Forum Best Bits

[Aruntraveller]

When Vlad is right. He is very, very right. Here replying to Ippy re Brexit:


Your thinking reminds me of a bloke I used to work with who would spend pounds of his hard earned
On the fruit machine in the pub but would be happy with a win no matter if his losses far exceeded the
Amount won.

Of course he just used his own money.

There is no fucking bright side to this.

[Nearly Sane]

This from Shaker is crushing but gently so.


'Nobody is enthusiastic about finding fallacies - they are, by the very definition of the term, evidence of sloppy thinking, of poor reasoning, of bad arguments badly made.

Who would be enthusiastic about finding that? Gordon - like most others here who entirely correctly identify the sundry, divers and assorted fallacies you routinely deploy day in and day out - is more objective than you can ever hope to be.

You just don't like having them pointed out to you, that's all. Nobody likes having it explained to them that their reasoning capacities are defective - who would? It's a mark of intellectual humility and hygiene, however, to accept this and take it on board and be open to learning exactly why a duff argument is a duff argument. It's the mark of rigidity of mind - dogmatism; but I guess that's your thing, really, isn't it? In the circumstances - to continue stubbornly to insist that everybody else is wrong and only you are right. '

[Nearly Sane]

I like this from Anchorman, clear,  cogent, and passionate.

'Jesus avoided politics? Are you serious? You DO know the political situation in the area? That the Pharisees, Sadducces, Essenes, zealots et al were not just sitting around reading Scriptures? You do know that they were, in fact, political parties - VERY political parties? In openly criticising them, as He did - in Scripture ..."Hypocrites....sons of serpents....empty graves...." Jesus was jumping right into the political mix. You simply could not divorce Judaism from 'politics' if you tried - and Jesus certainly didn't try! There were only two ways of avoiding politics in that part of the world; being dead or leaving the area. Christ was crucified for blasphemy. That was about as political asa you could get. His accuser brought charges against Him saying that He would destroy the Temple...political spin if ever there was spin. And they charged Him with claiming to be God...a crime of which, of course, He was guilty...but not a sin. The Romans got in on the act with "INRI"....stirring up the political mess as only they could. Political? The Gospel's full of it!'

[Nearly Sane]

And more from Anchorman in reply to NM about suicide


This is revolting in in its inane stupidity.
As you sail along in your uniqe way, remember this;
You know nothing whatsoever of suicides.
Stop pontificating and spouting utter bilge on the subject.
For your information, I've had to deal with four.
One was a girl aged twenty one - who couldn't cope with 'cold turkey'.
One was a friend of my cousin - with no finantial, medical, emotional or relationship issues who just walked off a bridge; and two were family members.
Don't you DARE generalise!
Your ignorance on this matter is on a par with your ignorance on cancer, astrophysics, biology, archaeology, ancient history and, to cap it all, Christianity.

[Nearly Sane]

From enki on the circle of SfG

I don't have your faith, dear Alan, dear Alan,
I don't have your faith, dear Alan, your faith.

        Well, I'll fix it, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, dear sceptic,
        Well, I'll fix it, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, I'll fix it.
 
With what will you fix it, dear Alan, dear Alan?
With what will you fix it, dear Alan, with what?

        With a soul, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, dear sceptic,
        With a soul, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, with a soul.

But where is this soul, dear Alan, dear Alan,
But where is this soul, dear Alan, but where?

        Can't tell you, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, dear sceptic,
        Can't tell you, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, can't tell you.

But how shall I recognise it, dear Alan, dear Alan?
But how shall I recognise it, dear Alan, but how?

        It's who we are, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, dear sceptic,
        It's who we are, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, it's me.

I thought I was my brain, dear Alan, dear Alan,
I thought I was my brain, dear Alan, my brain.

        Soul's the driver, dear sceptic, dear  sceptic, dear sceptic,
        Soul's the driver, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, it chooses.

How does it choose, dear Alan, dear Alan?
How does it choose, dear Alan, How?

        By willpower, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, dear sceptic,
        By willpower, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, by willpower.

Is this random or determined, dear Alan, dear Alan?
Is this random or determined, dear Alan, which is it?

