Ellen Stuttle

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Blog Comments posted by Ellen Stuttle

    william.scherk

    Posted

    41 minutes ago, Jon Letendre said:

    I think I was right, it makes you feel better to imagine that your opponents believe the things someone you found on the internet believes.

    It's on a par with William's thinking that either humans are causing the Arctic sea ice melting or it''s a fraud:

    Ellen

    PS:  I never heard of Mark D. Whitaker before either.

    william.scherk

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

    He loves his victimhood.

    Enjoying a feeling of victimhood - and maybe also of being a martyr - would make sense of someone's continuing to use posting methods which he has to know by now are looked on with scorn.  After all, William isn't required to post here.  If he so much dislikes the reception he gets, why doesn't he either stop posting here entirely or stop using the methods that provoke that reception?

    Ellen

    william.scherk

    Posted

    12 hours ago, william.scherk said:

    Disputes ... "dishonesty" ... reflection ... discussibles ...

     

    10 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

    So let's see you discuss.

     

    So does William discuss?

    No, he posts a link:

    Slide, slip, slither, avoid - and then whine if you're called dishonest

    And what the linked-to list is about, as Michael points out, isn't how to have a discussion but how to indoctrinate.

    Ellen

    • Like 2
    william.scherk

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Jon Letendre said:

    That last picture needs more red. People won’t notice until it is all red. Tell them the more red it gets, the spicier it gets. Most Americans can’t do spicy so that will get their attention. So many people are scientifically illiterate, like Billy, and stupid shit like that might get through to them, it’s personal.

    Click on the graphic William posted and compare to the actual Reanalyzer graphic.  William has played games.

    Also, re the issue of what he understands and what he doesn't, he ever so obviously doesn't understand what either the distribution or the sequencing and fluctuation of the figures at the bottom of the Reanalyzer series mean re the "humans are causing it" claim.

    Ellen

    • Like 1
    william.scherk

    Posted

    On June 9, 2019 at 3:49 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

    Ellen,

    This is core story material. I don't think it's simple hatred or schadenfreude or something like that. These lefties (and not only lefties--I prefer to call them all elitists) believe they are immune to reality by virtue of the story that confers superiority to others on them. They believe that their core story is reality and is not to be questioned.

    They may cognitively know of dangers like being vulnerable to the bubonic plague if an epidemic breaks out near them, but inside, swimming between their reason and their emotions, they don't believe this situation applies to them. Their core story makes them believe they are above this. The bubonic plague is for others, not them.

     

    On June 9, 2019 at 2:09 PM, Jonathan said:

    Bingo. They believe that they will be largely immune from the horrors that they wish to impose.

    J

     

    It would take one hell of a "core story" and/or severe ignorance to produce that degree of sangfroid at the thought of a bubonic plague epidemic.

    Let's hope that there won't be an opportunity for learning the hard way.  Problem is, it isn't unreasonable to fear that there might be.

    Ellen

    william.scherk

    Posted

    11 hours ago, Jonathan said:

     

    They are "predictably irrational." Envy is a primary motivator in their lives. They take opportunities to diminish others' lives even in situations where they themselves will also experience some difficulty or hardship. The value that they experience in hurting others more than they are hurting themselves is, to them, worth the price, worth the risk.

    J

    The amorphous leftist Blob, so eaten by envy each and every one they'd willingly die the ghastly death of bubonic plague if only Others would go too - or need it be first?  That is, would the thought of the death of Others be sufficient for the leftist to lead off the dying or must the leftist see some dying first?

    Ellen

    william.scherk

    Posted

    21 hours ago, Jonathan said:

    The same is true of all of their policies. They're willing to take the risk. They hope that they're less likely to be affected. They expect to have at least slightly worse lives in exchange for being allowed to make the Others' lives miserable. They think that they'll be part of the group that largely gets to escape the horrors that they dream of imposing.

    I think it would be a rare person, even among leftists, who was quite so insane as to want to risk dying of bubonic plague him/herself so that you (for instance) and other Others would die from it.

