First of all, it’s important to keep in mind, governments are often proponents of conspiracy theories. For example, the Bush Administration (whether maliciously or otherwise we’ll save for another space and time) propagated the myth that Saddam Insane conspired with Al Qaeda to blow up the twins . Additionally, pseudoskeptics like tentative manufacture and propagate conspiracy theories all the time. They’ll belittle, denounce and deride antiestablishment conspiracy theories as complete and utter lunacy in one breath, but then they’ll turn around and promote proestablishment conspiracy theories in another, as if all or virtually all the information out there contradicting climate change/global warming is being manipulated, obfuscated and disseminated by oil men and what not. Now, I’m not accusing you of this, I’m merely bringing attention to it because I think it needs to be addressed.
Secondly, my answer to your question is, no. We have to be able to differentiate between conspiracy theorists who use largely philosophical and scientific methods and who’re willing to put their ass, their reputation and their conspiracy theories on the line, making them wholly or partly falsifiable, from those use largely pseudophilosophical, pseudoscientific and religious methods. Conspiracy theories aren’t necessarily inherently, intrinsically pseudophilosophical and pseudoscientific, some can be partly or wholly fallsified, if the conspiracy theorist rightfully, rightfully admits that governement or whatever clandestine entity in accused and suspected of conspiring, is NOT assumed to be omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient… capable of manipulating all or virtually all information out there to serve it’s assumed agenda, but rather has degrees of power, presence and knowledge to be able to manipulate some information for their advantage/benefit. Of course where we draw the line between what the government is manipulating and what it isn’t is ambiguous and dependent on the specifics of each case. We know individuals within Governments and other entities conspire all the time, and are sometimes brought to justice, this bit is not contentious. Just as conspiracy theories can be (dis)proven in court, so too can they be, not necessarily (dis)proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, here, but given more or less credibility, and that’s what we’re, or should I say, that’s what I’m, attempting to do.
One last thing, I could just as easily accuse you and “your ilk” (“accidentalists”, “sheeple”) of believing in anything and everything the msm tells you, no matter how outlandish and preposterous (Al Gore - “the sky is falling, if you don’t pay me carbon taxes by x date you and yours are doomed”), but I won’t, you know why? Because I’m a little bit more sophisticated than that. Some people who’re skeptical of conspiracy theories think this way, but some don’t, although from my experience, most do, now.
One more last thing, the word skeptic is a misnomer. The conspiracy theorist could just as easily refer to himself as a skeptic, because he’s not willing to gobble up all the tripe the establishment peddles on a daily basis, where as pseudoskeptics often do without question.
People can be selfish, people can be liars. One can acknowledge this, without necessarily jumping to the other extreme, and concluding all people are selfish, all people are liars, or all people within government/media are selifish, or all people within government/media are liars, or anything that supports the establishment is a lie (absolutist thinking).
The point is it’s not as crystal clear cut as either side makes out to be, the truth is somewhere in the middle, between one paradigm and the other, and sometimes it’s closer to one side, and sometimes it’s closer to the other side, depending on the individual specifics involved. Believe me, I know how much people hate complexity. There comes a time in many threads where we’re temporarily forced to reexamine our methodology. I hope we’ve done that to everyone’s statisfaction.
I was addressing your attitude of ''I decide what’s relevant".
My jab was not nearly as cheap as your sophistic methods.
And you somehow think that heat is not required for this process?
What do you think keeps the fusion process going?
Well then, I challenge you to show me the flaws in his theory.
“The Conspiracy Theorist”, how convenient. Every theory that has not been proven for the full 100 percent is automatically rejected, except when it is your own own. Your mind must be very cozy and safe.
James - right here is another example of how value ontology can identify what is going to happen -
________ will select the input his mind will process in terms of what supports his position. He has already decided that he is right, so whatever would change his opinion is rejected.
This is the ‘‘self-valuing’’ of someone who equates thinking with already knowing everything. It is a relatively rigid self-valuing, a fragile intellect. Most people who begin to learn to think act in this way.
Another example: Eyesinthedark will accept everything that incriminates Jews, and reject things that do not, as he values himself primarily as anti-Zionist. His hatred is what gives him his drive. He has found himself to be strongest in this modus. He even goes to the length of defining people with whom he disagrees but can not intellectually overcome as Jewish. Once you have understood it (once it has “clicked”), value ontology is constantly demonstrated to apply to absurd lengths.
We can identify a priori what people will say and accept, what they will process and what they will unconsciously reject, if we have a picture of their self-valuing, of what their sense of self requires to maintain itself.
Of course, when it comes down to life and death situations, both the above will abandon their beliefs and shift to a more basal, less tentative self-valuing. This is what makes them different from a thinker - the thinker has already included all the Earthly uncertainty and danger in his intellectual position.
