Either. The point is, you have got to convince *me*. Yes, either is possible. A religious martyr provides proof of their belief by dying for their cause (or proof of their stupidity in believing what they believe). Proving *what* you believe in can be easier or harder (I believe that gravity exists, and I have a pretty convincing proof of it, come up to the roof with me;-) but I'm an athiest, and have no proof on the non-existence of god).
But - and here's the caveat - you can't use personal belief in a logical proof. Logic has to contain elements that can be objectively demonstrated; ie everyone can do the same experiment and come up with the same results.
I hope that's not babbling. I have'nt had my coffee yet.
Damn. Still gotta eat. Not that it's all bad....barbecued steak to perfection, potatoes in the skins, and green beans on the side... YUM
Since I'm sitting here waiting on the two minute limit, doesn't anybody wonder why they instituted that two minute limit? I mean, if you you have a higher karma (mine recently went up, due to some extremely successful karma whoring in the latest poll) - doesn't it make sense that those people with higher karma (ie, more intelligence/information to share, or more wit) should have a *lower* post time, so we can share the info/wit around?
Yeah, slashdot. Yeah, slashcode. Bah. Humbug. and....whatever. Screw it, it's time for another beer.
I know I said I was done with this thread: but I'm going to leap into the Lion's den once again. I'm going to make a disclaimer here: I've only studied psychology and physiology up to the undergraduate level, and that was many years ago, and only a required part of my curriculum, not one I was particularly interested in. I will say that even 20 years ago I thought that most of it was bunk, and I was basing that opinion on my personal observations of how people functioned. IANAP, etc.
Let's take it point by point:
"I do know know what I am talking about, however it appears as though my definitions are not in concert with popular discourse. They are formed from actual behavioral science studies."
Then there's also Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. A very well known phenonemon;
Behavioral science suffers from a certain problem, as regards theory: the observer is likely to interpret things as he sees them. This is not new and will not be surprising to you, but think about it - every human being has a unique viewpoint in some respects. Therefore, every behavioral scientist is going to interpret the actions of his/her subjects differently. There is *NO* objective way of interpreting the data, as there is, with, say gravity, or the Laws of Thermodynamics. Before you try to tell me that there is a large group of psych/physio people who do think there is, let me remind you that they all have the same kind of training; and the training they have is in theory that is just as subjective as their own opinion is. In the physical sciences, results can be repeated, and repeated, and repeated, down to where the results are similar to many orders of magnitude between different experiments concerning different "subjects". In psych/soc there simply is no such thing as reproducibility that is not contaminated in one way or another by way too many factors to count.
Even more to the point, you can repeat the same experiment with the same subject in the behavioral sciences several times, and get many wildly different results. This is one reason why I still regard behavioral science as a (don't take this wrong) infant science: we don't have any really solid, reproducible theories behind how the mind works; so all we are really doing is guessing. Sometimes we're wrong, sometimes we're right, and sometimes there are spectacular successes...and spectacular failures. But *we don't know enough about how the mind works yet* and we may never know enough - the human is an incredibly complicated piece of biomachinery.
Behavioral science (I'm avoiding the term BS here for obvious reasons) also suffers from another dissonance: the behavior of a singular or small group of subjects is not likely to be, and most of the time is not at all, applicable to large groups, such as defined by religious, national, or cultural groups. Yet it is still applied as if it does (profiling is a good example).
We'll stay away from the criminal side for now; that's a whole 'nother argument.
Applying Cognitive Dissonance to a society as a whole is not really a good idea. Not all people suffer from it, and those who do suffer from it do so in different ways, and in differing degree. Cognitive Dissonance, I believe, was a term invented by government and private sociologists to explain why people were unhappy. I think it's a bullshit term; there's *always* *somebody* unhappy with the so called "status quo". I'd like to stay away from that too, it's really irrelevant to what we're talking about.
I don't agree about rational vs. irrational behavior. I think that rational vs. irrational should be applied wholly to thought; leave instinct and emotion out of it. Instinct/emotion are hardwired responses generated by millions of years of evolution. The very term "rational" implies thought; therefore applying the term "irrational" to mean "not thought" is ridiculous - it should mean "not logical thought". Personally I feel that that particular definition is an invention of modern psychology. It is probably more
*Your* behavior may not be governed by rational thought; but *mine* certainly is! Your behavior is your problem (and mine if you show up on my doorstep, but be sure that rational thought would govern my behavior).
