Taboo Topics

Yes justice is not injustice. But clearly, by saying that they have a strong sense of injustice, especially in the context that it was used here, it refers to someone who recognizes injustices being committed out of a strong sense of justice.

The Buddhist section is a big section. I don't have the time to go through all the threads to find all your posts.

If your comment on justice is intended to interject a koan (as in a zen koan) then you cannot lecture everyone on logic and reason and then throw in a koan--it's reason is wholly and intentionally irrational--and in that irrationality provides a new frame of mind. Look at how Tikoo posts.

And your comment on observation requiring an observer in the Schrodinger's cat thread (even if it was already implied by the experiment) was good in that it gave me pause to think, I considered it as possibly another way to philosophize on the issue. I enjoyed that. But after pondering over it for a bit, I made my response about it already being implied, and that it was just restating the whole issue. But the structure of the comment itself initially seemed to present a new perspective, which was enjoyable to think through.

You do understand that what you are suggesting here---particularly in a thread about ethics, that has a highly subjective and relativistic nature, or a scientific discussion which relies on empirical evidence------is to make posts that are purely anecdotal.

I do ‘assert’ in that I come to the forums to debate and be challenged---I enjoy the debate and I learn from it. I present a hard case, and rebuttal—but I am looking for a hard argument against it----something I rarely find. And if we are just going around and around on minor semantical issues then it almost always becomes a waste of my time...

I like criticism and I try to take every bit of it in a manner to improve my writing. But I have rarely found criticsm that is more of an attack than constructive to be of any help. In my own books for example, I want my reasoning to be clear. I don't want it to be axiomatically unsound (for example)----fortunately I have a few trusted individuals who I share with, and we discuss it, so that such is not the case.

 

A perfectly sound axiomatic statement

Then you have little time to waste
MeAgain, on 20 Dec 2014 - 1:47 PM, said:

Okay what I mean is tell me what is wrong with my presentation. Pick what I said apart on the basis of it's merits. You are still trying to explain the confusion when offering the same definitions again.
This is the lowdown that i am asking you to tear apart with your reason.

"Start with one thing, a standard metric that we have different takes on.
Reality is. No variation in the state of reality. A thing is either real or it does not exist.
It seems you are trying to firmly account for the subjective experience by saying it is less than real or relatively real.
What is reality, information. Every informational bit of reality is every bit informed.
We are relatively informed. which does not mean less than informed. It means we are informed through relationship and are increasingly informed as we expand our relationships. Never in any part of this are we less than informed, or information less.
What is it to be informed, in the know. What is knowledge, being shared. to be bit by bit informed is perception.
Truth is relative in that it requires comparison and true terms are, same, different, or purposeful. You are the arbiter of truth if you arbitrate on true terms. If truth is a qualification then no one qualifies".

Posted December 20 2014 - 02:54 PM

1. 
   An axiom or postulate is a premise or starting point of reasoning. As classically conceived, an axiom is a premise so evident as to be accepted as true without controversy. The word comes from the Greek axíōma (ἀξίωμα) 'that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which commends itself as evident.'
   
2. 
   
   

 

My comment was to inform you I am a riot where ever I am not perceived. Read what I say with interest.

 

I am thrilled you enjoy your self.

 

Certainly I understand. I do not suggest.

This thread is named taboo topics, is ethics a taboo topic

You want everyone to share your ethics

But a clear sense of injustice is not an ethical view

 

Yes that is what you assert.
Your case is soft headed
I am your hard on
In case you misplaced it
Your time is yours

 

Your writing is going to go into the garbage you know
Only those things spoken heart to heart shall remain
You have little trust in many individuals
Your lack of trusted individuals to share with is because you want their scalp
Don;t be axiomatically unsound
Poke a stikoo in your eye

 

enjoying the show......

 

Goes to show

 

Trusted individuals... Oh dear, that does sound dreadfully exclusive...

I don't have many trusted individuals because my nanobots have only infected a handful of people so far---my trusted friends who follow my every command. But soon that will change---especially now that I have placed subliminal programming in big studio productions----starting with Seth Rogen's, The Interview. (Yes, Seth Rogen is a 'trusted' individual.)

Everything was going fine until the leader of North Korea discovered my plan, and tried to stop its release in order to save the world.

Damn him!

