ilstar

Here is an enlightening post, which proves that all of you have been correct.

I just saw this and let it through.

There goes more time in my life I wasted and will never get back.

Come on, dude.

Let's talk about something else, something that provides value to OL readers (and me and you).

Try trading values for a change.

You might like the experience...

Michael

No problem, Michael. I've banned the evil person from my blog. It's over. I am continuing to post there, and I know that everything now is going to be all right.

What happened to incommensurability?

All that matters is to try to prevent incommensurability, and I've tried as much as I could. Our incommensurability is not so extreme, however. It is probably of a pragmatic variety.

Just so OL readers get me, I'm doing this because of vanity keyword searches. People often do a Google search of their names and pseudonyms.

If a regular member here on OL mentions one of the names of the crazy person, I don't mind so much, even though the name might appear in Google SERPS. The regular member already knows who that person is and will write in a dismissive manner. Or banter. The crazy person is not that interested because of accumulated past history.

When someone new shows up defending this crazy person as an honest intellectual, that might encourage said neurotic creep to start a new sockpuppet account and start all over.

I'm not eternal to keep swatting that particular fly. God knows I've swatted it enough. So I stop the buzzing before it starts.

Now let's see if Ilya continues with his martyr in the name of truth routine. (Man, do I get tired of this shit. )

Michael

That's very funny, Michael, especially considering that I've mentioned a real person who could help identify the fraud. But you don't get my pragmatics and see only what you want to see, not my actual words. Oh well.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Sometimes communication cannot solve a problem.

I will ban that person, if xxxxxxxxxxxxxx replies to me by saying that she does not know any of these people. And you can restrict me, Michael, all you want, since I know that it is meaningless to seek alliance with you or your forum members. This forum goes the same way as OO for me.

Ilya,

You are having the same difficulty tracking a simple statement that person had. I wrote "the heuristic," not "the heuristics." Singular, not plural. {...]

Sorry, that was a misspelling on my part. Indeed, "the heuristic."

Michael, so you think that her simplification of Kahneman's heuristics to "the heuristics" (potentially to save time rather than explain all of them) is the best argument to show that she is crazy and fake?

Do you regret thinking that "Eva has a fine mind" and "a beautiful mind as it matures" (link)? You surely aren't her "kindred spirit" now or "resonate with that spirit" (ibid.). All this proves to me is that you rushed in your evaluations of Eva, and potentially you hurried when you banned her as well.

And to think that I am Eva or those type of people who write "daffy-nition" and such is ridiculous. You know you can tell from the writing style about the person? Does my style remind you of how Eva, Andie, or Bill write? Please, do not rush with your decisions or judgements. Judgements based on false premises lead to contradictions.

Okay, Michael, I will look at more of his posts.

Ilya

I seem to remember you posting a link to (in OO) to a blog post that you claimed was biographical and if I'm not mistaken the piece described your time in the Russian military service? Am I mistaken? The link (if it is the one I remember) says 'removed by author'. You did say you came to the USA at age 15, yes? Was it a fiction piece, or just my poor recollection? And if you could tell us more of Eva/Bill/Andie/Frank's positive attributes and scholarship, and why those here should engage them on your blog..

You recollect correctly, tmj, except it wasn't a blog post but a non-fiction essay I wrote for a graduate class. Yes, I served in the Russian army, but that was in 2009-10, many years after I had already experienced life in the USA.

Although Michael explicitly stated I should not mention their names or argue about them, I am going to keep this comment short: those-who-shall-not-be-named are more qualified and knowledgeable in philosophy and science than I am.

Ilya:

Let me be clear then...Rhetoric is developing all the means of persuasion in the given case.

Rhetoric is both "arte" and "techne."

Is that the definition that you had in mind?

Adam

I had in mind "discerning the available means of persuasion," apparent and real, yeah.

Easy Wolf, lol.

Ilya:

We are not using Aristotle's definition whose "book" is called Rhetoric?

I have always been fascinated by how "rhetoricians, communication arts and sciences folks and Skinnerian behavioralists run away from the originator's definition.

