Serapis Bey

Kacy, I don't mean this to be antagonistic, but why is your primary reaction that everyone on this board is wrong and your position is correct? Since you've said that you admire many of the posters here for their capacity for independent thought and reason, given the overwhelming consensus against you in this case, shouldn't your null hypothesis be that you are mistaken? I'm not advocating a popularlity contest of ideas, but I bring this up because I believe it underlies many of our disagreements and is indicative of some philosophical differences between you and SB and me. I'm not saying Kacy is mistaken, necessarily. He does have a point. But only *a* point. He is correct that fraud is most likely taking place since psychic abilities have never been proven to exist. This concern is no different than the FDA's interest in controlling questionable health products meant to cure cancer, but which might prove harmful. Kacy, as he so often demonstrates, is concerned with folks being harmed. So I would agree that he is correct -- in his context of values. The reason he finds resistance on this forum is because most everyone here has a different context of values, namely, most here are liberty-minded and concerned about an overreaching nanny-state. This doesn't mean they are wrong, it means their priorities are with larger issues related to government and freedom. So we see here again the psychological divide between liberals and conservatives (or certain libertarians). I have mentioned Jonathan Haidt's research elsewhere on this forum, but for the uninitiated: http://www.moralfoundations.org/ Moral Foundations Theory was created by a group of social and cultural psychologists (see us here) to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. In brief, the theory proposes that several innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too. The foundations are: 1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance. 2) Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives] 3) Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor. 4) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one." 5) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions. 6) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions). Liberals like Kacy obviously score high on (1) and (2). The Objectivists here score highly on (3) (and possibly some others). Regarding (1) care/harm, Kacy has said in the past that the true measure of a country/society is how it treats its most vulnerable members (paraphrased). Note: this "true measure" does not include "freedom", or "liberty", or "social cohesion" or "technological progress." His focus is on care/harm -- his psychology weights this concern heavier than others. Regarding (2), his busy-bodied desire to regulate transactions between psychics and their customers is proof enough of his sympathies lying with fairness/cheating. I shouldn't have to go down the list, I'm sure most of you get the point. This should serve as an illustration of why these conversations between liberals and conservatives ( or libertarians) are so aggravating. What we have are not two dispassionate truth-seekers looking for a Single Concensus, but rather a clash between values. And this is why I don't see much use in engaging such things -- it is mostly futile. (MSK would refer to these near-intractable psychological traits as "cybernetic programs" which operate independently of conscious awareness -- most other people would refer to them simply as "personality traits." Furthermore, I would like to point out that this conception of human value-behavior spears yet another stake into the heart of Objectivism's laughably simple-minded notion that the field of philosophy is more fundamental, more important, than the field of psychology. As if.)

Kacy, you might find more concensus for your peculiar hot button issues over at The Objectivist Standard. My understanding is that they are all about the "imminent Christian theocracy".

Kacy, Statements like this creep me out. You don't care about informing paying customers. There are many ways to inform them without legal coercion You want to make people spend their money in a way you see fit. It's a control issue. Friggen' busybody. Michael Correct. But notice how it is Kacy's fidelity to "Reason" which powers his sails. It is only natural to conclude that if Reason is our guiding star, that the judicious application of it to social problems would allow for and demand governmental oversight. Anything less would be....uncivilized. And we are thus left with a technocratic-bureaucratic managerial elite making centralized decisions on the basis of "science." It would seem this is a natural and organic development once one has enshrined Man's Power of Reason as the ultimate value. George Lakoff made the point in the video I posted that it was precisely the Enlightenment and it's corresponding faith in Man (after having killed God) which was the seed and genesis of the modern Progressive movement. Think about that one, O Mighty Objectivists.