But its ok now. He can' stop me. The people of the world need to be entertained! World domination is mine!!! (Evil laugh, the sound of which is blocked out by the medium upon which this forum manifests...)

 

That is because you don't.

Your effort to claim superior sense is senseless. You have an infection that is spreading. Specialness is the giant egos greatest defense against the truth which again
predicated on taking the measurements of what is the same and what is different
knowledge is being shared
Joy to you

 

Hmmmmm... And here I thought it would be funny to inject some timely humor, twist things around so that the North Korean Dictator's egocentric and malicious act was, unknown to the rest of the world, an attempt to save the world from a ruthless evil dictator with mind controlling microscopic robots...

 

Seriously----that is pretty presumptuous to say that I lack trusted individuals---in this case I was referring specifically with friends who I am willing to share portions of my book with, and who are interested in it, can provide intelligent input, etc. I have many other trusted friends too.

The reason I said 'trusted,' is that I know none of them will go off and write their own book, or share it with someone who will. The first time I tried to write a book was when I was an analyst at Shearson Lehman. I actually didn't start it to actually write a book, rather I chose that format to figure out where I wanted to invest next. It was in 1988---the 1987 crash was still in everyone's memory, and I was already predicting the end of the Tokyo market and economic turmoil ahead for Japan. As I got to working on it, and sharing my ideas, everyone encouraged me to publish it.

The Global Strategist for Shearson Lehman and I had some long talks over what I was writing. I had come to the conclusion that the US was going to be the global economic leader going into the 21st Century. I had a good argument for why we would enter into a period of low interest rates, low inflation, and strong economic growth.

About a year and a half later or so, I was sitting in my home in Manila watching CNBC. They had an interview with him, and much to my surprise, he discussed 'his' research on the US economy and how he thought it would play out over the decade. Sure enough, his outlook was clearly what I had told him. (he didn't even use 'we' as in Shearson Lehman---which still wouldn't have been correct, because he knew that I wasn't going to publish this as Shearson research---after all, I was covering 3 - 4 sectors of the Tokyo market, that was my job. This was something I was doing on the side.) He went on to mention that he was collaborating on a book with a KKR executive. I kept my eyes open for the book, and was eventually able to order it and get it when it was published. It was a book about the coming economic boom---and the author credited this Shearson strategist numerous times for providing the research that was key to the book's premise, and he quoted him numerous times. Some of the quotes seemed almost word for word of what I told him. I had left Shearson in the summer of '89, I don't think our telephone calls were really recorded back then, and it was a bit difficult to do anything about that from the Philippines anyway.

I had continued to work on the book in the Philippines, so my research had gone much further and included conclusions they never considered, not to mention uncovering an underlying long term cycle in the US economy----but I never finished the book after that. By the end of the 90's things played out just as I had predicted. The market in the 2000's did too for the most part—not exactly the way I expected, but it still fit my projections.

I didn't even get credit for my prediction of the top of the Japanese market at the end of 1989. Partly because I left Shearson in June, but still... Shearson's Elaine Garzarelli is still a hero on Wall Street because of her prediction of the 1987 crash---and I was on a conference call a few weeks earlier which she was also on, when I expressed my feelings that the US Market was getting toppy and would probably not last too long (and would pull the Tokyo market down with it). I don't know if that had anything to do with Elaine's prediction, but... And my prediction was over 1 year and 2 months earlier---I predicted that the Tokyo market would peak at the end of 1989, with the Nikkei between 38,000 - 40,000----it peaked on the last trading day of 1989 at 38,990 and crashed the first trading day of 1990. Elaine's prediction of the 1987 crash was only a few days before the crash---like who couldn’ see that?

Anyway---I am not going to just share my unpublished work with anyone----I probably still share the ideas too much, but I don't share everything.

Do I want people's scalps? No I don't---I have a very gentle, loving, empathetic personality---I am a hippie after all. Heart to heart comunication? That is what goes on around my fire pit most summer and fall nights, as I grill steaks and sit around the fire, often till well past midnight---for at least 4 or 5 years now. This is where we have discussed my book---those trusted individuals I mentioned above, and many others---some that come for the steak (or the mackerel (we fill up the whole neighborhood with the delicious smell of roasting mackerel), or my son's friend who would bring elk, or deer from his dad's hunting trips...) And sometimes at coffee shops too.

