Re: why bad arguments survive

On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:55:48 -0500, Damaeus wrote:

Reading from news:talk.origins,
Shane <remarcsd@xxxxxxxxxxxx> posted:

On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:55:09 -0500, Damaeus wrote:

Reading from news:talk.origins,
Shane <remarcsd@xxxxxxxxxxxx> posted:

On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:03:18 -0500, Damaeus wrote:

Reading from news:talk.origins,
"J.J. O'Shea" <try.not.to@xxxxxxxxxxx> posted:

On Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:42:54 -0400, Damaeus wrote
(in article <id57u4pf56jnn3h506gnf1fvj1cg4d98s9@xxxxxxx>):

No wonder I have such a hard time being honest.

You're in the 90%, alright.

Do you lie?

How does my claim to be truthful put me into the pack of 90% of the people
who you think are liars?

That you could be lying about being truthful is one explanation for his
doing so.

Yeah, I read a little about liars on the internet after participating in
this part of the thread. I found that people who think others are liars
are usually liars, themselves.

How did you read their thoughts?

I didn't. I was saying I found some articles on the evidence, opinions of
course, that people who think others are liars, are usually liars,
themselves. It involved no thought reading.

or did you mean most people that accuse other people of being liars
are liars themselves?

That was what I found on the web.

And how did you establish the truthfulness or otherwise of the people
involved?

I didn't. I just recognized them as opinions and brought it up here for
further investigation.

It's interesting. I've taken some of those personality tests during
employment application processes, and I've been told by someone who knows
how the tests are graded how I should answer the questions. Specifically
this one:

Most people steal.

A. True
B. False

My inclination is to answer false. But my friend told me I should answer
"yes" because the test graders believe that if you think other people
steal, then you're going to be more likely to report people who steal from
the company. But I have never thought that most people were thieves.

So what did you answer? Perhaps your friend was testing your to see if
you would accept a lie and act accordingly.

I remember being nervous about how to answer since I wasn't sure. I knew
I was not a thief, and I had not seen many people steal. It was like they
were asking me to know something that was impossible to know: the actions
of most people in the world, and since I had never seen anyone steal, as I
mentioned, I wanted to answer false. But I wanted a high score, so I
think I answered yes, following the advice of my friend. However, people
typically end up taking more than one test of that type in their
lifetimes, so on later tests, I answered questions according to the way I
really felt. I can't remember the specific score comparisons, but I've
never had trouble getting a job when I wanted one. I got near-maximum
scores for personality compatibilty and adaptability (means I'm easy to
get along with, don't mind being bossed around by younger people, etc...),
and for honesty. If I was being *forced* to work, however, my attitude
about it might change.

I
had never seen anyone steal anything except when I was 16 and working at
Safeway. I saw a young woman put a bottle of pills in her coat just as I
walked around the corner, but I was in my street clothes. I was shocked!
I had never seen anyone steal anything before. I wondered how she coudl
do such a thing, but even at that age, I knew about money. I assumed she
might not have had the money and needed it for her kids, so I didn't
report her. I just let her go.

I suppose in one way, that is a lie. But I want her sick kids to not be
sick. If I had turned her in, I would have been lying about wanting her
kids to be well. Then I would have had to stand before her and be the
prick supporting an unfair system of earning money that prevented her from
making enough to meet her needs and the needs of her kids.

That's quite a leap there, even for a 16 year old to go from a possible
justification for the theft, to twisting it the way you have.

I didn't twist it.

You went from a possible explanation to rationalising your lack of
action as if that possibility was a reality. There are other
possibilities, some of which an average 16 year old should be able to
work out.

That's what really happened and that was the way I
felt about it. As for your stereotyping

My what? I didn't steroetype, I acknowledged a certain level of maturity
for someone of that age. I work with 16 year olds and most display the
level of maturity I ascribed to them.

of 16-year-olds, your adult
tendency to stereotype can give you the perception that most 16-year-olds
tend to be mischievous. False assumptions lead to all kinds of crap in my
life as a child, so I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of
it. It's why I react to stereotyping when I see it.

