Messages

Religion and tyranny are forms of technology?

Oh yeah, definitely.  It's primitive social control technology.

Say you perceive a problem:  The people are inefficiently organized.  With great organization they could be far more productive.  So you need some sort of means to organize them.

You need technology for social control.  Technology is just ideas put into practice.  You might imagine there is a God (or if you want to be Old Skool, you might imagine you ARE a God), but that's just an idea.

You build a temple, that's technology.  That's an idea applied to reality to create an effect: worship.  Tyranny is just what my computer programmer friends call the "brute force approach" to social control.  A very simple technology.

the mythopoetic sense has its place, wolves don't talk to little girls in red capes but the story has a point that contains information and conveys a meaning to its readers (the same can be said of goddesses that chuck golden apples at other gods parties), most of religion is a metaphisical wank that makes people happy, which i feel free to use or not use depending on the situation, provability in a scientific proof of truth way is irrelevant, transmitting useful information is the measure of its success

There was no useful information in Nigel's post.

your critique has been boring and wanky a chintzy argument to support a foregone conclusion i think is idiotic, we are both free to have our opinions ...

We are both free to have our opinions, but your opinions are uninformed, irrational and stupid.

the argument is a device the device worked (see last answer)the point that some people should be less hung up on identity based on social convention is wrong? nope i don't think she is wrong.

No, the argument didn't work. You just happen to agree with the conclusion, so you think the argument was a success.

That doesn't require any intelligence or thought at all.   That makes you no different than any other moron on this planet who believes nonsensical arguments because they support the conclusions they want to be true.

your the one accusing her of having erroneous metaphysical beliefs based on one rant,  i am not coming to that conclusion from reading the same rant.

No dumbass, I'm accusing this one rant of being based on meaningless metaphysical premises.

A success by what standard of measure?

the standard that all of her audience except you got it...

That's not a measure of success.  All of Rush Limbaugh's fans delude themselves into thinking that Rush Limbaugh presents successful arguments because they want to agree with his conclusions.

You are no different than those dittoheads.  You're just a domesticated primate who isn't thinking.  You're just groupthinking.   Agreeing to belong.

Even in this exchange, your argument is "It doesn't matter what she said, I agree with the point, so that makes her argument successful."

But why do you agree with the point?   You don't know.  You can't explain.  You just have faith that it is true, and will agree with any argument, no matter how stupid, as long as it concludes by stating something you already agree with.

Technology will save us all, they say. 

It had damn well better.  Farming didn't work, religion didn't work, tyranny didn't work, and industry didn't work.

Interestingly enough, all of those are examples of technology.  If anything is going to save us, it'll pretty much have to be technology, given a broad enough definition of technology.

Really it's more like "Novel technology will save us."

No, wait, it's more like "Novel technology will replace our current problems with all new problems.  Yay!"

I can't wait for nanotech.  I'm sure it will be an unmitigated disaster that nearly destroys society (isn't everything these days?), but at least it will be a shitstorm of a color we've never seen before.

I like surprises.

Cartesian duality is a model, true in some sense false in some sense meaningless in some seance etc etc (you  should know the rest).

Yes.  It is true in a mythopoetic sense, false in a factual sense.  It's metaphysical wank.  Makes people happy, isn't true by the standard definition of truth.  It's religion.

so what if Nigel used that model?

It's boring and wanky and I can give it no mittens.  It's a chintzy argument to support a forgone conclusion, and I happen to think that forgone conclusion is idiotic.

the point of the piece is don't take social conventions regarding gender and other aspects of identity too seriously, perhaps the same point can be made using the model of emergence from neurology, perhaps even better but that's not the model she chose to use to get the point across (successfully to all but you) and successful transmission of an idea she had about social conventions was her goal and the map she chose worked to that end...

God that is one hell of a runaway sentence.  It appears to amount to "Who cares if the argument is crap, I agree with the conclusion."

Have you considered the possibility that Nigel's point is wrong?

i don't know what her religious metaphysical or philosophical beliefs are and i don't care.. i also don't assume because she used this model in this instance she wouldn't use a different model in a different circumstance.

That's nice?  How is that relevant?

tear up her use of that model because of your dislike for Cartesian duality all you want, it doesn't change the fact that her rant was a success

A success by what standard of measure?

Dude. Two sentences does not constitute a paragraph and treating it as such as mechanical stupidity.

