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John White
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 Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:11 pm Post subject: |
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| aggle-rithm wrote: | | John White wrote: | Lets get back to this, shall we?
| John White wrote: | Everything is the result of the brains efforts to make sense of its own internal messages. This actually says nothing. Boy if the human race only understood this
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In a way, I suppose you're right, but most of these "internal messages" have some direct correlation to an objective reality that can be shared and evaluated. The point made by the article, I think, is that some people try to attribute an objective reality to purely subjective thoughts. |
This is the usual level of perception of the ego/mind, but in fact this is illusion. Reality is entirely subjective. There is some work (russian)suggesting that DNA/RNA has properties of reciever/transmitter and that we, in effect, "broadcast" consensus reality to each other, but the hard truth is that no direct exterior input reaches the brain at all. Everything is decoded electrical signals which construct an internal universe within ourselves. Everything we percieve, from the light of distant stars to the very sensations of having a body (heartbeat, breathing and so on) are a second hand reality constructed inside our own heads.
Do you think you feel your bottom sat on your chair? You do not: you are feeling your re-construction of your bottom. Do you feel your fingers hitting the keys as you type? You do not: and you never have
We think it is "out there" but in fact it is "in here"...and we discard the majority of the input that we do recieve and assume and fill in the blanks
A practical application of this you should appreciate is the unreliabilty of eyewitness statements in court cases. Its extremely rare to get a unaminous description of a suspect when investigating unless all the witnesses had plenty of time to observe the person, and never when only viewed for a split scond...one will see brown trousers, another blue, one says tall, another medium, blonde hair or dark hair, etc etc etc
From these perspectives, the very "norms" that psychiatry tries to regulate are actually nothing more than generalisations, and dogma if considered more than that
_________________
Free your Self and Free the World
Last edited by John White on Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:13 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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jsut_peopel
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Joined: 21 Sep 2006
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:12 pm Post subject: |
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| chek wrote: | | jsut_peopel wrote: | | John White wrote: | Dont dodge the question. If critics have truly applied critical thinking (as opposed to simply thinking critical) then they must have applied it to their own reasoning. A belief that WTC7 collapased due to fire can only be held to be sound if and when other hypothesis have been considered and rejected. If critcs cannot say "there is this other possibile explanation but I rejected it as being highly unlikely" they havnt actually followed through a critical thinking process at all, and are willfully deluding themselves
I know your an engineer, but its really not that difficult to grasp. If critics havnt considered other hypothesis, they are in no position to cast aspirtions against truthers reasonings |
I didn't dodge the question, I merely pointed out that your "WTC7 collapsed due to fire" example is inaccurate. It is the same dodge CTers make when they claim that WTC 1+2 couldn't possibly have collapsed due to fire so it must have been CD. For some reason there is a strange inability of some people to address the cumulative damage these buildings sustained. Instead they pick which ever aspect of the damage they want to and ignore all the rest.
If you are modelling something, your initial assumptions are very important, they will determine how useful your model is. If you ignore large chunks of information, then your results will be useless. And that is exactly what you did in the post that I commented on above. You then, even after having this pointed out to you, made exactly the same mistake in your next post. It seems like willful ignorance on your part I am afraid. |
Still perpetrating the claptrap JP?
Asymmetric damage + scattered fires + heavy smoke = perfect simulation of a CD |
Still ignoring the evidence and creating strawmen eh?
| Quote: | | Engineer, you say? |
Well I have a masters degree and a PhD in engineering disciplines, so I guess so. Not that it particularly makes any difference when conversing on here, it just means that I have at least some understanding of some of the subjects under discussion.
| Quote: | | Seems like the wilful ignorance is coming from one direction, and it ain't from the truther's camp. |
Well yes, people who actually look for the truth, rather than parrot out the same old misinformation to be found on sites like 911truth, and who don't dismiss new evidence, simply because it is "new," could be called truthers I suppose. But it doesn't really help your case.
| Quote: | Hey it just occurred to me - what if in one of those one-in-a-trillion accidents of history, it just happened that way accidentally, yet that was the trigger that blew the lid off the whole scam.
Wouldn't that be, like, really cool? |
It just occured to me that that last paragraph, as written, doesn't really make any sense to me. |
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chek
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Joined: 12 Sep 2006
Posts: 3889
Location: North Down, N. Ireland
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:24 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="jsut_peopel"] | chek wrote: | | jsut_peopel wrote: | | John White wrote: | Dont dodge the question. If critics have truly applied critical thinking (as opposed to simply thinking critical) then they must have applied it to their own reasoning. A belief that WTC7 collapased due to fire can only be held to be sound if and when other hypothesis have been considered and rejected. If critcs cannot say "there is this other possibile explanation but I rejected it as being highly unlikely" they havnt actually followed through a critical thinking process at all, and are willfully deluding themselves
I know your an engineer, but its really not that difficult to grasp. If critics havnt considered other hypothesis, they are in no position to cast aspirtions against truthers reasonings |
I didn't dodge the question, I merely pointed out that your "WTC7 collapsed due to fire" example is inaccurate. It is the same dodge CTers make when they claim that WTC 1+2 couldn't possibly have collapsed due to fire so it must have been CD. For some reason there is a strange inability of some people to address the cumulative damage these buildings sustained. Instead they pick which ever aspect of the damage they want to and ignore all the rest.
