Skepticism and The Normal

Mojo said:
I think I'm with Charlie Brooker on this one.
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Gee, I wonder why it is I'm not surprised....


Mac vs PC, for sure. This to me is such a perfect contempoary metaphor, a pop cultural refrence of this argument expressed perfectly.

This one sums up our exchange in this thread. Note how the 'security' operator has to force the PC into bivalent answers, which wind up forcing the PC to be 'honest' with himself.

Too Perfect!

http://images.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov
 
Arkan_Wolfshade said:
That's odd, because I could have sworn your argument was
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That's my assertion, and all of these posts are my argument backing that assertion. C'mon Arkan, i don't get you sometimes, you're throwing out non sequitors here.

As Jonny stated perfectly earlier, the intersection between {James Randi} and {Deception/Delusion} is {Mystery}.

Mystery is the third value. We are discussing and agreeing/disagreeing on the neccesity of the third value, thus, my mention of the absence of the third value in Early Greece, and the irrational steps they to to ignore evidence which would have produced it's conclusion into thier philosophy and mathematics, which became the foundation of western delusion and holds to this very day.
 
So, let me recap. You made an assertion and it was pointed out that it couldn't possibly be true. When you have your reference back you correct yourself, but still get it wrong. So either you lied in the hope that nobody would check it out, or (more likely in my opinion) even when you were checking your facts, you didn't read the relevant part carefully enough to get it right. And that seems to be your way of going about research. You skim read lots of topics not very carefully and take the bits which you think fit in with what your ideas already are. And you think your basic skim reading makes you some sort of expert and then when caught out in a mistake, you plead "layperson". You don't know much about mathematics, yet you try to use mathematical arguments to justify your arbitrary numbering system for OS012. You are not a scientist yet you think you know and understand scientific reasoning better than all the scientists you have encountered on many forums. Now there are many topics I am fairly ignorant in, but whenever you start talking about one of them, I strongly suspect you have completely misunderstood or misapplied it - based on the way you use and understand things that I do know a fair amount about.

[An aside - how many of the following list of characteristics would you say bubblefish here exhibits?
    1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
    2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
    3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
    4. requires excessive admiration
    5. strong sense of entitlement
    6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
    7. lacks empathy
    8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
    9. arrogant affect ]
 
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Bubblefish said:
The 'murder' is irrelevant, I made an error previously, I already addressed that.
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No, you didn't. You posted, "It wasnt aristotle who did the murdering, it was Pythagoras, and obviously not the same time period. I was flat wrong there". All you did was change the identity of the murderer from Aristotle to Pythagoras. You left intact the claim that a philosopher who tried to introduce 0 to math had been murdered because the idea was so "very discomforting" (nice variation on the "they persecuted Galileo as well, so I'm right" fallacy, BTW).

In fact, you're still claiming that the book shows that the Greeks "were willing to kill, ban, maim, or censor those who provided rational evidence" for the existence of the irrational or infinite, when it is clear from the book a) that it was a particular cult-like group, the Pythagoreans, who had some very odd beliefs, who committed the alleged murder, rather than Greek philosophers generally, b) it is not established that they actually murdered him, and c) that if Hippasus actually was murdered, it was because he revealed the existence of irrational numbers to those outside the "brotherhood", rather than because he propsed their existence or provided evidence for it. See page 37:
...the incommensurability of the square root of two became the deepest, darkest secret of the Pythagorean order.

However, irrational numbers, unlike zero, could not easily be ignored by the Greeks. The irrational occured and reoccurred in all sorts of geometrical constructions. It would be hard to keep the secret of the irrational hidden from a people so obsessed with geometry and ratios. One day someone would let the secret out. This someone was Hippasus of Metapontum, a mathematician and member of the Pythagorean brotherhood. The secret of the irrationals would cause him great misfortune.
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According to the book, the Pythagoreans knew about the existence of irrational numbers but tried to hush them up. If he was killed, it was for revealing a secret of the "brotherhood" to the outside world. But, of course, it is far from established that he was killed because "the legends are very hazy and contain contradictory stories".

I haven't noticed any other evidence in the book that anyone was killed or maimed for attempting to introduce the concepts of irrational numbers or infinity. Can you provide page references, please?

Note also the sentence at the start of the second paragraph I quoted there:
However, irrational numbers, unlike zero, could not easily be ignored by the Greeks.
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You've claimed that the Greeks were violently opposed to the concept of zero, indeed so hostile to the concept that they were prepared to kill anyone who proposed it. In fact, the book says they were able easily to ignore the concept.
 
I have many arguments to attend to. Hopefully I can address Jonny's and Zaays by tommorow, and address afterwards Aarkan's and the hunk of Dr. Kittens.

I still find it hard to believe that so many of you are still struggling with this third value.

Three truth values have both an intuitive and logical relationship. Ternary Logic, maybe logic and taoism all have something in common, three values.

