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The Secret Histories, #1

Started by Doktor Howl, July 27, 2010, 03:42:43 PM

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Zyzyx

It's no flamewar. They're just asking you to put forth arguments that you can back up. Otherwise just lurk and read moar until you have something solid to contribute. No shame in admitting you've said dumb things, just do it and you'll feel better. We all derp things up once in a while. It's tough to be intellectually honest and even tougher to admit you're wrong.

Adios

Quote from: Ratatosk on July 29, 2010, 03:48:33 PM
Quote from: Phineas T. Poxwattle on July 29, 2010, 03:42:37 PM

As I said a few posts back, this is a thought experiment. I want to examine some thoughts which seem to be forbidden from my individualistic point of view. To look under some not-often-tipped rocks. The tone of this thread is sort of descending from "rational discussion" into sarcasm and "you're wrong, idiot"... I want to emphasize that just because I'm examining these things does not mean I'm throwing my full weight behind them; this is critical analysis, not manifesto. PD has always been a place where people can chew out these ideas together, I have no interest in escalating into a flame war.

Then you need to present the ideas in a more thoughtful fashion... thus far, its not been much more than some wild generalizations and bad metaphors...



Beat ya to it.  :lulz:

President Television

This thread was good until Phineas showed up.
My shit list: Stephen Harper, anarchists that complain about taxes instead of institutionalized torture, those people walking, anyone who lets a single aspect of themselves define their entire personality, salesmen that don't smoke pipes, Fredericton New Brunswick, bigots, philosophy majors, my nemesis, pirates that don't do anything, criminals without class, sociopaths, narcissists, furries, juggalos, foes.

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 29, 2010, 03:50:01 PM
Quote from: Ratatosk on July 29, 2010, 03:48:33 PM
Quote from: Phineas T. Poxwattle on July 29, 2010, 03:42:37 PM

As I said a few posts back, this is a thought experiment. I want to examine some thoughts which seem to be forbidden from my individualistic point of view. To look under some not-often-tipped rocks. The tone of this thread is sort of descending from "rational discussion" into sarcasm and "you're wrong, idiot"... I want to emphasize that just because I'm examining these things does not mean I'm throwing my full weight behind them; this is critical analysis, not manifesto. PD has always been a place where people can chew out these ideas together, I have no interest in escalating into a flame war.

Then you need to present the ideas in a more thoughtful fashion... thus far, its not been much more than some wild generalizations and bad metaphors...



Beat ya to it.  :lulz:

d'Oh!  :lulz:
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

Phineas T. Poxwattle

Quote from: Kai on July 29, 2010, 03:43:40 PM
I think you are castrating yourself by POLARIZING THE MOTHERFUCKING ISSUE. Jesus christ, it's like I'm talking with a communist or libertarian or partistan or borg or catholic. The discordian blashphemy is acting like there are only two alternatives.

earlier, in my reply to ratatosk I said that a pragmatic approach is more useful than getting locked into your individual mindset.

your inability to talk about this without dropping ad hominems makes me go MEH
I expected better


Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 29, 2010, 03:46:01 PM
Then make your case more intelligently. Stay on topic. Avoid flowerery nonsense.

:?

Quote from: Doktor Plague on July 29, 2010, 03:44:32 PM
Quote from: Phineas T. Poxwattle on July 29, 2010, 03:42:37 PM
PD has always been a place where people can chew out these ideas together, I have no interest in escalating into a flame war.

Um, Discordianism.

Right so no actual discussions then



you guys can disagree with me, that's fine, because I'm not putting any ego behind these ideas. They are not my ideas, they are ideas I want to examine. I've been saying it from the beginning, this is a devil's advocate discussion. It's possible to disagree with somebody without being condescending -- in fact, it's the only way to build a rational discussion.

Adios

#125
DAMMIT

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Right, but you have to make good arguments... So far, I haven't seen any. I mean White Blood Cells? Really?

And, while the collective may help you survive, it may also do all sorts of additional terrible things (see my previous posts)... How does your thought experiment address those?

