Skepticism and The Normal

[WWHP]

gee, when magical wiccan poster zaay says about me...

What draws people back is your fascinatingly superhuman, delusional, stubborness and failure to accept that OS012 is not the world-changing paradigm that you think it is. As the mods over at badscience said, when people get offensive it's because of your offensive boneheadedness; your ideas are just so trivial that they themselves aren't worth getting worked up about.

...he really gets the magical thinkers going!

worth repeating.

yes, chillzero, the more you repeat words, the more you will believe them, that is how magical thinking works!

damn zaay, I gotta say, you are one clever occultist! Bringing out the magical thinking in the skeptical crowd now, eh?

Good show! That's a classic. You really are good at manipulating!

It sort of reminds me of one honor I recieved at badscience.net. I was able to get members of British Academia to call me pompous! how classic is that? although I dont resort to deceptive or manipulative trickery like you do, zaay. I simply employ honesty, and then watch the irrational mind trick itself into what it means. It's quite a hoot, try it.

BF

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

<snip>
Arkan, can you let us know what particular logical fallacy is please. It's basically the "Accept this as true or terrible things will happen" appeal.

Sorry, have been away from the PC quite a bit this past weekend. The fallacy name for which you are looking is

Argumentum ad baculum
Consider the following argument:

You had better vote for an increase in taxes or the country will fall apart.​

Here an appeal is being made to the consequences of not accepting the argument for raising taxes. The fallacy itself means an appeal to force (although here we consider also the argumentum ad consequentium, since they are so similar), and here the claimant is implying that a consideration of what will (allegedly) follow from not raising taxes ought to force us to accept the proposal. That means the general form is thus:

P1: Not doing A will result in B;
P2: B is undesirable;
C: Therefore, we should do A.​

The fallacy occurs when the threat is in fact not related to the proposed action; in this formation, that would be challenging P1. In our example, perhaps not increasing taxes really would lead directly to the country falling apart (whatever that means), but it isn't obvious. Indeed, it sounds more like a rhetorical tactic to discount all the alternatives. What we want to know is if P1 is true; if not, then the argument is fallacious.
Take another instance:

If you don't exercise your right to vote, extremist parties will take advantage of your apathy and gain more power. Is that what you want?​

Here, once again, the force of the undesirable consequences is intended to make us accept the argument that we should vote. Is this fallacious, though? If we were to put it into syllogistic form, this time P1 would seem much more plausible. The important point is that the threat appealed to must be relevant to the issue at hand.

http://www.galilean-library.org/int16.html#ad_baculum

I'll leave it to your patience (as mine has run out) to substantiate your accusation that BF is committing such a fallacy.

 

[JonnyFive]

damn zaay, I gotta say, you are one clever occultist! Bringing out the magical thinking in the skeptical crowd now, eh?

Good show! That's a classic. You really are good at manipulating!

It sort of reminds me of one honor I recieved at badscience.net. I was able to get members of British Academia to call me pompous! how classic is that? although I dont resort to deceptive or manipulative trickery like you do, zaay. I simply employ honesty, and then watch the irrational mind trick itself into what it means. It's quite a hoot, try it.

When did Zaayr employ "magical thinking" in his arguments?

 

[flimflam_machine]

Bubb, I'm arguing against your statements at pre-school level because that's the level at which you appear to have screwed up. Chillzero summarised why you're talking bollocks in a paragraph of about 6 lines. I deliberately didn't go into meta-logic because frankly your grasp on real logic is poor enough. If you want to argue OS012 as a dialectic/metalanguage/metalogic or whatever then go ahead. But if, in so doing, you mention objective mystery then you will be dragged back (probably in words of one syllable) to the fact that it is based on a logical fallacy, and a really stupid one at that.

So..what's your argument against mystery again?

That it is not a possible truth value for objective statements. True and false have got it covered.

Don't know about you, but appeal to higher authority in the mob is not the most rational argument one should consider, no?

Nope, but the fact that your wonderfully logical, intuitive and elegant system has been rejected by everyone should give you pause for thought. Unless of course you are wildly egotistical, very stupid or a troll.

Examples of Objective Mystery/Unknowns.

Consciousness.
UFO
Death
Dark Matter
each's other's internal world.

