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Sargon
Sea Gull
Joined: Aug 28, 2007
Posts: 248
Location: Fairfax, VA
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 Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:12 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, I know about cognitive dissonance. In the levels that we are exercising this, we are not going to have major position shifts, but rather just counteract our natural confirmation biases that cause us to overstate our own position's strengths, such as found with people who cannot understand their opposition and attribute it to idiocy rather than other factors. Cognitive dissonance will mostly work if we continue to defend our new idea, sort of like how you try to claim that you love hot weather. |
True, but once you get past the phase of playing the devil's advocate to understand the opposition, it becomes less useful on certain topics (as elaborated here). Also, studying economics does seem to help with cognitive dissonance imo since much of economics has an emphasis on identifying all of the explanations for various phenomena and trying to "see the unseen" effects. |
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 5708
Location: United States
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Sargon wrote: |
True, but once you get past the phase of playing the devil's advocate to understand the opposition, it becomes less useful on certain topics (as elaborated here). Also, studying economics does seem to help with cognitive dissonance imo since much of economics emphases identifying all of the explanations for various phenomena and trying to "see the unseen" effects. |
Right, true, I like Eliezer Yudkowski. The issue is that I thought this would be an interesting topic and I wanted to test the ability of people here to do something like this. It is true though that economics is known for being 2 handed where people can analyze situations more thoroughly. |
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Orwell
Outer Party Member
Joined: Aug 09, 2007
Age: 18
Posts: 3666
Location: Room 101
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:19 pm Post subject: |
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Oh what the hell, here's my attempt for democracy. My entire intellectual framework is probably going to need to be rebuilt from scratch once we let this thread die.
As James Surowiecki showed in Wisdom of Crowds, decisions made by aggregate groups of people outperform even the top experts in any field, so technocracy or meritocracy is clearly inferior to democracy in decision-making, as is monarchy, oligarchy, or any other centralized system. By decentralizing the decision-making process, better decisions will be made because all relevant information can be taken into account by groups better than it can by individuals. For the same reason that the free market is often most efficient in coordinating economic activity, democracy is the best system for making political decisions. It is not necessary for every single voter to be intimately knowledgeable of every minute issue, and besides, no individual that you might want to entrust power to will be that knowledgeable either. Rather, voters can use cues such as what they plainly see about the performance of the economy to decide whether to support an incumbent, thus vindicating the status quo and the current policies, or, if disgruntled, to support the party out of power as a "vote of no confidence" in the current policies/administration and to demand a change. This is why a two-party system is best, in multi-party systems, the opposition is split so many ways that it may not be possible for one to win out over the majority party; this problem occurred recently in Zimbabwe when voters opposed Robert Mugabe, but because they were split between Simba Makoni and Morgan Tsvangirai, neither opposition candidate was able to garner sufficient votes to lead to the change the Zimbabwean people so desperately wanted. Representative institutions help to further the will of the people, but it would be even better to move away from the current system of democratic republic closer to the ideal of true pure democracy. By putting more issues to direct vote with initiatives and referenda, California is leading the way in this regard. Someday, it may even be possible to carry out polling over the Internet, allowing the people to be even more intimately connected with government decisions. Also, it is well-known that democracies do not go to war with each other, even if democracy were a less efficient method of decision-making (which it is not) this would be a strong enough point in its favor to demand the spread of democracy over the entire world. The individual rights and freedoms that we enjoy today could never exist outside of a democracy, and we must preserve the democratic tradition against any form of elitism or infringement on anyone's political rights. Further, the only way to have a valid democratic system is through universal suffrage, as any attempt to prevent "stupid people" from voting will degenerate into a tool of oppression whereby ideological opponents to the ruling party will be silenced and such tests of voter "worthiness" could also be used to further racism in the American South. Only by ensuring everyone the vote, and promoting higher voter participation rates through get-out-the-vote initiatives and possibly even mandatory voting, will be able to truly preserve freedom and liberty in the world.