I’m curious what Science you think that I have misrepresented…?
The last thing that I thought we were discussing was military strategies.
As far as the whole “heat” issue, there is a pedantic issue involved in the word “heat”.
Technically in thermodynamics, the word “heat” refers specifically to the transfer of thermal energy, not the thermal energy itself. In common English, the word “heat” refers to the thermal energy regardless of any transfer involved. Thus, the Carnot engine is called a “heat engine” because it functions by the transfer of thermal energy from one place to another. An automobile engine functions by the creation of thermal energy, commonly referred to as “heat”, but doesn’t really care about the transfer of that thermal energy.
That is exactly it. This sheds some more light on the dynamics of people and their negative values. We can see how the following applies in the case of Eyesinthedark:
The negative particle (“Jews” - he is a proper, i.e. emotionally fed antisemite, needs his racial hatred to fuel his political activity against Zionism) keeps circling the positive core. The excluded particle in part defines the ‘‘charge’’ of the whole, the exclusion adds to the strength. If Eyes would think more subtly about Jews, this would in fact weaken him. The same can be seen with the nazi’s and all isolationist organizations. They require a great deal of ignorance about their perceived adversaries in order to be able to properly hate them and mobilize themselves.
As you may have seen I’m now kind of playing with this myself - using “muslim” as a banner for people who are for example irrational, anticapitalist, antiwestern, antisemite, tolerant of medieval religious politics, and/or believing in objective morality. All these are decidedly incompatible with my self valuing, and the term muslim includes all of these properties. I am not completely serious here, but it is perhaps useful to just dump all discarded forms of thinking on one heap, as they do form a kind of goo, and add an emotional element to it to create a real distance.
What about those who aren’t religious freaks and don’t “understand” evolution?
Never-mind that. About warming and in an attempt at a general appeal.
Now that we’ve gotten the trick of notconflating anthropogenic, planetary warming and pollution–or something like that–and the U.K. has come on-board, with professorial support from Richard Lindzen of M.I.T., can’t we all agree that warming is better than cooling, assuming stasis to be improbable?
Yes! We can! (Oops.)
Do you really want those glaciers to be increasing in size and do you really want them crawling down Continents, mountain ranges and over your house? (I know some people do.)
Let’s not forget that our current iteration of civilization grew out of an ice-age. (More about iterations later.)
I live in an area of the U.S. of A. (between 41st and 42nd latitude, Eastern) where there is evidence around every corner that the land was, that is, at one time, covered–that would be entirely–covered by massive glaciers. This is to say nothing of the enormous amount of water that once–obviously–flowed through this area from melting glaciers: immense glacial moraines, gigantic, smooth boulders atop the highest hills.
If you think stasis is likely, then you are an …<whack (to head)-“restraint of pen and tongue”, whack (to head)-“restraint of pen and tongue”>.
Having gotten over that, can’t we all agree to take the scare out of “global warming”?
Holy hell, you still don’t understand. Yes, heat is part of the process. That doesn’t change the fact that a hurricane does not produce more heat than it consumes (quite the opposite, as I recall).
Some other thread doesn’t rectify the errors he’s made here. His crap about supposedly refuting heliocentricity hasn’t made a good case for him though.
Evidently my statement was much more complex than I thought, as you all seem to be having some trouble.
Convenient. See, if I am in point of fact correct (which I do perceive myself to be in this case), by selecting information as I have, I fit your schema and thus am categorized as “a relatively rigid self-valuing, a fragile intellect.” Unfortunately, you don’t include anything in that which says I’m inherently wrong, only that I’m shallow, ignorant, and weak. I don’t believe I know everything but I do try to restrict my comments on this site to what I do know. That is perhaps where we differ.
A quote from a sales seminar: “If I have learned one thing, people don’t buy bread based on what you tell them. They don’t buy bread on what you show them, oh no. They buy based on what you don’t tell them and don’t show them. If you hide things from them–unpleasant things, things they don’t want to hear, and you can do it in a sincere fashion, every door will open for you.” Basically what I’m saying is all you need to make the observation you’ve made is a crash course in sales tactics, not “value ontology.”
Yeah, I’d probably agree with whatever absurd idea a lunatic with a gun to my head wants me to.
The first bit of science you botched was that “[hurricanes] mostly redistribute, but create slightly more heat (increasing entropy).” This is incorrect, as I have cited.
We were indeed discussing military strategies. You claimed that the US military has the power to create hurricanes at will using "targeted heat” by various methods including “ozone depletion, oceanic atomic explosions, [reflect solar omitted as you attribute it to the Russains] radar and laser focus from satellites, and surface coloring providing light absorption and/or reflection to suit the need.” Neglecting that heat is only one of myriad factors of tropical cyclone formation is a pretty serious scientific error. Even given extremely warm waters, a strong, stacked convection, and ample water vapor, moderate to heavy wind shear can tear the storm to pieces. There is an interesting hypothesis regarding the future of wind shear by Dr. Jeff Masters that seems to also significantly damage your assertion. You may also want to review Dr. Masters’ blogs on the past Atlantic Hurricane season to get a better idea of why I’m suggesting heat alone is no where near sufficient to cause a tropical cyclone.