If you are modelling something, your initial assumptions are very important, they will determine how useful your model is. If you ignore large chunks of information, then your results will be useless. And that is exactly what you did in the post that I commented on above. You then, even after having this pointed out to you, made exactly the same mistake in your next post. It seems like willful ignorance on your part I am afraid. |
Still perpetrating the claptrap JP?
Asymmetric damage + scattered fires + heavy smoke = perfect simulation of a CD |
| jsut_peopel wrote: | | Still ignoring the evidence and creating strawmen eh? |
Did I miss out anything crucial then? Seems like the important points of the Roberts Hypothesis are there.
| Quote: | | Engineer, you say? |
| jsut_peopel wrote: | | Well I have a masters degree and a PhD in engineering disciplines, so I guess so. Not that it particularly makes any difference when conversing on here, it just means that I have at least some understanding of some of the subjects under discussion. |
Excellent then you should have a better grasp than I on how ludicrous the new theory is. Theoretically.
| Quote: | | Seems like the wilful ignorance is coming from one direction, and it ain't from the truther's camp. |
| jsut_peopel wrote: | | Well yes, people who actually look for the truth, rather than parrot out the same old misinformation to be found on sites like 911truth, and who don't dismiss new evidence, simply because it is "new," could be called truthers I suppose. But it doesn't really help your case. |
'New' evidence? The building didn't just slide down? Kindly explain what this 'new' evidence is and how it alters perceptions one iota?
| Quote: | Hey it just occurred to me - what if in one of those one-in-a-trillion accidents of history, it just happened that way accidentally, yet that was the trigger that blew the lid off the whole scam.
Wouldn't that be, like, really cool? |
| jsut_peopel wrote: | | It just occured to me that that last paragraph, as written, doesn't really make any sense to me. |
Don't worry about it. It was probably the lack of a question mark at the end that threw you. My bad. |
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Jay Ref
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Joined: 20 Jul 2006
Posts: 511
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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| John White wrote: | Dont dodge the question. If critics have truly applied critical thinking (as opposed to simply thinking critical) then they must have applied it to their own reasoning. A belief that WTC7 collapased due to fire can only be held to be sound if and when other hypothesis have been considered and rejected. If critcs cannot say "there is this other possibile explanation but I rejected it as being highly unlikely" they havnt actually followed through a critical thinking process at all, and are willfully deluding themselves
I know your an engineer, but its really not that difficult to grasp. If critics havnt considered other hypothesis, they are in no position to cast aspirtions against truthers reasonings |
Untrue. We skeptics apply logic. Logic dictates that the most parsimonious explaination is most likely to be the correct one. But one need not rely merely on logic...there is also evidence.
- Evidence that WTC#7 was heavily damaged by falling debris from the north tower.
- Evidence that fires which could not be fought burned in an uncontrolled manner.
- Evidence in the form of testimonies from experts on the scene that collapse was imminent.
One need not even take Ockham off the shelf in this case as there is ample evidence of what happened to WTC #7 for most reasonable people.
However if one were to employ Ockham; the razor would excise the unneeded and untenable CD theory as it is simply unneeded and untenable.
-z
_________________
"Knowledge is good"
-Emil Faber
"God in heaven. Here's the hard-headed, evidence-only freak who will not, like we CTers, indulge himself in self-inflating, utterly misconceived fantasies." -kbo234 (who is NOT a nazi) briefly makes sense |
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John White
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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*yawn*
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John White
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:38 pm Post subject: |
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| John White wrote: | | Quote: | | Paranoid schizophrenics are prone to delusions, tales in which random events become deeply meaningful. Some believe in complex conspiracies; others think they are Jesus Christ. |
OK so far
| Quote: | | These stories sound crazy |
I suppose they do
| Quote: | | But they may be the brain's efforts to make sense of its own internal messages, suggests * Kapur, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and vice president of research at the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. |
Everything is the result of the brains efforts to make sense of its own internal messages. This actually says nothing. Boy if the human race only understood this
| Quote: | | In addition to other brain abnormalities, schizophrenics have too much dopamine. Just as addicts' desensitized dopamine systems make them feel that nothing matters, high levels of the neurotransmitter make schizophrenics believe that everything is significant. |
Theres science for this, agreed
| Quote: | | Because the addict's dopamine-driven salience system keeps telling her that something very important is happening, ordinary events appear intensely meaningful. That police car? That song on the radio? That man with a cigarette walking by? They must be part of a massive international conspiracy. |
But this does not mean that the view that there is an international conspiracy is proof of schizophrenia. Here this article is starting to slide
| Quote: | | Kapur calls it "biased inductive logic" -- a top-down effort to explain the feeling that everything seems important. The cognitive parts of a schizophrenic's brain create the paranoid tale in an effort to explain the constant red alert blaring from the dopamine circuits, using any stimuli available. This is why delusions are culturally appropriate. African schizophrenics may fear they've fallen under the spell of a shaman, while Kapur's patients in Toronto think that the Mounties are after them. |
Kapur has a theory. But again, this does not show the view that there is a conspiracy is evidance of schizophrenia. Have critics any idea how dangerous this is?
Did Stalin conspire (I:E: plan in secret) to engineer events contrary to the states public pronouncments? Did Hitler? Did Mao?