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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH |
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 5708
Location: United States
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Orwell wrote: | Oh what the hell, here's my attempt for democracy. My entire intellectual framework is probably going to need to be rebuilt from scratch once we let this thread die.
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Well, I'll be proud if I can leave some kind of mark. |
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Orwell
Outer Party Member
Joined: Aug 09, 2007
Age: 18
Posts: 3666
Location: Room 101
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Awesomelyglorious wrote: | | Cognitive dissonance will mostly work if we continue to defend our new idea, sort of like how you try to claim that you love hot weather. |
Hey. I do love hot weather. I biked 10 miles in the hot sun today, and it was great. I love the feeling of the warm sun on my face, even the bright, almost blinding light in my eyes. It's greatly invigorating.
See, it does work. 
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FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH |
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Orwell
Outer Party Member
Joined: Aug 09, 2007
Age: 18
Posts: 3666
Location: Room 101
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:41 pm Post subject: |
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Oh, and also, AG, there have been documented cases where people's views have shifted from "devil's advocate" games similar to what we are doing here, especially as several people have done what amounts to a short essay in support of different views. Even so, it probably is healthy to use our reasoning skills to understand multiple different views, even if this causes us to become temporarily confused about our own views, because then our newly exercised reasoning abilities will help us to form better opinions rather than being stuck with whatever we had previously decided our beliefs to be.
Hey, no one has made a really religious post? I would have expected a couple of those by now. And nothing about mercury causing autism. This thread could get a lot more fun than it already is. Maybe it should be stickied.
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IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH |
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 5708
Location: United States
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Orwell wrote: | | Oh, and also, AG, there have been documented cases where people's views have shifted from "devil's advocate" games similar to what we are doing here, especially as several people have done what amounts to a short essay in support of different views. Even so, it probably is healthy to use our reasoning skills to understand multiple different views, even if this causes us to become temporarily confused about our own views, because then our newly exercised reasoning abilities will help us to form better opinions rather than being stuck with whatever we had previously decided our beliefs to be. |
I am not surprised, but the issue is "how likely?". Yes, you are right, I should have qualified my statement, however, I do not think that a change in position caused by an activity like this would be purely cognitive dissonance but rather be more likely due to a newly recognized internal contradiction.
| Quote: |
Hey, no one has made a really religious post? I would have expected a couple of those by now. And nothing about mercury causing autism. This thread could get a lot more fun than it already is. Maybe it should be stickied. |
I know!!! It should have some more weird things like that! Most of the stuff we are getting is just philosophical or political! Grr.... |
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Orwell
Outer Party Member
Joined: Aug 09, 2007
Age: 18
Posts: 3666
Location: Room 101
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| Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Awesomelyglorious wrote: | | I know!!! It should have some more weird things like that! Most of the stuff we are getting is just philosophical or political! Grr.... |
Well, after arguing utlitarianism, Keynesianism, and democracy, I'm pretty tired for the night, especially since it's almost midnight here. I'll post something about the false science of evolution and the big pharma hoax that's brain-damaging all our children tomorrow. Maybe I'll even put forward a case for the Iraq war.
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Apple_in_my_Eye
Snowy Owl
Joined: May 08, 2008
Age: 39
Posts: 131
Location: Lake of Fire
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 8:29 am Post subject: |
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Liberals have no reverence for anything. They want change for the sake of change and appear to be completely blind to the loss of things like tradition, values, community, and faith.
Those things only grow slowly, and once lost they must start again from seedlings. They are sacred; they must be regarded with respect and reverence. And not simply because they "should be," but because to do otherwise strips human experience of any important meaning. Liberals exist in a worldview where nothing has intrinsic meaning or value. It's all morally relativistic, addle-brained nonsense where differentiating between a man marrying a woman, and a man marrying his horse, becomes impossible. If you are free to re-define everything, then nothing means anything.
