On 29 June 2014 14:26, Kim Jones <kimjo...@ozemail.com.au> wrote: > > > On 29 Jun 2014, at 4:13 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > > > > As long as quasi-rationalists like you mock the theological field, and > prevent any seriousness there, it will remain in the province of the > bullshit vendors. > > The trouble with "thinkers" like Clark is that they are really liars to > themselves. Clark is a classic example of someone who has great knowledge > of a field but remains a lousy thinker due to his dishonesty and his > selective perception.
Without agreeing with the specific example (though I do wonder sometimes if it's "faux naivete" about comp), this is very common. I'm sure we have all done it at times, especially when we havent had that vital first coffee... the only answer is to be humble, no matter how much you think you know. > Because it is actually kind of impossible to lie to oneself, the only way > to work the magic trick is to utter the lie in public (under the guise of > "rational thinking") in the hope that clever use of selective perception > and bullying tactics, Hmm. I'm not sure it's impossible to lie to yourself. I know that consciously trying to hold conflicting views causes cognitive dissonance but if you can hide the fact from yourself that your views don't gel ... a lot of deconstructionists would say that a lot of people hold self-contradictory views, but they hide the fact. You can generally find some point when someone is inconsistent if you are motivated enough to try, imho. > vulgar language, colourful metsphors and analogies etc. will rally a bunch > of sheeple behind him as some form of support. In other words, he believes > that the more he persists by denying what he has understood all too well > but would prefer wasn't within the scope of the possible (because it > doesn't suit his personal taste) - the more vulgar his use of language, the > more bully-boy his style, the more tortured and affected the use of analogy > (often borrowed from Dawkins who often borrows from Bertrand Russell) the > more he feels he has won some kind of intellectual point-scoring match. > "I only need two things. Your submission and your obedience to MY WILL!" * I really do hate point scoring matches. The winner usually prostitutes him/herself to get the most points, bending his/her views around to make a snappy comeback. (Also, I'm no good at it :-) > > Clark is the kind of individual that believes progress is always a kind of > battle against an opponent or an opposition. That's very "macho". The war on terror - the war on drugs - the war on war? They're all the war on the people, by the powerful. > He is great at physics and related fields and in those posts we stand back > in awe of his command of detail. Yes, and Brent and a few other posters also have an impressive knowledge of this field. > Knowledge of a particular field or fields, however - I will never tire of > saying - does not make you the Supreme Commander Of All Thinking. Such > individuals have a well-known behavioural pattern: an intense emotional > need to be seen to be right about everything but probably have never had > an original idea in their life because they never risk anything; they only > ever go to the safe havens. Well, score one point for Mr Ross on that front! > The fact that Clark keeps showing up in discussions where he is clearly > out of his depth merely reinforces this impression. "These guys over here > are talking about something I understand but hate because it's not > something that an instrumentalist Aristotelian physicalist mainstream > scientific thinker like me should have to put with." > It's the "materialist hat" (I'm not sure which colour it is). Calling "bullshit!" on comp and similar ideas without stopping to understand them seems to stem from a religious belief in materialism (Bill Taylor on the FOAR forum is another example of this). There is endless spluttering and shouting and often even (gasp) capital letters, but never any sign that the person concerned has stopped and thought it through, in the spirit of "what if he's got a point?" - I guess I read too much science fiction in my youth because I am always at least trying to what-if, I even did it on Tronnies, although sadly my suspension of disbelief has rather collapsed on that front. > > I never miss reading posts by John K Clark. He is the perfect model of > everything that is ineffectual with the thinking system that humans use. > But he does know an awful lot about physics, to be fair. > > "And they was grateful for him patronage, And they thanked him very much..." *quote from the Master in Dr Who, "The Daemons" (1971) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