On balance, people are ruled more by their passions than by logic and reason. See what David Hume has to say on this matter. Ba'al Chatzaf "The truth is simple: we are inherently irrational beings capable of rational thought" -- C. S. Hyatt

Requesting Book Review by Scherk: http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Inquisition-Robert-Wilson/dp/1561840025 The "New Inquisition", indeed. Confer with Randi and his minions and get back to us. (The physics are probably out of date by this point since the book was written in the early 90's, but I'm confident the fundamentals are there)

That would be nice to think, wouldn't it? That if a method works on a small scale, that it would then necessarily work on any scale? That would be so convenient! Problem is, it's simply not the case with this sort of thing. Human nature *is* a natural barrier. Each citizen presents a particular variable to society - they more citizens, the more variable. And as any chess player knows, at some point you have to approach the problem a different way. Chess is actually a good metaphor here. Did yo know that there are computers that have "solved" various endgames? What that means is that if you have only a few pieces left on the board, computer analysis has already determined exactly the right moves for each piece - no matter where those pieces sit on the board. This means that a computer would be able to play the endgame perfectly. God himself could not find better moves - better moves don't exist. So, in theory, if you can do that with (for example) 5 pieces left on the board, you should be able to do it with 6, right? And then with 7, then with 8, and then with all 32 of the original pieces, right? Here's the problem... each piece you add to the board - depending on which piece it is - increases the processing power and time required to "solve" the position exponentially - and I'm talking large exponents. From the Wikipedia article on Endgame tablebase : The Nalimov tablebases, which use advanced compression techniques, require 7.05 GB of hard disk space for all five-piece endings. The six-piece endings require approximately 1.2 TB.[34][35] It is estimated that seven-piece tablebases will require between 50 and 200 TB of storage space. Plenty of guys like myself can play 1 or 2 piece endgames perfectly, using either intuition or rote memorization. So that's how I would approach those endgames. 2-3 piece endgames, with solid study and extreme talent might be played exactly correctly by strong players. Endgames with 4-6 pieces require strong computers to play perfectly. If you are playing and endgame with more than 6 pieces, there is no current way to play them perfectly, therefore to attempt to do so would result in a loss (because your time to move is limited). Therefore, you have to actually change your entire approach. Perfection is not an option, you have to use principles you've learned to try to figure out the move which works *best*, NOT the move that is perfect. If this is the case with a 7 piece endgame, you can imagine how chaotic the very first moves are in one's mind, with all 32 pieces and pawns still on the board. Now, this metaphor uses chess pieces, all of which have fixed properties and whose options are known and delimited. Imagine trying to find a "perfect" system for 330 million human beings, all of whom are unique individuals, all of whom provide their own unique variable, and none of whom are fully predictable. In 1726 Philadelphia, when B. Franklin was growing up there, it had a population of 2000. The system there was far from perfect - there was indentured servitude and a lot of other mechanisms in place that would be considered antiquated and obsolete in today's world. But it worked for the time, and for the scale. Can anyone really believe that a system that would work for a populace of 2000 would work for a populace of 330 million? The scale of the operation literally changes the nature of it. Therefore, as much as I agree with pure capitalism in principle (and I do recognize Rand's moral justification for it), the reality is that a society our size requires some infrastructural oversight, some mechanisms to protect private citizens from unscrupulous business practices, some mechanisms to protect the vulnerable, etc. This is just where we're at as a human race. I agree. Scale is the issue facing us at this point in history: http://mypostingcareer.com/forums/topic/155-the-limits-of-human-scale/ WARNING: Threats to the Progressive mind incoming, on a racist anti-semetic forum

That might be true if the KKK actually existed in anything approaching it's boogeyman status in the Progressive mind. The KKK is dead. La Raza, on the other hand, is being aided and abbeted by the Cathedral.

"Who's going to come out and say the mind of Nature is innately insane?" -- Jack Kerouac "The principal activity of Nature, like some eternally frustrated artist, is destruction." -- de Sade

Of course. My father was/is an Injustice Collector. My mother is a People Pleaser. Now that I think about it, I suspect my current ornery personality is a result of my struggle to survive my father's IC tendencies -- if I was a weaker person, I would have become a PP like my mother. I HAD to be a bastard to establish my own independent identity apart from his. Hope this helps.

