For ILP members, from someone who has been around these places for over 20 years and has made many of these mistakes.
For the Pseudo-Intellectual Narcissist
1- Do not post walls of words, sprinkled with Latin and Greek, referring to obscure writers requiring more reading, a translator, and months of homework.
After all that they may discover that all that gibberish and impressive bibliography was to claim something idiotic, or something absurd, or something unsubstantiated.
All that wasted time would produce a negative backlash.
2- Latin & Greek does not automatically mean depth and quality. Plenty of idiots wrote and thought in Latin and Greek, expressing idiotic superstitious bull-crap.
3- Obscure writers do not automatically mean profound insights…
If they had something worth reading, and returning to, they would not have remained obscure…their obscurity does not make them genius.
Plenty of obscure nobody’s that said nothing but crap.
4- If you insist on writing 5000 word essays on on-line philosophy forums begin with a brief overview of what you will claim and argue, and then proceed to do so.
5- Pretty big words do nothing but impress the illiterate, the stupid, and the impressionable.
Prose over prose, indicates a possible absence of reasoning…or seduction desperately trying to make absurdity palatable.
A nice metaphor does not compensate for an empty claim.
6- Such methods are part of what I call “sleight of word”, similar to how sleight of hand uses misdirection, confusion to perform a magic trick.
Most people want to be tricked, want to be mesmerized by magic…so you’ve got an audience, but if you then claim to be an actual magician then those that matter will realize that you are an insane buffoon and pay no more attention to you, leaving you with the gullible, needy ones.
7- People come on-line not to read entire philosophical treatise but bullet form perspectives - clear and concise.
If they wanted to read an entire book they would read a book, and not come on-line where a variety of psychotics, narcissist and charlatans prey on the gullible.
For the Pseudo-Intellectual Psychotics
1- Declarations are not arguments.
2- Statements of agreement or disagreement are not reasoning.
3- Dismissals, negations, rejections, nullifications followed by no alternative, no counter-argument, no superior probability, is not philosophy.
It is no more than high school semantics.
4- Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, extraordinary reasoning, extraordinary arguments.
Insanity may be its own defence, but it is not its own validation.
5- Ad Hominem is only tolerable when it is included in a text with reasoned arguments.
Calling someone a so-and-so is another declarative unsubstantiated statement.
6- A belief and the reasoning used - or that is lacking - exposes the one expressing them.
Opinions and their quality expose the mind to the world - its quality, its motives, its needs/desires, and its ailments.
7- Popularity is not an automatic victory.
Mediocre masses have believed all kinds of absurdities over the ages.
Popularity means shit.
People who seek popularity expose their motive and a personal need.
8- A positions quality is based on its verifiability, and falsifiability. How each reader can test the position independently, and put it into practice.
Everything else is mental masturbation, attention seeking, a call for help…
We’ll need a context of course.
I give you proof…as to why one should not waste too much time posting long arguments on such forums.
Practice the aphoristic style.
Sharpen your word focus.
In short, sharpened contexts then.
If only to take a break from your short, sharpened clouds.
you did one for iambig and one for ecmandu. you just gonna leave me out?