Noyau (2)

…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation

Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.

[to work around page bug]

2,941 thoughts on “Noyau (2)”

  1. keiths:
    Alan,

    The fact that you woke up with a hard-on is no reason for me to run around collecting evidence for you.

    Why not take a cold shower, go back to bed, and give the day a new start?

    This is a typical example.

  2. Alan:

    Sure. On the other hand, if you intend to persuade someone on a point of disagreement, mocking them is likely to prove counter-productive. This has long been my issue with Keiths’ posting style.

    Alan,

    If I were looking for advice on persuasion, I’d ask someone who was good at it.

    If you genuinely wanted to make TSZ a better place, you’d address your own problems — the immaturity, the lying, the refusal to admit mistakes, the abuse of moderator privileges — instead of chastising others for mockery, which when done properly is an entirely appropriate way of criticizing others’ views and highlighting their flaws.

  4. Tom English: Tom English: the greatest defect of keiths-bot

    walto: Hunh. I’ve got that down at five or six.
    I was referring to its greatest defect in simulating a human, not the greatest defect of the simulated human.

    Aha. I see. I missed that distinction.

  5. Derek Walcott, RIP

    LOVE AFTER LOVE

    The time will come
    when, with elation
    you will greet yourself arriving
    at your own door, in your own mirror
    and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

    and say, sit here. Eat.
    You will love again the stranger who was your self.
    Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
    to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

    all your life, whom you ignored
    for another, who knows you by heart.
    Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

    the photographs, the desperate notes,
    peel your own image from the mirror.
    Sit. Feast on your life.

  7. Alan Fox: On the other hand, if you intend to persuade someone on a point of disagreement, mocking them is likely to prove counter-productive.

    It’s a sure sign of a closed mind.

  8. Mung:

    Alan Fox: On the other hand, if you intend to persuade someone on a point of disagreement, mocking them is likely to prove counter-productive.

    It’s a sure sign of a closed mind.

    It can also be a response to a closed mind. Some people have earned nothing more than mockery. While it’s not going to change minds, it’s a way of pointing out that reason doesn’t work with some people.

    Mockery can be beneficial. Most people don’t like to be mocked, so they’ll avoid behaviors that lead to that response. Your good self excepted, of course.

  9. This is, um, interesting:

    Dean_from_Ohio April 15, 2017 at 9:30 pm

    For whatever reason, God has brought these atheists here. For some reason, they feel at home here, like the northerner who hangs out at the diner in Charlotte despite the abuse he gets from the good ol boys. And every time he shows up, they give him a plate of grits, chitterlings, collard greens and cornbread; they’ve got plenty. He never eats it, because that would be giving in. But he’s still hungry, and sometimes he slips some cornbread in his leather jacket pocket when no one’s looking. But that’s not really what he’s most hungry for. That, genuine conversation and a look straight in his eye, is why he comes, because it somehow feels like home. He rides away, humming a tune by Della Reese that was playing on the jukebox. He’ll be back tomorrow. And the good ol boys will see him coming and will say, “Hey, watch this!”

  11. wtf is wrong with Rumraket?

    The best part is that even the other theists here think he’s pretty much a nutcase.

    Why be such a denigrating and insulting ass Rumraket? This site is already biased enough against theists. You don’t speak for me.

  12. Checking in. Flip through the recent threads and can’t tell if I actually left for a bit. Anything new come up? Anything interesting? Anything not question begging and confirmation bias?

    *Sigh*…

  13. Robin:
    Checking in. Flip through the recent threads and can’t tell if I actually left for a bit. Anything new come up? Anything interesting? Anything not question begging and confirmation bias?

    *Sigh*…

    I tried to bond with Mung. I was rejected.

  14. Robin:
    Checking in. Flip through the recent threads and can’t tell if I actually left for a bit. Anything new come up? Anything interesting? Anything not question begging and confirmation bias?

    *Sigh*…

    Someone’s mind changed.

    In our dreams, anyway…

    Glen Davidson

  15. 2b fair, colewd appeared to have some kind of epiphany regarding evidence of common descent. So now it’s on to ‘mechanism’.

  17. GlenDavidson: Someone’s mind changed.

    In our dreams, anyway…

    Glen Davidson

    Yeah well…I wasn’t expecting that. I was hoping (though not expecting) that perhaps a few conversations would be relying more on rational arguments, but that was clearly foolishness on my part.