I tend to side with Dennis on the issue of secession. It's true that a State can be oppressive, but it can also be liberating. And the SAME thing applies to the Federal government. Why is one better than the other? The United States had a pretty good run there for a while, being all "freedom loving" and "liberty loving" and cohesive, etc. It's amazing when you think about it, given the size of this country, how things sort of ran like clockwork for a period of time. No doubt you Objectivists attribute this to "reason" and philosophies of "liberty" and whatnot. I would posit that the greatness and stability that once existed was a testament to the homogeneity of the culture -- both in the sense of there being a certain racial/ethnic cohesiveness which reflected certain temperamental traits towards communitarianism, and leftover strains of Christian goodwill. Of course, you don't believe in the existence of races, so it's probably all a mystery to you. Technology and immigration has altered the underlying stratum of this country and things are beginning to tear at the seams. We are told that Diversity is an unalloyed Good, and should be celebrated. I agree. I think now that we have competing tribes and ideologies, it only makes sense for people who are liberty minded to form their own communities and have the right to EXCLUDE those who might think otherwise. I would feel better living in some white Christian State that perhaps bans abortion, than the clusterfuck of a city I live in now. (Miami) My 2 cents.

http://www.whywesuffer.com/the-temptations-of-the-injustice-collector/#more-571

http://www.psybersquare.com/family/family_injustice.html

Now that I have been outed as a Hyatt devotee (of sorts), I'd like to post an essay of his that I read long ago that stuck with me over the years. It certainly shook this former Randroid up but good. I think he manages to gore every sacred cow across the political spectrum in this one, although I know for a fact he was heavily influenced by Rand/Libertarianism. I think his hard-nosed, rough and ready mindset will resonate with my man Kolker. Both Hyatt and Robert Wilson were members of The Tribe, if that means anything (it does). FrignSchmgn *mumble* goddamned *mumble* Chosen Ones...

Thanks for the beacon signal, William. I understand. I feel the same. "I grow weary of the battle and the storm I walk toward." You've done good work here. Given value. I have a premonition that my online presence here will be relatively short. After having spilled the last remaining drops of my lifeblood over the pages of OL, I think it might be time to hang it up for good, this current online incarnation being my last in a long history of internet trolling. p.s. what have you got against my nom de plume?

"Those who need to trust are either infants or cowards. If you can't tolerate disappointment, you can't tolerate life." -- Hyatt

Tool - The Grudge It's tough, I know. I still struggle with it. I think it helps to focus attention on how much of the other's behavior was born from the "upper realms" where some sense of free will comes into play, and how much is a result of biology, childhood conditioning, and environment. You are a determinist, after all. How can you hold grudges against people who are in your view no different than tornadoes? Do you hold grudges against earthquakes?

I'm coining the phrase "Polemic demagoguery" as distinguished from just demagoguery. Demagoguery is when you try to advance your cause through invoking substance-free emotion in your intended audience. Polemic Demagoguery is when you try to advance your cause by projecting (or provoking) substance-free emotions onto/into your rivals, for the sake of scoring points with your intended audience. Alright, I guess this thread is about as tired as I am. I'm only quoting this response by Kacy because it is the last one. I think most people reading can see the myopic focus on details that he is known for. Oh yes, he is certainly an advocate of Reason. He is quite logical. And erudite. So what's the problem? I hope it's obvious. It's the disconnect between logic and values. I'm pretty sure Adam has disengaged because he has perceived that engaging Kacy would merely sanction Kacy's progressive tendencies in attacking Good Things. I also happen to be in favor of Breitbart. (Of course, my favor is of the nuanced sort, as it is in all things. Not the regressive splitting RB mentioned earlier in his characterization of Kacy's behavior. I don't see people as all-good or all-bad) (By the way Kacy, what exactly is your beef with Michelle Malkin? I know you consider Ann Coulter to be your enemy, like most Progressives. I happen to find value in some of Coulter's essays and feel she can be quite perceptive on certain issues. Though, I can see how you would have an issue with her since she can be...er....a meanie...and hurt little pussies feewings, but what has Malkin done to incur your ire?) Anyway, as I was saying, we see in Kacy the disconnect between the dedication to """reason""", and the hostility to certain ethical and political values most individuals here are in favor of. This should give pause to everyone reading. Isn't Rea$on supposed to lead everyone to the same set of values and politics? Apparently not. This should be obvious from the fact that the spergloid New Atheist community is overwhelmingly liberal. If all these atheists who are dedicated to "free thinking" and "logic" and "reality" end up with very different notions of morality and politics than you Objectivists, how do you account for this? Could it be that values are in fact not tied to logic and "reason"? Perish the thought. I'm beginning to come around to the point of view I once read in a blog comment which said (paraphrasing): "The libertarian/Objectivist conception of humanity and politics is an inherently unstable point of view. It is premised on an idealistic view of society which is only possible due to the luxury of a pre-existing social order -- a social order made possible by very UN-Objectivist people, philosophies and behaviors. Oists/libertarian are a self-selected group of middle to upper-middle class individuals of a certain time and place, mostly nerds and misfits, who are afforded the privacy and space to dream up beautiful theories which have no force in the real world. Such theories exist in a sort of eigenstate which must perforce collapse into either Progressive materialism, or traditionalistic Christianity." Anyway. Kacy is one possible result of unleashing "reason" on an unsophisticated populace. I hope you're happy George H. Smith!!! It all started with you and your ATCAG book. If you're reading, I know you have the good sense to understand the benefits Western Christianity has delivered to the modern world, historically. Does this tension between your views ever cause you angst? Furthermore, I have to ask: was your path to atheism solely the result of your dedication to logical thought and reason? Were you truly that much of a free thinker? If so, I tip my hat to you. But I have to wonder if there were....influences....environmental factors....certain individuals or memes which had disruptive designs...antipathies to the Christian culture we had in the U.S.? What was your formative influence?

