Verily. So what would be some evidence that a person is rational?
As in, for example, anybody that has undergone a litteral lobotomy can probably be safely filtered out. But I’m sure we can get more specific.
What attributes be required for a person to be capable of reason?
Yo, Pedro! You’re up!!
On the contrary, Biggie is the first to admit that, in being “fractured and fragmented”, he continues to be “drawn and quartered” in regard to moral and political conflicts like this. What he suggests then is “moderation, negotiation and compromise” in regard to government policies. That the biggest danger comes from the extremists at both ends of the political spectrum who insist that “you are wrong times a 1,000” if you don’t think exactly like they do.
Which suggests that any categorical denial of a relatively progressive contextual change , is an admission of falibility of ‘conditional’ existence states.
An unpopular tenet nowedays; admittedly not synchronous with either nationalistic or internationalizational objectives, but just as well, adhereing to middle of a road positions of possible outcome. ( Albeit with a slim chance of seeing much duccess.)
But the point is, no fracture should last for ever, and some can even mend in time, regardless of the best possible outcome used judgementally.
If he consistently gets things right? The higher the consistency, the more likely one can say the person is rational. A scientific approach to this question is no doubt very useful, but I think we ought to remember Popper here who said science is better at falsifying theories than verifying them. In other words, what we would have to look for is cases of failed predictions rather than fulfilled predictions. Even a perfect track record might, for example, only indicate that the person has a perfectly reliable source other than his/her own rational faculties (like maybe a perfectly rational friend).
Well, I suggested a few: intelligence, conscientiousness, and attention to detail. ← Wanna start with these?
y’all ever study MBTI & suchlike?
A lobotomy is always of the frontal lobe.
That’s… to me that brings up the same as “if they are logical.” It’s not so much an identifiable attribute as something that itself requires testing and, like you said, leads to all sorts of problems.
This is the kind of thing that rings true to me. Intelligence, I mean I guess. I personally don’t see why a person with little intelligence cannot be rational. And, again, presents the same problem as the two attributes above.
Conscientiousness, though, and attention to detail, those I feel I can work with. First of all, they are both attributes that in themselves have nothing to do with rationality and are easily identifiable. Easily tested, too. Maybe conscientious we could do some work in laying out testing standards for.
I think the question is more about how you go about identifying what group of people can be identified as rational, not so much how you would go about testing individual cases of rationality.
This is because, if the quest is to come up with something that all rational people are forced to accept, it seems to me rather important to be able to identify who makes up this group.
Playing games with the earth’s population is going to blow up in everyone’s faces.
Maybe I should have said “separate from” instead of “nothing to do with.”
Great! Now what do you say if I tell you I agree with him?
Come on, Biggy. We’ve been over this. You know I understand how all this stuff is rooted in dasein. You’re just too much of a contrarian to accept that.
Yikes! I’m not gonna go that far!
But I take your point. Your interest revolves around how I (him, they, we) got to where I am today, with the political prejudices I have. The question is: how did I get to the point of being a trucker convoy supporter. Right?
I don’t know where to begin as we could go all the way back to my birth, but everything between then and April 26 2014 is quite uninteresting and frankly irrelevant. But on April 26 2014, I started my Reforming Democracy thread. My frame of mind at the time? I was a leftist without even knowing it. What I mean is, like most people who are uninterested in politics and oblivious to current affairs, I was a perfect subject for MSM brainwashing. And because MSM has had a unambiguous agenda to brainwash consumers with left leaning information and values since at least 2010, and most likely long before, my mind had been molded since as far back as I can remember into the perfect conduit for leftist philosophy. But to me, at the time, I didn’t recognize it as left leaning philosophy–they never prefaced it with any “trigger warning”–it just seemed like “common sense”, like “what everybody knows”, like what I could take for granted. So going into Reforming Democracy, I never thought the views and ideas I would express in that thread would be controversial, or come up against opposition, in the least (at least the ones I thought I could take for granted). ← This is what I mean by uninteresting and irrelevant… there isn’t much to explain except that I had, all my life, allowed the media to brainwash me.
But the thread Reforming Democracy opened my eyes to a wide range of alternative views that I never thought anyone actually took seriously, and as this was my first attempt to dig deep into political philosophy (and political reality), I encountered people and views that I didn’t realize existed and were so widespread.