How are we to know that stealing is wrong? It was wrong before there were laws against it -- it's wrong because we have a thousands-of-years old tradition telling us it's wrong. And if people could be trusted to determine wrong-ness for themselves there would never have been a need for these traditions and guiding principles in the first place. Without them we live in chaos.
We have other traditions that similarly include unfathomable wisdom about life and human nature. It is arrogant to think we can capriciously change these values without significant consequence. It may not be easy to precisely spell out what the danger is, but to think there is none is foolish and arrogant.
[NOTE: this is part of a thread called "Argue for a position you do not believe in"!] |
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snake321
phoenix
Joined: Mar 26, 2006
Age: 29
Posts: 3235
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Awesomelyglorious wrote: | | snake321 wrote: | | Well I'm rather confused here because I don't believe I have a position, except trying to define truth. I never take sides in debates over things, "liberals vs. conservatives", "religion vs. science", etc etc.... I usually try to look at all sides and referee the situation. |
Well, you do because you must. Your very continued existence is a positive statement about the world. You also take sides, usually your own side, but still a side. The fact that you attacked Apple as being psychotic and told him that if he really thought that then he should be locked up is a sign that you aren't passively neutral but rather have active opinions on matters.
| Quote: | | What exactly do you mean by my position? |
Your position is what you think or consider correct on a given issue. If you think that polygamy should be outlawed, then that is your position on polygamy, and you could, in this thread argue for it's legalization. Heck, your position could be so basic as to be that your life is worth living or that it is an acceptable use of time to post on WP, and you could argue that life is not worth living(perhaps not recommended because of high risk individuals) or that posting on WP is an intolerable waste of time(also not recommended because then you could drive away cool people). But right, if there is anything you consider true or have an opinion about, then you can consider that your position. |
Ah ok... So basically I'm arguing against my position.. here i go.
Thinking is a chore, I don't understand why anyone would want to think, much less have their own opinions to call theirs. It's much easier to identify in a group so who cares about having an individual identity? It's more fun to not even acknowledge common since, and I don't care much for facts. My opinions are already pre-made by the group before facts are given, and that ignorance feels absolutely great. I like to live in the absolute arrogance of conformity, always believing I am too great, too special for anything bad to ever happen to me because bad sh** only happens to other people. Positive values such as honesty, intelligence, loyalty, integrity, selflessness, etc are all dull and boring, and for weird people. But dishonesty, disloyalty, stupidity, ignorance, selfishness, hypocracy, etc feel good so I chalk that up to being human nature. Besides, it turns things into a nice spiffy reality tv show like deal. Yet, I still wanna talk as if I am "avoiding the negative" and be blindly optimistic, to induce my apathy.... Even though I prefer negative values. |
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Ancalagon
Sea Gull
Joined: Dec 26, 2007
Posts: 243
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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Many of you may be heliocentrists. You were probably taught in school that the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice versa. You probably believed them, despite the evidence of your own eyes, because they told you science had proven it conclusively. But what if they were wrong?
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, there is no preferred frame of reference. That theory is remarkably consistent -- a fact which is often taken to have disproved the theory of aether. In fact, the aether theory is consistent with relativity, just not required -- a very long way from disproof. There were experiments done around 1900 to try to detect the aether that failed -- it was thought that they failed because the aether was not there, but they actually failed because they were trying to detect the movement of the earth through the aether! Scientists failed to take into account the possibility that the earth simply doesn't move, that the entire universe simply rotates around the earth once a day and vibrates once a year -- the one and only theory consistent with relativity, the theory of aether, a strictly literal interpretation of scripture, and the facts.
Once again, science has shown that the bible was meant, not as a religious text with moral, philosophical, and religious truth, as so many commie-loving liberal wackos will tell you, but as a strictly literal, utterly scientific textbook. Even the bits that are falsely called "poetry".
Geocentricity -- it's what's for dinner.
