Definition of Power


Dglgmut

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1 minute ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

This is more stuff not thought through correctly.

Psychologists these days prescribe drugs--powerful drugs that inhibit the uptake of serotonin in your brain, for example.

That's physical force.

I said psychologist, not psychiatrist.

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Just now, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Nitpicking.

Psychologist do these things, too.

Apropos, you should see what they do to human guinea pigs...

Michael

It's not nitpicking. You took an example with clear implications and tried to turn it into something else... for what reason?

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2 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

You mean social power without individuals who wield and exercise this power?

No? I mean one person being in a position to somewhat predictably determine the volitional action of another.

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Or social power as a blob?

It's only a blob if you don't refine your definition so that you can trace what's happening. I don't see a blob, I see a network of individuals influencing each other, mostly in one direction.

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8 minutes ago, Dglgmut said:

It's not nitpicking.

It is.

So there.

10 minutes ago, Dglgmut said:

You took an example with clear implications and tried to turn it into something else... for what reason?

I did not. You are the one who thinks there is no difference between physical force and persuasion unless you are referencing a single instant in the present.

So there again.

We can go on like this all day.

Time to take a break.

We are messaging now, not writing well-thought out posts.

And this kind of messaging gets boring for readers interested in reading about ideas.

And boring for me...

Michael

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14 minutes ago, Dglgmut said:

No? I mean one person being in a position to somewhat predictably determine the volitional action of another.

Well, there's an idea here that maybe shows some promise.

In other words, social control for you is a synonym for persuasion?

Is that only armed robbery 🙂 or does it include things like crowd control?

Is bashing someone's head in or executing dissenters social control, too?

Michael

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1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

You are the one who thinks there is no difference between physical force and persuasion unless you are referencing a single instant in the present.

Physical force, or physical power, is what you use to open a stuck door. The threat of physical force--let's say violence--is extremely persuasive, but certainly not 100% reliable. Now if you mean to say that I equate threatening violence with all forms of influence, which would include persuasion, that would be like saying I equate getting squirted by a water pistol with getting blasted by a fire hose. Yes, I think in both instances you are getting hit with water.

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In other words, social control for you is a synonym for persuasion?

No, I said social power is synonymous with influence. Persuasion is a subset of influence; persuasion is deliberate. Does tone of voice count as a component of persuasion? How about physicality? Posture? Can you persuade someone that the gun is loaded? Maybe they're not persuaded that you will use it.

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Is bashing someone's head in or executing dissenters social control, too?

Depends on how it comes across. Was it violent enough? What about heads on pikes to scare away warring tribes? How accurate is the word "force" in these situations? Physically there is force involved, but socially? It all depends on people's perception.

 

This is why I say it's all influence. In some cases you could call it extreme persuasion.

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4 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

This is why I say it's all influence. In some cases you could call it extreme persuasion.

D,

Extreme persuasion? Heh.

Yeah, like an offer you can't refuse from The Godfather.

Degree is not kind. Measurement is not category.

In your way of thinking foreplay is not sex, buying a movie ticket and walking into a movie theater is not entertainment, declaring war in Congress is not war, and on and on.

In my way of thinking foreplay is part of sex even though copulation has not started, buying a movie ticket and walking into a movie theater is part of entertainment even though the movie has not started, declaring war in Congress is part of war even though no soldiers are fighting each other yet, and so on. 

Another point. I have never liked that libertarian thing that "threat of force" can be considered force. Why? Because it's so squishy conceptually. There is a huge difference between a spouse looking a mess her mate made and saying, "I'm going to kill you," and a bad guy in a nasty mood with a gun pointing at you saying, "I'm going to kill you." There is a huge difference between a man who loves hunting and has a huge collection of hunting weapons, and another man who stockpiles lots of bomb-making materials, guns, grenades, etc., in his suburban home. In both cases, the first and second can be technically called "threat of force." But in reality, the first case is not force (that is, in human-to-human terms, which is what we are discussing, although the hunting gear could be used for self-defense in an attack and that involves force), and the second clearly involves force.