Adam

I have no problem with Aristotle's definition. In fact it is perfectly fine and ethical. But to connect rhetoric to incommensurability in my previous statement to Michael, this definition works clearer, and Wolf used it as I intended. Indeed, if he doesn't want to talk to me and doesn't care about what I think - it leads the road to incommensurability. To close oneself to other ideas is to separate from or desynchronize with other people and their discourse communities.

Group sex?

--Brant

a soccer match?

Sexual rhetoric, sure, and sports rhetoric. As long as you are not walking away from a meaningful communication or synchronization with other people like Wolf does, you are perfectly fine.

Ilya:

Out of curiosity, how are you defining "rhetoric?" [...]

Adam

For my own purposes, I've defined rhetoric before as "a meaningful synchronization of a human in relationship with a specific discourse community."

You can have these people or not. There can be value either way. You can have them a week, a month, a year. Choose. This is not a right nor a wrong. What is the greater value to you? You can pull the cord any time. Choose. There is no one here to choose for you. You can even choose to muddle along. Just be a man about it by knowing what is going on first about what you know.

They have come to you on a platter: eat?

--Brant

Socrates was a son-of-a-bitch

I won't close my eyes on it -- that's my decision. I shall remain with my eyes widely open, however "painful" it can get. As it is written in The Fountainhead: "It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it's not really pain."

It just doesn't make sense. It's like we are running away from a problem we can't solve.

Ilya,

Why, that's right!

It doesn't make sense, but that's not on us. Crazy people do crazy stuff. Why? Because they are crazy.

They are not supposed to make sense. They can't not not make sense even if they wanted to.

I suppose you could call not engaging them running away from a problem, but curing neurotics is for psychotherapists, not philosophers. The fundamental issue on the table is crazy, not philosophy. And you don't get to change that with a crazy person. He or she won't let you. But they will make you crazy along with them. That's all they want and all they do.

Besides, one should charge money for trying to cure neuroses in another.

On a different, far better issue, Lakoff and Johnson's book on metaphor is just now coming up to the top of my reading list. After I get into it, I will be interested in your thoughts.

Michael

Michael, I take issue with people calling people crazy. I really think it is a poor rhetoric because once you call your opponent crazy, the argument may abruptly end and violence may begin. Objectivists, Marxists, and Harris/Andie have called me crazy before. I tolerated their attacks for the sole reason that I know the outcome of not engaging in rhetoric. The outcome is called incommensurability, and it's as anti-Aristotelian as it can get.

That was my next question, where in Russia?

Also, I am a lover of Korzybski and we used to have a poster here who also liked him. Since you studied linguistics, I can pick your brain on the Count and general semantics...Yes?

Adam

I am from Orel, but I think I want to move to Moscow.

We have a Chomskyan-infested linguistics department, so I know very little of true semantics from my professors. We have a Chomskyan student and the leading linguistics professor at NIU, Professor Gulsat Aygen. When I asked her about semantics in a linguistic typology seminar, she said something along the lines: "Oh that's like going back to what Aristotle said..." So I asked her: "And what did Aristotle say?" To which she never replied for the reason of making a row and hence ending our "argument." And from studying Lakoff, I learn arguments against formal semantics, yet which also disentangle semantics from generative syntax. Nonetheless, I think Lakoff's semantics is a lot closer to genuine Aristotle's essentialist view than Chomsky's semantic-puppeteering syntax.

Ilya, are you familiar with Toulman argumentation structures?

Debate?

Persuasion?

Oral interpretation?

Adam

No. I am also not a big fan of Wittgenstein.

The guy who hired myself and two other rhetoric majors, one a C.S. Lewis scholar and the other a passionate Richard Nixon person who spoke and read perfect Greek...

Hell of an asset to have since we three were immersed in Aristotle.

At any rate Russel Windes was both a teacher, mentor, adviser, boss and friend and a Toulman logician.

Here is his Vitae:

http://courses.missouristate.edu/RalphSmith/GEPfall2k/excerpts/gep397_windes_excerpt.htm

Adam

You had a good professor. I am going to Northern Illinois University (NIU), and it is not a big university for rhetoric. In fact, we don't even have a PhD in Rhetoric, so I am doing one in English with a concentration in Rhetoric. I fell in love with rhetoric when I was studying linguistics there last year and decided to stay, rather than move to a more prestigious university with an actual Rhetoric Department like Berkeley or Carnegie Mellon. I could have gotten excellent recommendation letters there, but I've decided to take an easy route. I am going to return to Russia anyway, and a degree from NIU should work fine for my future goals.