The thread lived for a good 2 years, and it went through 3 phases. Phase one (April 26 2014 to June 22 2014) was characterized more or less by what I would expect out of a threaded named Reforming Democracy. We hashed out ideas and possible solutions to the problems of corruption in politics. At some point, Uccisore, Eric_The_Pipe, and lizbethrose joined the conversation and that’s when I noticed the theme of conservatives vs. liberals (mainly between Uccisore (the conservative) and Liz (the liberal)), and on June 22, I asked this question:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=185699&hilit=preamble&start=225#p2476730
Phase two (June 22 2014 to November 1 2014) was me learning from these 3 about conservatism and liberalism. Believe it or not, I was completely oblivious to these philosophies up to this point. Sure, the terms “conservative” and “liberal” rang a bell–I remembered them from high school social studies–but I was very fuzzy on what they meant. Uccisore, Eric (another conservative), and Liz educated me. I have Ucci and Liz to thank for enlightening me about the political aspects of these philosophies and Eric for the economic and legal aspects. They helped flesh out and solidify these concepts for me, and I came out the other side agreeing with conservatism. I also came out seeing the problem of corruption in politics as not a problem between the government and the people but between factions–that is, between Republican politicians and liberal citizens, and between Democrat politicians and conservative citizens. In other words, when someone calls out the government on charged of corruptions, it’s almost always a conservative calling out a Democrat or a liberal calling out a Republican. As far as the party that conservative or liberal voted for, they can do no harm (and you might rightfully guess that this injected a huge dose of skepticism on my part towards charges of corruption–is it real corruption or business as usual?).
Ultimately, I came to understand the conservative position to be summed up in terms of the American Constitution: the constitution is the best recipe for optimal government–limited and as free of corruption as possible–and with the exception of a few amendments, this is what they are trying to “conserve”. So on November 1 2014, I announced that I was taking the thread in a new direction–an in depth look into the American Constitution:
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=185699&hilit=preamble&start=750#p2504294
This lasted until Oct 11 2015 when I finally got through the last of the amendments. Despite having learned a ton through each phase, the thread as a whole left me incredibly cynical, the most cynical I’d ever been about democracy and the state of corruption in American politics (and Western politics generally). Any hope I might have previous had for reforming democracy had, at this point, been blown to smithereens. So I gave America a scathing review, predicting much of the chaos and breakdown of society we saw in 2020, and (more or less) cursed it: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 0#p2592419. The thread continued beyond that point, and I continued to contribute, but for all intents and purposes, it was dead.
One of the most destructive effects the thread had on me was it left me incapable of believing anything I got from the media (not just mainstream but any source that wasn’t just my senses). The phrase I coined to express this was “the information pool is contaminated”–meaning that if you poison just one corner of the pool, it won’t take long before the entire reserve is contaminated. You see, before coming to this insight, I held to the phrase “a few bad apples don’t spoil the bunch”… but they do. A spoiled apple will eventually spread its mold to the rest of the bunch until they are all rotten to the core. I learned that because all sources of information originate from a human being, a human being who, by his very nature as a human being, CANNOT be impartial, and to one extent or another, has skin in the game, he will have a motive, to a certain degree, to spin the information in his favor. Drawn to its logical conclusion, I learned that this meant I could never know whether the information I was getting was objectively true through-and-through or was tainted with bias or plain falsehoods. Thus began a phase in my life of extreme skepticism, a phase in which I set the bar extremely high in terms of the criteria I would accept for believing something. The only thing I would allow myself to believe (to call knowledge) was what I saw with my own two eyes.
This skepticism remains today, but until recently, I at least was able to remain relatively centered in my political opinions about what I saw or read–that is, skeptical of both the left and the right–though I still favored the conservative right at least in principle–that is, what the right stood for–but as far as the information I was being fed, neither side won favor with me.
Then came July 1 2018–the day I quit drugs and alcohol. Youtube became a replacement. That is to say, I started watching youtube videos to kill the boredom and the deadly silence that comes with living alone. I wasn’t specifically looking for political videos but somehow the youtube algorithm got me hooked on them. That’s when I really started paying attention to what was happening in the world. And it really shocked me how much Ucci and Eric were right (specifically about the universities, journalism and Hollywood being a cesspool of the most corrupt lying leftist Marxists you can imagine–it sounded like a crazy conspiracy theory at the time, but there it was on youtube–a well known fact according to the sources I was being fed). The more I watched, the harder it became to refrain from taking a stance on either the left or the right side. It was a real struggle of cognitive dissonance–do I continue to stick to my impartial stance of strict skepticism, or do I fall for the brainwashing and allow myself to be consumed by the right? I really wanted to take a side–the “right” side–and I found that as much as I wanted to formally stick to my guns and claim that none of it counted as knowledge (all just hearsay), emotionally I was powerless to resist. I felt like an intellectual whore spreading her mental legs to allow whatever disease ridden filth to inseminate her mind. And I was addicted to it. I kept coming back for more. I had to settle on explaining my position thus: I don’t claim to know any of the stuff I feel strongly about, but I certainly believe it on faith. And most recently, especially with this Freedom Convoy, I kinda just threw my concerns about knowledge out the window and accepted that faith is good enough.