It's fine to play the devil's advocate, but that dude has to work hard to win his cases... I mean, he's still paying off his student loans and it's been 6000 years.
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

Kai

Quote from: Phineas T. Poxwattle on July 29, 2010, 03:42:37 PM
Quote from: KaiWRONG LEVEL OF ORGANIZATION. You don't thank quarks and leptons either, yet everything, absolutely everything, is composed of quarks and leptons.

Your point supports mine. When you zoom out, the individual disappears. I know we're all looking at each other here on the human level, so humans seem really important to us, but if we get outside of that perspective, it's possible that all this bullshit which fills our lives is kind of irrelevant.

Are you not a human? If you are not a human, what the fuck are you? And if you are a human, why the FUCK wouldn't humans seem important? Do you think bears walk around thinking "bears seem really important to me, because I'm a bear, but when I get outside that perspective, bears aren't really important, so everything I do is irrelevant"? FUCK NO. They just go on doing bear shit. It's a huge fallacy that, because we are human and can consider a perspective beyond our individual lives, that makes our individual human lives irrelevant.

Quote
Quote from: Doktor Plague on July 29, 2010, 03:30:05 PM
White blood cells aren't complex enough to be capable of any tactics at all, much less forming an individual identity. Consider that a single white blood cell is smaller than some neurons. Your comparison doesn't apply.

there are structural similarities between the brain, the society, the city, the culture...

within the context of the human metabolism, a white blood cell is very much an individual. If complexity is the measure of an individual, I'm not sure that WE measure up, when you consider how complex and dynamic larger things are.

I swear, I am going to kill a motherfucker.

The only structural similarities between any level of organization is many units which interact in close proximity causing categorical nova. Everything else is superficial. You cannot compare quantum mechanics to organismal biology to sociology because they are not comparable. And no, a white blood cell isn't an individual. An individual is an autonomous organic unit. White blood cells are not autonomous in any sense. And as for /complexity/,



              \
               \
FAKE EXPLANATIONS, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU KNOW THEM?

QuoteGreater comment in the context of the thread:

As I said a few posts back, this is a thought experiment. I want to examine some thoughts which seem to be forbidden from my individualistic point of view. To look under some not-often-tipped rocks. The tone of this thread is sort of descending from "rational discussion" into sarcasm and "you're wrong, idiot"... I want to emphasize that just because I'm examining these things does not mean I'm throwing my full weight behind them; this is critical analysis, not manifesto. PD has always been a place where people can chew out these ideas together, I have no interest in escalating into a flame war.

There's nothing critical about the analysis, because you're just pulling words out of your ass that you don't understand, it's teachers passwords all the way down. Your entire argument could be summed up in the word "Phlogiston" and have precisely the same amount of reality anticipation, which is to say, zero.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

Okay, I yield to the rejack. Just had to get that out of my system.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Adios

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 27, 2010, 03:42:43 PM
Well, not SO secret, just that nobody pays attention to it.

Many Americans know that the founding fathers were mostly Deists.  A Deist is one who believes in "God as watchmaker"...IE, God set the universe up, and let it run without further interference.

So it's obviously no surprise that the founders set our government up the same way (With the notable exceptions of Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton, who objected for very different reasons.).  In fact, given article V, it's even arguable that they set up a social program, designed to make the citizens of the union more free and more happy as time went on.

And it worked.  Slavery was abolished (though not without cost), women got the right to vote, the average life of the common man became better and better, for about 190 years.

Problem is, the program was based on a model, and the model was - as all models are - flawed to some degree.  This caused errors to appear, errors which grew with every iteration (or generation, in this case), until the system began to break down. 

For example, World War I was predictable at the time of the founding, and was probably taken into account.  World War II, on the other hand, was an error caused by errors made in 1918, and probably couldn't have been imagined by the founders.  Recessions were undoubtably taken into account.  The dustbowl and the depression, probably not so much.