A paragraph is a distinct portion of written or printed matter dealing with a particular idea, usually beginning with an indentation on a new line.  That's from the dictionary.  One word constitutes a paragraph if it begins on a new line.

Dumbass.

The point of it was to showcase the absurdity of the strict male-female gender structure.

Yes, but it failed.  It only showcased the weakness of the argument.

Also, no. The standard form for an essay is not strongest-weakest. In fact, that's actually a really bad idea. The second strongest should go near the end with the weaker ones in the middle.

I'm not an English major, so I'm going to cite an external authority, The Guide to Grammar and Writing from Capital Community College Foundation:

The second paragraph of the body should contain the second strongest argument, second most significant example, second cleverest illustration, or an obvious follow up the first paragraph in the body....The third paragraph of the body should contain the weakest argument, weakest example, weakest illustration, or an obvious follow up to the second paragraph in the body.

After looking at a dozen other sites, I can't find anything the specifically contradicts that.  Do you have any citations to back up your argument?

No?

You're not talking out of your ass, are you?

I think maybe you are.

Human memory tends to work that way.

Look, it's not like any of this is really relevant.  This is quibbling over bullshit.

The point is that the essay is a bunch of Cartesian bullshit.  Despite what a lot of people in this thread have expended a lot of hot air denying, the entire essay is founded on the assumption that there is a ghost in the machine, a driver in vehicle. She even uses that second metaphor, calls the body a machine, and claims the mind exist independent of the body.

I find such ideas boring and wanky.  I said so.   Everybody is fucking falling over themselves to defend it. I have no idea why.

[how]

The above proves beyond a doubt you are incapable of defending your position. Your idea of discussion is obviously ridicule and to insult. You are no longer worthy of my time. Do not respond to me again and assume if I mention you I am talking about you, not to you. I've had more intelligent responses while trolling pagan boards.

Flounce Flounce Flounce!

Hey Asshat, how does that prove I am incapable of defending your position?

Let me guess:  A WIZARD DID IT!

The second paragraph is supposed to contain the second strongest argument, but instead it simply reasserts the first paragraph.

Wouldn't the second paragraph be the weakest. I mean both  first impression or first paragraph and last impression or last paragraph are probably going to be of more lasting power.

Traditionally the third paragraph of the body (the fourth paragraph of the essay) presents the weakest argument.  There's no reason not to switch them around, but the default is to present arguments from strongest to weakest.

Regardless, the second argument should not be "See the first argument."

Dear Dead Kennedy.

1) Please STFU.

2) Some of us are capable of reading a simple rant for exactly what it is.

3) Your over(read under)whelming showing off is certainly not impressing anyone.

4) Did the rant make you jealous?

5) We get little wannabes like you here all the time, you are nothing new or different.

6) The fact that you are here indicates your other 'intelligent' buddies ran your simple ass off.

Dear Asshat,

1) No.

2) That statement is functionally meaningless.  It's empty words.

3) Bluster.  The monkey howls.

4) No.  I just think it's stupid superstitious nonsense.

5) More bluster.  The dog pisses on its territory.

6) The implication of this statement is that every person on this forum was chased here by their "intelligent" buddies.

[Your body]

Dissecting the OP.

Your body

The title makes the broad topic of the clear, and prompts the reader to ask "What about my body?"

Hey, how do you like that thing? Pretty neat, isn't it? I mean, if you think about it.

Preamble.  Irrelevant to the argument.

What follows is the actual argument.   The argument is presented as a standard 5 paragraph essay, with an introduction, three paragraphs presenting supporting arguments, and a conclusion.  This is the format we are all taught in high school.  You may want to actually read that page to refresh your memory if it's been awhile, as I will be making many references to the five paragraph essay.

So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white. It grows, and if you're lucky it all works like it's supposed to; totally sweet functional legs for perambulation, arms with dexterous graspers on the end, built-in audio and video perception devices, a noisemaker. Pretty fucking awesome! If you're lucky, you get to keep this thing for upward of 90 years, which is a pretty sweet deal even though it starts to break down a bit before the end. These things come in roughly three varieties; male, female, and both. The male ones have primarily external sexual reproductive organs at the lower limb Y-junction, and the female ones have primarily internal sexual reproductive organs for incubating more meat-bags, with the entrance at the same Y-junction. The both ones have some combination of the two and are somewhat of an anomaly.