So are you actually going to come up with some statements? Or are you just going to list lots of stuff that we don't know much about. Oh I get it... mystery = stuff that we don't know much about (yet).

You're saying I am simply unable to parse in logical or rational meaning from the obvious truth that although my 1 1/2 year old son does not know what 2+2 is, the FACTS are that 2 + 2 = 4 is an existing truth value of OBJECTIVLY TRUE no matter what my son knows.

So you admit that objective mystery is nonsense then? 2 + 2 = 4 > objective true, 2 + 2 = 5 > objective false and the equivalent objective mystery statement would be.....

Common statements that contradict your assertion. I am going to buy my house one day

Paradoxical statements that contradict your statement. This sentence is false

Philosophical statements that contradict your statement. At the moment of death, consciousness is flooded in pure bliss, and the last moment of being becomes an eternity

Scientific statements which contradict your statement. "We will live to be 1000".

No. 1: true or false
No. 2: metalinguistic statement, has no content to assess at a linguistic/ real-world level
No. 3: true or false
No. 4: true or false

Which of these was supposed to represent mystery (bearing in mind that "nobody yet knows" is not a justification for invoking "mystery")

When we cannot establish something to hold either a true or false value in the certain sense, then the 'something' is mysterious. It can be nothing else other than mysterious.

Nope, it is either true or false (assuming that it is an objective statement). Again *sigh* that we don't know the answer to something doesn't make it mysterious (if your ego can handle that).

For example, you're having a difficult time parsing the logical meaning of 'mystery'. You are unable to distinguish your reaction to the word 'mystery' from it's logical assosciation, unknown. Your framing your whole argument around your irrational reaction to unknown.

Bubb, I think that this whole sorry farce is due to your irrational reaction to unknown. Zaay put it pretty clearly a while back, other people deal with stuff being unknown and continue their lives by tentatively ascribing true or false values to statements on the basis of the information that they have. Ironically, even you do this. But you attempt to create some grander resolution in your head by hammering a "mystery" value where it cannot possibly go.

hmmm...objective statement =viewpoint, independent.

I'm sorry, I can't do much with that definition, to much is undefined. What is independent? to whom? clarify.

Are you really this stupid? The truth value of an objective statement does not depend on who is doing the stating. If a statement does not follow this rule then it is not objective. It's...... that...... simple......

An objectivly TRUE statement is a statement that holds information that is perfectly mutually observable and empirical to all points of view. It's truth value is 'one for all'.

Oh blimey I think he's going to get it!

If a statement does not contain that distinction, then it is not objectivly true, but objectivly FALSE, or objectivly MYSTERIOUS.

Ohhhhhh that's a shame, and he was so close too.

An objective false statement is still mutually observable to be false. If it's not objective true or objective false it's not an objective statement. If you want to use the word mystery to describe the fact that I don't know what you're thinking go ahead. But that's got nothing to do with "objective mystery", subjectivity or unknowability maybe but not "objective mystery".

"whales are mammals" is a tautological structure, so it's true in logical form. We agree that whales are mammals because we agree that whales are mammals, we agree we call them mammals because we created a mutually observable table of species that functions as objectivly true when we study and apply it.

Thier existence and what they are in and of themselves, the 'ding an sich', is irrelevant nor dependent upon our truth values in language. There is no 'truth' out there, there only is what is, there is only truth in 'here' that we can agree upon.

Yep, "whales are mammals" is an analytic truth. But "mystery" doesn't come into synthetic truths either. Either all ravens are black or they aren't, as you say "there only is what there is".

I have parsed it's meaning into the simplest of language that even a child can understand.

Children can understand the concept of santa claus, fairies and the easter bunny as well. That doesn't make them real.

 

[jimbob]

Statement 1.) Jimbob is saying that it is true that statement 1 is false about x.

Statement 2.) Jimbob is saying that it is true what statement 2 is saying about x, but does not define x mathematically sufficient.

Statement 3.) Jimbob is saying that it is true how statement 3 defines x is more refined than statement and preferable than statement 2.

Statement 4.) Jimbob is saying that it is true that we can come to define x more and more precisely the more we apply mathematics and science.

No, Statement #2 "the Earth "circles" around the sun is not true, because that implies that the orbital path is a circle, whereas naked-eye observations can show this is not the case.