        Not random, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, dear sceptic,
        Not random, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, not random

Then How is it determined, dear Alan, dear Alan?
Then How is it determined, dear Alan, how?

        By the soul, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, dear sceptic
        By the soul, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, by the soul.

Why should I believe you, dear Alan, dear Alan?
why should I believe you, dear Alan, why?

        Through faith, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, dear sceptic,
        Through faith, dear sceptic, dear sceptic, have faith.

But I don't have your faith, dear Alan, dear Alan,
I don't have your faith, dear Alan, your faith.

[Nearly Sane]

Torridon on the magnificence of crows


How predictable.  I think your neural pathways have been lined with concrete somehow.  Clearly crows experience conscious visual perception, without that they would not even be able to see the challenge set.  Clearly the solution for their challenge was not something taught to them, neither was it something they stumbled on by trial and error as in some blind deep learning program.  They worked it out spontaneously through abstract reasoning with a little imagination.  To anyone else, this would be a source of wonder; given how far back we have to go to find a common ancestor with birds, this shows connectedness across divides of deep time; it tells us something profound about the nature of intelligence.  Yet all this is lost on you it seems, seemingly debilitated by religious faith, unable to see the wonder of the world all around us and our interconnectedness in it.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Very nice stuff indeed from the highly civilised Dicky Underpants:

And you need not to take things so literally. I had qualified those odd phrases with the words "a spiritual something", which should have given you some idea of what I was getting at. In fact, the first expression "Old Nobodaddy" comes from William Blake, who used it to directly refute the idea of "a big daddy up there". But Blake was no atheist - and in fact most of his poetry is concerned with developing what you would call "the higher regions of consciousness". Likewise, the second expression "Somebodaddy" comes from George Bernard Shaw, who was using it to suggest that there might be some kind of impersonal "life-force" (akin perhaps to the Hindu prana) which was the source and sustainer of all living things. In this, he was doing exactly what you have been advocating  - to find underlying common links between the religious belief systems of the world. Aldous Huxley (as I said) also advocated this kind of 'ecumenism'.

I have parted company with these ways of thinking now. But I'm a firm believer in 'getting civilised' - as I suspect are most members of this forum. What I haven't lost faith in is the power of the arts - particularly great music - to 'raise consciousness', as you might put it. I would say that the performing arts are very much the West's form of yoga, and may be more valuable to us here (being home-grown) than trying the whole-sale adoption of systems of thought which have a long period of development elsewhere. We can all learn from each other, but 'changes in perspective' have to come about organically. And, if I may say so, you're doing your own bit to be divisive by partitioning off human beings in the way you seem to be. If those of a more scientific and analytical bent are 'doing it wrong', then perhaps a phrase of William Blake's might be useful "An error must be taken to its extreme before it can be combatted". Maybe that's a bit extreme in itself in these dangerous times, but people have to start from where they are.

[Enki]

For me, this missive from Torridon (post 33850 of the 'Searching  for GOD' thread) puts into sharp relief the utter futility and bankruptcy of Alan Burn's approach to 'free will'.

You are so full of prejudice against the world you think your god made, 'puppet' being typical of your skewed presentation.  We are not puppets of something separate that is controlling us, we are logical outcomes of our formative circumstances.  The will we have is derived from influences.  Were this not the case then there would be no rationale at all to what 'I' am and there would be no reason for me wanting the things that I want.  If humans had evolved in the way you imagine, free of reason, then we would be long extinct, it would be a curse.

Your scenario has no explanations for the resolution of choice.  It cannot explain why people do the things they do.  Some bloke in Wolverhampton decided it would be a really good idea last year to  cement his head into a microwave oven.  People do bizarre things, stupid things, bad things.  Can your scheme explain why people make such choices ? It cannot, it is a scheme that avoids explanation and settles for a facile dismissal, that guy is a stupid guy, that bloke is 'evil' and so on without entertaining any notion of why he might be stupid or bad.  The more insightful understanding comes about through recognising that there are always reasons for things; no one and no thing can be exempt from this principal.  I see no virtue in the elevation of ignorance over insight; we can do better than that.