The roaring like a lion was not in response to the OP. My response to the OP was measured and proportionate. It was a single comment. It was the ensuing misrepresentation of the point I was making that caused the "roar" (if you can call it that). Your comment here reminds me of this one instructive incident I had with TD. I had met this girl at the gym that was a nighttime news anchor, and I had never seen her on the news, so I decided that I would stay home that night and watch her on the news. TD asked me after I I got back from the gym what I was going to do that night. I told him, "I'm going to stay home and catch <whoever> on the news.". About three hours later he asked me again what I was doing that night. I gave him the same answer - "I'm staying home to see <whoever> do her newscast tonight." Then that night, he asked me again "What are you doing tonight?" and I told him "I'm going to stay here and watch <whoever> on the news tonight. He said "Damn, you're all about that, aren't you? You've been going on and on about it all day!" hehe... Anyway, yeah... roaring like a lion, eh? Sure man. Whatever you say. Do you see that you didn't address the substance of my post? This fits into MSK's observation that you are more focused on words instead of behavior and values. My use of the phrase "roaring like a Lion" was poetic license meant to contrast with the relatively minor phenomenon of you picking nits over Jerry's words. The main thrust of my post was that if someone is fighting for values you agree with (and I assume you believe in the 2nd amendment) then it can be counterproductive to make hay over minor details. I believe the example I have used with you in the past is an individual on the Titanic yelling loudly about the elevator inspection cards being out of date while the whole freaking ship is sinking. No sense of perspective. But whatever you think about my point, notice how all you focused on was my metaphor about "roaring" and how you felt the need to address that and defend yourself against such an "unfair" characterization. Totally missing the point.

How would the lack of interest in photos and pictures be a mark of narcissism? I would think it would be quite the opposite, actually. (RB, do you still hold that position, BTW?)

"Would you posit that not covering a story is an affirmative act?" Not sure what you mean or what you're getting at. I never asserted that this story wasn't covered. What he is getting at, and what I have attempted to explain to you in the past, is that lying and distortion is not the only form of bias in the media. That is the only thing you focus on. I'll say it again: bias can be reflected just as much through omission and/or emphasis. Do you understand?