The Introduction.  True to standard form, the thesis or premise is presented in the very first line of the argument:  "So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white." 

"So the deal is" is a very clear and powerful statement.  What is the deal with this essay? "So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white."

Essentially what Nigel is saying is "The premise of this essay is that Cartesian dualism is real."  She uses the term "you" and "person" exclusively to refer to the Mind, and uses the pronoun "it" to refer to the body.  The person is not the body, they are the mind.  This is textbook Cartesian dualism, with the body presented as a biological machine controlled by Mind.  The usage of "it" is powerful, as it is used to represent an inanimate thing or a person or animal whose gender is unknown or disregarded.  This characterization of the body as a thing  -- Nigel even uses that exact word, thing -- separate from Mind is important to Nigel's argument, and will appear again.

On to the Body of the essay:

For some reason a lot of the people inhabiting the meat-bags have decided to define themselves based on what sort of meat-bag they happen to have gotten dumped into. They've made up all kinds of fairly arbitrary assignations like "pretty" and "ugly", which are subject to change at any time for no reason whatsoever, then they identify their self-ness based on these assignations. They've also created categories for different colors of meat-bag, and for different forms of sexual behavior. They have created behavioral categories for the male and the female, which they call "gender". People are expected to pick one to identify with, and this identity dictates their behavior.

The first paragraph should present the strongest argument.  Nigel doesn't actually present a strong argument at all, in fact the purpose of this paragraph is extremely unclear.  It has no actual point.  Nigel says "For some reason people (Mind) inhabiting the meat-bags have decided to define themselves based on [various factors]" but never explains why people "decide" to do this.  That would seem to be the relevant point, but instead Nigel simply tells us that people do these things.  She apparently doesn't understand why.

I object to the characterization of this behavior as "deciding," but that's tangential.  Actually,I object to her characterization of every single element she describes, but we have bigger fish to fry.  On to the second paragraph of the Body of the essay:

Yes, they actually do this! I'm not even making it up.

What kind of lazy ass writing is this?  The second paragraph is supposed to contain the second strongest argument, but instead it simply reasserts the first paragraph.  In this second paragraph we learn that people do all the things we learned they do in the previous paragraph, and Nigel still can't believe it.

The hard thing to keep in mind, once you're here, is that your meat-bag is actually just a really cool biological machine. It gets hard to remember, because almost all of the people in their meat-bags all around you are totally buying into the idea that their bags define their personhood, but it's all bullshit. I mean, of course the thing influences your behavior; odds are high that you'll have the desire to mate with other meat-bags, mostly other-sex ones, and all of the machinations of your meat-bag, the chemicals it releases to control various functions, will affect your thoughts and feelings. But still, those aspects are fairly incidental; your vehicle will need a certain amount of care while you're in it, and it may be kind of eccentric and require special care, but that's only to be expected. The main thing to never forget is that the color of it, the sex of it, whether it is at any given moment in time "pretty" or "ugly"... these are all incidental. You would still be you in a void with a thought-operated keyboard for communication. You would still be you if all of these incidentals were excised from you and you were just a featureless blob in a jar. As long as your meat-bag continues to function, you continue to exist, and you are you.

I don't know how anyone denies that this is Cartesian dualism after a doozy like "The hard thing to keep in mind, once you're here, is that your meat-bag is actually just a really cool biological machine."  That is Cartesian in a nutshell: The body is a biological machine. Here's Rene himself:  ""I regard the body as a machine so built and put together...that still, although it had no mind, it would not fail to move."

If that's not enough, Nigel goes on to evoke the "car and driver" metaphor when she says "your vehicle will need a certain amount of care while you're in it." 

The rest of the paragraph reinforces the idea of the mind as a ghost in the machine.  The mind as separate and different from the body, which is only "incidental" to the mind.  The mind is the real person,the body is only some trivial object.  It "influences" the behavior of the mind, but the mind is clearly presented as separate from the body, with its own independent existence -- it must have an independent existence in order to be "influenced," even is such influence is "incidental."  As Nigel says, like a proper Cartesian, "you would still be you in a void."

So take care of the damn thing, appreciate it, and don't place too much value on identifying your person-hood based on what kind you got. It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one.

The first sentence, the cajoling to treat oneself well, isn't supported anywhere in the Body of the essay, but it's always nice to say something no one will disagree with right before you state your conclusion, to create a yes yes effect.  So here is the conclusion.  "It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one." 