And that brings me to today, to this discussion. I really do wish I could somehow know what the truth is, but I’m so far convinced that what I see on youtube is really going on that I don’t really give a damn anymore. Youtube keeps wanting me to watch clips from Fox News, and I know they have their fair share of information twisting tactics, but I don’t think they’re nearly as corrupt as, say, CNN or The Washington Post or The New York Times. I don’t think Fox News outright lies like the latter news sources do, but they will do things like give you partial truths, or will tell you when the left has done something evil but will never tell you when that evil has been undone or punished (keeps the viewer enraged or scared), and of course, is never shy about sensationalizing their stories with emotional rhetoric and clearly subjective opinions (though I don’t think they deny this). But a lot of what I watch is direct first-hand footage of the things going on in the world, so unless it’s being tampered with by some fancy video editing software or its all actors and special effects, I tend to trust it.
So to bring this full circle–the truckers–I support their cause and believe in what they’re doing because they’re fighting an extreme left-leaning authoritarian government–their enemy is my enemy–and I don’t trust Fauci’s inconsistent science as it seems to serve the interests of authoritarians and Big Pharma, and frankly it just reeks of pretentious acting. I got to this point through the path I outlined above–starting as a moderate lefty (without knowing it) and then being persuaded by the conservative views of Eric and Ucci, and finally, after quitting drugs, by the real world events I see on youtube.
How’s that?
It’s an uncomfortable truth because I use definitional logic constantly. The most true things are simply self evident.
My form of proof is original to me. If it’s false, you can’t exist to be having this conversation with me right now.
It’s the best proof structure I know of (I mean, I guess you could send someone to hell for a couple minutes and bring them back)…
But the thing is… as simple and elegant as my proof structure is…
People still disagree with me. It’s insane. It’s not something I’ll lose an acquaintance over. I just look at them as a blind person who’s having the color green explained to them. Someone with a mental handicap …
So I just keep pushing forward for their sake since they can’t help themselves.
I don’t get it. If I make predictions about what’s going to happen in reality, and I consistently get it right, is that not an indication that I’m thinking rationally?
The ability to be rational is a form of intelligence. But of course, one’s IQ is just a quotient. It is derived from measures of several more specific intelligences. So sure, in principle, you could have a person who is exceptionally high in the ability to be rational but low in all other measures of intelligence, and their overall IQ would probably be low.
But we’re talking about personal attributes (personality traits I guess), which will never be absolutely precise indications of a person’s ability to be rational. So even though it’s true that a person could, in princple, be rational without having a high IQ, that’s a moot point since the same will be true of any attribute.
I think we do. Conscientiousness is considered one of the Big 5 Personality Traits and I believe they have very well refined tests that measure these.
.
Yeah. Given my own assessment of your posts here. It’s just that I’m acknowledging that my assessment of your assessments is in turn a subjective frame of mind rooted existentially in dasein. As opposed to those like Urwrong who insist that others are wrong times a thousand if they don’t share his own frenetic moral and political dogmas. With you, it’s basically probing where you fit in here between the fulminating fanatic pinheads like him and the fractured and fragmented minds like mine.
Indeed, at times…
Of course! I don’t exclude my own points from my own set of assumptions.
Indeed, and for others who wish to explore that further: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=197493
In fact, you’re up there.
Again, for me, the point isn’t how far you go but the extent to which your point revolves around an objectivist dogma, and the extent to which you explore your point as the embodiment of dasein, and the extent to which you are able to close the gap between what you believe about the trucker protest in your head, and what you are actually able to demonstrate that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to believe in turn.
Come on, what can you really know for certain about how your indoctrination as a child impacts what you believe about anything as an adult in the is/ought world “here and now”. And who is to know for certain that had your experiences as an adult been profoundly different you might be here condemning the protests instead. Given the lives we live there are always going to be experiences we do not either fully understand or fully control. The existential components rooted in dasein are either more or less understood by you.
And all of this…
…is [to me] but a classic example of how you as an individual came to accept and then to reconfigure particular political prejudices given access to “alternative” views. You claim you were brainwashed by the MSM as though you can absolutely, positively demonstrate to us, issue by issue, what it means to be brainwashed.
Now, me, I start with the assumption that the MSM is part of the media industrial complex, part of what Gloominary refers to as the media “corporatocracy”.
The “deep state”. I have my rendition of it: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … s#p2187045
You and others their own.
But to pin down “absolutely, positively” how the media is brainwashing us in regard to either the covid pandemic or the role of government? Nope to me that’s more in the way of political prejudices rooted subjectively in dasein than in the pinhead objectivist dogmas of those like Urwrong.