Ahhh, yet this cannot be true what I write, because
drkitten said:
So do Goldilocks' bears, the Billy Goats Gruff, and the Stooges. That doesn't make Stooge logic either useful, accurate, or intuitive.
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Bivalent logic has botha logical and intuitive relationship. Bivalent logic, aristolian logic/philosophy, dualism, binary, all share something in common.

So do Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, and Ren and Stimpy, that doesnt make Ren and Stimpy logic either useful, accurate, or intuitive either.
 
Focus on the real argument, Mojo and Prof waffle, badscience.net crowd, focus on the real argument, not the one in your mind that doesnt really exist.

you had you're chance to discuss with me at badscience.net, and you all wanted me banned. No worries for me, you wern't supplying critical arguments anyway. Yours was a forum of trolls.

So please dont distract the argument, you cant do that here succesfully, that trick doesnt work.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
[An aside - how many of the following list of characteristics would you say bubblefish here exhibits?
    1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
    2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
    3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
    4. requires excessive admiration
    5. strong sense of entitlement
    6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
    7. lacks empathy
    8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
    9. arrogant affect ]
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I could score a perfect ten and have every box checked, but that still has nothing to do with the ideas that I am discussing.

Human Beings are not ideas, weeeck. You dont need a phd to see that self evident truth. So let you're arguments begin to reflect that elegant truth, or return to playing Abbott to PV's Costello.

do you really think that efforts to ban or shame me will prevent my arguments from being considered by your rational mind?

You may be a scientist, but your philosophy lives in the 19th century. Upgrade your ideas, please, but keep your job.

You may continue adoring me now, as you were.
 
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Professor Yaffle said:
[An aside - how many of the following list of characteristics would you say bubblefish here exhibits?
    1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
    2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
    3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
    4. requires excessive admiration
    5. strong sense of entitlement
    6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
    7. lacks empathy
    8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
    9. arrogant affect ]
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I brought this up, oooooh, ages ago back on bs, and I've seen nothing to change my view, namely high probability of NPD.
In fact I've read plenty more to reinforce my view. As for Bubba saying he could score a perfect 10, well, reinforces my view about his ability with numbers, that whole post is almost an NPD manifesto.
 
Am I thick, or is this thread a load of old bollocks?

Wait, don't answer that...
 
Bubblefish said:
Focus on the real argument, Mojo and Prof waffle, badscience.net crowd, focus on the real argument, not the one in your mind that doesnt really exist.

you had you're chance to discuss with me at badscience.net, and you all wanted me banned. No worries for me, you wern't supplying critical arguments anyway. Yours was a forum of trolls.

So please dont distract the argument, you cant do that here succesfully, that trick doesnt work.
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Would that be the argument that you've recently been conducting by posting clips from Mac adverts?

BTW, did you see me asking for you to be banned from the badscience forum?
 
Bubblefish said:
doctor Lo is organizing a new set of experiments on qi as we speak. He hopes to properly publish the results if it is a success.
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Perhaps this explains the non-appearance of the peer reviewed results you promised us back in 2005.

Do you know what reporting bias is?
 
I only wanted you banned from Bad Science because the likes of Judge Floro and Ruth Rosin seemed to go away when you were around, and I missed them. I was an avid reader of Ruth's threads.

Anyway, a big forum like this is much better able to handle you. bad Science is much smaller, and so you seemed to take it over. Which was a shame for everyone else there. Here you are hardly noticable.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
[An aside - how many of the following list of characteristics would you say bubblefish here exhibits?
    1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
    2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
    3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
    4. requires excessive admiration
    5. strong sense of entitlement
    6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
    7. lacks empathy
    8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
    9. arrogant affect ]
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Bubblefish said:
I could score a perfect ten and have every box checked, but that still has nothing to do with the ideas that I am discussing.
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And here we have a perfect example of Bubblefish's understanding of maths.
9 != 10


Mojo said:
Note also the sentence at the start of the second paragraph I quoted there: You've claimed that the Greeks were violently opposed to the concept of zero, indeed so hostile to the concept that they were prepared to kill anyone who proposed it. In fact, the book says they were able easily to ignore the concept.
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A view which is also supported here.
This shows how Pythagoras’ formulation immediately led to a new mathematical problem, namely that of incommensurables. At his time the concept of irrational numbers was not known and it is uncertain how Pythagoras dealt with the problem. We may surmise that he was not too concerned about it. His religion, in absence of theological explanations, had found a way to blend the “mystery of the divine” with common-sense rational thought.
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Of course, it has to be remembered that Pythagoras was basically a raving nutcase. The rules of his cult included not touching white cocks or using mirrors next to lights. It is entirely possible he would order someone killed for whatever crossed his mind at the time, but there is no actual eveidence that he ever did. In fact, there is very little evidence of anything, since all the writings about him were written after his death, and after his disciples had split into two violently opposed groups, who may have had good reason to spread rumours about each other. It is actually impossible to tell which of the Pythagoreans actually discovered anything, since all their discoveries were attributed to Pythagoras himself.

Interestingly, the Pythagorean theorem was discovered over 200 years before Pythagoras' birth.
 
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