Animals are governed by emotions and instinct. People are generally governed by rational thought, emotions, and instinct. (Note I didn't say all people; the others are referred to as irrational).
Playing video games, even violent ones, for 20 years has not made me a violent person, and never will. No amount of claims by you or some armchair shrink somewhere is ever going to change that. Now if someone points a gun in my face, I'll act violently - but rationally - if I can run or duck, I will, if not, I'm going to try to take it away from them any way I can. It has nothing to do with video games, or sports, nor anything else - it's called self-preservation.
Some people act irrationally by offering violence for no reason. They BEHAVE irrationally because they've never learned otherwise.
Emotions, instinct, rational or irrational thought, all affect behavior. But rational people govern their behavior, they don't let it govern them. We're not animals, man. That's what differentiates us from them. Behavior is the end result of *all* of the above, not just emotions or instinct. This seems to be something you don't understand. You aren't one of these "primal behavior" people, are you? If so I think you're totally nuts.;-)
God, I hate shrinks. I'd like to take most of them I'd met to a not so nice little bar I was at once in Mexico so they can see some really irrational behavior. Then some of these soccer mom shrinks might start taking a different view of what they're babbling about.
Oh, you're saying they get locked up for rational behavior and not for irrational?
Or are you trying to put a different definition on the word "behavior"?
Advertising doesn't cut it. Advertising manipulates emotion and conscious thought, as does propaganda.
Behavior is the end result, not some nebulous instinct or internal process. It's a description of what someone did, or does; the end result of instinct, emotion, and rational thought combining.
You don't say "My behavior causes me to leap two feet in the air when the tiger roared" you say "I behaved like a frightened ape when the tiger roared" or "the the apes behavior when the tiger roared indicated instinctual fright"./me thinks you don't know what you're talking about; or you're not expressing it well.
Not all behavior is instinct. For instance, a firefighter will run into a burning house; this is an example of the rational mind overcoming instinct (emotion - fear).
Attitude is a description of a viewpoint, not behavior (unless you use the slang verb "to cop an attitude").
Have any sources, or is this going to be all anecdotal? I'll be honest when I say that I also see a lot of psychobabble by "learned experts" that is simply nonsense when applied to the real world.
Human beings are much too complex to attribute all their behavior to emotion and instinct. We're not animals.
Except that kinetic energy is m*v. Cut your mass in half, your kinetic energy gets cut in half. Yeah, I know, it's star trek. Kinetic energy is a end component, not some kind of value you could magically conserve. KE doesn't mean *anything* unless you apply a vector force against it, like an impact. It's just an abstract value.
Now if they said that this device conserves *inertia* I could halfway accept it, even in ST speak.
The case of the skater is different. There it's conservation of rotational inertia (decreasing the moment arm).
I've never seen that before...that is just plain...wacky.
Not to mention makes no sense. I know, I know, it's Star Trek.
"Once the plasma stream has passed through the driver coil assembly, it reaches the exhaust port and passes into space. If the coil itself is not engaged, the Impulse Engine reverts to behaving like a simple Newtonian fusion rocket with a performance thousands of times less than its normal capabilities. Under these circumstances the exhaust system is designed to vector the thrust of the engine in order to correct for unusual mass distributions or provide off-axis thrust for enhanced agility."
[snip]
"Early space vessels had to mount so called "retro-rockets" in order to slow themselves down as they approached their destination, or else turn their craft backwards and use the main engines to slow down. One further advantage of utilizing the driver coil in an Impulse engine is that this rather cumbersome requirement is removed. The driver coil essentially allows the ship to reduce its mass in order to allow a - relatively - small amount of kinetic energy to create a great deal of velocity. Once the coil is discharged, the ship returns rapidly to its normal mass. The kinetic energy remains constant, so the velocity is vastly reduced without any need to use the engines thrust."
Yup, it's Star Trek all right. Let the ship return to it's normal mass, and automagically it slows down, because it's *kinetic energy remains constant*. Uh...ok.
"The truth is in prehistoric times, humans fought as much to far less than they do now, were without doubt alot happier, "
Oh? and you know, because...you lived thru it? You must be one of those low ID old fogies. "Yeah, in my day, we were happier digging roots out of the ground, getting injured hunting wooly mammoths dying of simple infection, and having our teeth rot out before we died at the age of 24. You kids have it easy."
