Rand through a Nietzsche filter

[Brant Gaede]

I drink in the evening but am not an alcoholic. My Dad was. When I drink it's for changing gears after a stressful day. My life is about to significantly change because of certain things I did and did not do. When that happens the stress level will go way down and I'll be only drinking an occasional beer. I don't like reading about me being a boozer even though Darren's crack at the time was water off a duck's back to me. It's just when I'm cold sober like I am now it reminds me of the stress I'm under or why I do drink. However, I'm not telling anyone to please stop mentioning it. There's no fun in living an heroic life--not the kind I am. (There's additional stress that everybody's under one way or another because of the economy and today's politics propelling us into what will be a worldwide disaster centered on currencies collapsing including the U.S. dollar.)

--Brant

[caroljane]

Carol:

You need to edit post # 541 - you repeated the info six (6) times!

Adam, I am sorry, it is my keyboard, dead but it wont lie down.

Carol:

It is time to shoot the keyboard and pick up a new one.

Please, I do not want to send the North Carolina dad on an undercover mission to execute your keyboard...

we might hit the damn cat...

Kitten on the Keys awwwww...

I have to lend Andy the computer again, I hope the dog will not get at it. Bulldog on the keys is not so cute.

[Ellen Stuttle]

PDS,

Thanks for the explanation about your suspecting Darren of being a boozer. Sounds plausible. I'm inclined toward the suspicion that he just enjoys being nasty and finds the Objectiv-ish ready marks.

I, too, enjoyed watching the back and forth. I'm sorry to see those revels ("Our revels now are over...") end.

I want to make a qualification to something I said yesterday. I was posting in a hurry, since we had to leave to make it on time to the restaurant where we wanted to have dinner.

You wrote:

My primary diagnosis:   he is a thorough-going agnostic who is highly irritated by the "faith" others have in evolution, and the mental laziness his O'ist adversaries have about the subject.   Secondary diagnosis:  he is a lapsed randian, well-read in the reasons the movement has been spinning its wheels in the ditch for 40-plus years, and likes to amuse himself by sticking it to people who drove the car in said ditch.

To which I said:

[That's] pretty much what I think, too.

The qualification pertains to "thorough-going agnostic." Although at first I thought that Darren might be arguing for Intelligent Design as a game of snowing the mathematically challenged, I came to think that he believes his contention that the DNA molecule is a literal code. On the premise of the DNA molecule literally being a code, the conclusion that a codER had to have done the coding would be correct. Hence there would have to have been some kind of creator of life. So I think that Darren isn't agnostic in the sense of considering it an open question whether life was created or not. Also I think that he believes his stated view that consciousness is a basic existent along with matter and energy.

(Regarding his ersatz math about the impossibility of life evolving in the time since the -- purported -- "Big Bang," however, I'm still inclined to think that he's too good at math himself not to know that that argument is ersatz. I think he uses it as an attempted snow-job technique and drops it when pitted against someone -- for instance, Merlin Jetton here on OL -- who's quick enough at the relevant calculations to keep up with Darren's speed.)

Ellen

[Xray]

Xray said,

Carol, remember that simply awful hat Fergie's daughter Beatrice was wearing at the Royal Wedding? This is among the most hideous headgear I've ever seen!

http://nowmagazine.m...-Beatrice15.jpg

Janet would probably call it a "postmodern" hat ...

lol it was nonlinear for sure!

Definitely nonlinear, no question.

X, if you get a kick out of Hideous Royal Fashion there is great stuff on the Royal Order of Sartorial Splendour, one of my fave brain relaxer sites,

Highly entertaining site, lol! What a bonanaza of royal attire, the gamut ranging from absolutely splendorous and tasteful to the absymal opposite ... !

I grew up with 'Royal gossip' so to speak: My mother was quite an eager yellow press reader, and thus I got quite acquainted, at a tender age, with pictures of Royals wearing their sparkling crowns. I especially liked the silk sashes adorning the ladies' evening dresses.

One of Mom's favorites was a non-Royal though (albeit she was of royal demeanor): the elegant and stylish Jackie Kennedy.

Mom did not speak English, and pronounced JK's first name as in German "Jacke", which phonetically converted "Jackie" into "Yucky".

You would simply not believe some of the stuff Queen Margrethe of Denmark wears in her hair. Let alone some of the dresses which she designs herself. She is an "arty" type queen.

The comments on that site are as hilarious as the pictures.

If you scroll down to about a third of the page, here's one of Margrethe wearing a hat which a blogger aptly called "an upturned oil funnel":

http://orderofsplend...ch/label/Hmm...

