Philosophy Now Forum

Walker wrote:Were you banned because you were acting like an ass?

Yeah, but only for overplaying my hand. What about you?

Green wrote:

Walker wrote:Were you banned because you were acting like an ass?

Yeah, but only for overplaying my hand. What about you?

Yes, I hear that in you.

Me? Actors are pretenders. That, I am not.

I got kicked from the Atheist Foundation of Australia some years ago, it was quite funny, one of the moderators genuinely wanted me to stick around but the others wouldnt have a bar of it.

Walker wrote:
Me? Actors are pretenders. That, I am not.

So you're genuinely this way. Seems exhausting imo.

Green wrote:

Walker wrote:
Me? Actors are pretenders. That, I am not.

So you're genuinely this way. Seems exhausting imo.

At first. The exhaustion caused by clinging leads to surrender of delusional control and this is a physically painful death. After that smooth sailing, like Yeager breaking the sound barrier. The body adjusts because the energy is relentless and beyond choice, like gravity, so awareness just rides it out, apparently forever. This does cause physical changes. But enough about me.

24hr ban from my favorite site.



The admin. did this just to be funny. See why it's my favorite?

Obvious Leo wrote:

Skip wrote: Still, I like to cause the rejection on purpose, rather than inadvertently. I hate inadvertency!

I know how you feel. I was chucked out of a physics forum for making this statement:

"An observation is an act of cognition." I was warned that this was a heretical statement which had no place in a physics forum and advised that I would be banned if I ever repeated it. In my following post I quoted verbatim a variety of statements from over a dozen of the most eminent physicists in history who had said this or made some similar statement which was obviously a paraphrase of it. The very last line of quotes was my own statement repeated. "An observation is an act of cognition". I was immediately banned but I can't claim that there was any inadvertency involved. To a physicist a philosopher is the lowest kind of pond-life. A smartarse who comes along and allows the facts to fuck up a good story is even worse than the bloke who farted in the elevator.

All I can say is, thank goodness I never went anywhere near physics, if that's a heresy, when it clearly screams truism.

Dalek Prime wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:

Skip wrote: Still, I like to cause the rejection on purpose, rather than inadvertently. I hate inadvertency!

I know how you feel. I was chucked out of a physics forum for making this statement:

"An observation is an act of cognition." I was warned that this was a heretical statement which had no place in a physics forum and advised that I would be banned if I ever repeated it. In my following post I quoted verbatim a variety of statements from over a dozen of the most eminent physicists in history who had said this or made some similar statement which was obviously a paraphrase of it. The very last line of quotes was my own statement repeated. "An observation is an act of cognition". I was immediately banned but I can't claim that there was any inadvertency involved. To a physicist a philosopher is the lowest kind of pond-life. A smartarse who comes along and allows the facts to fuck up a good story is even worse than the bloke who farted in the elevator.

All I can say is, thank goodness I never went anywhere near physics, if that's a heresy, when it clearly screams truism.

Not only is it a truism, Dalek, it is THE truism which is standing between the science of physics and models of physics which make sense. Instead of modelling the universe our models of physics are merely modelling the physicist's cognitive MAP of it. Ptolemy would beam in admiration because he got away with the same trick for 1400 years.

Leo, I agree that physics forums are awful dens of groupthink. I tried running an idea past one - just an open question, not saying anything was so or not, and was careful not to go out on a limb, and even then the level of defensiveness was an eye-opener.

Man, they defend their fort as hard as any fundamentalist! For years I've laughed at people suggesting that rationalists are as inflexible as theists for being locked in. Rationalists take pride in the fact that they can change their minds - but it's only because the "holy texts" changed. When religious texts change or are added to then theists change their minds too, eg. Buddhism.

Certain types of rationalists seem to be rigidly against even considering ideas that do not emanate "from above", eg. Bohr, Einstein, Hawking, etc. Look at the treatment of Peter Higgs - and for decades - before he was proved right.

It's quite strange. If something seems impossible to apply sums to - to quantify and control - then it's deemed "not science". That's fine, but somehow people extrapolate "not science" to "not real". It's not logical positivism, it's illogical positivism. So the responses were largely unhelpful, sometimes patronising and only one post was enlightening.

As mentioned by others, the actual researchers seem more open minded than their acolytes - although I guess that's almost by definition. A researcher is looking to poke holes in their heroes' ideas while disciples refuse to even entertain new ideas unless endorsed by their heroes.

I'm all for admitting that our little individual minds are nothing compared with society's body of knowledge built by generations of geniuses. However, while scientists are busy with "important" things (ie. activities that give them a chance to support themselves) those interested in philosophy sift through the "junk" that scientists threw away while driven by time pressures and commercial imperatives. I've heard scientists complain about situations where their research leads to possible interesting lines of inquiry which cannot be pursued due to the scientists' job description.

So there is much that exists "between the cracks" that thinkers are right to explore - but unfortunately it has to happen without support from the physics community. Ideally the different groups would be united in their search to understand reality but humans are still pretty primitively competitive. Maybe one day ...

Greta wrote:Man, they defend their fort as hard as any fundamentalist!

You better believe it, Greta, and I know whereof I speak, as you may well imagine. Furthermore the bile and viciousness which they direct at anybody who dares to question their eternal verities makes some of the insults getting chucked around within these pages look very tame by comparison. Considering that they're defending models which are universally known to be WRONG, and which describe a universe which makes no fucking sense, such hubris is more appropriate to an exclusive priestly order than it is to a group claiming to be doing science.

Greta wrote:As mentioned by others, the actual researchers seem more open minded than their acolytes -

This is very true. When you scratch a bit deeper and examine the thinking of the true illuminati in theoretical physics then you'll find that this confidence in the eternal verities has all but vanished. The serious players know bloody well that they've got something fundamental badly wrong and that the science of physics cannot proceed any further until they figure out what it is.

Sacking the philosophers was a serious mistake but the philosophers themselves were entirely to blame for this. So mesmerised were they by the mathematical virtuosity of the early 20th century geeks that they fell asleep at the wheel and let them get away with peddling a crock of metaphysical horseshit. This bollocks has now become so entrenched that it'll take a conceptual bomb of thermonuclear calibre to dislodge it from the minds of the exclusive brethren.

However do not despair. Leo's on the case.

Green wrote:24hr ban from my favorite site.



The admin. did this just to be funny. See why it's my favorite?

You’re obviously intelligent and offer value, which may or may not be the standard defining your detention.

I forgot my major banning. It wasn't really a banning though, it was a shift in political orientation when the Conservatives took power and tried their best from within to discredit and dismantle the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The reasonable centrist posters, including myself, were originally granted trusted posting privileges on the CBC web forum, that our posts didn't require vetting. Then it all changed under the Harper government. Our priveleges were rescinded, and given to the most right-wing, crudest ignoramuses you can imagine. This happened after they failed to wipe us out by privatising the moderation to an American company, with a branch based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Well, Winnipeg explains it! My redneck brother lives there.

I notice CBC is working very hard now at redeeming itself, after some truly shameful years of right-wing toadying. (No, I don't blame them: it's a matter of survival. Still, it was damned embarrassing.)

Skip wrote:Well, Winnipeg explains it! My redneck brother lives there.

I notice CBC is working very hard now at redeeming itself, after some truly shameful years of right-wing toadying. (No, I don't blame them: it's a matter of survival. Still, it was damned embarrassing.)

Yeah, it was a bad time for them and us. Thankfully they are gone for now, as is the Conservative attack vehicle, Sun TV, aka the "anti-CBC". I haven't been posting on the CBC forum in the past few years though, so I no longer have the pulse and feel of the present dynamics there.