[Gordon]

Another belter from Torridon (and the first Best Bits of 2019) - from Searching for God.

This is, to a degree, hubris, taking human superiority as an unquestioned given. I agree, chimpanzees have not produced a Shakespeare or a J S Bach, or landed a rover on an asteroid yet.  On the other hand, they are not knowingly driving species into extinction, filling the oceans with plastic or building weapons of mass destruction.  Maybe there is a terrible maths to this, the cost of producing a genius, is a hundred thousand morons.

[bluehillside Retd.]

NS nailing it:

On the subject of the racist incompetent lying PM saying she is about to resign soon (just like she said she wasn't going to call a GE), what then means that you as an MP would vote for a deal you wouldn't before? If some form of MV3 does get through, and I don't know why Bercow  gets such shite  for putting a precedent here, then those changing their mind, including the dangerous slug, Johnson are in some cases voting to get a chance to be PM. One of the many things that May is responsible for is allowing Johnson to be in the tent pissing in, and pissing on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's chances of being released by keeping him to save the Tory party. A disgrace leading a band of disgraced chancers.

[Gordon]

From Bramble, in the 'End of life, or live forever' thread.

People have long admired honeybees for their extraordinary social cooperation. If only we could get along this well together. Despite being mere animals (and millions of years older than modern humans) the bees would appear to be model exemplars of what Sriram calls the ‘higher self’ and all without engaging in years of ‘objective techniques and methods’, yet the difference between our two species is down to genetics. Humans will never be like bees, even though we may look to them for ‘spiritual’ inspiration. Unlike us, bees are not busy wrecking the planet nor do they wage war on their own kind, and it is doubtful whether they occupy themselves with fantasies about living forever or transcending their own natures. Of course, they don’t send rockets to Mars or post comments on internet forums and most live for only a few weeks, but only in our eyes could that possibly diminish them. Perhaps the humble admiration of bees could be added to the list of methods by which humans might ennoble themselves while they still have time.

[Walter]

bluehillside Retd.
Hero Member

Posts: 13675
 
 
Re: End of life, or live forever!
« Reply #98 on: Today at 04:19:59 PM »

Quote
Walter,

Quote
you can't beat a bit of Fanny!


Reminds me of the late Fanny Craddock and her cookery programmes. Husband Johnny got quietly tanked in the background, but he always got the sign-off line...

...one of which was the never to be be forgotten, "Well thank you for joining us everyone, and may all your fairy cakes taste just like Fanny's".   

Report to moderator    Logged
"To understand via the heart is not to understand."

thanks for the giggle

[Nearly Sane]

Jeremyp with something rather brilliant on sign on issues


"OK, let's try an analogy:

You can't remember your daughter's phone number, but you have been given the number of a telephone operator, call her Alice. Alice also doesn't know your daughter's telephone number but she knows the number of another telephone operator, Bob who does know your daughter's number.

You ring Alice and say "I need my daughter's phone number". Alice puts you on hold and rings Bob and says "I need Little Rose' daughter's phone number". Bob tells Alice the number and Alice tells you the number.

A couple of hours later, you need to ring your daughter again. You ring Alice to get the number and because you rang her only recently, Alice remembers the number from last time so she can tell you it without ringing Bob.

OK so far?

Now imagine Bob has a drinking problem. Sometimes when Alice rings Bob, he's slurring his words and that makes her suspicious so she refuses to tell you the number he gave her because it might be the wrong number. That makes you annoyed because you can't ring your daughter.

You try again in a couple of hours, but Alice remembers Bob was drunk last time so she refuses to ring him again until she thinks he has sobered up in, let's say, a day.

You complain about all this on the Ideology and Morals web site. Somebody else suggests that you should try ringing Carol who runs a service where you ring her and then she rings whoever you want to speak to and she sits in the middle repeating your conversation to each other. Carol has a different telephone operator to you: Dave. Dave also knows Bob but Dave doesn't care that Bob is drunk so Dave will always give Carol your daughter's number, so you can always speak to her using Carol as a proxy."

[Nearly Sane]

Lovely line from Outrider


But then Bagpuss went to sleep, right, and when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all critical thinking has to go to sleep, too...

