For general discussion that would be off-topic in other threads!
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
For general discussion that would be off-topic in other threads!
Clicking on the Gregory id in his posts will take you to his blog and you can get more information about him from there.
As Neil says, he is Canadian. Like Rob Ford, he disproves (by counter-example) many Canadian stereotypes.
I have to say, News at Uncommon Descent can often be relied on unwittingly to link to an interesting article. This is additional evidence for the idea of sexual selection being a factor in brain development in modern humans. I do wonder what justification the authors have for saying:
I’ve never made that assumption. The range and nuance in chimp vocalization would suggest language has very deep roots.
I really can’t imagine how anyone familiar with evolution could have thought language emerged suddenly and with just a few mutations. I can think of someone in the academic community who publicly doubted stepwise evolution, but not anyone I take seriously. Shades of Behe.
Would make a good thread topic.
petrushka,
I’m tempted. I’d love to get Piotr Gąsiorowski from Sandwalk (and now UD) involved!
I’ve decided not to return to participate in TSZ — after much reflection on my last meltdown, I’ve realized that I really do not have the right personality for Internet culture. Little snipes and barbs get under my skin and I can’t let it go. So it’s really not healthy for my psyche, nor is the time invested here conducive to my career.
Those of you interested in my work can download it all here, and you can also keep in touch by email, since that is, I believe, visible to registered participants.
Best,
The Philosopher Formerly Known As ‘Kantian Naturalist’
Kantian Naturalist,
Thanks for dropping back in and keeping us informed.
And many thanks for your past participation. I have found it quite valuable.
As for email — those with author rights can see your email address if they know where to look. I’m not sure whether other members can.
When your book is published, perhaps you will briefly drop in again to let us know. Thanks.
Hi KN,
I hope you’ll consider another option, which is to invest some time and effort in learning how not to let the snipes and barbs get under your skin — or more accurately, how to prevent yourself from overreacting when they do get under your skin, as they inevitably will. That skill (and it is a learnable skill) will confer benefits far beyond the walls of this little blog.
Mindfulness meditation helped for me. It trains you to notice your reactions, including anger, before they escalate to the point where you are no longer thinking clearly. It’s an “early warning” system, in effect, that allows you to choose your responses mindfully and rationally rather than being swept along on a wave of emotion.
Best of luck to you, and like Neil, I hope you’ll at least drop by and let us know when your book is published.
While on the topic of what is healthy and what is not in internet discussions, I think it would be useful to discuss the relationship between the need to accept people’s arguments in good faith and the possibility that personal witness may not be reliable.
I refer, of course, to WJM’s spoon bending claim.
Here we have a claim of an event that would be unique in the history of the world, if true. To the best of my knowledge there are no well attested instances of mind over matter. No instances under controlled conditions.
So any such claim will automatically be greeted with skepticism.
I think that such claims, made without documentation and without a detailed description of the conditions surrounding the alleged event — and made in support of an argument against mainstream science — constitute an abuse of the forum rules.
Am I overreacting? Am I allowed to ask for some supporting evidence?
petrushka,
My reply from the other thread:
Perhaps I haven’t read the rules closely enough.
I don’t think you are required to accept people’s arguments in good faith. I think you are only expected to accept that they were made in good faith.
At least, on my understanding, you can still be unpersuaded. You can consider them to be based on unreliable evidence. That’s consistent with the argument having been made in good faith.
I accept all that, but here’s my problem:
William’s whole argument is based on private testimony. He is arguing for the existence of miraculous events because he has witnessed and/or participated in them.
I could let slide the cancer remission and the heavy lifting, because they are matters of interpretation.
Spoon bending I regard as fraudulent. Anyone who could do it would be rich and famous. Those who have claimed to be able have been exposed as frauds. This is simply not acceptable.
petrushka,
True, but you don’t have to accept his testimony as veridical. The TSZ rules allow you to point out that William hasn’t given you any good reason to accept his testimony as true. Saying that doesn’t imply that William isn’t posting in good faith; it just means that he hasn’t given you good reasons to accept what he’s saying.
We’re only required to assume that he isn’t deliberately deceiving us. We don’t have to accept his testimony, nor should we, given his shoddy standards for evaluating evidence.