I’m honored that you three feel compelled to come and derail this thread on my behalf.
You have not even begun to think about what you are recalling.
I wasn’t going to say it, but indeed. You were thinking fusion keeps going because of the cool breeze that all this fusion produces.
I understand the difference between an dynamic running on turbulence-heat and an engine running on fuel producing heat and pressure, but neither dimisnishes heat. Unless it breaches the law of conservation of energy. It is of course possible that such a hurricane draws heat from one place (for example the air above it) and leaves that place cold, while increasing the temperature in other places. That’s not what you are saying though.
Ah, so his science is not wrong. See how quickly that turned around. Yes, you added “at least”, but even so it’s clear that you were just saying what you felt like saying.
To the observer, there’s nothing complex about a hypocrit. To himself, the consequences of his statements seem endlessly complex. How else could he avoid them?
It only took me fifteen minutes of reading your posts to see what you’re worth intellectually. I have no doubt that you are not quite as weak in all areas. You would not be alive if you were.
Basically all you do here is show that the one aspect of VO that I have explained to you is valid and verified in practice. Of course value ontology is compatible with economic and marketing strategies. It’s also compatible with physics, chemistry, biology, psychology - it brings all fields under a single “law”.
Naturally you can only bitch about something like that even if you could understand it - after all you didn’t get it from a book that was recommended to you by a man who waxes his beard.
You probably don’t really mean “agree”, but it’s possible that you’d actually change your mind at gunpoint - given that the gun was polished and the hand holding it gloved in silk.
The ‘d’oh’ is regarding your apparent inability to see how an internal combustion and a sun do not ‘run’ by the same method as a hurricane. But you are quite right; that’s not what I’m saying, because that’s not how it works. The hurricane ‘draws’ in vapor from below, creating a drop in pressure, which in turn pulls in surrounding air. The rising column of vapor condenses, which fuels the warm core of the storm. Cool air is ejected via the outflow (cirrus clouds), some sinking back down the column.
Where did I say his science isn’t wrong? I just acknowledged that an unrelated thread is unrelated.
How exactly am I being hypocritical?
Again with the petty insults. I apologize for my diminutive remark regarding you and James’ effectively equating all the BTL members to pawns, but did it really piss you off that much?
…so wait. I should only value information I get from books recommended to me by men that wax their beards? Is that also explained by “value ontology?”
You’re right; I meant that I’d tell him/her I agree. But thinking further, whether or not I actually changed my belief would be discursive. For instance, if I didn’t believe a little girl with an ice cream cone in a delightful little pink dress was an unlikely candidate for homicidal mania, and said little girl proceeded to kick me in the gut, pull a gun on me and demand that I believe she is in fact a likely candidate for homicidal mania, I’d be obliged to alter my opinion. Also, why would the gun being polished and the assailant wearing silk change my mind?
I still don’t see why I’m a hypocrite for not wanting to read his “Rational Metaphysics” as proof of his credibility re the mechanics of hurricanes and conspiracy theories, but I’ll read some to appease you; I recall having read some of his RM thread on BTL (did he post it here too?) and being somewhat underwhelmed.
Actually, I opened the thread to see what it was all about. It’s just that the first page was dominated by you and James cryptically going back and forth about plans and warnings, and when he proceeded to describe how he ‘gave’ us–the other members of BTL–to you a la warm apple pie for the new neighbor, I was somewhat taken aback, especially given that I hadn’t ever talked to James prior to his rants (which both Capable and I found somewhat ridiculous) on BTL. I concluded that I was reading a rather pretentiously fantastic (as in ‘of or relating to fantasy’) conversation in which I was an object, at least to some degree, and I made the poor decision of commenting on it. As you’ll note, I refrained from engaging it further.
Some researchers claims it’s false, because they have studied the ice samples at the poles and concluded it’s a repeated occurance ever since the dinos millions years ago.
Either global warming is real, or untold tend of thousands of scientists around the world are in a secret conspiracy to lie about it, or HAARP is secretly frying polar regions with high every radio waves to melt the ice as well as steadily adding electromagnetic energy into the atmosphere to raise global temperatures.
On the other side, the global warming skeptics are either right, or stupid naive people with no real training or access to scientific work and data, and/or they’re connected somehow to the big energy companies and lobbying groups (Republican party in the US, which is the #1 obstructor of global climate change efforts and progress)… yeah, I’m going with this last one.