Call the second case (the bad guy saying he is going to kill you and the terrorist stockpiling ordinance) "extreme persuasion" if you like, but that's blanking out the physical force involved in the two events that are underway and the narrative models (story concepts) that represent those events in our minds.

There is a reason "intent to commit..." is a part of criminal legal proceedings.

Michael

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4 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

This is why I say it's all influence. In some cases you could call it extreme persuasion.

Have you heard of head-hopping? This is a fiction writing term regarding perspective, when you hop from the head of characters at will, including the head of an omniscient narrator and even the reader.

Head-hopping is another problem in your formulations. You head-hop when you don't like the way an argument is going. A man hell-bent on murder and gunning for you has force involved in that event, in that narrative model. Oh... I don't like that because that doesn't fit my argument. OK... Let me head-hop to the victim and say the victim is obviously not using force or even intending to use force, so the gunman charging at the victim from his perspective is merely using extreme persuasion for the victim to run. No bullets have been fired yet. So now I can pretend that the victim's perspective is the only one involved in the concept and call this persuasion, not force.

I can point to many examples in your arguments where you sift frames like this.

Here's a quick example from your last post above:

5 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

Depends on how it comes across.

That's a head-hop.

Conceptually, an event involves the acts and perspectives of all parties, not just the perspective of one.

Michael

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Sex and foreplay can be the same thing if you're not trying to deduce who the father is... I'm done debating this, because the purpose of me forming a working definition is to trace the roots of power in what we would call powerful institutions. If your definition doesn't work for that, then we are not identifying the same thing.

 

I might work on a full essay on this, but for now I just wanted to say something that is relevant to the woke revolution going on as well as this topic. And that is the potential for the centers of woke power to cut off their own roots. I was just listening to a discussion with James Lindsay who mentioned university students wanting to rename parts of their schools after empowering symbols--specifically Wakanda. He brought up Yale being a slave owner, and how it would be funny if they renamed Yale to Wakanda. This is not actually that far off...

 

This is a liability for the left, being that they don't even know how much power they have, and therefore do not know where their power comes from. The left has not built their position, they've corrupted, or infected, a previously established position. If they try to stand on their own, with just their naked ideology, and completely disassociate themselves from their once objectively productive hosts, I think it would be disastrous for their cause.

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3 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

Sex and foreplay can be the same thing if you're not trying to deduce who the father is...

D,

This is exactly what I am talking about.

I have no idea what you mean here. Who said anything about a father? And how does the existence of a deduced father integrate sex and foreplay?

This has nothing to do with the point I was making, or you, for that matter, but you is presented it as if it were an intelligent comment on what we are discussing.

You do this all the time and it's frustrating, so I am glad you want to stop for now.

Anyway, the cow they were using for a photo-op in China was too yellow to be any good. And power doesn't prove a damn thing about candy bars. At least the bandit in the armed robbery had decent shoes.

🙂 

Michael

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3 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

... the purpose of me forming a working definition is to trace the roots of power in what we would call powerful institutions.

D,

Just one final hint.

The roots of power among humans is human nature. That goes from the innate part to the volitional. Get that wrong and you define power wrong.

Ignore this at your peril.

Michael

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33 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I have no idea what you mean here. Who said anything about a father? And how does the existence of a deduced father integrate sex and foreplay?

This has nothing to do with the point I was making, or you, for that matter, but you is presented it as if it were an intelligent comment on what we are discussing.

My next sentence: "...the purpose of me forming a working definition is to trace the roots of power in what we would call powerful institutions."

 

It means if a concept is related to other concepts, like sex to procreation, or power to powerful institutions, your definition shouldn't preclude that relationship. If power is forcing people to do/endure things they don't want to, and influence is not force, then not only are the institutions that are most predictive of arbitrary (not dependent on any objective reality the public can verify) social change not powerful, but even the institutions that are powerful (forceful) are not lead by powerful people. Are the people with power in the military the ones with the guns in the barracks, or the ones in the pentagon?

