Noyau (1)

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

Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.

2,559 thoughts on “Noyau (1)”

  5. walto: And may I just say that I’m glad we’ve got our best man on the job!!

    Irony. See.

    And yet people still doubt my ability to interpret the bible. 😉

  6. Sal, in your hit piece on Jerry Coyne, you say he was “forced” to post a correction. What is your evidence that he was “forced”?

  7. Evolution question.

    I’ve heard these:

    “You know what they say….big feet, big XXXXX”

    “You know what they say….big shnoz, big XXXXX”

    So what happens if the feet are small but the shnoz is big or vice versa? Battle royale down there? 😉

  8. walto:
    For gregory, the varieties of religious language are pretty much exhausted by repetitive insult, nonsense, pigeon-holing, fallacious reasoning, self-aggrandizement, faux piety and patent bullshit.

    Not a bad assortment, if that’s how you want to represent religious thinking, I guess. But sooo boring and humorless.

    Oops! I forgot sucking up:

    the lesson you are being taught time and again by Erik’s clear thinking

    Plenty of that in there lately too.

    So let me rephrase to correct that omission:

    walto:

    For gregory, the varieties of religious language are pretty much exhausted by repetitive insult, nonsense, pigeon-holing, ass-kissing, fallacious reasoning, self-aggrandizement, faux piety and patent bullshit.

    Not a bad assortment, if that’s how you want to represent religious thinking, I guess. But sooo boring and humorless.

    There. That’s better.

  9. I too am in awe of the expositional powers of all those with whom I agree. The rest, meanwhile – lumbering clods, nihilists, demon spawn. Hmmm – I like this black-and-white world …

  10. Gregory,

    Feel free to leave us alone. We don’t mind.

    Or continue to give us more material to show us what an absurd person you are. We don’t mind that, either.

    Either way, our days of not taking you seriously are definitely coming to a middle.

  11. Allan Miller,

    I too am in awe of the expositional powers of all those with whom I agree. The rest, meanwhile – lumbering clods, nihilists, demon spawn. Hmmm – I like this black-and-white world …

    You all eventually disappoint me….

  13. Bad day on the publication front. I got my paper on consequentialism rejected today by Erkenntnis. 🙁

    I spend six or more months writing and rewriting, often based on comments and criticisms of friends and colleagues, sometimes just realizing deficiencies on my own, etc., the journal keeps the paper six or more months, and then an apparent high school student reads the first couple of paragraphs (s/he actually admits this–and the paper’s over 30 pages!) and then rejects it in seconds based mostly on (1) insufficient discussion of the current literature (in the first two pages) and a lack of required “*stringency*.”

    Here are the remarks, in their entirety:

    1) I read the first couple of pages, until I felt convinced that it would be impossible to recommend R&R. (I did not look at the second half of the paper.) Here are some, but not all, of the reasons for why the paper should be rejected:

    2) The introduction is not good. It took me just a couple of seconds to figure out that the author has not published in this area before, or is not a professional philosopher. You need to be much more *stringent* to get a paper accepted fort publication in Erkenntnis. No nonsense, just get to the point straight away!

    3) The text is full of unclear or even contradictory sentences. Just read the first two paragraphs.

    3) As formulated by the author, several of the key claims are open to trivial counterexamples. Take “P1” for instance: what about the desire to kill innocent people for fun, does that desire really “create value”? Or P2, what about irrational or contradictory desires?

    4) The author seems to be unaware of the extensive discussion of desire-fulfillment theories in the literature on intrinsic value. Search at philpapers.org and you will find many papers that address questions you should be aware of.

    5) You have to convince the reader that your knowledge of the relevant literature is up to date and that you have something novel to contribute. What is it that is novel in your paper?

    To be fair, there ARE two paragraphs numbered “3)” there, so there were actually six insipid complaints there rather than only five. And when you start getting up to six insipid complaints you must be onto SOMETHING! Furthermore, those were “some, but not all of the reasons” the thing is no damn good.

    Anyhow, this gives a good example of the unpleasantness of submitting papers for publication to philosophy journals. It almost makes one long for a critique by Gregory.

    Anyhow, I’m gonna be more *stringent* next time FOR SURE!

  15. I’m sorry to hear about the rejection, walto!

    In non-traditional observance of Yom Kippur, I’m taking a fast from the Internet and social media.

    See you all on Thursday!

  16. Kantian Naturalist,

    Thanks, KN, and good yuntiff. (sp?) And while you’re at it, if you get a chance and could get my name written in more stringent letters in the book of life I’d appreciate it. 🙂

  17. Huh. I guess we’ll have to piss Gregory off on our own then. Shooting fish in a barrel, mind.

  21. Mung: I’m feeling left out.

    Well, at least you can take some comfort in knowing that you were covered by my “rat bastard” characterization. That was all-inclusive. 🙂

  25. Well, you’re a mome rath, anyhow.

    At least according to certain ancient folkloric accounts.

    (I read that in a pamphlet over at Herman’s Hellacious Hermeneutics)

    “Where everything you read is true…..more or less!”

  26. walto: (I read that in a pamphlet over at Herman’s Hellacious Hermeneutics)

    “Where everything you read is true…..more or less!”

    As Moriarty says:
    “I read it in the paper, so it must be true. I love newspapers. Fairytales. ”
    …
    “And pretty Grimm ones too.”
    🙂

  27. Ahh, there’s hardly anything as satisfying as visiting TSZ to find a “Gregory on Guano” comment in the middle of the Recent Comments list.