We've now been cycling monstrous errors for 60 years, and the effects became noticeable about 40 years ago, serious 30 years ago, and untenable 10 years ago.  We exist in a broken Machine in a horrible reality that Machine built for us, not out of malice, but out of bad data...Small errors magnified over decades, until there are a million small problems, and a few huge ones, that the system simply can't cope with anymore. 

You can't really fix it, or hit the "reset button", as the Ron Paul crowd would like to do, because you can't change the past, and you can't make history go away without creating a worse monster than you started with.

The idea of "E-Democracy" won't help, either, because changing the controls on a broken machine doesn't fix the machine, it just adds further complexity and makes the problems worse.

If allowed to continue, the end result will be either an autocracy or an oligarchy (something guaranteed by Ron Paul's ideas, and those of the "E-Democracy" crowd, incidentally).  The founders probably knew this would eventually happen...They were nothing if not students of history.

You have to wonder if they saw this coming, and wondered if we'd be smart enough when the time came to develop something completely different, a new social program that would be able to carry on where theirs finally failed. 

And, well, if not, we had 220 years.  Not a bad run.

Okay for now,
Dok

Adios

Quote from: Richter on July 27, 2010, 04:12:16 PM
I see a problem like this, and I get caught up in it almost by default.  Can't be helped, I am, as one good ol' italian fellow I knew in college dubbed me, a fixer.  

I don't have a good elegant fix for it, either.  I have an idea of running through the pages of laws, regulations and policies with a rubber stamp. "BULLSHIT: REMOVE"  This is falling into the trap of trying to fix the machine though, a labor of the Gordian sort, with a case of Sisiphus of undiagnosed serverity.  Given the rate at which the BS perpetuates and multiplies, the elected rabid STD host monkies hammer away at their typewriters banging down drugs with booze when they're not outright shitting everywhere.  At what point did we sign our overarching servies to these mangy creatures?  We did it because it was easy, because we didn't want to worry.  

There had been an earning, and entitlement, a decision that it would be OK to expect everything the dream of America promised, sit behind out picket fence pallisades and expect everything to go on OK outside of us.  We grew fat and big and forgot what "Community" was, though we're rediscovering "Tribe" in a REAL hurry.  

Fire?  Better call someone and expect them to stop it.  It's THEIR job.
Bleeding out?  Phone the lazy ambulance fuckers.  Weren't they wathcing your webcam stream?
Robbed?  Clear out, let the robbers have their way, and wait for the police to show up and stop them.  You are not allowed to defend your self or your property.  Jump in and YOU are LIABLE if any of it goes wrong.  We do have to protect everyone form overzealous amateur participation.

How do you untangle that kind of self-  fucking logic?  Alexander the Great knew how to cut through bullshit.  He may have jsut been a frag - happy frat boy who was good with horses, but the example: fuck the minutia, go out an accomplish SOMETHING: it's one that works.  Can we cut our mess of a system apart and go on?  

Primarily, there's this sneering hipster, teenage angst concept of the "system".  There is no "system", (that's my runnign slash with Occam's razor for the day).  Assuming their is any centralized intention behind it all dedicated to (apparently) inconveniencing, frustrating, monitoring, and driving you into slavedom is a delusion of your own self importance.  Saying there is a "system" doing anything like this is like accusing space aliens of fuckign with the fabric of the unvierse to give us all cancer with Hawkian Radiation.  It's a side effect, a leaking, a sidestream of every little injustice, inconsistency and bureaocratic trip - up in interacting with anythign bigger than a 7 person small business.  In short; you're delusion of persecution is backed and powered by the sinister fuck of idiot human nature.  

Feel cold yet?   (more to come.)

     

Phineas T. Poxwattle

Quote from: Zyzyx on July 29, 2010, 03:49:24 PM
It's no flamewar. They're just asking you to put forth arguments that you can back up. Otherwise just lurk and read moar until you have something solid to contribute. No shame in admitting you've said dumb things, just do it and you'll feel better. We all derp things up once in a while. It's tough to be intellectually honest and even tougher to admit you're wrong.

uhhh I've been backing up my arguments? Just because you don't agree with my points doesn't mean that I'm not contributing something solid. What I'm examining is a point of view, which cannot be right or wrong, although it can have degrees of both. In the replies to my posts, I haven't yet heard anything which has tipped my opinion. So merely admitting that I'm wrong because a group disagrees with me... would be the sort of collectivism you guys are arguing against.