Probably the biggest chewing I got as a kid was when I was 16 or 17 and
put the bedspread on my bed wrong. I didn't know there was a right way
and a wrong way for a bedspread and had never noticed it had a rounded end
and a squared end. My mother screamed at me like I had done it on purpose
and she said, "Why are you so fucking hard-headed? And why are you so
rebellious?" I found that odd because I was always trying to do
everything I could to stay *out* of trouble, so I guess my mom was so
determined to see me be rebellious that she nitpicked about the smallest
things, even chewing me out for pieces of lint on my bedroom floor. But I
had never heard her use the word "***" until the bedspread incident.

I told my friend's mom what had happened one night, and how puzzled I was
by her actions after something so small. I told her how I had been called
rebellious and my friend's mom just laughed hysterically and said,
"You????? No way! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha" I was always the kid who never
got to go anywhere with his friends because I had to be home at 10pm while
everyone else go to stay out until 11pm or midnight. So I couldn't go to
"the next town" or everybody else would have to come home an hour earlier,
too.

I'm not saying I feel cheated by my childhood. With all the
overprotection and no chances to be exposed to opportunities to do
anything wild, I never landed myself in jail. Of course, neither did any
of the friends I hung out with, as far as I know. We were all in Law
Enforcement Explorers together, so why would we want to do something to
embarrass ourselves?

Very few liars go about admitting they are such, and most, in my
experience, suggest they are telling the truth even when they obviously
are not.

Not much about someone's personal life can be obvious through a computer
screen full of text. Sure, inferences are made from my posts and I've
described some instances of what some would call hallucinations, but I've
done this with the multipoint perspective of psychiatry (knowledge of
hallucinations being the result of brain misfirings), spirituality
(understanding that God his miracle power, and we are supposed to get it
one day, too), and being aware of the delicacies of trying to describe
these topics in a way that at least makes sense in English.

At times I have intentionally written ambiguously, not to deceive or trick
anyone, but because my ideas are so sound within my own mind, that if I
can get someone to respond to an ambiguous post, I can more easily find
connections to build bridges into other peoples' minds instead of feeling
totally shut out.


Ambiguity leads to misunderstanding.

Only if the person just runs off with his interpretation of ambiguity with
a stack of false assumptions and accepted conclusions which are then used
to judge a person's private live and history before even asking for
clarification.

Nope, if you are deliberatly ambiguous--which you claim to be on
occasion--then they have to make a choice based on available material.
As you deliberately put them in this position you have no right to
lament what you consider their erroneous choice.

I can see how having so many words has worked in the past, but a simpler
society would be able to use a simpler language. I don't make /all/ my
posts ambiguous, but the fact is that each word may have a specific
definition, but people still come up with different impressions, different
memories of experiences associated with that word, so it brings up a whole
other image that goes along with the definition. So even trying to be
precise with words still results in misunderstandings. Based on that, if
you're just talking on usenet and not face to face, the lack of body
language and intimate knowledge of each others' nature makes truth a
matter of trust. You've actually got to trust that the person you're
corresponding with is posting his message because he really cares about
his topic and want to be taken seriously, not be treated like a troll just
for having a different way of expressing himself apart from what
precisionists want to deal with.

If my messages seem to be falling apart, I'm to the point now where I have
to say I see this as a good thing...the next step in evolution is emptying
our minds of some of the stuff that no longer serves us, like my constant
usage of a dictionary to make sure I'm using every word precisely as a
predefensive move against people I know are just waiting for me to make an
idiosyncratic move with one word so they can use it as a springboard for
another round of laughs. But my view of immortality is one of hedonism
and ecstasy, where words are few because we figure out the secrets of life
and no longer need to think to find ways to improve ourselves or our
environments.

An old Army maxim comes to mind:
*If an order can be misunderstood, it has been misunderstood.*

Makes sense when dealing with people's lives. But this is usenet. Lives
aren't at stake due to our actions, so we have time to discuss.

I suggest you Google Asia McGowan and Anthony Powell, to see just how
wrong you can be. Although it was not usenet that was their medium.


Clarity is always to be preferred in a forum which relies only on the
written word for communication.

Clarity can be preferred, but for that clarity to be accepted, the person
reading it has to at least assume the other person is being truthful. If
not, no amount of clarity in the world would do any good.

If there is no ambiguity then clarity means that a person who does not
accept your words at face value--lacking any other reason to not accept
them--has the problem, not you. But you say that you are sometimes
deliberately ambiguous, which always leaves the door open for them to
get the wrong idea about you which is apparently your intention.

.

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