[SteveH]

Gordon invents a new political tactic, the "reverse Meatloaf" - something like Private Eye's "reverse ferret"?

Follow-up regard Jo Swinson's (who happens to be my MP) initially reaction to Corbyn's letter - perhaps, to follow on from NS's earlier point, she has to do a reverse Meatloaf and decide to 'do that' to remove the prospect of no-deal, and hopefully Brexit.

[Robbie]

Bramble, on Brexit today:-

Never underestimate human pride and the need to save face. There will be no shortage of lies and scapegoats to cover up the 'mistake'. It would all have been fine if the EU and the remoaners hadn't betrayed us. Remember, Brexit was supposed to be a 'howl of rage' against the elite. Don't imagine the angry howlers are ever going to give that elite any satisfaction. They'll also want to maintain their nasty habit of mainlining grievance and self-pity. The traitors, quislings and enemies of the people will continue to serve that need very nicely. It's they who will have made the mistake.

[Gordon]

Another notable post from Torridon.

Baffling watching people trying to pick holes in evolutionary theory, like some detail here or there is going to bring the whole house down.  People like you put me in mind of a visitor to London's Natural History Museum who unlike everyone else marveling at magnificent structure and its contents, spends all his energies going round the building hoping to find brick with a crack so that he can claim the entire edifice to be invalid.  I mean why ?  All you can achieve is nit picking holes when you could be growing in insight with the positive attitude of someone open to learning.

Do you really think a god that created life and set it loose in a changing dynamic environment would then impose arbitrary limits on its ability to adapt and evolve in line with changing environment ? It would be madness as a design principle.  Every time a big rock falls out the sky and causes a mass extinction. god has to come down and get busy all over again, a horse here, a hedgehog there, a colony of penguins for Antarctica, that would be nice.  No more triceratops or velociraptors though, he's gone right off them now.   I mean, really ?

 

[Nearly Sane]

BHS - doing the do

'Wrong again. I meant "separate" as in distinct from rather than unconnected. Emergent properties are discrete phenomena that arise from the interactions of constituents that themselves do not have the characteristics of the emergent property. A queen bee for example doesn't have as set of blueprints for a hive that it tells the other bees to construct - these things emerge from repeated, consistent and relatively simple actions.   

Wrong again. Whether it's perceived or not makes no difference to its existence. On a planet with no people to do the perceiving but lots of bees there would still be bee hives.

Wrong again. No-one presumes that. Rather based on all we do know about consciousness (which is quite a lot) we can deduce that it aligns perfectly well with other properties we know to be emergent. The much bigger presumptions would be to presume that it's somehow fundamentally different in its character from those other properties, that it cannot be explained by emergence, that your incredulity is a logically sound argument rather than a logically false one, that a "driver" is therefore necessary, and that this driver is actually an invisible little man at the controls for which you have no evidence whatever and that's fundamentally irrational in its proposition because of the determined vs random problem. Now that would be "just presuming" - multiple times in fact.

As I said before, if you bothered to find out something about emergence it really would help you avoid future howlers of this type. Some time ago I even recommended a book to you about it to get you started, but I'm guessing you didn't bother wit that either. Oh well. '

[Nearly Sane]

Lovely post from Robbie


I found his performance a bit lacklustre too Trent, thought it was just me. I remember him being a really good big band type singer and had his own band, not exactly my taste but I could appreciate it. I suppose they alll have their day (or he could have been having an off day). He was always rakishly good looking too. I've noticed the guest singers on Strictly often aren't as good as usual in that setting so he's not the only one. Nadya and Anton danced beautifully to him though.

He was excellent as lawyer in Law and Order & he and Det Olivia Benson were in love but had to part because of conflict of interests, it was quite cutting.

Again I knew Anneka was going and it was right that she did, don't thinkshe minded too much, good sport and all that.

Group dance at beginning was excellent in my opinion. Yes I am a real Strictly fan as are all family it seems. My late parents and my (not late) in laws used to take it in turns to watch at each other's houses, take food or have takeaway, a Sat night ritual :-). My mother in law said before this year's started that it just wouldn't be the same for them any more without my mum and dad, last time just dad but I'm glad they've got into the swing of it again. My sis went round to theirs last week with a lasagne and watched with them, bless her. They all danced in their time, people of their ages all learned ballroom and knew how todance, didn't matter if the weren't all that good but could shuffle around reasonably accurately.