Did you watch those spoon bending party videos I linked to? Even though they were using their hands, some of those people genuinely believed that they were participating in a paranormal phenomenon. I think William genuinely believes in this stuff. Remember, he’s a fan of The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know, and he’s written a book about how to “manifest” desired realities by simply willing them into existence.
He believes a lot of questionable things, uncritically but sincerely, in my opinion.
Testing:
∀ ∃ ∧ ∨ □ ⋄ ¬
Petrushka said:
If you mean I’m trying to prove to others that such things exist through testimony of my personal experiences, no, I’ve never made such an argument.
Can you post about how you did those?
I learned a lot from your comments here and enjoyed our exchanges immensely. Thank you.
All the best.
He used: ∀ ∃ ∧ ∨ □ ⋄ ¬
(I’m hoping this works). You can also use latex if you know how (google for “wordpress quicklatex”).
Bruce:
Neil:
Neil’s right, and there’s a useful list of codes here.
Testing.
From the Comical Misunderstandings Department:
Central Dogma: Missing, and presumed dead
Courtesy of Denyse O’Leary, of course.
This is simply a test! Ignore.
and another and another test. done now.
Enquiring minds want to know…
were the tests successful?
I’ve been looking at sentiment analysis and wanted to apply it in a familiar stomping ground.
So far so good! 😛 More to come at some point in a OP.
OMagain,
Look forward to it. We could do with some new interesting OPs.
Someone just sent me this:
‘the true american experience is wondering if you just heard firecrackers or gunshots’
True, in my neighborhood. We have legal “safe” fireworks here. xx(
Wouldn’t make a huge difference if fireworks weren’t legal, though, since we’re close enough to a border and a big city that people can get them illegally if they want — which they do. And some of our hundreds of gun-loving neighbors might get too loosened-up to resist firing a few rounds into the air. So yeah, when I hear a couple of loud cracks I wait to hear sirens – or not – before I conclude whether I’ve heard gunshots or just fireworks being set off.
.
.
.
Just good fun for the kids, ya’ know. No harm, no foul. Hell, when we were young, the cousins useta make their own cherrybombs. Dunno when’s the last time we did that – we should remember ta do them for the Fourth this year. What’s the matter, this is America. Land of the free. You don’ like it, you can move back where you came from.
http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140710-hints-of-lifes-start-found-in-a-giant-virus/
I apologize to all of my interlocutors for not replying promptly. After celebrating the 4th, all of my time was consumed in getting ready for a family vacation. We just left Luxembourg and will be spending another week in the south(-ish) of France.
Never fear, upon my return I will happily continue to explain to Gralgrathor why his dislike of guns should be applied to those controlled by bureaucrats, to Hotshoe why her naive faith in government is as foolish and dangerous as the IDCists’ faith in the Designer, and to Walto why he is morally compelled to get off the public teat and stop initiating force against free traders.
Until then,
Patrick
FWIW, my father grew up in Luxembourg. He once reported having seen the Grand Duchess riding through the streets in a carriage–waving to her subjects.
You’re very welcome to call in for a coffee (or something stronger) if you are within striking distance of the Languedoc!
It’s not evil, it was created by Jesus and anything created by Jesus is by it’s very nature good.
And it’s doubly not evil because it’s the cure Jesus has for boredom and to get us off our lazy butts. You said it better then I could!
So neither you or I think cancer is evil, right?
It’s part of the greater plan and it’s positive outweighs the negative.
OMagain,
And yet you brought it up as an example of evil earlier, how odd?
Now that you have been cornered and shown the hypocrisy of your position, your only alternative is now to disavow calling it evil, and trying to run from your position. I don’t blame you, because you are in a no win situation now, but its unseemly nonetheless.
I have not run from mine.
You were defeated, so you only way out now is to try to con your way into a fake position. You called it evil, and when asked to justify why, you are forced to fumble like a bad politician.
You have convinced me that Jesus made cancer for a purpose.
Yes, cancer is good! Me, you and Jesus all agree on that!