  18. Allan Miller:
    2b fair, colewd appeared to have some kind of epiphany regarding evidence of common descent. So now it’s on to ‘mechanism’.

    Must have missed that. So now it’s God-of-the-Common-Descent I take it?

  19. Robin: Yeah well…I wasn’t expecting that. I was hoping (though not expecting) that perhaps a few conversations would be relying more on rational arguments, but that was clearly foolishness on my part.

    If you’re looking for that, you’re on the wrong Internet.

  20. Robin,

    Pretty much. “Does one have evidence that it could happen non-interventionally” sort of thing. God as genetic engineer.

  21. Robin: So now it’s God-of-the-Common-Descent I take it?

    You never read all those begats in the bible?

  22. stcordova: Whether or not my characterization of Behe is accurate, let’s just consider an evolutionary search for a password.

    Please, just let the adults talk.

  24. Almost impossible to keep up with and respond to all the bullshit claims that the atheists/materialists/evolutionists make here at TSZ.

  25. phoodoo,

    Oh well, its cool, maybe you can get in line for Dazz’s mom. Neil said he is done.

    Death by cop is it? I doubt you’ll achieve it like that. Why not try posting some porn?

  27. OMagain,

    dazzdazz June 20, 2017 at 2:45 pm

    phoodoo:
    Rumraket,

    Well, there are actually two schools of materialist thought.

    One is the Accidental Materialist Philosophy.

    The other is the Accidental Materialist Who Want to Hide the Word Accident When its Not Convenient Philosophy.

    I take it you are in the second.

    You’re fucking retarded

    I should have said this you mean?

  28. Mung:
    Almost impossible to keep up with and respond to all the bullshit claims that the atheists/materialists/evolutionists make here at TSZ.

    Fighting fire with fire?

  33. This remark, from a review of one of Harris’s books by Keenan Malik, is good too:

    Harris is nothing if not self-confident. There is a voluminous philosophical literature that stretches back almost to the origins of the discipline on the relationship between facts and values. Harris chooses to ignore most of it. He does not wish to engage ‘more directly with the academic literature on moral philosophy’, he explains in a footnote, because he did not develop his arguments ‘by reading the work of moral philosophers’ and because he is ‘convinced that every appearance of terms like “metaethics”, “deontology”, “noncognitivism”, “antirealism”, “emotivism”, etc directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe’.

    Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as ‘adaptation’, ‘speciation’, ‘homology’, ‘phylogenetics’ or ‘kin selection’ would ‘increase the amount of boredom in the universe’. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument? It is one thing to want to ‘start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and can find helpful’, something that many of us, including many of those boring moral philosophers, seek to do. It is quite another to imagine that you can engage in any kind of conversation, with any kind of audience, by willfully ignoring the relevant scholarship because it is ‘boring’.

    Didn’t really care that much for the rest of the review, but folks can judge for themselves: http://www.kenanmalik.com/reviews/harris_moral.html

  35. walto,

    As I believe Sam Harris has a loyalist or two here…

    I’m guessing that you’re including me in the “loyalist” category. If so, don’t. I’m no more a Harris loyalist than I am a Dawkins, Dennett or Hitchens loyalist. I agree with much of what Harris says, and I disagree with quite a bit too. It has nothing to do with “loyalism” and everything to do with whether the position in question makes sense to me.

    For example, Harris accepts the idea of objective morality. I don’t, for reasons I’ve given at length in other threads.

    Regarding this bit from the Loonwatch article:

    Harris made the following claim in the original: “In fact, there is a doctrine of deception within Islam called Taqiyya, wherein lying to infidels has been decreed a perfectly ethical way of achieving one’s goals”. The current doctored version has been secretly altered. Harris gives no indication to his readers of the transcript’s post hoc edit. His asinine “Taqiyya” slur against Muslims at-large has gone down the memory hole.

    If Harris has in fact done that, then I find his behavior reprehensible.

  36. keiths: For example, Harris accepts the idea of objective morality. I don’t, for reasons I’ve given at length in other threads.

    You may like the Malik critique more than I do.