Charlie and I have always had favourite professionals (tho' like them all): used to be Ian Waite, Erin Boag,  Darren and lilya, Flavia and Vincent, still see them on ITT (lovely Lilia is huge now!).  Latterly I particularly liked Natalie Lowe and Aljaz. Chaz favours Kevin. Now it's Oti, Aljaz and the wonderful Johannes. I sound like a real sad case but it's good to have something different and relaxing in life when work etc. is so intense (it's the only non-work thing that is ever talked about at work!).

I have to go and get ready in a bit, starting early today, still half asleep. See you all later.

[Nearly Sane]

And another great post from Robbie


I haven't heard anyone suggest 'go home' for a very long time; the last I heard it was some years ago from an elderly lady who was, frankly, rather afraid that her way of life would somehow be disrupted. I remember pointing out to her, gently, that the people she felt ought to go 'home' were at home, they'd been born here. She just hadn't thought it out properly. Prejudice always comes from fear of some type. If we live in a multicultural or cosmopolitan, whatever the correct term is, area, we are not going to have fear of people on racial grounds. 

Ippy, thanks for your reply. I can't say I've noticed that much quite honestly, I've seen programmes on television about influx of immigrants in some places but here it isn't much different to how it was twenty years or more ago. I don't think it would affect or bother me anyway, I'd say if it did. My life goes on the same regardless. That doesn't mean I don't feel terribly sorry for people who take great risks to come to the UK and other places because of war and persecution in their home land, I certainly do and if there is anything I can do to help them, I will. My parents and grandparents did the same. We're fortunate to live here, we did nothing to achieve that, it's just how it happened; could have been very different.

As a Christian, which won't mean anything to many here, I'm always conscious that Mary and Joseph with the little Jesus fled persecution and went to Egypt where they stayed a few years, living and working freely, until King Herod died and it was safe to return. I daresay not everyone in their community did return, some would have been quite happy to stay once established in Egypt.

[Nearly Sane]

And from wigginhall


Strange analogy with a rugby game, which, as far as I know, are never reversed.  However, political decisions frequently are.  Obvious example, clause 28, passed in 1988, repealed in 2003, and in fact, in Scotland in 2000.  It's a cornerstone of parliamentary politics that one parliament cannot bind the next.  And as we are seeing recently, MPs frequently change their mind.  Otherwise, we would be operating under Lord Palmerston's edicts.

[Robbie]

From Christine today:-

Brexiteers?  Spartans?  We should all stop playing their game and call them what they are: right-wing sociopaths who've bled every penny they can out of the public purse for the last 10 years for their own benefit and are now using Brexit to game the international money markets for their own benefit while we suffer.

https://fullfact.org/economy/pound-fallen-since-brexit/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/08/brexit-latest-news-boris-johnson-no-deal-parliament-prorogation/

I picked the Telegraph because I wouldn't like to be accused of bias.

Spud's posts about nurses demonstrate nicely how some people in this country have been deceived.  Don't like something?  Anything? It's the EU's fault.  Johnson has been telling these lies for decades.  He likened it to throwing rocks over a wall and hearing glass smash.

Anyone who thinks the Barclay brothers or Rupert Murdoch or Lord Rothermere are not "the elite" hasn't been paying attention.  It doesn't take Miss Marple to work out where their interests lie and it certainly isn't the same place as mine.

I heard this morning someone on R5 talking about, basically, getting rid of the BBC.  Murdoch might at last get what he's always wanted.  Nice going.

Of course all this pales into insignificance against the threat posed by having Jeremy Corbyn as a temporary Prime Minister.