I bow to your wisdom, oh elder.
Seriously, if you think civilization is the root of all evil, that evil people did not exist before we had civilization, technology, and urbanization, you are an idiot. Sir.
Hm. If at least a portion of behavior wasn't governed by rational thought, I doubt we'd have civilization.
Few people - that I've met, anyway - who play video games are violent at all. AMAF most of them are pretty peaceful nerds who'd rather sit in front of a monitor then even play a mild contact sport.
"And no, I don't consider "porno movies" actual movies so they don't count, but those don't waste much time as I just watch short clips."
No use in watching the entire movie anyway, none of them have any plot. Just the same people fucking over and over again in different ways. Easier just to skip the garbage in between fuck scenes...
Slashdot Mirror
Either. The point is, you have got to convince *me*. Yes, either is possible. A religious martyr provides proof of their belief by dying for their cause (or proof of their stupidity in believing what they believe). Proving *what* you believe in can be easier or harder (I believe that gravity exists, and I have a pretty convincing proof of it, come up to the roof with me ;-) but I'm an athiest, and have no proof on the non-existence of god).
But - and here's the caveat - you can't use personal belief in a logical proof. Logic has to contain elements that can be objectively demonstrated; ie everyone can do the same experiment and come up with the same results.
I hope that's not babbling. I have'nt had my coffee yet.
SB
Yeah...like I said, I could pick it apart quite a bit more. The real sticker, as you and I both pointed out, is in his "belief".
:-)
Believe in something? Wanna convince me? Ok, prove it
I have these kind of arguments with religious people all the time...
SB
I'd rather give everything, and just drink beer.
Damn. Still gotta eat. Not that it's all bad....barbecued steak to perfection, potatoes in the skins, and green beans on the side...
YUM
Since I'm sitting here waiting on the two minute limit, doesn't anybody wonder why they instituted that two minute limit? I mean, if you you have a higher karma (mine recently went up, due to some extremely successful karma whoring in the latest poll) - doesn't it make sense that those people with higher karma (ie, more intelligence/information to share, or more wit) should have a *lower* post time, so we can share the info/wit around?
Yeah, slashdot. Yeah, slashcode. Bah. Humbug. and....whatever. Screw it, it's time for another beer.
SB
Heh.
http://www.selfknowledge.com/8905.htm
SB
I know I said I was done with this thread: but I'm going to leap into the Lion's den once again. I'm going to make a disclaimer here: I've only studied psychology and physiology up to the undergraduate level, and that was many years ago, and only a required part of my curriculum, not one I was particularly interested in. I will say that even 20 years ago I thought that most of it was bunk, and I was basing that opinion on my personal observations of how people functioned. IANAP, etc.
Let's take it point by point:
"I do know know what I am talking about, however it appears as though my definitions are not in concert with popular discourse. They are formed from actual behavioral science studies."
Then there's also Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. A very well known phenonemon;
Behavioral science suffers from a certain problem, as regards theory: the observer is likely to interpret things as he sees them. This is not new and will not be surprising to you, but think about it - every human being has a unique viewpoint in some respects. Therefore, every behavioral scientist is going to interpret the actions of his/her subjects differently. There is *NO* objective way of interpreting the data, as there is, with, say gravity, or the Laws of Thermodynamics. Before you try to tell me that there is a large group of psych/physio people who do think there is, let me remind you that they all have the same kind of training; and the training they have is in theory that is just as subjective as their own opinion is. In the physical sciences, results can be repeated, and repeated, and repeated, down to where the results are similar to many orders of magnitude between different experiments concerning different "subjects". In psych/soc there simply is no such thing as reproducibility that is not contaminated in one way or another by way too many factors to count.
Even more to the point, you can repeat the same experiment with the same subject in the behavioral sciences several times, and get many wildly different results. This is one reason why I still regard behavioral science as a (don't take this wrong) infant science: we don't have any really solid, reproducible theories behind how the mind works; so all we are really doing is guessing. Sometimes we're wrong, sometimes we're right, and sometimes there are spectacular successes...and spectacular failures. But *we don't know enough about how the mind works yet* and we may never know enough - the human is an incredibly complicated piece of biomachinery.