But my online persona on this site may not seem exactly that way. Though I don't think you will find me calling people names, or being overly cruel. I do my best to avoid making personal attacks. I would never tell anyone that their efforts will end up in the garbage. I delight in joking with people---sometimes at their expense, but I will apologize and let them know it is all done in jest. I don’t get pissed off the way I see people do here. I don’t take things personally.

The thing is, I come here to debate ideas—many times about what is in my books, other times not. It helps my writing tremendously. I debate with my ‘trusted’ friends who are helping me with my books---but they are well aware of my philosophy, and have come to agree with it. So they won’t challenge me as much, which is why I will debate on places like this forum---but I will debate in an assertive manner, as you said, I will debate hard---because I am looking for a real challenge. We can go around and around and around, and if we are still going around---then you haven’t convinced me---but at least, I hope, you have made me think. You have shown me where I will be misunderstood, or even where I need to tweak my ideas, or maybe gave me additional insight, or a new perspective to pursue. If you can convince me through my hard-nosed stubbornness---then you have shown me where I am wrong. If I can’t see the point of your argument, or continue to disagree, or find it trivial, then you will not convince me. These debates are critical because it helps me struggle against dogma, reductionism, my own shadow.

But if everything you have to offer is anecdotal, then it better be truly axiomatic, but more importantly, mind blowing—or it will not impress me. New Age bookstores are filled with books overflowing with anecdotal crap. I don’t want to write what will amount to be another piece of New Age crap.

If there is communication going back and forth, a debate, then that is what I am here for. I am not here to debate the way someone else wants me to debate. I am not debating for appearances. If you don’t like me presenting evidence to build a case, it doesn’t matter because I am not debating for you. If you don’t want to debate, I have many other posts and many threads where I don’t debate.

 

If everyone shared my ethics, or believed the way I did, then how could I debate? Please point out to me where I insist that people believe the way I do. I have always been respectful of people’s beliefs. I am not religious, but I do not try to take religion away from people. I am an animist, but I do not try to convert people to my beliefs, to the spiritual path I am on.

Having said that, there are two caveats to that----the first is that if you want to debate, then, yes, I will gladly debate and pose a challenge. Second, that I will do what I can to make this world a better place for everyone. And yes---for that purpose I will try to win people over to my side---but I do not want everyone to believe as I do.

That last statement is very important! Utopianist philosophies fall into that problem, and that is their downfall---Communism for example----the idea is that if every nation everywhere became communist, then there would be world peace and the old selfish values of the past would fall away and all humanity would live in a utopia.

That reductionist belief is complete crap. What makes a nation or a people vibrant and successful is a continuous interplay around a shaky center. It takes the left, the right, moderates---varying degrees of opposing ideas. That is the beauty of the two party system we have---when it works (right now the nation is so polarized from several decades of a GOP strategy to polarize the country in a divide and conquer manner, that our government is no longer working as it should---perhaps it is time for 3 parties…).

But perhaps there is a little shadow projection going on here. You have an idea of how you think debates should be done----and you feel so strongly about this that you have hijacked this thread to point out how people are not debating the way you think they should.

To quote you:

And yet could it not be that someone who claims to be always axiomatically correct in their arguments and reasoning, who always “ascends to the transcendent experience to make it perceptible,” is in fact falling victim to the ‘specialness’ you spoke of?

For example, what is the truth here:

Ethics, by definition is the moral beliefs that governs a person, or a groups behavior. Injustice is a lack of fairness or justice. We live in a world that is extremely relativistic. What is just to one group of people, is not always just to another group of people. In some parts of the world, it is just to cut off a girl’s clitoris in order to keep her from giving into sexual excesses, and so that she will be a good obedient wife and mother. In other cultures that is considered unjust. Among certain individuals and groups it is considered ethical to fight to stop this injustice (by their definition) from occurring in other countries (where it is considered just).

You can play with the semantics of that statement all you want, but it is axiomatically incorrect.

 

Interesting you should bring up Pinker. Have you read the book? Is it your impression that it confirms your theories that race or IQ is the most important or even an important factor in the decline of violence?( BTW, did you know he's Jewish?)

 

I apologize to everyone for going off topic for a page or more.