 

But not only that, you go from calling my definition too inclusive, then flipping all of a sudden to say it's too exclusive. You act like I'm the slippery one... I make a point, but you don't challenge it. You might quote a sentence fragment and go off on a tangent. Then you'll tell me "what I'm doing" and it will be unrecognizable. You use tactics, instead of just saying what you mean.

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The roots of power among humans is human nature. That goes from the innate part to the volitional. Get that wrong and you define power wrong.

This, and this:

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Conceptually, an event involves the acts and perspectives of all parties, not just the perspective of one.

is another thing you do. You make disconnected critiques that don't point anywhere. "Forcing someone to do/endure shit they don't want to," includes all perspectives, not just one, and it says a lot about human nature. Oh, you didn't make that point?

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7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The roots of power among humans is human nature. That goes from the innate part to the volitional.

I remember a  "Scientific American:" article that explored how different cultures and time periods diagnosed men's attraction to women.  Women's desirablilty was always tied to having  children.  Does her hour glass figure indicate she would have healthy children? Do her larger than normal mammary glands indicate . . .        
 

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10 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

My next sentence: "...the purpose of me forming a working definition is to trace the roots of power in what we would call powerful institutions."

 

It means if a concept is related to other concepts, like sex to procreation, or power to powerful institutions, your definition shouldn't preclude that relationship. If power is forcing people to do/endure things they don't want to, and influence is not force, then not only are the institutions that are most predictive of arbitrary (not dependent on any objective reality the public can verify) social change not powerful, but even the institutions that are powerful (forceful) are not lead by powerful people. Are the people with power in the military the ones with the guns in the barracks, or the ones in the pentagon?

This still has nothing to do with the example I gave.

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11 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

I make a point, but you don't challenge it.

What's there to challenge at the beginning except the premises?

You build a house on a foundation of sand and then want me to challenge your choice of windows?

You haven't yet shown you have grokked what a premise is, or a concept for that matter. I don't know if this is due to wanting to win arguments, so you blank out the parts that make your epistemological foundations look look like they need some serious work, or you really have a mental blind spot. So far, I won't entertain that you are lying.

Here's what I'm talking about.

11 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

You make disconnected critiques that don't point anywhere.

The fact that you can't see where they point to when they are pointing right at the sand in your foundation shows the problem when we post to each other.

You want everything to point to agreeing with your sand, with your pre-evaluation

I can't do that. You have presented a foundation of intellectual sand, not intellectual steel and stone. Foundations need steel and stone, not sand.

Moving out of metaphor, epistemologically, I cannot use context as necessary for some concepts for them to be valid and universal, and then ignore the need for context (in concept formation, i.e. epistemologically) when discussing an idea under consideration for universality (i.e., what applies to all) just so you can be right and pretend you are probing what mankind has gotten all wrong until you came along. I admire the spunk (I do, that's not a quip), but your results are the product of an epistemological double-standard.

It's the equivalent of saying context is critical for concepts until it isn't.

Until you grok that, I am pretty sure you will have no clue of what I am talking about. (btw - My intent has nothing to do with winning arguments. I don't give a shit about that. It has everything to do with encouraging you to check your premises, which you resist. And insisting, like I am, on epistemological consistency when going after big concepts is a great way to prompt readers to think about this.) 

Here's the problem. You can accept it or ignore it or deny it as a kneejerk like you normally do. It's still reality and it will not change because you want it to.

You are using normative before cognitive thinking. You have made an evaluation about something (power) you have misidentified (or parts of which you have not identified at all because you don't look at them), then made a show of trying to look at new cases, a bunch of new cases, that prove your pre-made evaluation. As part of the show, you accept or dismiss or meander around the examples discussing them based on word games. That makes it look like you are trying to identify something related to reality, but at the foundation, you are merely trying to identify things that agree with your evaluation.