This strategy that I mention does not rely on those in power using it. That was already tried by Buckminster Fuller, and he failed that problem. He created the world game for leaders to play to resolve problems of resource. The game works, universities and corparations use the game all the time. The only problem with 'the World Game' was that world leaders didnt use it!

The method I outline can be adapted into a framework that can synthesize more refined ideas to problem solve than the political engines of politicians. It's function is not to get the politician to use it, but rather to outcompete the ideas of irrational political bodies.

"The only problem with 'the World Game' was that world leaders didnt use it!"

Isn't that rather a fatal problem?

How will this outrcompete? by being more attractive?

Any solution that imploys a win lose strategy can be argued to be irrational, and those arguments against win lose strategy can hold and maintain themselves without producing contradictions, and will continue to expose contradictions in the arguments supporting win lose strategies continually.

That's discussion game theory, strategy, logic. It exists as a logical structure.

No, it is irrational to harm your own position. It is perfectly *rational* to be selfish, and to maximise your own wealth and power, even to the extent of harming other people.

It might not be "nice", but it is rational.

everybody wants to win. period. globally, we strategize in win lose terms, as in 'this side must lose x for us to have x'.

When there is a finite resource, and not enough to go round, (e.g. the balloon debate) it is not rational to be "nice" and die, nor is it rational for everyone to die because of the lack of scacrifices (willing or otherwise) of *other* people.

Or do you mean something different by the word "rational".

okay, so first off, those are all simple 'unknowns'. each unknown may have a value relative simply to itself. 'death' for example has certain limits which perhaps may always be impenetrable and permanent mystery...but perhaps not, you never know what we are going to uncover about consciousness.




agreed, it's a 2 value. 2 values are very close to mysterious ideas, by the way. That's the difficult distinction to make, the distinction between a false idea and a mysterious idea.



all 2 values are valid to the individual's that make them.

But the point is that there are different nuances in assssing this, which are lost in a trivalent logic system, due to the fact that you are all assigning them the same value, when they are qualitatively different.

what's important is how we model political problems. the query 'Is it better that an innocent person is imprisoned or that 99 guilty people go free?' is not very helpful, for it would depend upon the environment. If that innocent person going free was, say, Albert Einstein fleeing Nazi Germany as opposed to '99 citizens guilty of being 'jews' being freed by the Nazi's, then it's a different scenario, right?

Not to me it isn't. I *am* theoretically idealistic. Despite the loss to science, the greater harm would be the killing of the greater number. Anyway if the question was 99 murders as opposed to one innocent persion being falsly convicetd of murder, I still say that the 99 going free is the lesser of the two evils.

the most rational and logic ethic to have, in relationship to the self, and the self with others, is win win. There is no rational argument in defending win lose ethics or morals.

Those types of discussions is where OS 012 shines perfectly.

How? If you accept that there is not actually an objective (i.e. externally verifiable) "correct" answer, how does a trivalent system further the cause at all?

All you can do is look at how the implications of the various views are consistent with the stated framework of values, how they are internally consistent, and how consistent they are with your own values.

Jim

 

[Z]

gee, when magical wiccan poster zaay says about me...

That wasn't me, halfwit.

I simply employ honesty, and then watch the irrational mind trick itself into what it means. It's quite a hoot, try it.

Like, honestly posting what one poster has said and attributing it to another poster.

Sure, real honest.

Further personal attacks noted - nothing worth discussing.


BTW, Rome, I'm enjoying watching everyone tear your false triad to shreds... it's really quite amusing to sit back and watch you scrabble to support your personal delusions. It's quite a hoot!

 

[Z]

When did Zaayr employ "magical thinking" in his arguments?

Never; he's chosen to attack the person, rather than the idea.

Ironic, isn't it?

 

[WWHP]

That wasn't me, halfwit.

ahh, indeed it wasnt. sorry, I guess your not as clever as I thought, my apologies

Further personal attacks noted - nothing worth discussing.

you can always try rebutting my arguments

BTW, Rome, I'm enjoying watching everyone tear your false triad to shreds... it's really quite amusing to sit back and watch you scrabble to support your personal delusions. It's quite a hoot!

then you have more surprises coming your way. stay tuned.

