somedude
7mo ago
You guys are still going to end up permabanning him at some point down the road. Same as Darwin the first time, same as Hlynka. The trajectory of the mod team's qUaLiTy CoNtRiBuToR charity cases is always obvious from a billion miles away.
somedude
7mo ago
I did respond to your other example, I literally said that there are things we can predict (remember the shark example?) - just that we don't need to read Darwin to predict them.
Utterly and completely irrelevant. We don't need to read Newton to know that things fall down when dropped, either. Which principles of a theory were commonly known before that theory was codified is totally meaningless. What a bizarre criteria to try to impose.
But that doesn't change the fact that there are things that we can't predict. Would the brown rats still be as likely to survive in one thousand years? How about in one million years?
So what, things are tautological or otherwise invalid if they don't offer infinite predictive power over arbitrary timescales? Or do you have some kind of threshold of validity? What is it, and how did you arrive at it? Where are you getting this stuff?
On the other hand Natural Selection does not gain any predictive power from stating the obvious, that individuals who get devoured won't pass on their genes.
So now theories are invalid if you think they're too obvious? Okay well, you'll just have to deal with the fact that your claim to being the King of Science is likely to go unrecognized.
Seriously, these are not good arguments. These are all complete asspulls with no actual principle behind them.
somedude
7mo ago
No matter what example you give me, Natural Selection will always be the correct explanation, because it is no explanation at all.
Listen, this shit you're doing right here isn't going to cut it. You picked the example where you could prevaricate about what a bunch of scientists in the twenties did or didn't predict, and conveniently cut out the other example which elucidates my point in a way that leaves no room to dissemble.
I'll make it really direct this time so that there's no room for misunderstanding: What you're trying to tell me is that there's no way to predict how likely a living thing is to survive based on its traits and the environment it occupies. That it's a total mystery.
You've painted yourself into a ridiculous corner where you have to pretend you don't know whether brown rats are more likely to survive than grey rats on an island where the snakes can't see brown. Because if you do know, then you can predict that the grey gene is eventually going away, natural selection gains predictive power, and this whole silly facade collapses.
Also I still don't know why I should care if true things are tautologies.
somedude
7mo ago
So if we take a bunch of bacteria and keep exposing them to antibiotics on a consistent basis, there's no reason to worry that we might be creating resistant bacteria?
What if a species of critter that naturally occurs in two different colors gets loose in an environment full of predators that can only distinguish one of those colors well? You can't think of any way to predict what things are going to look like down the line? None at all, it's all just random to you?
Nonsense. Not only is natural selection a theory capable of generating predictions and thus not tautological, you haven't given us a reason to care if it is. Like that guy trying to tell us that the scientific method "rests on faith" last week, informing me that obviously true and useful things don't meet your arbitrary philosophical standards just tells me your philosophical standards shouldn't be terribly important to me.
somedude
7mo ago
If I introduce a species to a different environment than the one in which it evolved, what framework should I use to predict the sorts of changes most likely to occur across generations?
I could consider the traits of that species in light of how pleasing to god I think they are. Maybe slap together some hokey system of analysis based on Biblical zoological references and spend a couple decades losing arguments about it on the internet.
Or I could examine the selection pressures likely to be present in the new environment and make my predictions on the basis of natural selection. Which of these do you think is most likely to generate correct results?
somedude
7mo ago
Link? All I can find are an instance where they were friending random people and it turned out to be a bug they apologized for, and various complaints about the algorithm filling feeds up with suggestions people don't care about. Nothing on the order of "it keeps unfollowing Taylor Swift because something something celebrity worship."
More to the point, whatever they're doing, it's not because "Zuckerberg agrees" with you. Firstly because there's no way Zuck gives a shit about redistribution of social capital as a goal, and secondly because there's no reason to imagine that trying to force people to read one another's unwanted spam would generate social capital in the first place.