Like any proper five paragraph essay the premise ties directly to the conclusion. Nigel actually does an artful job of tying the bow on this otherwise ridiculous essay.  Consider:  "So the deal is, the first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white...It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one."

Nicely done.  But here's the problem:  Nigel twice uses the metaphor of the Mind having an existence independent of the body.  The phrase "you arrive" implies that "you" arrives from some other place, just as the phrase "you could have ended up in" implies that you started off from some other place.

That's metaphysics.  That's religion.

So here is a summary of the argument presented by Nigel:

The Mind comes to inhabit the Body, which is a machine. [1] 
The Mind inhabiting the Body defines itself based on various incidental factors.[2]
The Mind has an existence independent of the Body that remains true regardless of the Body. [3]

Except the mind is an emergent property of the body.  My mind could never arise in your body.  My mind is a unique product of my body, and only a body exactly like mine could produce my mind.  Some of the factors that Nigel list are not at all incidental to the mind, and when changed result in a different person.

There is no ghost in the machine that can exist independent of the body.  It is not a crapshoot.  The mind is an emergent property, it does not come from anywhere



[1]"The first thing that happens when you arrive is you get dumped into a yellowish or brownish meat-bag filled with red and white."/"The hard thing to keep in mind, once you're here, is that your meat-bag is actually just a really cool biological machine."

[2] "For some reason people (Mind) inhabiting the meat-bags have decided to define themselves based on [various factors]"/"The main thing to never forget is that the ... [various factors] are all incidental."

[3] "You would still be you in a void..."/"It's all a crapshoot; you could have ended up in this bag, and I could have ended up in that one." 

[supporting that with your personal education level]

I love it how you start off with one argument aka the OP doesn't know the premise of their own essay, supporting that with your personal education level, and then turn that around by saying the last statement in the post above.

Hello Straw Man!  The bolded part of your quote is false.  A true premise (my argument is that the OP doesn't know the premise of their own essay) and a false premise (I supported this argument by referencing my personal education level) equals what?   The false conclusion you don't actually state.  Armchair psychology says: you can't bring yourself to actually state your false conclusion, because you know you're a disingenuous shitweasel.

So what is it Kai? Are you retarded, or a fuckwit?  I'm leaning towards retarded fuckwit.

So, lets get back to slinging stupid insults over stupid arguments, for example, the way you completely conflated this thread with your retarded post and missing completely the point of the OP's rant. Hint hint: it had nothing to do with dualism, cause if it did I wouldn't have liked it. I am strongly non dualist, because I know the mind is simply an emergent property of neural function. I also, unlike you, know the context that the rant was written in, and therefore have better insight into the language and dare I say it(?) the premise.

You're wrong.  Your insight has failed you.  I will demonstrate why in my next post.

What I find truly hilarious is that you continue to stand on your own on this forum insulting quite a few people with your drivel, and that you expect, at some point, for someone to actually come round to what you are saying. Or maybe you're just another dumb troll running yet another dumb social experiment on these forums. Its so BORING, and so done to death.

I'm not trolling. I had no idea this was going to go off the rails like this.  I thought my original post would be more or less ignored.  Copper Carbonate and Obelcald turned it into the barbecue it is now.  I'm just tossing logs on the fire.  I don't really see how anyone participating so far can fault me for that, since inevitably that's all you're doing yourself.

Anyways, I'm not bored.  I love this shit.  I'm also not running any experiment. I also don't expect anyone to come around to my position.  I just enjoy being right.  I like arguing like some people like Soduku and crosswords.  I enjoy dismantling arguments and taking them apart, breaking them.  Sometimes I get frustrated with people like you, who present horribly stupid and inane arguments and are incapable of recognizing good arguments, fuckwits who don't know when they're outsmarted.  But mostly I just love the thrill of the chase, teasing and tearing people's arguments -- and people themselves, when they make it personal -- apart.

There's no agenda.  There's no plan.  I'm just an argumentative asshole opportunist.

But if you are bored, if you aren't having fun still, you can just stop responding.

[elementary]

So, literacy is only for english majors now, huh?

Does that mean music is only for music majors?

Oh, Oh, I KNOW, that means SEX is only for PORN STARS!

Do you know how ridiculous you sound?

Are you attempting to prove that there is, in fact, such thing as a stupid question?

It means none of those things.  What it means is that having advanced knowledge of biology does not make one an authority on literary criticism.