Guess what they did with people who tried to put out that information
| Quote: | | Kapur cautions that this theory is still speculative |
Right
| Quote: | | but it could support a radical idea: treating schizophrenia with cognitive therapy. If drugs control the overactive dopamine system, patients may then gradually unlearn their delusions. |
Now we are into spin: there is nothing radical or new about such a suggestion. Just what were the schizophrenics on the wards tonight taking as their compulsary meds?
Therefore, the extension of this article is: "Belief in Copnspiracy Theory is proof (strong indicator) of schizophrenia, and ergo anyone who exhibts such belief should be treated/considered for treatment with psychiatric drugs"
I'm sure that is a view held to some degree by a number of JREF members, for which I can only say:
"Forgive them, they know not what they do"
And read some R D Laing!
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=r+d+laing&btnG=Google+Search&me ta=
I wonder what the result of a poll asking critics "should truthers be sectioned for their own good" would be? |
Do you agree with my reasoning about the inherant dangers of this thinking Jay Ref or do you advocate locking up and forcibly drugging dissenting views?
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Free your Self and Free the World |
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jsut_peopel
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Joined: 21 Sep 2006
Posts: 82
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:51 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="chek"] | jsut_peopel wrote: | | chek wrote: | | jsut_peopel wrote: | | John White wrote: | Dont dodge the question. If critics have truly applied critical thinking (as opposed to simply thinking critical) then they must have applied it to their own reasoning. A belief that WTC7 collapased due to fire can only be held to be sound if and when other hypothesis have been considered and rejected. If critcs cannot say "there is this other possibile explanation but I rejected it as being highly unlikely" they havnt actually followed through a critical thinking process at all, and are willfully deluding themselves
I know your an engineer, but its really not that difficult to grasp. If critics havnt considered other hypothesis, they are in no position to cast aspirtions against truthers reasonings |
I didn't dodge the question, I merely pointed out that your "WTC7 collapsed due to fire" example is inaccurate. It is the same dodge CTers make when they claim that WTC 1+2 couldn't possibly have collapsed due to fire so it must have been CD. For some reason there is a strange inability of some people to address the cumulative damage these buildings sustained. Instead they pick which ever aspect of the damage they want to and ignore all the rest.
If you are modelling something, your initial assumptions are very important, they will determine how useful your model is. If you ignore large chunks of information, then your results will be useless. And that is exactly what you did in the post that I commented on above. You then, even after having this pointed out to you, made exactly the same mistake in your next post. It seems like willful ignorance on your part I am afraid. |
Still perpetrating the claptrap JP?
Asymmetric damage + scattered fires + heavy smoke = perfect simulation of a CD |
| jsut_peopel wrote: | | Still ignoring the evidence and creating strawmen eh? |
Did I miss out anything crucial then? Seems like the important points of the Roberts Hypothesis are there. |
Well, your use of the term scattered fires, seems to me, to attempt to down play the severity of the blaze, Your conclusion of perfect simulation of a CD, is misleading at best and wrong at worst.
| Quote: | | Quote: | | Engineer, you say? |
| jsut_peopel wrote: | | Well I have a masters degree and a PhD in engineering disciplines, so I guess so. Not that it particularly makes any difference when conversing on here, it just means that I have at least some understanding of some of the subjects under discussion. |
Excellent then you should have a better grasp than I on how ludicrous the new theory is. Theoretically. |
Oh, how you'd like that to be true.
| Quote: | | Quote: | | Seems like the wilful ignorance is coming from one direction, and it ain't from the truther's camp. |
| jsut_peopel wrote: | | Well yes, people who actually look for the truth, rather than parrot out the same old misinformation to be found on sites like 911truth, and who don't dismiss new evidence, simply because it is "new," could be called truthers I suppose. But it doesn't really help your case. |
'New' evidence? The building didn't just slide down? Kindly explain what this 'new' evidence is and how it alters perceptions one iota? |
I was speaking about CTers in general. "Conspiracys" complaints about the flight manifest in another thread for example.
| Quote: | | Quote: | Hey it just occurred to me - what if in one of those one-in-a-trillion accidents of history, it just happened that way accidentally, yet that was the trigger that blew the lid off the whole scam.
Wouldn't that be, like, really cool? |
| jsut_peopel wrote: | | It just occured to me that that last paragraph, as written, doesn't really make any sense to me. |
Don't worry about it. It was probably the lack of a question mark at the end that threw you. My bad. |
I still don't get it. Sorry. |
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Jay Ref
Moderate Poster
Joined: 20 Jul 2006
Posts: 511
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:54 pm Post subject: |
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| John White wrote: | | John White wrote: | | Quote: | | Paranoid schizophrenics are prone to delusions, tales in which random events become deeply meaningful. Some believe in complex conspiracies; others think they are Jesus Christ. |
OK so far
| Quote: | | These stories sound crazy |
I suppose they do
| Quote: | | But they may be the brain's efforts to make sense of its own internal messages, suggests * Kapur, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and vice president of research at the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. |
Everything is the result of the brains efforts to make sense of its own internal messages. This actually says nothing. Boy if the human race only understood this
| Quote: | | In addition to other brain abnormalities, schizophrenics have too much dopamine. Just as addicts' desensitized dopamine systems make them feel that nothing matters, high levels of the neurotransmitter make schizophrenics believe that everything is significant. |
Theres science for this, agreed
| Quote: | | Because the addict's dopamine-driven salience system keeps telling her that something very important is happening, ordinary events appear intensely meaningful. That police car? That song on the radio? That man with a cigarette walking by? They must be part of a massive international conspiracy. |
But this does not mean that the view that there is an international conspiracy is proof of schizophrenia. Here this article is starting to slide
| Quote: | | Kapur calls it "biased inductive logic" -- a top-down effort to explain the feeling that everything seems important. The cognitive parts of a schizophrenic's brain create the paranoid tale in an effort to explain the constant red alert blaring from the dopamine circuits, using any stimuli available. This is why delusions are culturally appropriate. African schizophrenics may fear they've fallen under the spell of a shaman, while Kapur's patients in Toronto think that the Mounties are after them. |
Kapur has a theory. But again, this does not show the view that there is a conspiracy is evidance of schizophrenia. Have critics any idea how dangerous this is?
