ControlsFreak
No bio...
User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Science has methodological constraints; it makes certain assumptions and speaks only to things within the constraints of those assumptions. But instead, folks want to claim that those are not constraints on the method; they're constraints on reality. Rather than building an actual metaphysical theory, they just declare that their constraints handwave the whole problem away.
Why would it matter? The truth value of a statement or belief stands independent of whatever it may engender.
To be as flippant as the commenter two posts up in this thread, because the atheists are wrong. /thread
It's only bonus badness that their wrongness led to one of the very things the OP was complaining about.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Since it is obviously inconceivable that all metaphysical theories can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.
ControlsFreak
9mo ago
When you try to claim that Christianity gets treated with kid gloves, you get bland shoulder shrugs and some upvotes. When you point out that actually, it's atheism that is treated with kid gloves, you get banned. The modding happens because atheists don't even bother trying to defend their absolute bollocks metaphysics since they know they'll get trounced, so instead they fight with oversensitive interpretations of the rules (declaring that actually responding to people's questions is "obnoxious" and "unnecessarily antagonistic").
If anything in this forum is 'sacred' in the language of Robin Hanson, it is atheism. It shall not mix with the profane things, like arguments about the culture war.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
"methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory"
This is actually a beautiful line from Rene Girard, skewering such poor reasoning.
atheism doesn't imply that shoes are atheists
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Why are you so certain that human intelligence (at least in bulk) is not "predicting the next word in a sequence"?
Because we reason about concepts. Predicting the next word in a sequence is only the output filter that attempts to make said sequence intelligible to our interlocutor so that she may also reason about concepts in similar fashion. We're not perfect at it, but we're oriented toward something different.
ControlsFreak
4mo ago
you will never get a satisfying, rational justification for why you can’t have sex with your teenage daughter because one doesn’t exist.
I disagree. But I agree that the problem of morals in general, including this one in particular, is an extremely steep challenge for rationalist atheists. Don't let them hear you say that too loud, though; they get super defensive 'round these parts.
ControlsFreak
5mo ago
Mod hat is as mod hat does. Praise be to mod hat!
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
I think this can only be said to be due to the incoherence of wokeism and the impossibility of pinning such people down to making defensible claims rather than argument-by-protest. All I can offer is my own experience trying to determine if there was any substantive 'there there'. Goes all the way back to grad school, from the time before wokeness had taken over. I was starting to see the beginnings of something happening in the space and couldn't quite understand what was underpinning it. I had previously had the experience of looking at subjects like the Supreme Court's docket and SIGINT through the prism of popular reporting, wondering how any of it could make any sense at all, then digging in and learning that there was at least some level of coherence underlying the whole shebang, even if I didn't agree with all of it. So I thought maybe I'd do the same here, and I took use of our University's ability to audit courses. I wanted to go straight to the horse's mouth.
Whelp, best I could tell, there was very little there there. Maybe a little, but not nearly enough to support the whole edifice. Regardless, one thing that was very clear from my experiences was that they were utterly committed to the idea of relativism if you even tried poking at their philosophical underpinnings. It seemed like nearly a reflex to just deflect having to worry about it. Like, just go read Foucault if you want to know more about why relativism, but relativism means we don't have to give objective reasons for our moral positions, and oh by the way, you're a bigot if you disagree with our moral positions. They hide the contradictions just well enough and the masses are now just blinded enough to noticing broken philosophical underpinnings that they can mostly skate along without accounting for it.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
I wrote:
Try it and see. Try calling atheists delusional or saying that they're treated with kid gloves. You might be surprised, and then you might not make such silly claims as your original comment.
I don't think you've responded to anything I wrote in the slightest. Tilting at windmills; blinded by your own rage; incapable of even reading when the topic makes you too emotional.
ControlsFreak
7mo ago
morbidly obese people who lost a lot of weight
Ok, so you're saying that you start CICO, you lose a bunch of weight, and then your caloric expenditure goes down? Yep! Sounds right. Why is this "the problem with CICO"? That doesn't sound like a problem at all with CICO. That sounds like the standard thing that CICO people say. You have less mass, often both fat mass and lean mass. So you use less energy. Uh, duh?
You had made it sound like it was something that just happened when you started eating less. That you just start eating less, then your body magically changes, and you never get around to losing weight. That would be a problem for CICO. But not the case where you start eating less than your maintenance, lose a bunch of weight, and then have a lower maintenance. That's just science.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
misreported
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
Can one shut up and multiply their way to a problem of evil? Can you, like, multiply a quaternion by an elliptic curve, and it somehow pops out in there somewhere?
ControlsFreak
5mo ago
What exactly is it telling of? If you wish to call it hypocrisy, feel free, but I can wholeheartedly assure you that people will leap to the defense of things they care about/prefer more than those they don't.
People will obviously engage more with topics that they care about than topics they don't care about. But you specifically raised a concern with what you perceived as the form of an argument. We can go back to antiquity to find good reason to think that one should consider the form of an argument apart from its particulars.