 

[WWHP]

When did Zaayr employ "magical thinking" in his arguments?

that was me just teasin'. and I fumbled it too, rats.

 

[WWHP]

Never; he's chosen to attack the person, rather than the idea.

Ironic, isn't it?

oh please zaay, your manipulations are useless. I have rebutted your ideas, and teased you relative to your ideas about me. You removed yourself from the tit for tat, i.e. you didnt respond to my last set of arguments, and now your whiny because I call you an occultist. What's wrong with being an occultist? isnt that what you are?


I still love your charade though. Really, very entertaining. Your statement that the world is too complex to model using any form of logic whatsover is you simply stating you work in the mystery. Isnt that what most occultists/wiccans/warlocks do?

Io pan!


BF

Dont have much time to get to the other responses, will tommorow or perhaps later this evening.

 

[JonnyFive]

that was me just teasin'. and I fumbled it too, rats.

oh please zaay, your manipulations are useless. I have rebutted your ideas, and teased you relative to your ideas about me. You removed yourself from the tit for tat, i.e. you didnt respond to my last set of arguments, and now your whiny because I call you an occultist. What's wrong with being an occultist? isnt that what you are?


I still love your charade though. Really, very entertaining. Your statement that the world is too complex to model using any form of logic whatsover is you simply stating you work in the mystery. Isnt that what most occultists/wiccans/warlocks do?

You are polite enough to some of the posters here (including me), but then you inexplicably start with these ad hominem attacks and starw man statements.

I try to be patient and polite, but your conduct here is particularly immature. I think that some of the other posters were out of line with the personal junk, but you responded in kind and then claimed you were "just teasing" before launching into another round of ad hominem junk.

If that's what the OS012 "dialectic" is all about, then I do not want anything to do with it.

 

[JonnyFive]

Just to be clear, here's how mystery works into all this:

 

[aggle-rithm]

Just to be clear, here's how mystery works into all this:

[qimg]http://www.randi.org/latexrender/latex.php?$$\{\textrm{James Randi}\} \cap \{\textit{Mystery}\} = \{\textbf{DECEPTION}\}$$[/qimg]

Great. Just when I thought I understood discrete mathematics.

 

[WWHP]

Yeah, ok. The contradiction comes from the fact that you are using two different definitions of "objective", neither of which are the usual usage within discussions of logic. In statement 1 you are using "objective" to mean "true" i.e., accurately describing the world. In statement 2 you are using "objectively" to mean confirmably.

huh? truth is confirmable and the confirmable is true. I am using one sole distinction for objectivity that has produced absolutly no contradictions whatsoever. You misinterpret the meaning.

If we take your usage from statement 1 (objective = true) then statement 1 says "false statements are not true". This is hardly news. If we then take that same definition into statement 2 you are saying that "statements are truly true, truly false or truly mysterious".

Three truth values mean three TRUTH VALUES. In bivalent logic, things are objectivly true, or objectivly false. There is no contradiction there. IT's the law of identity. true=true, false=false, unknown=unknown.

C'mon flim, those are just basics in logic. there is no contradiction. If it is true that a thing is unknown, it's the third value of truth. if it's true that a thing is a false representation or an error, that's the second value. if it's true that it's true, then it's the first value.

The concept of a "truly false" statement is a complete oxymoron and utterly illogical, imagine saying that something is "whitely black" or "wrongly right".

'truly false' or 'it is true that this is false' is also a truth in bivalent logic which hold TWO truth values. It's not even close to an oxymoron, it's a LOGICAL value!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_value

Please come a bit more prepared to this discussion if you going to make sweeping indictments

So to restate, your problem is that you do not stick to one definition of "objective" and there is no one definition of "objective" that allows all your statements to be valid. I suggest that you stick to using "objective" the same way that logicians and everyone else does i.e., meaning "referring" to the real world so "Bubblefish is an antelope" is an objective statement because it refers to you and you are part of the real world.

My definitions of OBJECTIVITY are in complete harmony with logic, science, and mathematics. There is no contradiction between the usage of OBJECTIVITY in OS 012 and logic, mathematics, or the dictionairy.

You have a false idea about what objective means in OS 012.