  37. Too bad Patrick isn’t around anymore to defend his buddy Trump by telling us how terrible Hillary Clinton is.

  38. keiths: Regarding this bit from the Loonwatch article:

    Harris made the following claim in the original: “In fact, there is a doctrine of deception within Islam called Taqiyya, wherein lying to infidels has been decreed a perfectly ethical way of achieving one’s goals”. The current doctored version has been secretly altered. Harris gives no indication to his readers of the transcript’s post hoc edit. His asinine “Taqiyya” slur against Muslims at-large has gone down the memory hole.

    If Harris has in fact done that, then I find his behavior reprehensible.

    That’s the biggest non-issue I’ve seen in years.

    The original reads: “Harris: But I acknowledged they’re not all Hamas supporters in my article. And I agree with you now that they’re not all Hamas supporters. However, there is another problem for Israel that you’re ignoring. The people with whom the Israelis must negotiate, even the best of them—even Yasser Arafat after he won his Nobel Peace Prize—often talk a double game and maintain their anti-Semitism and religious triumphalism behind closed doors. They’ll say one thing in English, and then they’ll say another in Arabic to their constituencies. And the things they say in Arabic are often terrifying. In fact, there is a doctrine of deception within Islam called taqiyya, wherein lying to infidels has been decreed a perfectly ethical way of achieving one’s goals. This poses real problems for any negotiation. How can Israel trust anyone’s stated intentions?”

    The “doctored” version: “Harris: But I acknowledged they’re not all Hamas supporters in my article. And I agree with you now that they’re not all Hamas supporters. However, there is another problem for Israel that you’re ignoring. The people with whom the Israelis must negotiate, even the best of them—even Yasser Arafat after he won his Nobel Peace Prize—often talk a double game and maintain their anti-Semitism and religious triumphalism behind closed doors. They’ll say one thing in English, and then they’ll say another in Arabic to their constituencies. And the things they say in Arabic are often terrifying. In fact, there is a doctrine of deception within Islam, wherein lying to infidels has been decreed a perfectly ethical way of achieving one’s goals. This poses real problems for any negotiation. How can Israel trust anyone’s stated intentions?”

    The only “scrubbed” part is where he informs it’s called taqqiya. The thing I highlighted in bold. Which is a trivial statement of fact. That doctrine does in fact exist, and that it it’s name. As usual Harris detractors are full of shit. Oh my god that is so “scrubbed”. And nowhere is it implied that this is somehow true of all muslims.

    I think this is the twentieth time at least, where I have personally decided to investigate slurs thrown at the man and found them to be utterly vapid. I have no more patience for this bullshit. If the people who hate him so much had real arguments, they wouldn’t find it necessary to invent bullshit like this about him.

  39. Rumraket,

    Not sure why he left out “called taqiyya,” but that’s an amazingly tiny thing to try to turn into a “gotcha.” No change in meaning at all.

    I’ve never really had an opinion about Harris, but this saves me from thinking he might have done anything actually sleazy. Always doubt sources that won’t give full quotes, I guess.

    Glen Davidson

  40. Rumraket,

    I think this is the twentieth time at least, where I have personally decided to investigate slurs thrown at the man and found them to be utterly vapid.

    I agree that Harris way too often gets a bad rap, and in fact I’ve spent considerable time here defending him against untrue and scurrilous charges (leading walto to conclude, erroneously, that I am a Harris “loyalist”).

    A particularly egregious attack came from Kantian Naturalist, as I described here:

    KN, who doesn’t have the evenest of keels to begin with, absolutely flips out when the topic is the New Atheists.

    Prime example:

    keiths:

    This is where exact quotes would help. What are the specific words of Dawkins and Harris that have led you to conclude that they are racists?

    KN:

    Because Harris thinks we should kill anyone who looks Muslim.

    KN was serious.

    An attack like that only demonstrates that KN is morally inferior to his intended target.

    So yes, Harris is unfairly attacked far too often by folks who are behaving emotionally and irrationally.

    That makes it all the more disappointing when one of the charges against him turns out to be true. Harris actually did doctor his own quote to erase his reference to taqqiya, and that’s just plain dishonest.

    I’m not surprised when someone like Alan Fox does something similar, but Harris shouldn’t stoop to that level, and he doesn’t need to.

  41. keiths: I’m not surprised when someone like Alan Fox does something similar,

    What fucking connection is there between wind-powered vehicles capable of faster than wind-speed directly downwind and Sam Harris’s views on politics or religion, whatever they might be?