(Tune in next week, same time, same channel, for our next episode: 'Flat Earth Society: Vindicated')
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"If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself." -Einstein
"Don't think outside the box - find the box" -Andy Hunt & Dave Thomas |
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 5708
Location: United States
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:11 pm Post subject: |
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| snake321 wrote: |
Ah ok... So basically I'm arguing against my position.. here i go.
Thinking is a chore, I don't understand why anyone would want to think, much less have their own opinions to call theirs. It's much easier to identify in a group so who cares about having an individual identity? It's more fun to not even acknowledge common since, and I don't care much for facts. My opinions are already pre-made by the group before facts are given, and that ignorance feels absolutely great. I like to live in the absolute arrogance of conformity, always believing I am too great, too special for anything bad to ever happen to me because bad sh** only happens to other people. Positive values such as honesty, intelligence, loyalty, integrity, selflessness, etc are all dull and boring, and for weird people. But dishonesty, disloyalty, stupidity, ignorance, selfishness, hypocracy, etc feel good so I chalk that up to being human nature. Besides, it turns things into a nice spiffy reality tv show like deal. Yet, I still wanna talk as if I am "avoiding the negative" and be blindly optimistic, to induce my apathy.... Even though I prefer negative values. |
If I could critique you a little bit, I think that your argument uses too many of the terms you use to describe the opposition, and not enough terms that your opposition may consider and thus it feels hollow. I mean, you describe your own position in too many negative terms rather than giving it a positive spin. Perhaps that is just my opinion though.
| Ancalagon wrote: | | Once again, science has shown that the bible was meant, not as a religious text with moral, philosophical, and religious truth, as so many commie-loving liberal wackos will tell you, but as a strictly literal, utterly scientific textbook. Even the bits that are falsely called "poetry". |
Not too bad. I am a little concerned about the part I quoted. But, I really liked the part about the aether and how that relates to the history of science and relativity as few people could even come up with a good argument. Perhaps even attacking the mathematical models used as arguments about movement of various heavenly bodies would also work, at least in their ability to come to a non-geocentrist conclusion. Then again, I am not sure how much you have any conservative Christianity in you given your GK Chesterton quote. |
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Ancalagon
Sea Gull
Joined: Dec 26, 2007
Posts: 243
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Awesomelyglorious wrote: |
| Ancalagon wrote: | | Once again, science has shown that the bible was meant, not as a religious text with moral, philosophical, and religious truth, as so many commie-loving liberal wackos will tell you, but as a strictly literal, utterly scientific textbook. Even the bits that are falsely called "poetry". |
Not too bad. I am a little concerned about the part I quoted. But, I really liked the part about the aether and how that relates to the history of science and relativity as few people could even come up with a good argument. Perhaps even attacking the mathematical models used as arguments about movement of various heavenly bodies would also work, at least in their ability to come to a non-geocentrist conclusion. Then again, I am not sure how much you have any conservative Christianity in you given your GK Chesterton quote. |
The Chesterton quote (as well as the poker one) has been in my signature for awhile, it's not in any way connected with my post. I am a Christian, though whether conservative, moderate, or liberal depends on who makes up their definitions, and Chesterton was definitely a conservative Christian.
That last part was a bit overdone and disconnected. Thing is, I don't believe in geocentricity, and I don't believe in an excessively literal interpretation of the bible, but I do believe in the bible. So I didn't put tons of bible quotes in, like a real geocentrist would have done (and yes, there are real geocentrists -- a pamphlet I got in the mail inspired my post).
The theory part was easy, as I have a decent hand-wavey understanding of relativity and the aether theory. It could be expanded, too, it's close enough to a theory that was taken seriously once.
I think it would be a lot harder to do something I disbelieve in strenuously -- like abortion. I couldn't do that with a straight face, although I might be able to do it as satire with biting sarcasm on top. Maybe that's why there aren't any religious topics -- too serious, therefore too painful and too hard.