Bubb, I'm arguing against your statements at pre-school level because that's the level at which you appear to have screwed up.

I think you have a false idea of OS 012 is stuck in a preschool level, but let's give it a roll

Chillzero summarised why you're talking bollocks in a paragraph of about 6 lines.

That's not an argument, that's an opinion piece.

I deliberately didn't go into meta-logic because frankly your grasp on real logic is poor enough.

I am in perfect harmony with logic, there is no contradiction

If you want to argue OS012 as a dialectic/metalanguage/metalogic or whatever then go ahead. But if, in so doing, you mention objective mystery then you will be dragged back (probably in words of one syllable) to the fact that it is based on a logical fallacy, and a really stupid one at that.

it is not a logical fallacy. It's a third value of truth, as opposed to two values of truth in bivalent logic. Flim, your making some pretty big blunders here. Please research 'truth values' and what they mean.

you may also find this interesting, my friends and counterparts down in south america, doing some amazing things with three values found in the natural language of Aymara.

http://www.aymara.org/biblio/igr/igr3.html

That it is not a possible truth value for objective statements. True and false have got it covered.

It's a truth value for statements when the true/false is UNKNOWN. It can be unknown objectivly when NO ONE knows the answer. Period.

are you actually denying the third value exists in logic and mathematics? because that's pure insanity if you are.

here is the paper once again. http://www.aymara.org/ternary/ternary.pdf

Nope, but the fact that your wonderfully logical, intuitive and elegant system has been rejected by everyone should give you pause for thought.

huh? I think you over conflaggerating the importance of badscience and this forum! There are numerous people who are embracing this model, and many of them quite educated in mathematics, science, philosophy.

It's natural I would find anti-thesis in these communities, that is why I am here! The dominant philosophy surrounding the arguments here is Reductionism, which is founded on bivalent logic. Ternary logic appears contradictory to your belief systems.

I'm not here trying to 'sell' anyone believing OS 012, I am here looking for antithesis and rational argument

So are you actually going to come up with some statements?

I listed statements inside the third value all over this forum, and in my last post to you, listed a number of them.

Have fun with this one.

At the moment of death, consciousness is flooded in pure bliss, and the final moment exists in eternity.

or this one

Human Beings alive today will have the oppurtunity to live 1000 years

Oh I get it... mystery = stuff that we don't know much about (yet).

exactly.

So you admit that objective mystery is nonsense then?

no

2 + 2 = 4 > objective true, 2 + 2 = 5 > objective false and the equivalent objective mystery statement would be.....

2 + x = [what natural number?]

'k, let's look at our statements and values. We are analyzing statements now.

I give some examples of third value statements:I am going to buy my house one day
you say it's

No. 1: true or false

what is the statement NOW? In the future, that statement is still that statement. Can you define which value that statement has NOW please using bivalent logic?

Paradoxical statements that contradict your statement. This sentence is false

No. 2: metalinguistic statement, has no content to assess at a linguistic/ real-world level

so you can't account for that statement then.

Philosophical statements that contradict your statement. At the moment of death, consciousness is flooded in pure bliss, and the last moment of being becomes an eternity

No. 3: true or false

which one is it?

Scientific statements which contradict your statement. "We will live to be 1000".

No. 4: true or false

which one is it?

Which of these was supposed to represent mystery (bearing in mind that "nobody yet knows" is not a justification for invoking "mystery")

THAT'S WHAT MYSTERY IS>>>>>>>>>>>>NOBODY KNOWS.

Again *sigh* that we don't know the answer to something doesn't make it mysterious (if your ego can handle that).

not knowing is what makes something mysterious.

Bubb, I think that this whole sorry farce is due to your irrational reaction to unknown.

my reaction to unknown is in harmony with logic and mathematics

Zaay put it pretty clearly a while back, other people deal with stuff being unknown and continue their lives by tentatively ascribing true or false values to statements on the basis of the information that they have.

yes, that produces uncertainty at the foundation of your knowledge tree

Ironically, even you do this. But you attempt to create some grander resolution in your head by hammering a "mystery" value where it cannot possibly go.

mystery is a value, a certain value, to assign to that which we dont know.

The truth value of an objective statement does not depend on who is doing the stating.

The objective value is not dependent, no, but the subjective value is depedent, yes.