Did Stalin conspire (I:E: plan in secret) to engineer events contrary to the states public pronouncments? Did Hitler? Did Mao?
Guess what they did with people who tried to put out that information
| Quote: | | Kapur cautions that this theory is still speculative |
Right
| Quote: | | but it could support a radical idea: treating schizophrenia with cognitive therapy. If drugs control the overactive dopamine system, patients may then gradually unlearn their delusions. |
Now we are into spin: there is nothing radical or new about such a suggestion. Just what were the schizophrenics on the wards tonight taking as their compulsary meds?
Therefore, the extension of this article is: "Belief in Copnspiracy Theory is proof (strong indicator) of schizophrenia, and ergo anyone who exhibts such belief should be treated/considered for treatment with psychiatric drugs"
I'm sure that is a view held to some degree by a number of JREF members, for which I can only say:
"Forgive them, they know not what they do"
And read some R D Laing!
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=r+d+laing&btnG=Google+Search&me ta=
I wonder what the result of a poll asking critics "should truthers be sectioned for their own good" would be? |
Do you agree with my reasoning about the inherant dangers of this thinking Jay Ref or do you advocate locking up and forcibly drugging dissenting views? |
If someone's insanity creates a danger to themselves or others then the answer is yes. I have never once suggested that people with dissenting views be locked up or drugged. That is your strawman argument and has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I've ever said or even implied.
In your "everything is subjective" world insanity could not exist. I'm not sure how you could ever justify treating any pathology given your worldview. Crazy people are just a different form of normal, aren't they?
-z
BTW: You really should regisater at JREF and go meet Geoff at the "Religion and Philosophy" forum...aka UnderCoverElephant or JustGeoff. You and he would get along famously.
_________________
"Knowledge is good"
-Emil Faber
"God in heaven. Here's the hard-headed, evidence-only freak who will not, like we CTers, indulge himself in self-inflating, utterly misconceived fantasies." -kbo234 (who is NOT a nazi) briefly makes sense |
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chipmunk stew
Moderate Poster
Joined: 19 Jul 2006
Posts: 833
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:37 pm Post subject: |
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| John White wrote: | | aggle-rithm wrote: | | John White wrote: | Lets get back to this, shall we?
| John White wrote: | Everything is the result of the brains efforts to make sense of its own internal messages. This actually says nothing. Boy if the human race only understood this
|
|
In a way, I suppose you're right, but most of these "internal messages" have some direct correlation to an objective reality that can be shared and evaluated. The point made by the article, I think, is that some people try to attribute an objective reality to purely subjective thoughts. |
This is the usual level of perception of the ego/mind, but in fact this is illusion. Reality is entirely subjective. There is some work (russian)suggesting that DNA/RNA has properties of reciever/transmitter and that we, in effect, "broadcast" consensus reality to each other, but the hard truth is that no direct exterior input reaches the brain at all. Everything is decoded electrical signals which construct an internal universe within ourselves. Everything we percieve, from the light of distant stars to the very sensations of having a body (heartbeat, breathing and so on) are a second hand reality constructed inside our own heads.
Do you think you feel your bottom sat on your chair? You do not: you are feeling your re-construction of your bottom. Do you feel your fingers hitting the keys as you type? You do not: and you never have
We think it is "out there" but in fact it is "in here"...and we discard the majority of the input that we do recieve and assume and fill in the blanks
A practical application of this you should appreciate is the unreliabilty of eyewitness statements in court cases. Its extremely rare to get a unaminous description of a suspect when investigating unless all the witnesses had plenty of time to observe the person, and never when only viewed for a split scond...one will see brown trousers, another blue, one says tall, another medium, blonde hair or dark hair, etc etc etc
From these perspectives, the very "norms" that psychiatry tries to regulate are actually nothing more than generalisations, and dogma if considered more than that |
I completely disagree with the reality is entirely subjective bit. Reality is entirely objective. Our perceptions are entirely subjective, but that doesn't mean we're incapable of sussing out a fairly close representation of objective reality. This is where science and critical thinking come in. They're investigative tools designed in such a way as to limit the effects of our subjective perceptions. That's why they've produced vastly more reliable, practical knowledge and have had vastly better predictive power than any other method ever conceived by humankind.
edit:
Getting back to the article, I agree with you that the theory cannot be generalized to the whole population of those suspecting a 9/11 Inside Job. But the idea that some people's brains are over-producing a chemical that produces a subjective feeling that everything is important and interconnected, leading to misattributions and/or paranoia, is worth further investigation. If the mechanism operates as the theory supposes, are there varying shades, with schizophrenics at the extremity? If someone knows this is going on in their brain, can they be taught to reason their way around the feeling and attribute appropriate importance to various events? |
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chek
Mega Poster
Joined: 12 Sep 2006
Posts: 3889
Location: North Down, N. Ireland
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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| jsut_peopel wrote: | | Well, your use of the term scattered fires, seems to me, to attempt to down play the severity of the blaze, Your conclusion of perfect simulation of a CD, is misleading at best and wrong at worst. |
To simplify then: the building collpasing is in itself not suspicious.