And you?
Instead, just more of the same. Phase two. A continuation into the excursion of own particular life derived from your own particular experiences intertwined into your own particular exchanges here at ILP. Uccisore, too, used to become infuriated at me when I took the discussion from “the truckers protest is either right or wrong” to “right and wrong are themselves but the embodiment of dasein”. He was just another political objectivist that I drove up the wall here. Five will get you ten [I suspect] if you bet that I was the reason he left ILP.
In fact, I challenge Ucci and Eric to provide us with their own set of political prejudices in regard to the truckers protest. Or to any other “conflicting goods” of note.
Anyone here able to reach them?
Bottom line [mine]: I’ve been infuriating objectivists online now for years.
The question here then [mine] is just, “Are you one of them?”
As I noted on another thread, it’s all just the usual “blah blah blah” political prejudice qua dogma from someone who “for all practical purposes” is probably closer to Urwrong than even he is willing and able to admit.
“The ‘real world’. The world as it really is inside my head. Let me tell you about my life in order to demonstrate why, even though your own very different life brought you to completely conflicting political prejudices, you should jettison them and think more and more and more like me instead.”
Something like that, I’m figuring.
Let’s back up a little here.
Iambiguous conceded the pro choice argument when put on the spot about what all rational and virtuous people would do.
Then about 10 posts later he used abortion again as a context to choose. That’s mental illness.
Another box iambiguous is in is that we’re not in a debate culture…
Sure we’ll watch singing and dancing competitions by the billions…
Who’s out there searching for the best debator in the world. ME.
The problems that political people raise wouldn’t even exist in the first place if ideas were popular…
And that’s not only cultural, it’s global.
We don’t have a debate culture.
Debate heals. Debate stops problems before they ever start so that we don’t give iambiguous to even have the luxury of talking about dasein with protesting truckers or not.
Iambiguous is intellectually dishonest and can’t think outside the box, and he gets defensive and offensive.
It’s that simple.
Indeed, all the way back to the source of his “condition”.
Let’s debate that. 
Iambiguous.
When you have had enough conditions in your life (And I’ve had way more than you). You transcend conditions.
I know you can understand that.
If you want to talk about the ‘source’… ignorance, if you mean the ‘source’ in a different way… there was no beginning.
Conditions? No, I mean “conditions”. When you have one of those you say truly bizarre and wacky things that you refuse over and again to actually demonstrate are true. You simply believe them “in your head” and that’s what makes them true.
And not just those who think they are Napoleon. 
Actually, iambiguous…
This is the first time you’ve defined your private use of the word “conditions” to me. Thank you.
You do realize that if we walked in a park yesterday and admired a tree together and then saw the same tree the next day and said I had a condition for believing it was there, that you’re the one with the condition … correct?
But you don’t think because god doesn’t exist that you won’t be punished for it… right?
Maybe I’ll just stop talking to you. Maybe that doesn’t bother you. But if you do this to EVERYONE! Maybe everyone will stop talking to you. And I can guarantee you that’s a shitshow for you.
Ask me what you really want to ask me.
Do we live forever? Yes we do. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here right now having this conversation.
Right now is a subset of our extinction from the entire timeline. I don’t just mean that matter always changes form. I mean continuity of consciousness.
What do you remember about your 5 year old self?
If you were ever deleted from existence, you wouldn’t be here right now. I understand that with no argument people can always say, “I disagree”…
It’s the easiest thing in existence to do.
And that’s what you always do. You don’t debate. You don’t use what all virtuous and rational people would believe … you are a farce of your own self.
Now, some would call this a bizarre and wacky thing to proclaim…unless you were able to provide definitive evidence that, in fact, we do live forever.
In other words…
“If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here right now having this conversation.”
…is not even remotely in the vicinity of definitive evidence. More like the sort of gibberish one would expect from someone with a “condition”.
Or, for others, proclaiming a faith in a God, the God, their God’s capacity to bring about immortal salvation for their very soul. But then providing absolutely no definitive evidence that their God actually exists.
You say fantastic things. And I don’t doubt that you believe them.
Let’s leave it at that, okay?
No. We’re not going to leave it at that.
You’ve never seen. So you don’t know.
People like you who’ve never seen are defensive.
So for a person like you, I made a LOGICAL argument.
Explain this to me.
Very simple.
If you ever cease to exist at any point in the timeline.
Complete oblivion. Forever.
You can’t exist right now. You right now is part of your timeline… correct? A lack of oblivion.
If you were ever truly born, your unique self HAD to have come from nothing at all… a logical impossibility.
So for once in your life iambiguous, you have to actually use your brain.
I’m not sorry I’m making you use it.