Let me continue my response I started in Post #77 (and clarified a little bit in my next post about the research I was trying to recall)

I left off falling asleep wanting to answer this. Yes, of course I would want to be living in the most recent age. That is true for almost all people whether they realize it or not (rare are the individuals today who can truly live those old ways)----though, you know I lived through the best years of all---the 1960's and 70's. Everything is all down hill after that. ;-)

Yes for the most part violence has decreased (though again you are grossly generalizing on how indigenous people are. There are plenty of stories of compassion among the Lakota and other tribes---even to their enemies---as that is known to be a valued virtue among many of the tribes, and that is how they speak of their ancestors today. The same is true for Love, Respect, and so forth. There is a respect for all life in the Native world that you do not have in the Western traditions. The Medicine Wheel for example, symbolized, among many other things, the people of the earth---red, white, black, yellow (and this tradition is older than the coming of the white man) and that to cause harm to one people, affects all the other people because the structure of the medicine wheel makes us all interconnected.) In World War I the life expectancy of a pilot who reached the European theatre was a matter of hours. Ships that sailed the seas in the days of sail where filled with disease and dangers, and harsh punishments for the crew----a trip across the ocean was a dangerous undertaking. We could go on and on. Reality is so less harsh today that we take life for granted.

People just would not be able to survive very well if we were thrust back into the past, even if we disregard violence---we are dependent on the technology and comforts we have now.

What Pinker, and the anthropologist he quotes are trying to defend against is the sentiment of Anti-Modern culture, or even Anti-Western culture. They see it as a threat---as if it was coming from some powerful foreign culture that is ready to attack and destroy our way of life.

I love modern culture. I love modern technology. I love watching IMAX in 3-D, etc. etc. etc. American Pop Culture is now the global culture. Even many of the terrorists in the Middle East--reactionaries defending their own dying planter-culture----plan jihad while sitting in a Denny's or an Appleby's in parts of the Arab world. There is no one else to take down our way of life and culture---the Modern zeitgeist.

So where will the death of our culture come from? From within of course---all the dynamics of decay are playing out. If there is no progress, there is only decay. The enlightenment has done great things for us to bring us to this stage. But it is also turning us into slaves of our own system, alienated from our true selves. It has resulted in a nihilistic culture where all meaning and value are superficial at best, and all our desires, wants, and drives are programmed by the cultural spectacle around us. Today we are facing the Post-Modern crisis, because our culture lacks a true unifying truth. Modern global culture with all its diversity and relativism is really unified on only one thing---consumerism. And what gives consumerism its power is our own subconscious avoidance of the existential crisis of looking for deeper meaning. Instead, we are addicted to drugs, or alcohol, or consuming, or playing video games, or any number of other things that we do to excess, so we don’t have to face a deeper truth---a deeper question of, ‘Why?’

Consumerism is not an authentic value that gives deep meaning to our lives. Logic and empirical evidence, and all the reprioritizing that the enlightenment did, was great in the progress it gave the human race---but it spawned the crisis of meaning we now face.

It is not our first post-enlightenment crisis. The first one came about as a clash between rationalism and skepticism. It was summed up in a joke of the time: no thing, never mind. Philosophy and the intelligencia had hit a stalemate---either the world was completely objective and physical, or it was subjective and internal, in other words---it was all real, or an illusion. It took Kant to resolve the crisis by splitting the physical sciences, from those of the mind (which included religion, because it was a science back then). This allowed science to burst forth free of the fetters of religion. Objectivism soared to the detriment of subjectivism.

And herein lays the danger of modern logic, racism, eugenics, and so forth. The downfall of subjectivism equates to the downfall of the individual. The individual has little value compared to the objective world of things, institutions, and objects. In fact the value of the individual is entirely determined by objects and things. Therefore we live in a world where a multinational corporation is considered an individual in our own land, and can stomp all over real individuals without recourse. We live in a world where not that long ago, the shape of the skull, color of the eyes, hair, and skin, and other objective factors determined that it was ok to send a whole group of inferior people to gas chambers and ovens. A world where we can objectively determine that the value of an individual is based on the objective value of IQ.

The dangers of science is repeated in the phenomenological message that keeps coming to us from our collective subconscious---appearing in movies, stories, music. You can sum it up by the phrase sung by Blue Oyster Cult: “History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.”