[seymourblogger]

Xray said,

Carol, remember that simply awful hat Fergie's daughter Beatrice was wearing at the Royal Wedding? This is among the most hideous headgear I've ever seen!

http://nowmagazine.m...-Beatrice15.jpg

Actually it was a "post modern" hat. It was making fun of the rules that hats have to be worn in that social situation. The tradition has been to have a "pretty flowery flattering" hat on. Beatrice just siad "fuck you" to the tradition in wearing a "joke".I thought it was clever the way she did it. Just as I think Helen Bonhan darter is clever in dressing like Hallowe'en on the read carpet affairs where all the "journalists" - can we really call them that - rehash the wore it best post mortum.

Like you.

Janet would probably call it a "postmodern" hat ...

lol it was nonlinear for sure!

Definitely nonlinear, no question.

[seymourblogger]

I drink in the evening but am not an alcoholic. My Dad was. When I drink it's for changing gears after a stressful day. My life is about to significantly change because of certain things I did and did not do. When that happens the stress level will go way down and I'll be only drinking an occasional beer. I don't like reading about me being a boozer even though Darren's crack at the time was water off a duck's back to me. It's just when I'm cold sober like I am now it reminds me of the stress I'm under or why I do drink. However, I'm not telling anyone to please stop mentioning it. There's no fun in living an heroic life--not the kind I am. (There's additional stress that everybody's under one way or another because of the economy and today's politics propelling us into what will be a worldwide disaster centered on currencies collapsing including the U.S. dollar.)

Maybe you don't think so but you are. And you are rationalizing why you are drinking every night.

Try yoga. It works, It's free and its healthy. And sexy.

--Brant

[seymourblogger]

Xray said,

Carol, remember that simply awful hat Fergie's daughter Beatrice was wearing at the Royal Wedding? This is among the most hideous headgear I've ever seen!

http://nowmagazine.m...-Beatrice15.jpg

And god, you are so linear. So much in the oppositional Discourse of the dialectic. Boring.

Janet would probably call it a "postmodern" hat ...

lol it was nonlinear for sure!

Definitely nonlinear, no question.

[George H. Smith]

I think he was just fed up with the IQ around here. Darren did/does not suffer fools gladly.

If you were to quit posting on OL and spend full-time on SOLO, you would raise the average IQ in both forums.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

I drink in the evening but am not an alcoholic. My Dad was. When I drink it's for changing gears after a stressful day. My life is about to significantly change because of certain things I did and did not do. When that happens the stress level will go way down and I'll be only drinking an occasional beer. I don't like reading about me being a boozer even though Darren's crack at the time was water off a duck's back to me. It's just when I'm cold sober like I am now it reminds me of the stress I'm under or why I do drink. However, I'm not telling anyone to please stop mentioning it. There's no fun in living an heroic life--not the kind I am. (There's additional stress that everybody's under one way or another because of the economy and today's politics propelling us into what will be a worldwide disaster centered on currencies collapsing including the U.S. dollar.)

Maybe you don't think so but you are. And you are rationalizing why you are drinking every night.

Try yoga. It works, It's free and its healthy. And sexy.

I don't drink every night.

I don't appreciate your cheap suggestion and ignorant diagnosis.

--Brant

while you're at it learn how to use your quote function

[Xray]

The qualification pertains to "thorough-going agnostic." Although at first I thought that Darren might be arguing for Intelligent Design as a game of snowing the mathematically challenged, I came to think that he believes his contention that the DNA molecule is a literal code. On the premise of the DNA molecule literally being a code, the conclusion that a codER had to have done the coding would be correct. Hence there would have to have been some kind of creator of life. So I think that Darren isn't agnostic in the sense of considering it an open question whether life was created or not. Also I think that he believes his stated view that consciousness is a basic existent along with matter and energy.

(Regarding his ersatz math about the impossibility of life evolving in the time since the -- purported -- "Big Bang," however, I'm still inclined to think that he's too good at math himself not to know that that argument is ersatz. I think he uses it as an attempted snow-job technique and drops it when pitted against someone -- for instance, Merlin Jetton here on OL -- who's quick enough at the relevant calculations to keep up with Darren's speed.)

Ba'al too would be good at challenging Darren mathematically.

If memory serves, Darren spoke of a 'programmer' or 'designer' in one of his posts on SOLO. I think even even as "thorough-going agnostic", one still leans, belief-wise, toward one side of the fence. (At least this is the experience I have made since I became an agnostic).

PDS's thinking of Darren as "lapsed randian" is a good guess imo. For Darren's resentment/anger against Objectivists was quite palpaple, and it is not rare for ex-adherents who once had totally identified with a philosophy/ideology, etc., to feel such resentment later.

[caroljane]

Xray said,

Carol, remember that simply awful hat Fergie's daughter Beatrice was wearing at the Royal Wedding? This is among the most hideous headgear I've ever seen!

http://nowmagazine.m...-Beatrice15.jpg

Janet would probably call it a "postmodern" hat ...

lol it was nonlinear for sure!