Behavioral science (I'm avoiding the term BS here for obvious reasons) also suffers from another dissonance: the behavior of a singular or small group of subjects is not likely to be, and most of the time is not at all, applicable to large groups, such as defined by religious, national, or cultural groups. Yet it is still applied as if it does (profiling is a good example).
We'll stay away from the criminal side for now; that's a whole 'nother argument.
Applying Cognitive Dissonance to a society as a whole is not really a good idea. Not all people suffer from it, and those who do suffer from it do so in different ways, and in differing degree. Cognitive Dissonance, I believe, was a term invented by government and private sociologists to explain why people were unhappy. I think it's a bullshit term; there's *always* *somebody* unhappy with the so called "status quo". I'd like to stay away from that too, it's really irrelevant to what we're talking about.
I don't agree about rational vs. irrational behavior. I think that rational vs. irrational should be applied wholly to thought; leave instinct and emotion out of it. Instinct/emotion are hardwired responses generated by millions of years of evolution. The very term "rational" implies thought; therefore applying the term "irrational" to mean "not thought" is ridiculous - it should mean "not logical thought". Personally I feel that that particular definition is an invention of modern psychology. It is probably more
Reality....Television....
For some reason I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that phrase
(Heard of it; I don't watch TV
Are you saying it's plotless too? Hey, WTH, it's TV....doesn't surprise me in the least.
SB
You're right; I should have previewed, I meant to say "proportional" to m*v. My bad
SB
I should have previewed.
"Emotions, instinct, rational or irrational thought, all affect behavior. But rational people govern their behavior, they don't let it govern them."
Should be "But rational people control their instincts and emotions, they don't let them govern their behavior."
That's it for me in this thread, I'm starting to babble just like SG.
SB
Just to put it plainly:
;-)
*Your* behavior may not be governed by rational thought; but *mine* certainly is! Your behavior is your problem (and mine if you show up on my doorstep, but be sure that rational thought would govern my behavior).
Animals are governed by emotions and instinct. People are generally governed by rational thought, emotions, and instinct. (Note I didn't say all people; the others are referred to as irrational).
Playing video games, even violent ones, for 20 years has not made me a violent person, and never will. No amount of claims by you or some armchair shrink somewhere is ever going to change that. Now if someone points a gun in my face, I'll act violently - but rationally - if I can run or duck, I will, if not, I'm going to try to take it away from them any way I can. It has nothing to do with video games, or sports, nor anything else - it's called self-preservation.
Some people act irrationally by offering violence for no reason. They BEHAVE irrationally because they've never learned otherwise.
Emotions, instinct, rational or irrational thought, all affect behavior. But rational people govern their behavior, they don't let it govern them. We're not animals, man. That's what differentiates us from them. Behavior is the end result of *all* of the above, not just emotions or instinct. This seems to be something you don't understand. You aren't one of these "primal behavior" people, are you? If so I think you're totally nuts.
God, I hate shrinks. I'd like to take most of them I'd met to a not so nice little bar I was at once in Mexico so they can see some really irrational behavior. Then some of these soccer mom shrinks might start taking a different view of what they're babbling about.
Pardon my rant.
SB
Oh, you're saying they get locked up for rational behavior and not for irrational?
/me thinks you don't know what you're talking about; or you're not expressing it well.
Or are you trying to put a different definition on the word "behavior"?
Advertising doesn't cut it. Advertising manipulates emotion and conscious thought, as does propaganda.
Behavior is the end result, not some nebulous instinct or internal process. It's a description of what someone did, or does; the end result of instinct, emotion, and rational thought combining.
You don't say "My behavior causes me to leap two feet in the air when the tiger roared" you say "I behaved like a frightened ape when the tiger roared" or "the the apes behavior when the tiger roared indicated instinctual fright".
SB
Not all behavior is instinct. For instance, a firefighter will run into a burning house; this is an example of the rational mind overcoming instinct (emotion - fear).
Attitude is a description of a viewpoint, not behavior (unless you use the slang verb "to cop an attitude").
Have any sources, or is this going to be all anecdotal? I'll be honest when I say that I also see a lot of psychobabble by "learned experts" that is simply nonsense when applied to the real world.
Human beings are much too complex to attribute all their behavior to emotion and instinct. We're not animals.