  42. Alan,

    Harris doctored a quote of himself. You quote mined yourself to avoid admitting a mistake.

    Quite similar.

  43. keiths:
    Alan,

    Harris doctored a quote of himself.You quote mined yourself in order to avoid admitting a mistake.

    Very similar.

    Bollocks. I made mistakes in my understanding regarding the carts. Over time my understanding changed and I was quite open about my earlier misundertanding. It is all documented at Talkrational.

    ETA

    Link to my first comment.

  44. Alan,

    Bollocks. I made mistakes in my understanding regarding the carts.

    Yes. I pointed them out and explained them to you during our discussion in Sandbox.

    Over time my understanding changed and I was quite open about my earlier misundertanding. It is all documented at Talkrational.

    During our discussion, which was here at TSZ, you actually quote mined yourself in a failed attempt at hiding a mistake you had made. Follow my link — I expose your quote mining at the end of my comment.

    That’s just one example of your dishonesty. You have a severe lying problem, Alan.

    And you wonder why you don’t get the approval you crave?

  45. IMHO, the worst thing Harris has done is offer a monetary prize to anybody who could show that some argument in one of his books was wrong. I contacted him on Twitter to say both that (i) I considered him judging a “contest” regarding the value of one of his arguments to be a conflict of interest; and (ii) such a “contest” was likely illegal in Mass., since you had to buy his book to see the argument.

    To his credit, he substituted one of his fanboys as judge and put a summary of the argument online that people could read for free. So while he’s extremely arrogant, perhaps he’s not entirely irredeemable.

    Also, he’s hardly a neuro-scientist. He just wants to be ultra-sciency-sciency.

  46. keiths:
    Alan,

    Yes.I pointed them out and explained them to you during our discussion in Sandbox.

    During our discussion, which was here at TSZ, you actually quote mined yourself in a failed attempt at hiding a mistake you had made.Follow my link — I expose your quote mining at the end of my comment.

    It’s spin, not exposure.

    That’s just one example of your dishonesty.You have a severe lying problem, Alan.

    I have a problem with constantly being accused by you that I have a lying problem, you little shit.

    And you wonder why you don’t get the approval you crave?

    I don’t seek approval from you. I think your commenting style here is counterproductive and has lost us many other valued members.

  47. Alan,

    I have a problem with constantly being accused by you that I have a lying problem, you little shit.

    Of course you do. You’re ashamed of your dishonesty and would prefer to keep it under wraps. The truth hurts, and so you lash out at the truth-teller, making you look even worse. That’s poison to an approval-seeker like you.

    Your lying problem is so severe that you’ve even lied about admitting that you have a lying problem!

    keiths:

    And you wonder why you don’t get the approval you crave?

    Alan:

    I don’t seek approval from you.

    You seek it from the commentariat. Remember when you abused your position by sending out a “survey” to everyone here regarding your fitness as a moderator? On account of your insecurities, you imposed yourself on all of us. You were begging for validation. It was a cringe-worthy performance.

    As I recall, Patrick had to point out the obvious: that you should be concerned with the correctness of your moderating decisions, not with their popularity.

    I think your commenting style here is counterproductive, has lost us many other valued members.

    Whereas your lies, insecurities, and moderation abuses have attracted members by the thousands.

    I think your commenting style here is counterproductive, has lost us many other valued members.

    I suppose you’re thinking of Mike Elzinga. Mike was quite comfortable at TSZ as long as he was doing the criticizing, but he got cold feet when his own views were subjected to skepticism. TSZ is a poor fit for those with fragile egos. Like you.

  48. Alan,

    When it gets to the point that you will lie about having admitted to a lying problem, and you will quote mine yourself in order to hide a mistake, then you have a problem. A big problem.

  50. keiths:

    During our discussion, which was here at TSZ, you actually quote mined yourself in a failed attempt at hiding a mistake you had made. Follow my link — I expose your quote mining at the end of my comment.

    Alan:

    It’s spin, not exposure.

    It’s exposure, not spin. You actually truncated your own quote in order to change its apparent meaning. That’s pathetic.

    Don’t you get tired of these public humiliations brought on by your dishonesty and childishness? Get your shit together, Alan.

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