And if anybody should know…
Yes, your eloquent words defeated me! I was such a fool…
Originally I thought it was evil, but then you explained about how we’d all be bored with no reason to move without it and that makes total logical sense so here we are! Cancer is good! Jesus is good! Jesus made cancer and it’s all good!
OMagain,
Originally you thought it was evil, then you realized (you were shown, because you were too stupid to realize it yourself) , then you had no defense of your position.
So you went back to your Jesus moaning, because you and Jerry share the same hurt.
Yes, indeed! Cancer is not evil, it’s good!
No, Jesus made cancer! Cancer is good!
If you don’t like the consequences of your argument then don’t make such arguments!
OMagain,
The consequences of me showing how stupid your arguments are is you crying more about your jesusphobia?
That’s a consequence for you, not me, I could care less how much you love cats or what your priest did to you.
Phoodoo = Iraqi information minister
Defeated! Driven back! I have won! 0_o
Holy mackerel!
This guy can’t even do apologetics right!
Comedy Gold!
🙂
Why’s phoodoo so angry anyway? What could be behind all this anger and resentment?
Typically you’d put my actual words inside quotation marks.
Yes, indeed. Cancer in a child is not evil. A deity choosing to give said cancer to a child, that’s evil.
Yes, others have tried the tactic of defining others as wrong before even starting the debate. Yet you are still in the tiny tiny world of ID and meanwhile, the reality based community progresses.
I fear for the guy. When his true-believer friends find out he’s a craven, Benthamic hedonist, a guy who believes that good is a matter of what people want most and evil that which they most abhor, they may send poor phoodoo somewhere for “reprogramming” — or worse!
Worse. Fine with me. The more of them that burn each other, the fewer we have to round up and send to our re-education camps in the Nevada desert.
Oh, oopsie, I was supposed to keep that secret, wasn’t I.
I’d be interested in a thread having the topic: Assuming we had the technology to make all children “normal”, would we and should we?
I thought about this with regard to homosexuality and transexuality, but My educational experience is with the deaf. Inherited deafness can be “cured” by cochlear implant, but deaf parents don’t always want their children cured. I’m wondering whether gay parents would balk at an intervention that would reduce or eliminate the chance their children would be gay. (And I have met gay people of both sexes who have been married and had children the conventional way.)
This seems like a great topic in which to discuss cultural norms.
petrushka,
I’m familiar with the debate over cochlear implants and stuff like that. I’d be interested in participating and can offer some references.
Since it seems that authors can no longer post, I’ve switched you to contributor. And I think I have also given you the additional ability to publish a new post.
Please give that a try. If it turns out to not let you publish your new post, then I can do that for you.
Neil,
Any idea why authors are no longer able to post? What changed?
keiths,
I don’t know what changed. I do recall that Alan F. added a plugin to give finer control over abilities, so I’m guess that this might be a side effect. Perhaps the plugin needs some tuning, which is why I hope Alan will take a look.
After switching Petrushka to “contributor”, I was able to use the additional plugin settings to give him publish ability (that seemed to work). But, while he was still an “author”, all of the relevant settings were checked as enabled but grayed out (unchangeable) — they just didn’t work as they should.
For the present, I’ll do for others what I did for petrushka (on request). But I’m hoping that Alan can find a global setting to fix it for everyone in a single step.
Neil Rickert,
Hi Neil
I just noticed these comments. The plugin, “Role Editor”, is supposed to allow a wider choice of settings. All I did was install and activate the plugin and then I deselected the options to delete posts and comments for author role. I just checked that the “publish posts” option is selected. Short of disabling the plugin, not sure what else I can do. The “Role Editor” interface is available via settings on the dashboard.
@ All
Who else has had a problem publishing a post?
As best I can tell, it affects everyone (except moderators).
I created an experimental account “NeilWR” to test that. As author, I seem to have very little privilege. I can see the dashboard, but it is a stripped down dashboard with nothing of interest. When I changed to contributor, there were more options.
Neil Rickert,
Just did the same with my test sock. I’ve tried tweaking the capabilities but nothing so far brings back the full dashboard. It’s late so I’ll have a look tomorrow. There was an update offered for User Role Editor recently. Has the problem occurred within the last three weeks?