In other words, being an expert on nuclear physics doesn't make one an authority on law enforcement. 

It does not mean that "literacy is only for English majors." That's a ridiculous and stupid question, and that you are asking it can only mean one of two things:

a) You are functionally retarded.
b) You have confused being a disingenuous twat with being clever.

Note: when an essay is about biology, it is very easy for a BIOLOGIST to recognize the premise. Savvy?

That makes no sense. It's an entirely absurd argument.  Following that logic, a nuclear physicist would find it very easy to recognize the plot of an action movie involving nuclear physics.

You're not very bright, are you?

Tell me, what is the premise of of chapter four of On the Origin of Species (first ed.), actually, tell me ALL ABOUT the premise of the Origin, since you are so incredible, and list for me, not only all the hurdles he had to jump in publishing that book, but also all the 20th century biology he anticipated. Huh huh?

The first premise of chapter four of On the Origin of Species is "We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection by taking the case of a country undergoing some physical change, for instance, of climate."  There may be more -- he covers several topics in each chapter -- but I don't want to read the whole chapter right this moment.

That's the only request you've made that's relevant to the discussion at hand.

I also didn't need to know a single thing about biology to figure that out.  Instead I relied on the things I learned in Language Arts and English programs.  Because that's the area of knowledge that is actually relevant.

See, you can't, not because you are illiterate, but because you didn't spend years of your life studying the science that Darwin spawned.

Actually, every single science class I took in both college and high school was focused on biology, evolution and paleontology.  I've even read Origin of the Species.  I've also read Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.  So i actually have spent years of my life studying this self, though I don'tconsider myself an expert, merely well-informed.

Also, in reference to the op, who the fuck is a CRIMINAL JUSTICE and WOMENS STUDIES major to tell what the premise of an essay is? As far as I can see, thats not an english major.

My areas of expertise are irrelevant.  I am able to recognize the premise of an essay, or a chapter, because I paid attention in school.  In elementary school.  The ability to recognize the premise of an essay is something you should have learned by about 4th grade, at the latest.

Yes, yes it was the premise, as a BIOLOGIST, I got /IT/. Okay?

No, it was not.   You screaming will not change that fact.

You may be a biologist.  That's utterly irrelevant to your ability to recognize the premise of an essay.  Now,if you were an English major then that might be relevant, but being a biologist gives you no special ability to recognize the premise of an essay.

You write THAT shit????

What shit?  There is a lot of stuff on television.  Some of it is crap, some of it is brilliant.

Does any of it get used?

Yes, though not much.  It seems that the majority of my sales end up in development hell.   I once sold a treatment and series bible for a children's cartoon based entirely on Discordianism -- St. Gulik was a character! -- but it ended up going nowhere, and the production company eventually folded (and I never got the fucking rights back).

The premise is that biology is simply what it is, and to decide that you are something else based on social constructs is just a story you're telling yourself.

No, that was not the premise of the piece you wrote. 

And you are a complete fucking idiot. At one point I was convinced that you were pretty smart, but an asshole. It's more and more evident that you're one of those people who can memorize but not think. And an asshole.

Aww.  You're still a moron.

[retarded]

It's really fascinating that Little Jefe seems to believe that philosophy is the ONLY form of intellectualism possible, and to dislike philosophers = anti-intellectual.

I have never made any claims of the sort.  What I have suggested is that hating on philosophers when one clearly knows nothing about philosophy is anti-intellectual.

Is the glorification of ignorance.   Essentially many people are using the argument "You appear to have an education, therefore you must be wrong.  And elitist!"

That's fucking retarded.

At the same time, English, writing, and reading comprehension don't seem to be his strong points...

BWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!!!!

Oh, that is too damn funny.

despite his claim to be a "professional writer", which sounds suspiciously like "blogger" to me. Probably a Very Important blogger, too, with practically dozens of other Important Modern Philosophers (unemployable co-sycophantic web pedants) following his frequently-updated (due to being unemployable) Very Important Drivel.

I'm a screenwriter.  I write for television.

As for your whole take on gender, eat a dick, twatface. Yes, I am insulting you. No, I will not waste my time pretending anything you say is greater than useless drivel.   You're just another one of those needle dicks with a BA in Philosophy...

I do not have a BA in Philosophy.  My major was criminal justice, my minor was women's studies.  I'm just well read.  Unlike you.