Nobody would have been the least bit surprised. It may even have been expected.
It was the manner it collapsed in that drew attention - just like a CD.
Straight down no messing. No tip, no tilt, no nothing. Whoosh straight down. With a deep enough basement, it wouldn't even have scratched the pavement.
That's the fishy part that neither Roberts nor anybody else can explain. The crux in fact. |
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John White
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Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Posts: 3187
Location: Here to help!
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 3:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Jay Ref wrote: | | John White wrote: | | John White wrote: | | Quote: | | Paranoid schizophrenics are prone to delusions, tales in which random events become deeply meaningful. Some believe in complex conspiracies; others think they are Jesus Christ. |
OK so far
| Quote: | | These stories sound crazy |
I suppose they do
| Quote: | | But they may be the brain's efforts to make sense of its own internal messages, suggests * Kapur, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and vice president of research at the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. |
Everything is the result of the brains efforts to make sense of its own internal messages. This actually says nothing. Boy if the human race only understood this
| Quote: | | In addition to other brain abnormalities, schizophrenics have too much dopamine. Just as addicts' desensitized dopamine systems make them feel that nothing matters, high levels of the neurotransmitter make schizophrenics believe that everything is significant. |
Theres science for this, agreed
| Quote: | | Because the addict's dopamine-driven salience system keeps telling her that something very important is happening, ordinary events appear intensely meaningful. That police car? That song on the radio? That man with a cigarette walking by? They must be part of a massive international conspiracy. |
But this does not mean that the view that there is an international conspiracy is proof of schizophrenia. Here this article is starting to slide
| Quote: | | Kapur calls it "biased inductive logic" -- a top-down effort to explain the feeling that everything seems important. The cognitive parts of a schizophrenic's brain create the paranoid tale in an effort to explain the constant red alert blaring from the dopamine circuits, using any stimuli available. This is why delusions are culturally appropriate. African schizophrenics may fear they've fallen under the spell of a shaman, while Kapur's patients in Toronto think that the Mounties are after them. |
Kapur has a theory. But again, this does not show the view that there is a conspiracy is evidance of schizophrenia. Have critics any idea how dangerous this is?
Did Stalin conspire (I:E: plan in secret) to engineer events contrary to the states public pronouncments? Did Hitler? Did Mao?
Guess what they did with people who tried to put out that information
| Quote: | | Kapur cautions that this theory is still speculative |
Right
| Quote: | | but it could support a radical idea: treating schizophrenia with cognitive therapy. If drugs control the overactive dopamine system, patients may then gradually unlearn their delusions. |
Now we are into spin: there is nothing radical or new about such a suggestion. Just what were the schizophrenics on the wards tonight taking as their compulsary meds?
Therefore, the extension of this article is: "Belief in Copnspiracy Theory is proof (strong indicator) of schizophrenia, and ergo anyone who exhibts such belief should be treated/considered for treatment with psychiatric drugs"
I'm sure that is a view held to some degree by a number of JREF members, for which I can only say:
"Forgive them, they know not what they do"
And read some R D Laing!
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=r+d+laing&btnG=Google+Search&me ta=
I wonder what the result of a poll asking critics "should truthers be sectioned for their own good" would be? |
Do you agree with my reasoning about the inherant dangers of this thinking Jay Ref or do you advocate locking up and forcibly drugging dissenting views? |
If someone's insanity creates a danger to themselves or others then the answer is yes. I have never once suggested that people with dissenting views be locked up or drugged. That is your strawman argument and has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I've ever said or even implied.
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There is nothing in the article you have presented to indicate that it's author does not. But between us, we have established positions somewhat. The argument is not strawman, becuase it is not designed to be knocked down: instead it stands on a bedrock of solid ethics. Perhaps I have succesfully demonstrated a perspective you were not aware of?
| Quote: | | In your "everything is subjective" world insanity could not exist. I'm not sure how you could ever justify treating any pathology given your worldview. Crazy people are just a different form of normal, aren't they? |
Well I have given you R D Laing to explore. I believe logic requires you to go to the science and dis-prove the "everything is subjective" view? Its basis is in biological fact, so good luck
Could you countenance the posibility that humanity might develop until we live in a world where all people take self-responsibility for the balance of their own state of mind? An interesting world that might be
| Quote: |
BTW: You really should regisater at JREF and go meet Geoff at the "Religion and Philosophy" forum...aka UnderCoverElephant or JustGeoff. You and he would get along famously. |
Noted
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Free your Self and Free the World |
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chipmunk stew
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John White
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 3:21 pm Post subject: |
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| chipmunk stew wrote: | | John White wrote: | | aggle-rithm wrote: | | John White wrote: | Lets get back to this, shall we?
| John White wrote: | Everything is the result of the brains efforts to make sense of its own internal messages. This actually says nothing. Boy if the human race only understood this
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In a way, I suppose you're right, but most of these "internal messages" have some direct correlation to an objective reality that can be shared and evaluated. The point made by the article, I think, is that some people try to attribute an objective reality to purely subjective thoughts. |
This is the usual level of perception of the ego/mind, but in fact this is illusion. Reality is entirely subjective. There is some work (russian)suggesting that DNA/RNA has properties of reciever/transmitter and that we, in effect, "broadcast" consensus reality to each other, but the hard truth is that no direct exterior input reaches the brain at all. Everything is decoded electrical signals which construct an internal universe within ourselves. Everything we percieve, from the light of distant stars to the very sensations of having a body (heartbeat, breathing and so on) are a second hand reality constructed inside our own heads.