You seem to have this naive conception that people sit down and say "Time to use social media to find common ground with the rest of humanity!" It's so out of touch that someone in this thread actually had to take more than one post to explain to you why he wants to read about his local football team and not random teams he doesn't give a fuck about. Like... what? I don't think you understand why people use these things.
somedude
7mo ago
TikTok has competition that consists of viable social media platforms, not government-mandated crippleware, so I feel like comparisons are limited. If you're going to force Americans to use that crippleware at gunpoint in pursuit of nebulous social engineering goals, you may as well just ban everything and make them go outside.
somedude
7mo ago
I don't think you fully appreciate what an unappealing product you're describing. Social media under US control would quickly become a derelict husk. You would need to either exert Chinese levels of authoritarianism over the internet in order to try and prop up your crummy domestic social media, or else watch American public discourse move under the control of other powers.
somedude
7mo ago
You're forgetting the part where there needs to be a reason for anyone to care if you expect them to participate. Exactly who do you think the audience is for a social media site that randomly deletes people from your friends list, spams it with total randos you don't give a shit about, and goes out of its way to avoid showing you videos anyone finds too interesting?
YouTube has been doing this thing where they throw random small creators into their suggestions and I hate it. It's gotten to the point where I just immediately block any channel in my feed if the video presented has under a thousand views, because so far they've been poorly produced dogshit 100% of the time.
somedude
7mo ago
My argument isn't about parsing degrees of certainty
No? Because it sort of sounds like it to my Philistine ears.
Is this like a hypocrisy claim? That since science isn't literally true it would be hypocritical to criticize theism for not being literally true?
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Except one of these things can produce consistent on-demand results that wouldn't be possible if its claims were false, while the other cannot. By any standard of truth-seeking that doesn't succumb to solipsism and ludicrously rule out observation of the world as a means of understanding it, the former is obviously much more true than the latter.
Ah but while science may contain observable truth, it doesn't meet Nelson Rushton's standard for being "the source code of the universe" and that's important... why exactly? Telling me you have a standard of truth under which apparently absolutely nothing is "literally true" isn't actually interesting.
The reason I keep thinking this is about getting atheists to stop snorting is because I can't think of any other purposes for this whole argument, charitable or otherwise. Like okay, nothing in the universe meets the Rushton Source Code Standard of Literal Truth. Neat, why should anyone care? What decision should anyone make differently now that they've heard this?
somedude
7mo ago
Tagging @marten too so I don't have to post twice.
Look, I'll be honest: If you're not playing some kind of game that amounts to wanting people to stop snorting when someone brings up god in an intellectual context? If this isn't the usual goofy theist sophistry and you're actually just parsing the differences between degrees of philosophical certainty that no one out in the world ever thinks about when making decisions?
Then I'll leave you to your hobby and continue to be puzzled as to the appeal. Back in the world where people make decisions, the fact that science does in fact produce functional results obliterates every other consideration anyway.
somedude
7mo ago
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Okay well in that case it's also hypocritical to criticize Cthulhu and Star Wars lore for not being literally true. Hooray, solipsism. This entire line of argument advances absolutely nothing.
It essentially amounts to a theist's special request for their beliefs to be treated as intellectually serious even though they can't point to any justification for them that exists outside of their own skull, because hey after all, nothing is really certain, right?
Bluntly, request denied until one of these arguments successfully and meaningfully distinguishes Christianity, theism, whatever, from an infinite number of bullshit things I could make up on the spot.
somedude
8mo ago
The sole form of refutation that has ever and likely can ever be offered is noticing that Science has successfully done a lot. And that's a rhetorically powerful but formally extremely weak argument. Especially when you consider irrational belief systems have also done a lot.
Science accomplishes things that directly relate to its claims about the world and which would be physically impossible if those claims weren't true. By comparison, whenever the accomplishments of irrational belief systems religion come up they inevitably boil down to social engineering and fan art that don't actually hinge on the related beliefs being true at all.
If being able to produce functional, repeatable, documentable magic that lets you actually cure diseases, communicate across vast distances, etc. etc. etc. doesn't count for anything in your system of formal argumentation, then that system doesn't seem terribly credible or useful to me.
As I've said elsewhere, I've literally never seen these kinds of arguments come up in any context other than "believer wants to argue with atheists but doesn't want to defend any religious beliefs" and at this point I don't think I ever will.
somedude
8mo ago
if you talk to people walking down the street, they think we are in the business of discovering natural laws that are actually true.
