Posted by
glen ropella on
Nov 12, 2013; 10:30pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/11-American-Nations-tp7584250p7584286.html
On 11/12/2013 10:25 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> But the two of, I think we like to argue, or at least stridently offer
> alternative views.
Yes!
> On 11/11/2013 05:00 PM, glen wrote:
>> You can't be rational without a ratio.
>
> I like the ring of this... can you unpack it more, or is it just a jingle?
Well, I started thinking seriously about it after an argument at a
cocktail party. (I would be/know nothing without arguments.) I have a
long-standing beef with atheists, not all atheists, just the ones who
claim that atheism is the only rational conclusion to consideration of
the big questions. The argument started because this
atheism-on-my-sleeve yahoo kept yapping about how irrational religious
belief is. He laid out a challenge to the whole room in the form of "I
sincerely wish someone [wc]ould rationally defend religion." (I don't
remember if he used "would" or "could".) I accepted the challenge, of
course. 8^)
After lots of rigmarole where he and another yahoo (who claimed "physics
is _my_ domain!" during the course) took turns spouting every brain fart
they could imagine while I (not so deftly after a few pints) deflected
each attack, the argument ended having established that calling
religious people "irrational" is really an _insult_. I asked him quite
clearly, a few times just to be sure: "Are you insulting me?". [*] He
repeated "Yes", and suggested I was free to insult him back. I went
silent after that, hoping ... in vain ... that he would realize the
fallacy (ad hominem). He failed. He subsequently told a friend of mine
that he thinks he offended me. ;-) It's been almost a year and I've met
him a few times since. It's absolute torture keeping my mouth shut. I
don't know how long is appropriate before I re-raise the issue and walk
through the discourse in hind-sight to see if he'll recognize that his
rhetoric is/was based on that fallacy.
Now, with that background, I consider the word "rational" to mean
weighing multiple options and deciding on one based on that
comparison/contrast measurement. Obviously, there have to be at least
2, but I consider rationality to be directly proportional to the number
of options available. Atheism being the _only_ option, is just as
irrational as, say, Heaven's Gate being the only option. If, however,
we compare atheism and Heaven's Gate, then we're infinitely more
rational than those convicted of atheism alone. After that, each
additional position considered increments the rationality. (Note that
you can only eliminate options by falsification. Mere implausibility is
not falsification.)
Of course, whether your comparison/contrast (e.g. cost-benefit analysis)
includes division and multiplication is a bit of nit-picking. I don't
_require_ you to quantitatively divide one by the other or normalize to
[-1,1] or anything. 8^) The complications of the comparison/contrast
depend on the domain, how much time you have to think, etc. So, "ratio"
is a bit of a stretch. But it's more ... lyrical than other words or
less dense ways of saying the same thing.
> Well, like the balance of matter and antimatter in our known universe, I
> think the road to hell is paved with both good and bad intentions, but
> somehow a flutter in the statistical variance makes *this* universe one
> where Hell is what you get for consistently being an arseh*le, while a
> bumbling hero still gets the pearly gates. Of course, I have no
> literal binding of this mythology, but do take it fairly seriously
> metaphorically... another thread in it's own right to drive Doug (and
> many others?) right up into the tree.
Well, I usually have trouble finding bad intentions, by definition of
"intentions". The only intentions that can be seriously judged "bad"
are those falsified by the most minimal reality check. E.g. drinking
competitions. It should take only a second's worth of thought to
realize that competing in how many shots of tequila you can slam in the
shortest amount of time, is a _bad_ intention. But most intentions seem
good, at the time, from that perspective, by the person who thought it
up, etc.
Hence, your assertion that the road to hell is paved with both,
ass/u/me-s some sort of objective/subjective cut, or at least a
perspectival cut that may not actually be there.
The real issue you highlight with your @ssh0l3 vs. bumbling hero
archetypes is _transparency_. E.g. is Obama a bumbling hero for
ObamaCare (especially his pants-on-fire assertion that you can keep your
plan if you like it)? Maybe. Is he, however, an @ssh0l3 for killing
people with drones, assassinating US citizens, keeping Gitmo open,
colluding with banksters, etc? Maybe. I think the answer to those
questions, for me at least, lies in the transparency associated with
each decision he makes. If it's opaque, then I have no chance to judge
his intentions and all I see is the irreparable damage he's done. He
relies on my own willingness to do mental gymnastics in order to give
him the benefit of the doubt.