    And what advantage do you see to leftists anyway in having the homeless population of Los Angeles and San Francisco die off?  Can homeless people not vote?  I'd think, though maybe I'm wrong, that, come voting time, the California homeless, of whom there are a large number, are rounded up and paid to take a trip to polling places where they vote Democrat.

    Ellen

    william.scherk

    Posted

    4 hours ago, Jonathan said:

    Damn, just think how thrilling a plague would be for leftists! Misery all around, and unlimited opportunities to control the Others™ and decide who receives benefits versus who receives punishments. Very exciting! They'll get to see, firsthand, the Others™ dying en masse, instead of just reading about it. They'll finally get to be there, and to live it! Their anticipation must be just intolerable.

    Leftism doesn't confer immunity from bubonic plague.  If there really were a plague epidemic, leftists, along with the Others, might get the "thrill" of dying from it.

    Ellen

    william.scherk

    Posted

    20 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

    Yes, Tony stuck around to demonstrate his impairments longer, but he and Merlin were about equally dumb. And also equally arrogant and certain.

    J

    I don't think Tony is in Merlin's league.  Tony gets blockages where he can't get past a word meaning on which he's fixated, but he wouldn't have done something like Merlin's gall in presenting a false picture of the Aristotle's wheel paradox on Wikipedia.

    Ellen

    william.scherk

    Posted

    2 hours ago, bradschrag said:

    This is cute, Ellen. And by cute, I really mean pathetic. Maybe try addressing some of the evidence I've brought forward instead of attacking the individual. It's called ad hom and it's really sad excuse of a debate tactic.

    It isn't a debate tactic.  It's a question. 

    And you've once again avoided at length the issues Jonathan is challenging you to address.

    Ellen

    william.scherk

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

    The implcit working premise that CC science is neither corrupt nor corruptible does not pave the way for a rational discussion about CC. And to call it CC instead of AGW is chocolate frosting on a lemon cake.

    --Brant

    Brad is far too slick at the snake oil salesmanship to be innocently duped.  He's put effort into becoming good at the tricks.  Why?

    Ellen

    william.scherk

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

    [....]

    Michael, you wrote, in the linked post:

    "This event hasn't been the first rodeo over here about this topic. One of our members, for example, Ellen Stuttle is personal friends with Richard Lindzen and her husband is a scientist who works in the field. She doesn't post much anymore, though. She's been suffering from an illness that precludes her looking long hours at a computer screen. "

    Rats.  I'm going to have to break down and post something on William's blog, which I'm very reluctant to do.  But, Michael, since you made that statement publicly, I think I'd best publicly correct an implication and a fact.

    I'm not "personal friends with Richard Lindzen" in the way your statement might sound - the kind of relationship where one chats about personal things, etc.  I know him, through my husband.  I've had conversations with him a number of times at conferences, sat with him, and his wife if she was attending, at the dinners, been to his home in Boston once for a climatology-conversation-geared get-together.  I like him and I think he's enjoyed his exchanges with me.  I respect him enormously as a scientist.  He has a mind for physics, he could have gone into one of the prestige fields and been a big name.  Instead, he went into climatology, from love of the subject.  It was not a prestige subject when Dick went into it, and he never had any expectation of ending up a limelight person in a battle against scientific corruption.

    Larry, my husband, is not "a scientist in the field," i.e., climatology.  He's a full professor of physics, with special interests in mathematical physics, symmetry, and relativity.  He started studying climate issues in 2004, out of concern about the scare prognostications.  He didn't need long to discover how shoddily-based those were.  He's become a minor expert on climatology, just through his own studies, but he isn't "in the field."  The main draw for him, which keeps him involved in climate disputes, is hatred for the scientific corruption and the creeping erosion of scientific honor.  (The selling out on scientific integrity spreads to other fields, even to unrelated fields where researchers look the other way and give lip service to climate alarm because their universities are getting climate-related research funding, also from PC motives which can affect scientists like other people.)