I don't think like that. I use cognitive before normative thinking for complex topics. I try my damnedest to identify what I am looking at correctly before I even allow myself to evaluate it. A person who does this says or thinks, "Isn't that interesting?" and things like that. A person who does normative before cognitive immediately jumps to, "See? See? They [or you or he or she] got it all wrong. Look at this... blah blah blah. Man, are they wrong." This is great for an emotional payoff and a surge of dopamine and serotonin, but it does not identify qua identify much of reality.

(The human mind actually does normative before cognitive for most cases that do not involve conceptual thinking as this kept the species alive over the millennia. It's an evolutionary thing. But it doesn't work well with conceptual thinking--prefrontal cortex thinking--except in certain cases like where expert training has become automated. All this is outside the scope of this post, though. Besides, I have written plenty about it elsewhere on OL.)

Maybe it's too soon for you to see what I am talking about. Sometimes you show glimpses.

Mostly you show a subtext that you will not--and cannot--entertain the possibility that your premise might be wrong.

At root this is a form of faith and a strong urge to win some game or other that nobody else is playing (unless someone shows up and actually does). I'm saying, based on what you have written so far, it's way too early to play any competitive "I'm right you're wrong" game (or "I'm right they're wrong" game) for any universal concept based on reality to come out of this effort.

Using reality as the standard, epistemological consistency is the only universal idea on the table so far. All the rest is small talk.

Michael

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12 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

"Forcing someone to do/endure shit they don't want to," includes all perspectives, not just one, and it says a lot about human nature.

D,

It sure does.

That's a solid foundation on which to build.

It includes humans, force between humans, volition, wanted and unwanted outcomes of applying force (by both perpetrator and victim, and onlooker for that matter--all perspectives), and the ability of humans to identify, and accept or reject those outcomes. There's a lot there. (Probably more if I really ponder it.) All of this entails universal aspects of human nature.

And, being universal, all of this will have to apply to all cases and examples that are examined, that is, for universality to be involved. 

Note that each item (human, force between humans, volition, etc.) can be used to set standards (both cognitive and normative) for comparing cases and examples.

Of course, I'm talking about universal characteristics and aspects for use as standards, not cherry-picked examples or word games as standards.

I would probably clean up the language a bit for a dictionary, though.

🙂 

12 hours ago, Dglgmut said:

Oh, you didn't make that point?

See the game? The point of the game you are playing is to win, not identify. And you just gave a perfect example in more ways than one.

You presented my definition of power (between humans) and didn't even realize it was my definition. 

I asked you above if you knew what my definition of power was. I was met by silence, of course. Now, by quoting this passage, which was at the beginning of this discussion, I know you finally started looking for my definition.

Then you found it and didn't even know what it was. You presented it as a silly statement to mock me with. That's the danger of playing games instead of using your mind to identify something correctly before you evaluate it.

In fact, I could mock your right now for this boner, but I don't want to. I prefer you to understand. I don't think you will, yet, (I know many readers will), but that's my intent. If wanting to beat you were my motivation, I would start crowing and making a fool of myself.

Bah to that. Oh, I do my share of crowing, but I save that shit for politics and things like that. Or maybe when a discussion has left ideas in the dust. But I never do it for important ideas in the middle of a discussion.

(I admit, I poke people in the ribs at times during a discussion of complex ideas, just like they poke me, but my intent is always playful. It's a way to keep morale and interest going during a discussion of dry topics.) 

Michael

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8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

You presented my definition of power (between humans) and didn't even realize it was my definition.

When you say stuff like this it makes me wonder just how much you're not picking up on. I used your definition a couple times, but saying you didn't make that point was concerning the standards you imposed on proper thinking: human nature, all perspectives. You didn't point to an error and then compare it to your definition. You just said, "There's an error here!" without even identifying it.

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Is bashing someone's head in or executing dissenters social control, too?

Depends on how it comes across. Was it violent enough? What about heads on pikes to scare away warring tribes? How accurate is the word "force" in these situations? Physically there is force involved, but socially? It all depends on people's perception.