We can never go back to the past. The church will never again be our unifying truth---first of all, our culture is no longer a localized one---it is global, second of all, as a culture we will always see it through post-enlightenment eyes. Relativism and globalism demand that future meaning embraces diversity, and cannot fall victim to dogmatic reductionism. Furthermore, we need to find meaning that is true in the context of modern post-enlightenment (i.e. scientific) man. Finally, it must bring back the value of the subjective---the individual---life.

I am an individual that is a part of modern man, therefore I can criticize it without being biased or against it----especially because I disagree with the decadent suicidal path our culture is currently heading down.

 

That certainly fits a stereotype---the brutish jock who is ready to beat the crap out of the puny nerd... But what about the highly intelligent psychopath, who will use people around him (or her) like game pieces on a chess board, and if it comes to it, will kill them without any sense of remorse.

I know a number of extremely intelligent people who express passive aggression. There are those who are just as likely to fight as the stereotypical dumb jock. Put any person in a combat situation and they will probably fight regardless of IQ. Look at the virtual reality presented by the electronic gaming world. Do you think that people with higher IQ's avoid violent games such as Assasin's Creed, Battlefield, Mortal Combat, or Grand Theft Auto. Do you think that a person of high IQ enjoys killing in these games less than someone of low IQ? Certainly not. Violence is a natural trait and psychology suggests that it is intimately connected to the sex drive within the subconscious mind.

Is there a difference in the pre-frontal lobe and how people delay gratification? I think not. There are smart Type A individuals and dumb Type A individuals. There are the simple-minded farmers and peasant folk that I have met around the world (I don't know their IQ's but we can assume that not all of them are high----just as we can of any other group of people). They wouldn't touch a flea and are patient with people. This is one reason I have come to love indigenous people---the absolute first time I ever met a truly caring, non-violent patient and loving people, was after Mount Pinatubo exploded in the Philippines, and my wife and I took it upon ourselves to take food, water, and medicine to the Aeta Tribes people who lived around Mt, Pinatubo. There was no greed in these people who just lost everything (The women didn't even have tops to wear (---wait a minute, were they always like that????)). (I'm joking of course, these natives still wore nothing more than something over their waist.) When everything we brought was quickly gone, you could see how disappointed the other people were, that they didn't get any. Yet they were still so humble and thankful and embraced us, and wanted us to join them with the little food they did have.

Have you ever been to New York? There are smart, high IQ New Yorkers---I have certainly dealt with many of them in the Stock Market---and they can be real assholes and certainly anything but patient when compared to my Mid Western sentiment.

Why are the Japanese so peaceful----it has far more to do with their traditional planter-culture and their strong group ethic. As this traditional culture breaks down into a more Modern (western-influenced) culture, violent crime has increased. There are dumb people and smart people in Japan just like anywhere else. I wouldn't ever attribute it to a higher IQ, or believe Japanese to be smarter than other people. In fact the wonders and benefits of the Japanese educational system are largely a myth. I would never put my child into the Japanese educational system.

I would be very surprised to find there to be a difference in the development of the pre-frontal lobe of any ethnic group.

I think that you over-generalized violence and aggression---for example the brutish bar-room fight type of aggression is only one kind of violence that runs through a society and would need to be separated from combat violence, road rage, and any other form of violence that runs through modern society.

I think that there are far more existential, economic, and social factors that are more significant to the causes of specific types of violence than the IQ of an individual. Someone with a lower IQ may be more likely to fall victim to such factors because of where their choices put them.

 

there is no apology for not facing the person before you in real time.
If someone is disturbed by this they can pull the plug.
Your apology is for acting foolish.
for trying to defend a position that you have to convince others to consume.
That is not what i do.
I call upon your intelligence
to rise to your personal occasion which is just as much mine as yours and I will maintain integrity and I will not allow ignorance in our shared space.
To speculate about what others may have done or to replay endlessly your petty details is called gossip
You use a whole page to make your presentation and what you are doing is trying to explain yourself, Why would you need to explain yourself if you know what you saying?
I know what I mean and I mean what i say.
Demostrate to your compatriot despirator's how you can say it is not so.
We don't need your sorry ass apology to maintain our integrity.
You are a sad case if you think anything you can say to offend or anyone else here who is of their own mind
We can pick you up and lay you down with the closing of a book or a click of a button but you will never be able to forget this encounter and you shouldn't if you care about our life here and the condition of our planet.