Oh blimey I think he's going to get it!

Oh I got it, been saying it for years now

An objective false statement is still mutually observable to be false.

agreed. before when I stated this, you confused it as your 'wrongly correct' oxymoron. Now your stating what i was stating

If it's not objective true or objective false it's not an objective statement.

Objectivly false statements are not objective statements, they are false objective statements

If you want to use the word mystery to describe the fact that I don't know what you're thinking go ahead.

that is a third value, yes

But that's got nothing to do with "objective mystery", subjectivity or unknowability maybe but not "objective mystery".

Each other's inner life or experience is a mystery to everyone else. It is a perfect example of an unknown. Our inner realities are hidden from others. This is true to all points of view, thus, it's an objective mystery.

Yep, "whales are mammals" is an analytic truth. But "mystery" doesn't come into synthetic truths either. Either all ravens are black or they aren't, as you say "there only is what there is".

Yes, there is only what is, and in the set 'what is', they are knowns, and unknowns

Children can understand the concept of santa claus, fairies and the easter bunny as well. That doesn't make them real.

It makes them real concepts and imaginairy creatures. that's the 2 value.


BF

 

[WWHP]

You are polite enough to some of the posters here (including me), but then you inexplicably start with these ad hominem attacks and starw man statements.

I try to be patient and polite, but your conduct here is particularly immature. I think that some of the other posters were out of line with the personal junk, but you responded in kind and then claimed you were "just teasing" before launching into another round of ad hominem junk.

If that's what the OS012 "dialectic" is all about, then I do not want anything to do with it.

Jonny, human dialogue is often chaotic and many other things, inflammatory, insulting, etc etc.

I know how it may appear to some people, but I am using a method of communication, which employs a 'tit for tat' strategy, similar to used in Game Theory and Evolutionairy Theory. This means when I recieve personal attacks or ad hom, i respond with that in kind. If this continues, then the tit for tat turns into 'mutual teasing', mutually 'funny', and then the discussion returns to the actual topic. In game theory, 'tit for tat' can turn into 'non zero sum' or win win.

And it works. Look at some of the badscience.net people here. See how they are returning to the discussion?

I mirror my opponents, that is the strategy. Zaay, long before I started 'teasing' him back, called me delusional and all sorts of other things. He intentionally disrespected my requests for anonyminity. Zaay is getting back what he put in. His statements are part of the 'synergy' of this discussion.

I tease back in the same light that a comedian will tease. I want you all to tease me in the same light. But i also want all of us to discuss this rationally, yet I don't want to restrict anyone's communication. Thus, tit for tat is an effective strategy in dialogue when applying game theory to heated discussion.

Remember my earlier examples. Two dialecticians, one is Robert Wright, and the other Stephan Colbert. This is sort of like both of them combined.

Nice to see you back,
Bubblefish

 

[drkitten]

Jonny, human dialogue is often chaotic and many other things, inflammatory, insulting, etc etc.

I know how it may appear to some people, but I am using a method of communication, which employs a 'tit for tat' strategy, similar to used in Game Theory and Evolutionairy Theory. This means when I recieve personal attacks or ad hom, i respond with that in kind.

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this so-called strategy of yours.

First, tit-for-tat has not actually been shown to have any positive effects in realistic interactions such as between real people instead of programmatic software agents. So it's a stupid strategy to follow, especially in a moderated forum where your ability to participate may be curtailed at any point.

Second, you are demonstrably unable to accurately identify personal attacks and/or ad hominem statements. So your attempt to implement the strategy is flawed, with attendant negative consequences.

I have another suggestion about the best way to interact with posters. Ignore the ones that you don't like. And instead of posting personal attacks yourself, which is likely to get you suspended or banned, simply post logical, cogent, and well-written statements that actually make some sort of coherent sense.

 

[aggle-rithm]

I know how it may appear to some people, but I am using a method of communication, which employs a 'tit for tat' strategy, similar to used in Game Theory and Evolutionairy Theory. This means when I recieve personal attacks or ad hom, i respond with that in kind. If this continues, then the tit for tat turns into 'mutual teasing', mutually 'funny', and then the discussion returns to the actual topic. In game theory, 'tit for tat' can turn into 'non zero sum' or win win.