That's because the difference between one-hundred percent philosophical certainty and something merely being true enough that you can put a satellite into orbit with it isn't a meaningful distinction to most people.
I'll be honest, it's not a terribly meaningful distinction to me either. Like I wasn't aware that scientific laws were supposed to be "the source code of the universe" and not just really rigorous descriptions of nature that might get updated if we learn something new.
This all just seems like the usual "uncertainty exists, therefore god" routine that you sometimes get from Christians who want to tell those smug atheists what for, but who know better than to make any real claims.
somedude
8mo ago
If you look at it like this, you have two axes: complacency vs revolutionary; and traditional vs utopian.
Now add the traditional left/right division as a Z-axis and you've got a cube. We can call it the Corvos Cube and develop an insular and baffling lingo surrounding it.
So I would be a revolutionary traditionalist; @2rafa's political friends would be complacent traditionalists, and Walt is a revolutionary utopian.
Entirely too legible. I'd rather say that someone is "in the upper lefthand back corner of the purple sector of the Corvos Cube."
somedude
8mo ago
Because the assertion that I am endorsing is that the appropriate way to group ideologies is not by position statements, which observably change with some frequency, but rather on core axioms and values, which do not.
I won't comment upon this assertion except to point out that this was absolutely not what Hlynka was doing. Hlynka would just tell people they were lying about their positions, make up some of his own to attribute to them, and then strut off as if he hadn't just made a fool of himself.
His bullshit system of categorization wasn't leading him to some deeper insight others failed to understand, it was leading him to make stupid nonsensical posts where he attempted to call people out for failing to defend arguments they had never made.
Did you make a point against his IQ skepticism that he doesn't want to answer? Prepare to have him ask you how your point is supposed to invalidate colorblind meritocracy. Have you ever posted about meritocracy before? Doesn't matter if you haven't. Are you actually in favor of it? Fuck you, Hlynka can read your mind and knows you really aren't.
somedude
8mo ago
Didn't they lose and then troll the Vulcan team into oblivion anyway? I remember their victory being that they successfully pissed off a bunch of guys who aren't supposed to show emotions.
somedude
8mo ago
I feel like this video pretty much sums up how that would go.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yy4oURBLo98
Tell me I'm wrong.
somedude
8mo ago
I think what you are referring to is the inferential gap, not malice.
No, I'm not referring to an inferential gap. Dude literally sees fit to tell you that you're lying about your own opinions and then make some up for you. Check Prima's example, there are others. Thanks for the twee little lecture, but you'd have been well-served to acquaint yourself with the discussions in question before delivering it.
somedude
8mo ago
Listen, once you reserve the right to disregard the other guy's actual post and respond to the one you imagined him making, you're not participating in a forum in good faith. If you're going to respond to someone with "How does this prove X?" like it's some kind of comeback then X can't be something the other person has never posted about.
You can suspect whatever you want about what kind of autistic power level hiding fatlords everyone is, but you have to respond to posts that exist. You have to participate in the conversation people are actually having.
somedude
8mo ago
Oh get out of here with this. Dude routinely reserved the right to ignore others actual posts and try to call them out over arguments they never made, and would sit there fantasizing about what they "really" thought and what bad people it made them. There's never been a version of this place where that was tolerable, other than in the case of Hlynka himself and the "999 strikes and you're out" rule he was allowed to live and die by. It's absurd that he lasted this long.
somedude
8mo ago
I'll consider worrying about the other mechanisms as soon as I see them come up in any context other than atheists dragging religion and someone wanting to chastise them without having to actually defend it. In a quarter-century of internet, so far that's literally never happened. Everyone seems perfectly content with logic and reason under every other set of circumstances.
somedude
8mo ago
Listen, people who want me to believe X need to be able to put forth something outside of their own skull that points toward X being true. Anyone who wishes otherwise is either a charlatan, or needs to understand that they are indistinguishable from one.
Yeah watching him say shit like "well when I said people like Rowling I didn't actually mean Rowling herself" while getting downvoted fifty points through the floor on every post he makes at least contributes some humor value. Just try not to ban too many otherwise okay posters for getting frustrated with him along the way.
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