Definitely nonlinear, no question.

X, if you get a kick out of Hideous Royal Fashion there is great stuff on the Royal Order of Sartorial Splendour, one of my fave brain relaxer sites,

Highly entertaining site, lol! What a bonanaza of royal attire, the gamut ranging from absolutely splendorous and tasteful to the absymal opposite ... !

I grew up with 'Royal gossip' so to speak: My mother was quite an eager yellow press reader, and thus I got quite acquainted, at a tender age, with pictures of Royals wearing their sparkling crowns. I especially liked the silk sashes adorning the ladies' evening dresses.

One of Mom's favorites was a non-Royal though (albeit she was of royal demeanor): the elegant and stylish Jackie Kennedy.

Mom did not speak English, and pronounced JK's first name as in German "Jacke", which phonetically converted "Jackie" into "Yucky".

You would simply not believe some of the stuff Queen Margrethe of Denmark wears in her hair. Let alone some of the dresses which she designs herself. She is an "arty" type queen.

The comments on that site are as hilarious as the pictures.

If you scroll down to about a third of the page, here's one of Margrethe wearing a hat which a blogger aptly called "an upturned oil funnel":

http://orderofsplend...ch/label/Hmm...

OMG, how did I miss that one. She looks like a Lego piece. (Are Legos Danish?)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

You don't have to feel defensive about drinking. Not here.

I actually envy you because I can't. Sometimes I get nostalgic for a well-iced Jack's with a dash of Angostura and club soda.

That was the way I liked drinking Jack Daniels (my favorite) before I turned into an animal, i.e., one day I thought, why fiddle around with Angostura? So I cut it. That led to, why club soda? Then, why ice? Then why use a glass at all? Just drink from the bottle. Then why the expensive stuff? And so it went and so did I.

Michael

[Selene]

Does this count?

[caroljane]

Brant,

You don't have to feel defensive about drinking. Not here.

I actually envy you because I can't. Sometimes I get nostalgic for a well-iced Jack's with a dash of Angostura and club soda.

That was the way I liked drinking Jack Daniels (my favorite) before I turned into an animal, i.e., one day I thought, why fiddle around with Angostura? So I cut it. That led to, why club soda? Then, why ice? Then why use a glass at all? Just drink from the bottle. Then why the expensive stuff? And so it went and so did I.

Michael

I am worse than Brant. I drink in the afternoon because it is too dark to read in the pub in the evenings.

[Ellen Stuttle]

If memory serves, Darren spoke of a 'programmer' or 'designer' in one of his posts on SOLO. I think even even as "thorough-going agnostic", one still  leans, belief-wise, toward one side of the fence. (At least this is the experience I have made since I became an agnostic).

He presented his CodER thesis in a lengthy series of posts on SOLO, excerpts from which I quoted in post #514 on this thread.

Here are those excerpts again. All come from posts on the current page 6 (reading in reverse-date order, 90 posts/thread) of Rand and Darwin - Conflict or Not?:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8268?page=5#comment-96622

Being extremely reasonable and good-natured myself, I am more than amenable to a Grand Theory of Evolution in which the end-goal is pre-existing, or in which Big Natural Selection has been instructed, in advance, as to what sorts of biological traits are to be deemed "desirable" and therefore "fit", in order to reach a pre-existing goal, and which traits are to be discarded. All you need to do is assume a Big Coder in the Sky: someone who is the analogue in physical nature to Richard Dawkins himself when he's in front of his computer.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8268?page=5#comment-96715

The Big Coder (necessitated by Dawkins's own assumptions in his computer simulation) Always Was And Always Will Be.

The fact that I posit an intelligent first cause as opposed to an inert one in no way changes the logic of the reply.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8268?page=5#comment-96720

[...] if you assume that existence doesn't require creation, then there's no problem positing an Intelligent First Cause whose existence always was. The reason one posits an Intelligent First Cause is to explain the existence of a system of coded-chemistry, which obviously cannot emerge -- spontaneously or incrementally -- from non-intelligent causes. Codes are always tell-tale products of intelligence, goal-directedness, and teleology.

[....]  "Codes" come from "Coders." They never "emerge" -- not spontaneously, not incrementally.

[....]

We're substituting a known cause -- intelligence -- for unknown causes, in order to explain a known effect: coded-chemistry in biological organisms.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8268?page=5#comment-96732

Given the time constraints imposed by the age of the universe (approximately 12-15 billion years), the start of life is a mathematically impossible event.

[....]