My objection to you is that you didn't submit anything more than post-modernist nonsense about how, since atheism makes metaphysical claims, it's just as unfounded as religion.
Huge ROFL. I've never said that. Just not even. Double ROFL in thinking that it's anything post-modernist. Instead, it's like, core classical philosophy. I've seen some kind of ridiculous misunderstandings/misaccusations about post-modernist philosophy, but this is a new one. Just comically off the mark.
ControlsFreak
5mo ago
If my concern is genuinely new to you, it's the problem of non sequitur if one wants to use complex terminology for no good reason. But yeah, sorry Ugg. We have developed thousands of years of knowledge in how reasoning works, and your argument simply isn't persuasive. It's hardly even an argument. It's just mood affiliation. Ugg's going to have to catch up with the times and figure out how to make a proper argument.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Proof text much? Colossians 2:16 goes on into verse 17. Pay attention to your translation, and notice which word isn't present in the Greek. Romans 4:15 is written by the same guy who went on to write chapter 6 of that same book. And Galatians 4:10? I mean, I don't even know if I have a complaint. It's straight impressive how magically you read something into here that isn't remotely present. Like, kudos for whatever kool-aid you've got in your cup. And man, 1 Corinthians 6:12? This guy wrote the previous three verses; what do you make of them? Do they imply that nothing is forbidden? Did you just skip the first part of the chapter of Romans 14, where it indicated the types of things it was talking about, rather than being a free-floating license to do literally anything. I mean, you can't really believe that. You can't really believe that if Paul was standing in front of you right now, and you asked him, "Hey yo, this passage here. This be where it says that it's totes cool to rape, murder, and pillage, right?" that he would say, "Abso-toot-o-lutely! Hop in my ride! We're heading for a rape off right now!"
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
One-sided billing went out when uni-directional communication went out
Let's start our story with the physical precursor to all this digital stuff - mail. Party A pays a company to transport Item X to Party B. (Or, at least the agreement is to transport it to a location believed to be Party B.) The exchange of money agreed upon between Party A and the company may have depended on how large Item X was or the distance it needed to travel. Bulk/bundled pricing could be possible. In any event, for this story, Party B does not pay the company anything. If the company turned around and said to Party B, "Actually, I got yo' shit; pay me more if you want it," that would be double billing and without checking, probably illegal (unless, of course, in certain scenarios where Party A's agreement specified that Party B would be providing some compensation; COD does exist).
One might mistakenly view one's relationship with a package service as, "I pay you for your service, and the charges apparently include the amount that I send out as well as unlimited reception of goods." Perhaps this misunderstanding could be amplified by having a bulk/bundled billing, say, you pay an $Y "service fee" that includes being able to send out up to Z letters per month or something. "I pay you plenty and don't always send out the maximal amount I'm allowed; clearly, the extra must cover things like how much it costs for me to receive stuff." But this is clearly misleading and wrong.
Sears used to sell a ton of stuff via mail-order. This sort of thinking could result in folks concluding, "Yo, we the people already pay the mail service, like $Y/month! That clearly compensates them for both sending and receiving! The companies shouldn't have to pay them more! That would be double billing!" And while the companies shouldn't have to pay more to receive the letters that contain your orders, they sure as hell are going to have to pay them more to mail you back a fridge.
Intermediate conclusion: if the only things that ever traversed the internet were UDP packets, perhaps a sensible pricing scheme could be devised that only charged one of the sender/receiver. (I kind of kid, because you could still plausibly charge each side for just the packets they send for other types of connections.)
Enter telephones. Telephones are inherently a two-way communication medium. Suppose I want to talk to Bob down the street. I could go run my own telephone line directly connecting us, then use it for free, but I'm probably going to instead pay a company to hook me up to their centralized telephone service, so that I can talk to lots of different people. Bob is also likely to do the same. Now, when I call Bob, is it "double billing", because we both paid for such service? Probably not. There are special cases here, of course. Say, what if it's an especially expensive call to make (long distance/international)? It could get complicated, because there might be multiple companies involved, and they might be trying different pricing schemes. Maybe the telecom company in my country lets me receive international calls for free, but charges to initate them; maybe the telecom company in Bob's country charges either way. I remember exactly these sorts of things happening in the early days of cell phones and just having to plan out, "Hey, you should call me instead," or like, "We were talking on a call that you started, but now that it's 7pm, we should hang up and I should call you, because it'll be cheaper."
In any event, in a telephone network, you might have nodes which primarily receive or primarily send, and these things might affect how much it costs to build the infrastructure/run the network. You should expect that companies will try out different pricing schemes. With telephony, Sears can now take orders via telephone. "Customers" would pay Sears for products. "Customers" would pay the phone company for phone service. Would it have been a stable system for Sears to go to the phone company and say, "Yeah, dude, the 'customers' pay you for phone service. Set us up a connection with 1,000 lines for free, otherwise it's 'double billing'." Then the next year, Sears' sales go up, and they come back, "Make it 10,000. Free. Don't care how much trouble you have to go to. Actually, ya know what? Christmas time is busy; make it 50,000, just in case. Make sure it's free or we'll sic the press on you."