[Nearly Sane]

From Anchorman, heartfelt and real


I was not generalising.
I help run a club for blind and visually impaired folk, the majority of whom aquire their condition in later life. Some ajust; many do not. People are people.
And I use 'empowering' deliberately.
Yes, like most disabled people, I face discrimination - have done since I started school. Some in my situation crumbled into depression or in one case, suicide. I didn't.#
I never asked "Why me".
Instead, "Why not me?"
And, when things took their first major downturn in the early 1980s, I relied on my faith, trusting God that whatever happened, there was purpose in it. And purpose there was. I could rise above thehealth problems, and realise they don't limit me; I can even use them as a focus for what I need to do.
Like Joni, I can even thank God for the situation I'm in, and that He can still find mischief for me to get up to.
So, yes, 'empowered' is the right word here.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Excellent demolition by Outrider of Sriram's attempted woo:

OK, so...

Anthropic Principle, as you've espoused, being based upon the fallacy of 'fine tuning' is on rocky ground at best.  The unwarranted presumptions in the fine tuning argument are well established.

Quantum Mechanics - the misinterpretation here of the 'observer' is also well-established. There is no requirement for an observer to be conscious in order for a wave-function to collapse.  Evidence of this is readily available every time we look up at the stars and see light twinkling.  You may suggest that our looking is what causes the wave-function to collapse so that we can see, but the twinkling is caused by interactions with the atmosphere on the way through, waveforms that have to have already collapsed during the interactions; are those ozone molecules 'conscious'?

Evolution - design is not evolution, the two are very, very different.  That design can, at times, involve an iterative modelling element does parallel the natural selection element of the current model of evolution, but design is not a random variation on prior success, it's a deliberate researched attempt at progress.  Most importantly, though, is the misunderstanding that evolution is a process from simple to complex and one of development.  Evolution can move towards simplicity if that's what's of benefit in the instant, there is no overarching framework to evolution with 'development' to somewhere as a goal.

Artificial Intelligence - evolved intelligence will almost certainly diverge from artificial intelligence in some ways, but there's nothing in either that seems to require the supposition of 'soul/spirit/atma'.  Whilst it's true that any potential artificial intelligence will not have invented itself, neither did we 'invent' us - we emerged from the iterative process of evolution.  You say that 'If automatons can behave like humans, we cannot conclude that we are also automatons!' - we perhaps cannot prove, but it's not an unreasonable supposition based upon the evidence.  If two things manifest the same behaviours in response to similar inputs, why would we presume (in the absence of any other evidence) that there are qualitatively different internal processes going on? It's possible, but you need a reason to presume it, not just the possibility.

Spectrum - I'd agree, to an extent, that the human tendency - or, at least, the Western cultural tendency, perhaps - to classify into rigidly defined 'boxes' is increasingly something that the natural sciences are having to undo.  Species classificiations, with clearly demarked and defined boundaries are not always the practical reality.  However, accepting that biological classifications often fall on a continuum is not sufficient to warrant claims of 'spirit' - saying the line between two species of birds is actually more blurred than was originally thought is not the same as suggesting, therefore, that phoenixes are real.

[Nearly Sane]

This from Outrider is beautiful coruscating anger

Suffering and pain are part of human life - every human life.

Why? What justification is there for creating people only to put them through pain?  Could a perfect God not create a perfect life free of pain and suffering? Indeed, is it not alleged that this is what we have to look forward to when we die - why make people who've not asked for the opportunity go through it?

We do not see the full picture of causes and reasons, but I know God will give whatever we need to endure and bring good from it if we put our faith and trust in Him.

Absolute horseshit.  I have two autistic children who suffer from the barrage of life's sensory input on a daily basis; what have they done that justifies that torture, on a daily basis, since birth? Why do they 'need' to endure that, whilst all I have to put up with is banal victim-blaming crap like this?

Jesus Himself had to suffer torture and death in order to bring us eternal salvation.

Did he? Why? He decided. He's an avatar of the one true god, after all, he makes the rules. He didn't 'have' to do anything, he chose to suffer to forgive sins we haven't committed, which aren't actually immoral things in some instances, which he created us with the inclination to do in order to earn the love he assures us is unconditional rather than just forgiving us out of his allegedly infinite wisdom and largesse.  Self-contradictory victimhood-seeking pap fiction that wouldn't stand up in today's literary marketplace, if only because it'd be sued for copyright infringement on all the earlier bits of folk bullshit that it copied.