Do you think you feel your bottom sat on your chair? You do not: you are feeling your re-construction of your bottom. Do you feel your fingers hitting the keys as you type? You do not: and you never have
We think it is "out there" but in fact it is "in here"...and we discard the majority of the input that we do recieve and assume and fill in the blanks
A practical application of this you should appreciate is the unreliabilty of eyewitness statements in court cases. Its extremely rare to get a unaminous description of a suspect when investigating unless all the witnesses had plenty of time to observe the person, and never when only viewed for a split scond...one will see brown trousers, another blue, one says tall, another medium, blonde hair or dark hair, etc etc etc
From these perspectives, the very "norms" that psychiatry tries to regulate are actually nothing more than generalisations, and dogma if considered more than that |
I completely disagree with the reality is entirely subjective bit. Reality is entirely objective. Our perceptions are entirely subjective |
Stop right there. A subjective reality invalidates the possibility of a genuinley objective one. Even scientific instruments only tell us what we perceive them as telling us. Philosophically, it is impossible to prove we are not brains in a jar being fed electrical signals: we can only construct convincing assumptions that we are not
| Quote: | | but that doesn't mean we're incapable of sussing out a fairly close representation of objective reality. |
We live in a world of guesswork
| Quote: | | This is where science and critical thinking come in. |
Its easy to see their attraction, yes 
| Quote: | | They're investigative tools designed in such a way as to limit the effects of our subjective perceptions. |
You say more than you might know
| Quote: | | That's why they've produced vastly more reliable, practical knowledge and have had vastly better predictive power than any other method ever conceived by humankind. |
A subjective view. Trial and Error gave us banging two rocks together...unless we countenance something else. Logic and Reason are still playing catch up to that one
| Quote: | edit:
Getting back to the article, I agree with you that the theory cannot be generalized to the whole population of those suspecting a 9/11 Inside Job. |
Excellent
| Quote: | | But the idea that some people's brains are over-producing a chemical that produces a subjective feeling that everything is important and interconnected, leading to misattributions and/or paranoia, is worth further investigation. If the mechanism operates as the theory supposes, are there varying shades, with schizophrenics at the extremity? If someone knows this is going on in their brain, can they be taught to reason their way around the feeling and attribute appropriate importance to various events? |
Toughie. Ultimately, only that person could ever really know.
I believe the important distinction to be made here is from associating any mental disorder from any particular set of views. Psychology, although as I know JREF'ers will point out a "soft science", should not be underestimated, in the same way that physics should not underestimate weak nuclear force compared to strong. If politicised, its power can be enormously dangerous. Ask those who have had to live their lives in a communistic regime
Yesterday whilst posting on another forum, I encountered a somewhat distressed fellow who was convinced that all 9/11 activists are part of an islamic conspiracy to weaken the west. Should we consider him a paranoid schizophrenic defending the official story?
There is no evidance to suggest Schizophrenia is prevelant in anything other than an average rate across all the possible opinions of society. History has already given us plenty of evidance for what happens when political power creates propoganda that such disorders are characterised only by its "enemies". We seem to have reached this view in common.
So tell me chipmunk: what now is your opinion of the original article?
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jsut_peopel
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 3:48 pm Post subject: |
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| John White wrote: |
| Quote: | | That's why they've produced vastly more reliable, practical knowledge and have had vastly better predictive power than any other method ever conceived by humankind. |
A subjective view. Trial and Error gave us banging two rocks together...unless we countenance something else. Logic and Reason are still playing catch up to that one
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You bang two rocks of a certain type together you get sparks. You do it again you still get sparks. You chose two different rocks of the same type as before, and look! more sparks! You might try some different types of rocks and not get any sparks. So through a process of logic and reason you decide that first type of rocks will give you sparks, and the second type won't. So everytime you want sparks you go and find some of those type one rocks.
Over time the benefits of using this type of reasoning becomes clear to you and you seek to codify it and name it. You decide "science" is as good a name as any and you set about working out just what the necessary parts of the process are for it to work successfully. |
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chek
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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Hey ho - yet again having to explain the obvious.
OF course the building walls tip over.
The ruins don't stand up vertically, now do they?
At some point they tip over to lie in a neat, centralised pile.
Perimeter +70ft.
NIST's figure. |
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John White
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:13 pm Post subject: |
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That is quite amusing... You can't project a modern form of thinking onto a hypothetical caveman and produce anything else but a self-comforting fantasy. No data sir, no data. The way you set your perspective out mankind worked out fire in an afternoon.
"Science" is quite a lot like the Death Star: a lot of pride in a methodology that has produced a technological nightmare more often than not. Without a fully functioning emotive balance of the right brain to bring equilibrium to the hot fire of the left, we find an excess of cleverness and a desolation of wisdom
Hence over reliance on left brain functions is actually a symptom of dis-harmony in the psyche. The Native American's did try to warn the White Man of where his "enlightenment" would lead the world: look how right they were
| Quote: | I do not think the measure of a civilization
is how tall its buildings of concrete are,
But rather how well its people have learned to relate
to their environment and fellow man.
Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe
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I have a dream, and make no apology for it, that one day our species might be healed
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chipmunk stew
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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| chek wrote: |
Hey ho - yet again having to explain the obvious.
OF course the building walls tip over.
The ruins don't stand up vertically, now do they?
At some point they tip over to lie in a neat, centralised pile.
Perimeter +70ft.
NIST's figure. |
The tilting is shown AS THE BUILDING COLLAPSED in the first link I gave.
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
Look at the images near the bottom of the page.
The other images are just for some perspective, and to counter your claim that "With a deep enough basement, it wouldn't even have scratched the pavement." |
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Jay Ref
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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Wow! Didn't even scratch the sidewalk!....Well, if you can actually find the sidewalk that is.
Since everything is all in the mind I guess the CT-mind is experiencing a clean "in the footprint" collapse that didn't scratch the sidewalk. Why if only there had been enough CTers around at the time of WTC7's collapse they could have all held hands in a ring around #7 and sung Kumbaya as it collapsed safely into a neatly folded pile.
That would have been a pretty impressive spectacle of the power of belief and Darwinism all in one go.
-z
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chek
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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| chipmunk stew wrote: | | chek wrote: |
Hey ho - yet again having to explain the obvious.
OF course the building walls tip over.
The ruins don't stand up vertically, now do they?
At some point they tip over to lie in a neat, centralised pile.
Perimeter +70ft.
NIST's figure. |
The tilting is shown AS THE BUILDING COLLAPSED in the first link I gave.
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
Look at the images near the bottom of the page.
The other images are just for some perspective, and to counter your claim that "With a deep enough basement, it wouldn't even have scratched the pavement." |
It's called 'exaggerating for effect' CS.
Perimeter +70ft is the important part. |
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Patrick Brown
9/11 Truth critic
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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Let me get this straight debris from WTC 7 reached no further than 70FT from the structures original perimeter? 
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chipmunk stew
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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| John White wrote: | | Stop right there. A subjective reality invalidates the possibility of a genuinley objective one. Even scientific instruments only tell us what we perceive them as telling us. Philosophically, it is impossible to prove we are not brains in a jar being fed electrical signals: we can only construct convincing assumptions that we are not |
The philosophical difference is practically meaningless, though. You'll still "duck" when someone "throws" a "rock" at your "head". The rock has objective characteristics that can be independently verified, such as transparency to natural light, hardness relative to a common baseline, fracture type, etc. It also has subjective characteristics that are dependent on interaction, such as painful, cold, heavy, etc.
Unless you buy into solipsism and believe that I'm a figment of your imagination, the objective characteristics stay the same no matter who (or what) is doing the observing. Discovering objective reality is not mere guesswork, it's a process of independent verification and converging evidence. No one person, with their subjective limitations, can ever fully grasp or be 100% certain of objective reality, but adopting the axiom that there is one is valid. |
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Jay Ref
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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| John White wrote: |
There is nothing in the article you have presented to indicate that it's author does not. But between us, we have established positions somewhat. The argument is not strawman, becuase it is not designed to be knocked down: instead it stands on a bedrock of solid ethics. Perhaps I have succesfully demonstrated a perspective you were not aware of? |
Bullsh!t. Your post was indeed a logical fallacy. It was an implication that I may support a position I have never supported. Actually a more accurate term for your post is a false dichotomy
| Quote: | | Do you agree with my reasoning about the inherant dangers of this thinking Jay Ref or do you advocate locking up and forcibly drugging dissenting views? |
Very nicely done on second look John. You managed to combine elements of two logical fallacies into one sentence. In one sentence you have elevated nonsense to an art form.
| Quote: |
| Quote: | | In your "everything is subjective" world insanity could not exist. I'm not sure how you could ever justify treating any pathology given your worldview. Crazy people are just a different form of normal, aren't they? |
Well I have given you R D Laing to explore. I believe logic requires you to go to the science and dis-prove the "everything is subjective" view? Its basis is in biological fact, so good luck |
Logic requires me to do nothing of the kind. You and RD Laing are the ones making assertions. It is therefore incumbent upon you to support them with evidence yourself. Logic dictates that you support your assertions with evidence John...the burden of proof lies with you not me.
| Quote: |
Could you countenance the posibility that humanity might develop until we live in a world where all people take self-responsibility for the balance of their own state of mind? An interesting world that might be
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Maybe so, maybe not. The real world is quite interesting enough to me as it is without making grand postulations about what it may or may notevolve into someday. Similarly I rarely attempt to calculate the number of angels dancing on the heads of any given pins.