SB
Except that kinetic energy is m*v. Cut your mass in half, your kinetic energy gets cut in half. Yeah, I know, it's star trek. Kinetic energy is a end component, not some kind of value you could magically conserve. KE doesn't mean *anything* unless you apply a vector force against it, like an impact. It's just an abstract value.
Now if they said that this device conserves *inertia* I could halfway accept it, even in ST speak.
The case of the skater is different. There it's conservation of rotational inertia (decreasing the moment arm).
anyway....
SB
"we shoot tomahawk cruise missiles at spammers, have Delta Force sneak in spammers' houses and 'neutralize' them"
I like those two ideas. Can we put the show on webcam? Please? I would pay good money to watch....
SB
#6 does not follow from #5 unless we could prove that #1 is "all" universes rather than "a lot of" universes.
Plus he's saying "I do not believe" and "beliefs about nature of reality". Believe is not proof, simply opinion.
I could probably pick it apart further but I'll stop there.
SB
But the Ringworld is 2 AU in diameter. It also can move (using EM fields to focus the solar output into a plasma jet). Magog, beat again.
(Bet that Ringworld also has more square meters of "decksize" too
SB
I've never seen that before...that is just plain...wacky.
Not to mention makes no sense. I know, I know, it's Star Trek.
"Once the plasma stream has passed through the driver coil assembly, it reaches the exhaust port and passes into space. If the coil itself is not engaged, the Impulse Engine reverts to behaving like a simple Newtonian fusion rocket with a performance thousands of times less than its normal capabilities. Under these circumstances the exhaust system is designed to vector the thrust of the engine in order to correct for unusual mass distributions or provide off-axis thrust for enhanced agility."
[snip]
"Early space vessels had to mount so called "retro-rockets" in order to slow themselves down as they approached their destination, or else turn their craft backwards and use the main engines to slow down. One further advantage of utilizing the driver coil in an Impulse engine is that this rather cumbersome requirement is removed. The driver coil essentially allows the ship to reduce its mass in order to allow a - relatively - small amount of kinetic energy to create a great deal of velocity. Once the coil is discharged, the ship returns rapidly to its normal mass. The kinetic energy remains constant, so the velocity is vastly reduced without any need to use the engines thrust."
Yup, it's Star Trek all right. Let the ship return to it's normal mass, and automagically it slows down, because it's *kinetic energy remains constant*. Uh...ok.
SB
He was talking about *external* reference vectors, not internal ones.
On a ship with AG, the internal gravitational direction has no relation whatsoever to your external coordinate system.
SB
Sex and violence, yeah, baby! Masturbation kills kittens! :)
SB
"But I do think that, any day now, I'm due to find a ring of invisibility, boots of speed and a +3 vorpal sword,"
:) Resist mightily, oh Faithful Cleric! or not.
Or a Succubus
My mom actually thought that drawing in the Monster Manual was porno....
SB
"The truth is in prehistoric times, humans fought as much to far less than they do now, were without doubt alot happier, "
Oh? and you know, because...you lived thru it? You must be one of those low ID old fogies. "Yeah, in my day, we were happier digging roots out of the ground, getting injured hunting wooly mammoths dying of simple infection, and having our teeth rot out before we died at the age of 24. You kids have it easy."
I bow to your wisdom, oh elder.
Seriously, if you think civilization is the root of all evil, that evil people did not exist before we had civilization, technology, and urbanization, you are an idiot. Sir.
SB
Might give 'em a taste for senseless plotlines....
Oh...the humanity....
SB
Hm. If at least a portion of behavior wasn't governed by rational thought, I doubt we'd have civilization.
Few people - that I've met, anyway - who play video games are violent at all. AMAF most of them are pretty peaceful nerds who'd rather sit in front of a monitor then even play a mild contact sport.
SB
"it's on a 100mbps connection"
*and your* little server too! Muwhahahahaha!
(now where the heck did I put my enchanted broomstick? Wicked Witch Need Coffee)
*bows head*
With deep shame, I have to admit I was never much of a Zappa fan.... so that one went right over my head...
SB
"And no, I don't consider "porno movies" actual movies so they don't count, but those don't waste much time as I just watch short clips."
No use in watching the entire movie anyway, none of them have any plot. Just the same people fucking over and over again in different ways. Easier just to skip the garbage in between fuck scenes...
SB