    As to the physical problem which keeps me from spending long hours at a computer, that's correct, I do have such a problem, but it isn't the only reason I hardly post these days.  There are also some nefarious doings I'm involved in helping with trying to counter (things related to reducing human population).  I'm kept busy with explorings - which I don't want to talk about publicly.

    As to the rest of your post:  Bravo!  I think you did a really good job of explaining to Brad the situation regarding William's OL activities.

    Cheers,

    Ellen

    • Like 1
    william.scherk

    Posted

    See this thread in the Epistemology forum:

    http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...?showtopic=2558

    And in particular this post of mine:

    http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...ost&p=16972

    I signed on specifically to respond to Shayne's query, which I'd noticed earlier, and to say (I wrote this before I signed on):

    "Whoever told you that is right, Shayne, although the expression should be 'contextually certain.' Peikoff waxed at length on exactly that example, on which Rand (with her dislike and suspicion of statistics) had waxed at length to him. I haven't time for providing details. Maybe one of the other 'old-timers' here will notice your post and respond."

    Peter Reidy has meanwhile posted to fill in some details. Rand was extremely sceptical of statistics as an epistemological method. (This scepticism, btw, was a significant factor in her not placing any credence in the early smoking-and-cancer studies. Another factor was that she thought cancer was caused by "bad premises.")

    Ellen

    ___

    I'm wrong, however, in something I said there. The expression Peikoff used WAS metaphysical vs. epistemological possibility. "Contextual certainty" is related but isn't identical. I'm not sure when the idea of "contextual certainty" started being talked about.

    Rand had trouble "making sense" of HER having gotten cancer, because of her belief that cancer was caused by "bad premises." I think this is discussed somewhere else in the forum, amongst the early threads, but I don't remember where.

    I'll add that actually she was right not to place credence in the early cancer studies, although not for the reasons she gave of generalized distrust of statistical methods -- instead because there was jumping the gun in the Surgeon General's Report. Long story there (including that the dog studies were found to have had a systematic error in the reading of the slides). I worked for about a year and a half in a couple different capacities at the headquarters of the ACS and I heard the low-down about what really was known and what wasn't when Koop issued his report. However, Rand wouldn't have had any way of being privy to this information. Her objections were (a) general objection to statistics; (b ) specific belief in the bad-premise etiology of cancer.

    Ellen

    ___

    nealelehman

    Posted

    Neale,

    Hello. Just a quick introduction. I've been "around" the Objectivist world for a long time, since Fall '63 (first read Atlas in spring '61), and I've posted a fair amount on OL. You'll find my name as 5th, I think, in the list of "top 10" posters. I'm currently as much as possible in hiding, for several reasons, a prominent one being a health condition which makes working at a computer screen rather an ordeal (long-term complications from childhood polio).

    I didn't, as I recall, post anything on the emotion subject. It's too long and complicated. But William has given you excellent pointers to finding "the good stuff." There is definitely good stuff on OL, though it often needs digging to find it.

    Meanwhile, I want to thank William -- thank you, William -- for the link to Butterflies and Wheels.

    I hadn't known of that site. On clicking the link, I found on the front page a link to lots of information about a subject which came up at one point on OL, that of whether or not Mileva, Einstein's first wife, significantly "collaborated" in the work of his Annus Mirabilis, 1905. I did not have time when the subject came up to find sources, and my husband didn't have time,** but I knew that it had been well argued that the story is "one of those," good for attention but without real foundation.

    Now I can send this link to the OL poster who had pretty well swallowed the tale.

    http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/infocu...in's%20Wife

    Again, thanks, William.

    Ellen

    ** My husband's a physicist, and a minor expert on Einsteiniana, gave a lecture titled "Einstein, the Myth and the Magic" to several groups, lay and professional, in 2005.

    EDIT: Oops; I originally gave the date of the Einstein Annus Mirabilis as 2005; it was of course 1905.

    ___