An impossible event for chance requires intelligence to explain it. God? As far as my replies to Leonid go, I only mentioned a "Big Coder in the Sky." Could be intelligent martians.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8268?page=5#comment-96735

[...] biological coded-chemistry is isomorphic with all other known codes such as ASCII and Morse Code; and since we know that codes cannot arise from chance, necessity, or any combination thereof, that leaves only intelligence as a cause.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8268?page=5#comment-96750

[Asked "why one needs to postulate creator"]: To account for things that could not have come into existence through random combinations of pre-existing material entities, or by means of necessary, deterministic forces; i.e., codes.

[Asked "why your first cause has to be intelligent]:  Because of the existence of codes, which are always the product of intelligence. In the case of human life, of course, I'm perfectly willing to consider that biological coded-chemistry was designed by intelligent martians or venusians.

http://www.solopassion.com/node/8268?page=5#comment-96756

The "secret of life" is not "super-complicated chemical interactions." Most of life's chemistry is fairly straightforward. What makes life special (and interesting) is the existence of a system of coded chemistry, with cellular apparatus that encode and decode strings of simple chemicals that function in an organism exactly like binary mathematical symbols in a computer algorithm, or like alphabetic symbols within a system of a written language. [....] The "code" part of the "genetic code" resides in the arbitrary, optional, non-determined order, or sequence of base molecules.

This arbitrary, or optional, aspect of symbol-sequence is one of the typical features of true codes -- like Morse Code, for example. [....]

[Coded] y whom? We don't know. I call him The Big Coder in the Sky, though Leonid took offense that I assumed He lives above ground-level.

[caroljane]

Does this count?

If he loses the election I think Burger King will have a pretty tasty offer.

[Selene]

Yes, I can just see the ad now...

You wants fries with dat!

[caroljane]

Yes, I can just see the ad now...

You wants fries with dat!

Freedom Fries or regular?

[Selene]

Yes, I can just see the ad now...

You wants fries with dat!

Freedom Fries or regular?

He would not be able to form the word FREEDOM!

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

You don't have to feel defensive about drinking. Not here.

I actually envy you because I can't. Sometimes I get nostalgic for a well-iced Jack's with a dash of Angostura and club soda.

That was the way I liked drinking Jack Daniels (my favorite) before I turned into an animal, i.e., one day I thought, why fiddle around with Angostura? So I cut it. That led to, why club soda? Then, why ice? Then why use a glass at all? Just drink from the bottle. Then why the expensive stuff? And so it went and so did I.

Michael

Well, I'm glad to report my stress level has just been reduced 50% or so. I'm still going to have a drink or two--to celebrate!

--Brant

glug, glug

[caroljane]

Brant,

You don't have to feel defensive about drinking. Not here.

I actually envy you because I can't. Sometimes I get nostalgic for a well-iced Jack's with a dash of Angostura and club soda.

That was the way I liked drinking Jack Daniels (my favorite) before I turned into an animal, i.e., one day I thought, why fiddle around with Angostura? So I cut it. That led to, why club soda? Then, why ice? Then why use a glass at all? Just drink from the bottle. Then why the expensive stuff? And so it went and so did I.

Michael

Well, I'm glad to report my stress level has just been reduced 50% or so. I'm still going to have a drink or two--to celebrate!

--Brant

glug, glug

Just got home from the pub and out of money - any extra in that bottle? (Lots of ice please)

[9thdoctor]

Try yoga.

I don't drink every night.

I don't appreciate your cheap suggestion and ignorant diagnosis.

There’s a “strengthening” alternative Peikoff approves of. And it’s even cheaper than yoga!

http://www.peikoff.c...etter-composer/

I hasten to add that I think you're ok just the way you are.

[caroljane]

Try yoga.

I don't drink every night.

I don't appreciate your cheap suggestion and ignorant diagnosis.

There’s a “strengthening” alternative Peikoff approves of. And it’s even cheaper than yoga!

http://www.peikoff.c...etter-composer/

I hasten to add that I think you're ok just the way you are.

DAMN you Ninth you made me spill my drink laughing!

[Brant Gaede]

Try yoga.

I don't drink every night.

I don't appreciate your cheap suggestion and ignorant diagnosis.

There’s a “strengthening” alternative Peikoff approves of. And it’s even cheaper than yoga!

http://www.peikoff.c...etter-composer/

I hasten to add that I think you're ok just the way you are.

'cuse me. I've got to go do something.

--Brant

[caroljane]

Try yoga.

I don't drink every night.

I don't appreciate your cheap suggestion and ignorant diagnosis.

There’s a “strengthening” alternative Peikoff approves of. And it’s even cheaper than yoga!

http://www.peikoff.c...etter-composer/

I hasten to add that I think you're ok just the way you are.

'cuse me. I've got to go do something.

--Brant

That would be yoga, Janet, of course. The Lotus, maybe.