Quote from: Doktor Plague on July 29, 2010, 03:51:13 PM
This thread was good until Phineas showed up.

I had been chewing on Dok's OP since he posted it, and I wanted to share some of the things it made me question. I think this is the preferred thing to do, rather than ignoring it or posting mittens.

but if you guys think I fucked it up, mea culpa. Don't sweat it, I'm out then, sorry to fuck things up.

Adios

Quote from: Richter on July 27, 2010, 04:41:43 PM
Thinking back for a second to our founding Deists.  "Sure, there was a watchmaker, but it's up to us to tuen it up a bit."  Not "I better hire a watchmaker." or, "I better contact the central watch maintenance authority witha  bug report."  We are all of us looking at this metaphorical watch constantly.  Thought these days it seems like more than just a watch.  It was a simple pocketwatch at first.  The kind even a local craftsman could afford, and it did the basic stuff simple.  Then we added to it, and it worked all right still, but it was getting big.  We had a few crazy outings, but it held up.  Some folks decided that they could fuck around with the mechanism a few times, steal a little money off of each turn of the spring, and almost crashed the works, so prevention, regulations and failsafes were built in.  This happened a LOT.  Seems like sometimes every concern a few people could give voice to would get another part peice or function added on.  

I don't think it's a watch anymore.  It's a huge fuckign emchanical spider now.  Too big to take off for parties with guns and ammo anymore, but there are these huge goddamn legs, brislted and hgairly withe fighter jets tanks and ordnance that we plop down anywhere we want to send the boys to play.  In fact, it's not even standing with too many legs on the country that supposedly built it anymore.  It's busy supporting itself off other lands, proping up or squashing as it teeters.  There's jsut the body proped up over us now.  Eyes, spinarettes, and horrible fuckign fangs.  It spins down campign signs and slogan, news, internet, and shiny new apple products.  The eyes watch every form of radiation of vibration we make and detect, and several we don't.  the fangs ares resplendent with bright black clube, dripping with mace and jackboots, crackling like a fucking thudnerstorm of a tazer.  Look close; it's all printing presses and typewrtiers, cotton gins, dot matrix printers, and (finagle take it all!) a few old looms still spinning the mummified scalps of their mutilated opperators.  

Anything we ever did when we thought it wasn't our concern or problem is up there.  Too big to fail, or too big to crush us without killing us all?  Haha!  Remember how the "Crystal ball effect" seemed optimistic?

(Hork cough spit coffee)
Okay

Adios

Ahem, the OP and subsequent posts had real content.

Adios

Quote from: Phineas T. Poxwattle on July 29, 2010, 04:01:41 PM
Quote from: Zyzyx on July 29, 2010, 03:49:24 PM
It's no flamewar. They're just asking you to put forth arguments that you can back up. Otherwise just lurk and read moar until you have something solid to contribute. No shame in admitting you've said dumb things, just do it and you'll feel better. We all derp things up once in a while. It's tough to be intellectually honest and even tougher to admit you're wrong.

uhhh I've been backing up my arguments? Just because you don't agree with my points doesn't mean that I'm not contributing something solid. What I'm examining is a point of view, which cannot be right or wrong, although it can have degrees of both. In the replies to my posts, I haven't yet heard anything which has tipped my opinion. So merely admitting that I'm wrong because a group disagrees with me... would be the sort of collectivism you guys are arguing against.

Quote from: Doktor Plague on July 29, 2010, 03:51:13 PM
This thread was good until Phineas showed up.

I had been chewing on Dok's OP since he posted it, and I wanted to share some of the things it made me question. I think this is the preferred thing to do, rather than ignoring it or posting mittens.

but if you guys think I fucked it up, mea culpa. Don't sweat it, I'm out then, sorry to fuck things up.

PROTIP: Start your own thread.