-z
_________________
"Knowledge is good"
-Emil Faber
"God in heaven. Here's the hard-headed, evidence-only freak who will not, like we CTers, indulge himself in self-inflating, utterly misconceived fantasies." -kbo234 (who is NOT a nazi) briefly makes sense |
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chipmunk stew
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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| chek wrote: | | It's called 'exaggerating for effect' CS. |
Also known as hyperbole. Bad habit for a truth seeker. |
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chek
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Patrick Brown wrote: | | Let me get this straight debris from WTC 7 reached no further than 70FT from the structures original perimeter? |
That's the figure NIST quote in their document. |
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John White
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Jay Ref wrote: | | John White wrote: |
There is nothing in the article you have presented to indicate that it's author does not. But between us, we have established positions somewhat. The argument is not strawman, becuase it is not designed to be knocked down: instead it stands on a bedrock of solid ethics. Perhaps I have succesfully demonstrated a perspective you were not aware of? |
Bullsh!t. Your post was indeed a logical fallacy. It was an implication that I may support a position I have never supported. Actually a more accurate term for your post is a false dichotomy
| Quote: | | Do you agree with my reasoning about the inherant dangers of this thinking Jay Ref or do you advocate locking up and forcibly drugging dissenting views? |
Very nicely done on second look John. You managed to combine elements of two logical fallacies into one sentence. In one sentence you have elevated nonsense to an art form.
| Quote: |
| Quote: | | In your "everything is subjective" world insanity could not exist. I'm not sure how you could ever justify treating any pathology given your worldview. Crazy people are just a different form of normal, aren't they? |
Well I have given you R D Laing to explore. I believe logic requires you to go to the science and dis-prove the "everything is subjective" view? Its basis is in biological fact, so good luck |
Logic requires me to do nothing of the kind. You and RD Laing are the ones making assertions. It is therefore incumbent upon you to support them with evidence yourself. Logic dictates that you support your assertions with evidence John...the burden of proof lies with you not me.
| Quote: |
Could you countenance the posibility that humanity might develop until we live in a world where all people take self-responsibility for the balance of their own state of mind? An interesting world that might be
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Maybe so, maybe not. The real world is quite interesting enough to me as it is without making grand postulations about what it may or may notevolve into someday. Similarly I rarely attempt to calculate the number of angels dancing on the heads of any given pins.
-z |
Well thats the self-sustaining feedback loop of logic isnt it?
Anything a logician doesnt like can be postulated as a "logical fallacy"
There is a real world, its the infinite universe, and it can only be modeled, never experianced, by "dit or dot"
Critics asked for my opinion: I have provided it, and exposed the article for what it is
But I wonder if that will prevent critics from using this ethically bankrupt article to support their arguments elsewhere?
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chek
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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| chipmunk stew wrote: | | chek wrote: | | It's called 'exaggerating for effect' CS. |
Also known as hyperbole. Bad habit for a truth seeker. |
You're probably right CS. Must be the Irish part in me.
I shall try to guard against it in future. |
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Patrick Brown
9/11 Truth critic
Joined: 10 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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| chek wrote: | | Patrick Brown wrote: | | Let me get this straight debris from WTC 7 reached no further than 70FT from the structures original perimeter? |
That's the figure NIST quote in their document. |
That is so amazing it almost funny!  Now if people don't think that stinks I don't know what does.
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aggle-rithm
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:20 pm Post subject: |
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| John White wrote: | | aggle-rithm wrote: | | In a way, I suppose you're right, but most of these "internal messages" have some direct correlation to an objective reality that can be shared and evaluated. The point made by the article, I think, is that some people try to attribute an objective reality to purely subjective thoughts. |
This is the usual level of perception of the ego/mind, but in fact this is illusion. Reality is entirely subjective. There is some work (russian)suggesting that DNA/RNA has properties of reciever/transmitter and that we, in effect, "broadcast" consensus reality to each other, but the hard truth is that no direct exterior input reaches the brain at all. Everything is decoded electrical signals which construct an internal universe within ourselves. Everything we percieve, from the light of distant stars to the very sensations of having a body (heartbeat, breathing and so on) are a second hand reality constructed inside our own heads.
Do you think you feel your bottom sat on your chair? You do not: you are feeling your re-construction of your bottom. Do you feel your fingers hitting the keys as you type? You do not: and you never have
We think it is "out there" but in fact it is "in here"...and we discard the majority of the input that we do recieve and assume and fill in the blanks
A practical application of this you should appreciate is the unreliabilty of eyewitness statements in court cases. Its extremely rare to get a unaminous description of a suspect when investigating unless all the witnesses had plenty of time to observe the person, and never when only viewed for a split scond...one will see brown trousers, another blue, one says tall, another medium, blonde hair or dark hair, etc etc etc
From these perspectives, the very "norms" that psychiatry tries to regulate are actually nothing more than generalisations, and dogma if considered more than that |
Now we're getting perilously close to solipsism, a philosophy that I disagree with for one important reason: It lacks utility. It does nothing to help us understand our place in the world, be it real or imaginary. What DOES have utility is the presumption that there IS an objective reality corresponding to what we perceive. That objective reality may indeed be an illusion, but it is useful to act as if it is real. Conversely, it is not useful to believe that it doesn't.
Skepticism, to my mind, is the process of determining what does and does not have an objective reality outside of our own minds. One of the simplest tests of this is to ask the question: When we stop believing in it, does it go away? |
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aggle-rithm
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Patrick Brown wrote: | | chek wrote: | | Patrick Brown wrote: | | Let me get this straight debris from WTC 7 reached no further than 70FT from the structures original perimeter? |
That's the figure NIST quote in their document. |
That is so amazing it almost funny! Now if people don't think that stinks I don't know what does. |
What lateral force do you think should have moved the debris more than 70 feet away? |
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John White
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| Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:33 pm Post subject: |
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It proves what you make of it
Nonethless, it is the very fundament of truth
Go to the proof in Biology, don't take my word for it
But its no philosophical meta game: philosophy is meerly an appropriate tool to comprehend the reality
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