    🙂 🙂 🙂

  28. I see someone apologised for posting without going back and reading the entire history of a thread.

    I find I can leave mung or Fifth thread for a week, and come back to find nothing has changed. We have been Gaulinized.

  31. Alan Fox, from the “Religious Language” thread:

    Has Gregory ever suggested English is not his first language? I have watched a video that leads me to think he is completely at ease in English.

    Erik has mentioned English is not even his second language but seems to have mastered the art of the subtle insult better than many native speakers.

    I know, Erik’s a devious little scut, isn’t he.

    I only wish I had half his ability to twist the knife while appearing as if butter wouldn’t melt …

    Well, no, I don’t really wish to be that kind of underhanded bastard. I’m atheist, not deviant.

  35. Being skeptical is too deviant. Requires courage. Better to toe the atheist line here at TAZ.

  37. Mung: Better to toe the atheist line here at TAZ.

    Good, at least you spelled “toe the line” correctly. Well done, Mung!

  39. GlenDavidson: So you have something against those of us who would tow the line?

    Some lines need towing.

    Glen Davisdon

    Yeah, I’ve lived on a boat. I know something about lines that need towing. Nothing against that whatsoever.

    But “tow the line” is not the correct idiom to be used when meaning “conform to standard” or “adhere to party doctrine” – so Mung is indeed using the right phrase.

    Equivalent to “toe the mark”. Stay in the right position, act correctly, behave as ordered to, don’t stray beyond the defined boundary. And no one says “tow the mark”, so “toe the mark” helps illuminate the correct idiom of “toe the line”.

    Anyways, it’s just one of the little things I notice sometimes and I threw in a comment about it. Sorry. 🙁

  41. walto:

    hotshoe_: Yeah, I’ve lived on a boat.

    Wow. For a long time?

    Years, but never a whole year at a stretch, and it’s not really any kind of adventure because the boat has a permanent dock. Cold running water, electric power hooked up from the dock. Sorta like an RV but, uh, wavier. We were at dock one night when some folks came boat-to-boat to wake everybody up to get all the boats out into open water because a tsunami was coming. But mostly the commercial fishing boats went out, mostly everyone else just tied up tighter, and the tsunami turned out to be about a half meter high doing no harm. That’s it for big adventures!

  42. Mung,

    Being skeptical is too deviant. Requires courage. Better to toe the atheist line here at TAZ.

    Yeah, not as if anyone at TA/SZ ever posted at an atheist-unfriendly site or nuthin’.

  43. hotshoe_

    Years, but never a whole year at a stretch, and it’s not really any kind of adventure because the boat has a permanent dock. Cold running water, electric power hooked up from the dock.Sorta like an RV but, uh, wavier.We were at dock one night when some folks came boat-to-boat to wake everybody up to get all the boats out into open water because a tsunami was coming.But mostly the commercial fishing boats went out, mostly everyone else just tied up tighter, and the tsunami turned out to be about a half meter high doing no harm.That’s it for big adventures!

    I thought everybody who lived on a boat was on the lam or something. Did you meet a bunch of Humphrey Bogart types?

  44. Allan Miller,

    The point you don’t seem to understand, Allan, is that atheists are marginal people around the world. Your worldview is a pathology. It offers nothing inspiring, not in science or society. And it insults the highest, deepest and widest expressions of humanity and self-/community expression. How do you expect to be treated by theists of any stripe or colour, especially if you are aggressively anti-religious, as are many posters here at TA/SZ?

    “Being skeptical is too deviant. Requires courage.”

    No, being skeptical is normal given time and place. It doesn’t require courage, only rationale. Being a ‘skeptic’ (ideologist), however, I agree is “too deviant”. Most people reject such ‘skeptics’ in ‘normal’ society. This place, TA/SZ, is quite obviously *not normal*! 😉

  45. Gregory,

    Gregory, what you don’t understand is that seekers after truth aren’t really so interested in what is “inspiriing” or “uplifting”–no matter how outnumbered or “marginal” they may be. For the philosophists that you hate so much, Camus was right when he said that truth is better than illusion.

    If you want to believe your teddy bear is real because it makes you and many other children–maybe even most of them!–feel good, have at it. But some day you may come to understand that others look at the world in a very different way.

  47. walto,

    Apparently Gregory thinks it is more important that one conform to the beliefs of the majority than to inquire into what is true, and anything else makes one an enemy of the people.

  48. Kantian Naturalist,

    Me, I’m a connoisseur of minority positions, though I prefer to pick and choose. Flat Earth, for example? Nah.

    I get lectured for not adopting one on evolution, though. Can’t win!

  49. “Apparently Gregory thinks it is more important that one conform to the beliefs of the majority…” – KN

    This is pitifully hilarious! 😉 Doubly highly ‘minority’ KN accusing conformity to the majority. After rejecting (we still haven’t heard if it was intentional or just given to him) his religious Jewish roots, as he told us here at TA/SZ, KN simply now wants to be a secular obscurantist egoist, a philosophist, to avoid the DNA of his family’s creation and its non-secular narrative. And yet he’s got ‘evangelical Protestants in the USA’ stuck in his contrarian ‘soul.’

    Newsflash: I’m not an evangelical Protestant USAmerican.

    Newsflash #2: accusing an innovative sociologist of ‘conformity to the beliefs of the majority’ displays ignorance that humours generations.

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