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I have to say that many of the theories in cosmology and quantum physics I eventually read about were anticipated by me during my psychedelic trips. Warning: there is a "spiritual", "mystical" slant to it all. As I mentioned before, I had a lot of bad trips. But as any old acid-head will tell you, it is often the bad trips which are the most illuminating. I remember being thrown into a hellish, atavistic solitude....there were no pretty colors or New Age foo-foo to comfort me. I experienced what it was like to be the Only Thing. What I mean is that I experienced what it was like to be a point source of consciousness, with nothing to percieve. Nothing around me. Just pure Awareness....of NOTHING. I recall thinking this must be what "God" must have felt in the "beginning". So utterly lonely. (I was an atheist). And this was a loneliness that was not in time, but for an eternity. Words can't do justice to the experience. I feared for my sanity. When every organic instinct in me was screaming alarm bells, I felt a sort of 'demi-urge" to willingly "lose my mind" for the sake of escaping this horrible solitude. To go crazy, in other words. My subsequent reading of esoteric literature confirmed what I felt. There a number of spiritual "myths" that involve the idea of "God" splitting itself in two in order to escape this loneliness. In order to know itself all over again. Basically one part of the Original Thing is forgetting the other part in order to create movement or activity. It's all a sort of game, or play that "God" does over and over to keep itself occupied and entertained and far away from that original Solitude. Kind of like a dog chasing its own tail. Next time you're in a barber shop where you have parallel mirrors creating an infinte regress...well, you might have an idea. Of course, seperation (or Division) creates the chaos and violence and havoc and pain we know all too well from our Darwinian past. And that is why the Seperation does not last forever. Eventually the pain of Separation gets to be too much, and the two halves (which had eventually split into Multitudes) must return to a Union of Love and Wholeness. (This would be FAR off in our own personal futures, I have to add) Pretty out there, eh? But I assure you, I am not a hippie. The takeaway from all this, I think, is the possibility of reconceptualizing the debate over the relationship between matter and consciousness. Philosophical condundrums like Free Will can be recast if we utterly flip our materialistic bias about matter being the starting point. You see, when we inadvertantly start with a materialistic bias, we are left with the mystery of consciousness and all the attendant puzzles. We aer left perceiving ourselves as mere meatpuppets (Hi Ba'al). But I recall reading somewhere (perhaps it was Ken Wilber channeling some previous philosopher) that it is more fruitful instead to think of EVERYTHING possessing consciousness, of a sort. That is, we are merely the latest and greatest examples of consciousness reaching higher orders of complexity. But it is a narcissitic conceit that we are somehow unique or elevated over the animals and the cavemen of our past, as if our particular consciousness was sui generis. We are the Rational Animal! No, I'm afraid it's all on a spectrum. This has moral implications for how we treat animals, for instance, but I'll leave that issue alone for now. The mystics would say that bacteria have consciousness. That rocks have a sort of consciousness. This, of course, completely flips Objectivist metaphysics on its head and turns it inside-out. But it's worth considering. I realize I haven't fully thought out all the implications of this perspective, so I leave it to y'all to pick it apart. I'm merely reporting my direct, knowable experience.

I wonder what you mean with this Koan, Ellen? How much of your heart is in it? I'm no Buddhist scholar, but I'm pretty sure what this famous quote refers to is the experience of "going under", of "perceiving the true nature of reality" during meditation, and then realizing that in order to function in the world, one must perforce assume the same old illusions one had before "enlightenment." I speculate that one such insight learned is the predetermined nature of Life, i.e., the initial conditions at the "start" of the universe spiral outward in a Grand Design greater than anything our monkey-minds can conceive of. I further speculate that it is this realization which leads to the tranquility and inner-peace one finds in practitioners of Zen. Such individuals have relinquished the Western conceit that we are fully responsible for what happens to us, and the concommitant stress and anxiety over our powerlessness in the face of Reality. Yet, in order to act as a goal-pursuing organism, we have to indulge the belief that we are in control. Is this something you are prepared to endorse?

Robert Baratheon confronts Kacy Ray in public (true story!): Nice of you to use media that I cannot watch. Well I didn't really have a choice, do I? Would you rather I desist from posting it due to your internet limitations, much in the same manner you demand I stop calling you a liberal because you find it disrespectful? Do you at least see the screen shots? It's the scene from Donnie Darko where Jake Gyllenhall's character confronts Patrick Swayze's character in the high-school auditiorium. If you recall, Swayze's character was a motivational speaker type whose whole theory revolved around the choice between Love and Fear. (Don't Grumpy Cat me. Are you Grumpy Catting me right now? Stop Grumpy Catting me.)

Lakeoff "defends" himslef by alleging Pinker is either dishonest or stupid or perhaps something else, but he does not know which. I can solve Lakoff's "framing problem" simply. He regards government as a -benefit- and I regard government as a -necessary evil-. Without government we are all in deep kimchee. With government we are all in danger of being tyrannized. The rational solution is to keep government to a workable minimum, just sufficient to keep order in the society and just sufficient to repel foreign invaders. Apparently this has not occurred to Lakoff who sees government with its intrusions, constraints and regulation as being BOTH good and necessary. Framing problem solved. Ba'al Chatzaf Come now, Ba'al. Try and be a little more charitable. His speculation about Pinker's stupidity or dishonesty was the close of his essay, and came after he provided good evidence to back up his assertions. I agree that he's a mess on politics, but he did a good job of defending his science against Pinker.