>> And if we do that, how much hand-wringing is enough to argue that the
>> changer is responsible in their actions?
>
> Switching from the Literal to the Figurative, I take your use of "hand
> wringing" to be perjorative and suggest that such a colorful display of
> worry is "all for show" to relieve the hand wringer from any
> responsibility for their actions. I'd offer "careful consideration" in
> place of "hand wringing".
Well, it's not all for show. You must purposefully exhibit your careful
consideration, just as Obama must exhibit his hand-wringing about
killing people with drones. If he doesn't exhibit the hand-wringing,
then his potential victims have no choice but to consider him an
@ssh0l3. So, transparency isn't "just for show", it serves a useful
purpose, even when that purpose is just to cover your @ss.
>> Well, I've argued my case before. Free will is a generative random
>> twitch.
> Then it is NOT free-will... it is a random twitch (unless you've packed
> something more into the word "generative" than I can unpack).
You say "potato" ... I define free will as a type of randomness.
>> Any apparent purpose, color, or bias that results is purely a
>> function of the constraints in which that twitch takes place.
> I don't disagree that this is entirely possible, but am still left with
> my own "illusion of free will" and no good answer to the question of
> "who is this *I* with the illusion of free-will?"
Hm. It seems clear what "I" refers to, the [entero&proprio]ceptive
self. Free will is the same as any other feeling (hate, love, etc.),
it's the abstraction or compression of the patterns exhibited by the
[entero&proprio]ceptive signals.
> BTW, it turns out to be hard to push Ants into any
> kind of futile cycle... and when one does bluntly (put an ant in an
> empty jar and watch him try to climb the sides until he's
> exhausted/depleted) it feels very much like torture (by any definition,
> even Rummies?).
We could honor Rumsfeld by parsing torture, if you want. I think the
S&M crowd might help us blur the lines between torture and ... "normal
life" just as they do with pain and pleasure.
> On the other hand, if you had felt a strong affinity to people,
> institutions and government might you have stayed? Sure, the spirit of
> adventure, etc. has it's draw... but using your own model, the
> constraints of the system relative to your (innate?) nature helped to
> push you out of that nest, right?
Yes, I might have stayed if I had been professionally "fulfilled". I
wouldn't have stayed simply due to family or a tightly knit group of
friends, though. I'm a firm believer that friends and family (or any
group) is more valuable if the members of the group have access to as
much knowledge/experience as possible. Hence, I encourage even my
closest "others" to go, now, and keep going until you can no longer go.
Then find me and tell me about it. So, to "stay" because you cherish
your group seems contradictory to me.
> I just gave a tent to a young man who had his
> possessions washed away in the flooding and chose to recover from his
> semi-traumatic experience by packing what little he was able to salvage
> into his car and hitting the road, visiting his sister in SFe on the
> way. I thought it was a very healthy response to what could have been
> a catastrophe. I think he's camping somewhere in AZ right now.
Yes, I agree that's a very healthy response.
> I do appreciate how you can play both directions on this field... you
> seem to be adept at dismissing reductionist analysis at times and
> invoking it at others. I don't mean this dismissively, even though
> often it loses me like the game of "crack the whip". I believe there
> is continuity, but at my end of the "whip" I fly off the end and tumble.
If you agree with yourself too much, too often, then it's time to buy
the farm. The end of the whip is where the action is!
> <deleted long, self-righteous riff on how "wolf at the door" is a thin
> mythology in the first world>
I'm glad you deleted it. Otherwise I would have had to trot out some
examples of all the homeless, mentally ill people living here in
Portland. Or, even worse, the incarcerated, mentally ill people in our
corporate jails, being pepper sprayed in order to get them out of their
cells so they can be injected with their ... [cough] medicine. The wolf
is closer than you think, even/especially in the 1st world. 8^)
> Thanks, as always, for your engaged, thoughtful responses and
> alternative views,
Right back at you.
[*] Note that I'm not religious at all. But by the end of the argument,
most people in the room seemed to think I was Christian ... or some sort
of evolutionary theist, though much of my defense relied on deism.
--
⇒⇐ glen
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