I say this, and you respond: "Conceptually, an event involves the acts and perspectives of all parties, not just the perspective of one. "

What does that mean in the context of a critique of what I said? "Forcing someone to do/endure shit they don't want to," apparently considers all perspectives, but what I said above only considers one. Lay that out. To me, I see two perspectives in your definition. The person forcing and the person not wanting to do/endure. "Depends on how it comes across" means it depends on what it looked like and what the people watching think about what they just saw--are they afraid? There could be any number of factors involved in this...

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I asked you above if you knew what my definition of power was. I was met by silence, of course. Now, by quoting this passage, which was at the beginning of this discussion, I know you finally started looking for my definition.

Then you found it and didn't even know what it was. You presented it as a silly statement to mock me with.

This is just horrendous. You need to lay off a bit on analyzing people. It's not working. I read your definition when you posted it, and I kept it in mind. I do NOT find it a solid foundation, because you've got a mystery component, being "force." Here's the most relevant definition of force from a Google result: "make (someone) do something against their will." They could have included "endure" or "experience." This makes your definition circular. Ready to build?

 

Building is not the goal, anyway. Building is just a way to test the conceptual element before reverse engineering existing structures. I've stated many times now the target of this deconstruction is ultimately the media and universities in their positions relative the greater society. The point of using many cases is not to validate my definition, it's to carve it out from different angles. I'm looking at WHERE power is, first, then trying to find out WHAT it is, on the condition that the WHAT must be consistent across all of these cases. Your definition is not consistent if we consider WHERE to be a world leader. He isn't using force.

 

Another reason your definition doesn't work is that power doesn't usually involve two parties. This is a question of WHERE, not WHAT. Even if one person has power, the physical force will not come from him. So instead of metaphors about building and foundations, why don't you just contradict the idea that a general has power? If you want to say a dictator doesn't have power, then we can agree we are talking about different concepts.

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On 7/20/2020 at 12:27 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

D,

This is more stuff not thought through correctly.

Psychologists these days prescribe drugs--powerful drugs that inhibit the uptake of serotonin in your brain, for example.

That's physical force.

In past times, they did lobotomies. More physical force. They still do shock treatments. Even more physical force. 

I could go on and on and on...

Michael

Psychologists are not doctors and prescribe no drugs. D didn't nitpick on this. I am interested in just what you think psychologists do that is force and the case that can be made for that.

--Brant

Edited by Brant Gaede
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29 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Psychologists are not doctors and prescribe no drugs. D didn't nitpick on this. I am interested in just what you think psychologists do that is force and the case that can be made for that.

--Brant

Brant,

In my stepson's treatments in the past, I remember a psychologist prescribing meds for him. (Kat and I since have put a stop to all of it.)

But I looked it up just to make sure. Lookee what I found:

Can Psychologists Prescribe Medications?

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Where Can Psychologists Prescribe Medications?

Psychologists are able to prescribe medications anywhere in the military and the Indian Health Service if they are credentialed in Louisiana or New Mexico. Psychologists can prescribe in five states: Louisiana, New Mexico, Illinois, Iowa, and Idaho.

Professional psychologists gained prescribing privileges in New Mexico in 2002 and in Louisiana in 2004. In 2014, Illinois became the third state to grant prescribing powers to psychologists who hold appropriate training. Iowa granted prescriptive authority to psychologists in 2016, and Idaho followed suit in 2017.

I live in Illinois.

I knew I remembered seeing it.

Prescribing serotonin uptake inhibitors and similar without any real evaluation other than asking a question or two of a semi-autistic child is levying force to me. That, at least, is within my own up-close observation. I was there.

Michael

 

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I need to say, if you give your autonomy away, by crippling yourself or by submitting, you will find yourself up the creek until your freedom is restored.  Your emotions are finnicky things, you can be looking at the greatest inspiration of your life, holding the world in your palm and your subconscious will just "nope" at you.  I know from experience & have learned my lesson.  Sorry the format won't work on this computer

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