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"If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself." -Einstein
"Don't think outside the box - find the box" -Andy Hunt & Dave Thomas |
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 5708
Location: United States
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Ancalagon wrote: |
The Chesterton quote (as well as the poker one) has been in my signature for awhile, it's not in any way connected with my post. I am a Christian, though whether conservative, moderate, or liberal depends on who makes up their definitions, and Chesterton was definitely a conservative Christian. |
Well, mostly Christians would know about GK Chesterton, he is mostly a popular author, and distributionism(?) is hardly popular enough as an economic philosophy where his name would pop up there. I think anyone who has read Orthodoxy would know that Chesterton is a conservative Christian given his belief in the importance of tradition, heck, the man converted to the Catholic church for sake of tradition.
| Quote: | | That last part was a bit overdone and disconnected. Thing is, I don't believe in geocentricity, and I don't believe in an excessively literal interpretation of the bible, but I do believe in the bible. So I didn't put tons of bible quotes in, like a real geocentrist would have done (and yes, there are real geocentrists -- a pamphlet I got in the mail inspired my post). |
Right, I know. Everyone knows about the Catholic church and geocentrism. Also, I know that there are real geocentrists too, I think there is even an organization that says it will pay big bucks to whoever disproves geocentrism, not like anyone would ever win it. They also have similar things for evolution.
| Quote: | The theory part was easy, as I have a decent hand-wavey understanding of relativity and the aether theory. It could be expanded, too, it's close enough to a theory that was taken seriously once.
I think it would be a lot harder to do something I disbelieve in strenuously -- like abortion. I couldn't do that with a straight face, although I might be able to do it as satire with biting sarcasm on top. Maybe that's why there aren't any religious topics -- too serious, therefore too painful and too hard. |
Yeah, I could definitely think so.
Well, I can understand that idea and it makes sense. |
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 5708
Location: United States
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| Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." - Mahatma Gandhi
The dietary composition of the people of this world is a concern for me and I would like to argue for a solution to this problem. A major problem with the world is meat, people grow animals for it, and then they eat these animals, and this is a major moral problem that needs to be addressed and rectified.
The killing of animals for one, is an immoral act in and of itself. Animals clearly have an ability to suffer as can be noted from their reactions to painful stimulus and their psychological development, and people intuitively know this. When we see a dog limp and whimper, do we think that these are actions of joy? No. We know that animal suffers and our hearts go out in sympathy to the poor creature. When we saw Bambi lose his mother, we did not look upon this callously, but rather recognized that such a loss would be painful, and even though this deer was anthropomorphic, the element of pain is not one that is lost on anyone. In fact, to argue further, to do anything but recognize the suffering of animals would merely be a biased action on our part only in the gratification of our sense of aesthetics rather than cognizance of the common bond of feeling. We do not slaughter the mentally challenged for food, why do we do so to our animal kin?
Some may say that I have only justified vegetarianism, however, they fail to recognize that enslaving animals is bad as well. Can we put an animal in chains and expect that this somehow is amazingly better than murdering it? I think not! To enslave a creature is to take away it's life no less than to put a bullet through it's brain, and because of that, I argue that we cannot conscionably accept the use of animal products in our lives, for just as I would argue towards animal pain, animal slavery is wrong.
Finally, a reason we should not eat animals is because it is wasteful. If one has studied biology a bit, then one understands the notion of a trophic level, at each higher trophic level less energy travels up. Given that every animal is a trophic level above the most basic food, plants, these animals are less efficient at meeting our physiological needs, which only drives up the cost of land which could be used for crops that could be used to feed more people with less area than meat would require. Not only that, but the method of raising these animals often involves clear-cutting and thus the destruction of precious, and vital rainforest resources that are needed to replenish our oxygen, that are valuable resources for biological research and that are a part of our heritage as members of the ecological community.
In short, veganism is right because killing animals is murder based upon their ability to experience pain, other use of them is slavery because we take them without regards to their will in order to promote our own uses, and animal use is inefficient because of energy loss due to trophic levels, issues of land use, and issues of biodiversity lost. |
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