Ilya, are you familiar with Toulman argumentation structures?

Debate?

Persuasion?

Oral interpretation?

Adam

On the other hand, I start remembering his warrant and backing idea that expanded the traditional syllogism. We didn't cover him extensively in my class, though.

Ilya, are you familiar with Toulman argumentation structures?

Debate?

Persuasion?

Oral interpretation?

Adam

No. I am also not a big fan of Wittgenstein.

Yes, I used to go into NBI regularly.

My first day at Queens College undergrad was 1963 and we had a Randian group that met in the back cafe...ten (10) of us four (4) women, six (6) men. One YAFer and we were extremely aggressive in pushing Ayn's ideas.

SDS hated our guts because we took their best weapon away from them...the draft and other "personal freedom issues."

A...

I assume you want me to continue your last statement as ... is A. However, it does not change. And without change we can never defeat the likes of Bill Harris.

Ilya:

Welcome to OL...what are you studying in grad school?

A...

Thanks. I am studying rhetoric. Although I like Aristotelian and Ciceronian rhetoric, I am currently applying George Lakoff's conceptual metaphors to Russian Marxist rhetoric.

Interesting, I taught Rhetoric at Queens College in the CUNY System when it used to be called Speech, lol.

This was 1966...

Ahh, the 60s - the golden era of Objectivism. ;-)

Ilya:

Welcome to OL...what are you studying in grad school?

A...

Thanks. I am studying rhetoric. Although I like Aristotelian and Ciceronian rhetoric, I am currently applying George Lakoff's conceptual metaphors to Russian Marxist rhetoric.

[...nothing about sharing a cake with others, or lending me a helping hand in this matter...]

could it be lies all the way down?

Well, one thing Bill told me about himself is confirmed on the thread on Marxist forum, in which he basically mentions being against Rand ("the horrid type") and for unorthodox Marxism ("we're all Marxists"). I am reading Bill's posts on the Marxist forum right now, and he writes there that his "own PhD was on how changing conditions of production among the Tuareg (Am'zert) effect their nomenclature of kinship." This is a PhD in anthropology (which does involve studying Marxism) as he told me this on my blog as well.

In contrast, Eva said in the linked thread that her "intellectual extras do include philo, but also lit and, now, anthropology." This is strange because it seems that anthropology is most recent, whereas Bill mentioned his degrees in the opposite order, with anthropology being the first and highest degree and no literature among them. I would presume one would get a PhD first and then additional master's degrees later. So does it mean that Bill is a he and Eva is a she, and they are different individuals?

Of course, there is something that complicates all these matters. When Bill posted on my blog, he once logged in and posted as Andie Holland. He apologized for it, meaning it was an accident that he logged in under Andie's name. What's going on here? Do they have one computer where they live? I highly doubt that. Or why would they all use one computer? Is Bill and Andie the same person? I've talked to Andie before on OO, and they do seem very similar with lots of knowledge on physics, Kantianism, and Marxism.

But why would he lie? It just doesn't make sense. It's like we are running away from a problem we can't solve.

Try Wikipedia.

There are lots of positivists like Bill/Andie/Eva writing articles on Wikipedia as well.

A liar and a troll and you don't pull the plug?

Two facts you already know.

Eve, the daughter who doesn't exist.

Maybe you are right. I am reading Eve on this forum right now, and she sounds just like Andie on OO and Harris on my blog. They use the same language, such as "Amerika", the same small caps run-on sentences or small capped words such as "i", the same headers such as "Re" or abbreviations such as "OTH." There are many similarities indeed.

I guess what I am expecting from this (multi)person is for him/her to learn new tricks. I've learned a few things from him, such as the existence of alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics, Griffiths' consistent histories approach, and also that Marx researched Democritus and Epicurus in his dissertation. Those are facts, and they make me think that potentially I could learn something new from him, other than his lackluster criticisms of Rand and myself.