Right. And Darth Vader was ALWAYS supposed to be Luke Skywalker's father...

 

[JonnyFive]

Great. Just when I thought I understood discrete mathematics.

You understand nothing!

Go ahead, ask me what [latex]$$\{\textrm{James Randi}\} \cup \{\textit{Mystery}\}$$[/latex] is... ask me!!

I know how it may appear to some people, but I am using a method of communication, which employs a 'tit for tat' strategy, similar to used in Game Theory and Evolutionairy Theory. This means when I recieve personal attacks or ad hom, i respond with that in kind. If this continues, then the tit for tat turns into 'mutual teasing', mutually 'funny', and then the discussion returns to the actual topic. In game theory, 'tit for tat' can turn into 'non zero sum' or win win.

Well, you can do that all you like, but it doesn't make it any less of a boorish debating tactic.

I had respect for you when you were willing to talk to me without resorting to ad hom crap (as a few other posters have done to me when I disagreed with them or asked to see evidence), and that you were willing to continue this thread in spite of the childish behavior of some of the people that apparently followed you from the other forum.

But that respect hasn't survived your repeated dropping down to that same level with the excuse of what is essentially "but they did it first!"

You can talk all you want about game theory, but that kind of behavior should be reserved for children. If you insist on continuing this ridiculous "respond in kind" style of discussion to include repeated ad hominem attacks as a central theme, I'm going to simply put you on ignore, and I suspect others will eventually do the same.

 

[WWHP]

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this so-called strategy of yours.

First, tit-for-tat has not actually been shown to have any positive effects in realistic interactions such as between real people instead of programmatic software agents.

ever hear of the Common's Delimma?

Also, that's partly my next stage to this project, showing tit for tat as a discussion method to return the discussion into a win win

So it's a stupid strategy to follow, especially in a moderated forum where your ability to participate may be curtailed at any point.

This is somewhat true, I do have to alter my strategy on occasion.

Second, you are demonstrably unable to accurately identify personal attacks and/or ad hominem statements. So your attempt to implement the strategy is flawed, with attendant negative consequences.

I may make an error here or there, but overall, my application is pretty spot on. If I mistake a personal or ad hom attack, then I make an error and apologize, simple.

I have another suggestion about the best way to interact with posters. Ignore the ones that you don't like.

Why ignore them? When tit for tat is happening, there is chance for communication/resolution, when I ignore them, there is no chance for communication.

And instead of posting personal attacks yourself, which is likely to get you suspended or banned, simply post logical, cogent, and well-written statements that actually make some sort of coherent sense.

I respond to all critical arguments. Zaay is no longer posting critical arguments, he is posting commentary regarding my state of mind. I want to turn that commentary back into a discussion. If i tit for tat with him, he may return to reasonable and honest discussion.


BF

 

[WWHP]

I had respect for you when you were willing to talk to me without resorting to ad hom crap (as a few other posters have done to me when I disagreed with them or asked to see evidence), and that you were willing to continue this thread in spite of the childish behavior of some of the people that apparently followed you from the other forum.

likewise, I have the same respect for you for the same reason.

But that respect hasn't survived your repeated dropping down to that same level with the excuse of what is essentially "but they did it first!"

You can talk all you want about game theory, but that kind of behavior should be reserved for children. If you insist on continuing this ridiculous "respond in kind" style of discussion to include repeated ad hominem attacks as a central theme, I'm going to simply put you on ignore, and I suspect others will eventually do the same.

Jonny, I'm sorry you have this reaction. I take that as a request, and for you, I shall tone down this method a bit.

It may be obnoxious, I can accept that, but it works in real world situations where we are forced to deal and communicate with those who employ those tactics.

What i do is like Aikido, but in dialogue. the strategy is there to show that unless your intention is to be funny, ad hom or personal attacks cannot advance ideas inside of a rational discussion, it's impossible after a certain point. When we have to consider conflict resolution and problem solving with irrational human beings, we have to find a strategy to communicate inside of those dialogues and keep the discussion going. As you know, this is very important in side of this project for conflict resolution/problem solving on a global level. Human Behavior changes and alters around this princaple.

But again, for you, I shall tone it down. Thank you once again for your always honest point of view and critique.

Bubblefish