"Company" and "customer" are not categories that attach to packets on the internet.
So, I'm calling Bob down the street. What about? Who knows. The telephone company can't listen in without a wiretap warrant; they don't know. Maybe Bob set up a little business, and I'm buying something from him. Maybe the thing I'm buying is actually being sent to me via the telephone conversation we're having (I give him a credit card number over the phone, and he like, tells me his stock picks or something). At what point does Bob get to go to the telephone company and say, "Yo! This here a 'company', not a 'customer'! The 'customers' pay you so that we can talk. FREE!" (Nevermind that Bob is an asshole that is actually just a customer of Jane's Stock Tips that he repackages and sells for more money. The telephone company can't know this either, because again, no wiretap warrant.)
Bob makes enough money off his shitty stock picking business that he decides to buy a ranch in the middle of nowhere, like he's always dreamed of. He contacts the telephone company, "Yeah, hi! I'm gonna need you to go ahead and run like fifteen telephone lines a few hundred miles out to my little compound. Business is booming, and I have the whole family answering calls and giving stock tips. I have a big family. So, if you could just go ahead and do that on Saturday, that'd be great. Thanks! ....oh, and remember... FREE!"
Would this system be stable and sane? I think already it appears not quite sane. How about stable? In this system, there appears to be a hell of a great incentive to gain the 'company' label. I might look like a customer at first glance, but I'm going to start up just enough of a business, host just enough content in my house (send just enough stock tips of my own out on the phone). I'm a "business" now. Can I go to the ISP/phone company and say, "Yo dawg, I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, maaaaan. FREE." What is the minimal level of business/hosting that I need to do to qualify? Can everyone on the block attain this minimal level? We'll all do it, and we'll all stop paying. Who pays now?
The internet is just a bunch of endpoints
A variety of big companies help connect up those endpoints, forming a massive morass in the middle of everything. Endpoints get charged by the company that helps them get into that morass. (Companies which set up that morass negotiate with each other to price traffic between their respective networks when they traffic to each other.) Endpoints get charged according to how much traffic they want to get in to and out of said morass. Large, heavily-used endpoints probably pay a lot. Small, slightly-used endpoints probably pay a little.
While packets don't come with a "company" or "customer" label, in reality, telephone companies and ISPs do have "business class" service. It costs more, not less. It recognizes that there may be differences in service needs. Individuals might be happy with cheaper service that doesn't come with the fifteen lines that Bob needs or better guarantees like that at least ten of them need to be functional 100% of the time. The usage demands of individuals can often be rounded off to "within some small bucket", and bulk/bundled prices can be easier for everyone than metering out every call/packet. Bob's business needs more than this small bucket, and he's going to pay more. Sears needs even more, and they're probably going to pay even more. Neither of them can be like, "Yo, the 'customers' already pay you; FREE."
This general story makes sense, and lots of academic ink has been spilled on "two-sided markets" with different features along these lines. In some cases, there may be benefits to providers; in some cases, there are some things we can do to reduce concerns. In the basic story, things mostly work out okay given some measure of competition. Of course, the basic story doesn't preclude the possibility that anti-competitive behavior could arise or that such behavior should be dealt with. Below, people describe Comcast as vertically-integrating their own streaming service and behaving anti-competitively toward Netflix; that particular anti-competitive behavior can and should be dealt with, but the solution is not some weird distinction between 'customers' and 'companies', where 'companies' can magically demand FREE no matter what their demands are.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
I'm here for a discussion where people actually read each other and respond in a way that is, uh, responsive to what they have said. That's kind of the purpose of this place. Ah, I do see that you're new here.
ControlsFreak
1mo ago
I just hope there'd be some consistency from the moderators.
Try it and see. Try calling atheists delusional or saying that they're treated with kid gloves. You might be surprised, and then you might not make such silly claims as your original comment.
ControlsFreak
5mo ago
I see. You seem to have just imagined me saying something about my personal beliefs. Moreover, you have some weird post-modernist idea that your perception of my beliefs/identity has some bearing on the validity of the form of my argument. Also, you struggle with "greater than or equal to".
ControlsFreak
5mo ago
Any stick'll do.
I've said it before and I'll say it again...
But I don't give Christianity a pass. When people tell me that they are Christian, I have pretty much the same reaction as I have when people try to convince me that a trans woman is a real woman. In both cases, I think that their beliefs are ludicrous and deeply irrational.
ControlsFreak
5mo ago
I said that your argument was a non sequitur, not someone else's argument. I'm well aware that there are well-formed "problems of evil". You haven't got one here yet. You have:
- Ichthyosis vulgaris exists.
- ??? [something coming from reality]
- Therefore, the person allowing it to exist isn't omnibenevolent or at least not that and capable of doing anything about it.
At the very least, maybe you could check out wikipedia and see if they can help you fill in the question marks. Otherwise, I can only shrug, and say you're potentially being obtuse or simply can't construct a clear argument.
ControlsFreak
5mo ago
if I ever meet the Omnibenevolent loving Creator who created ichthyosis vulgaris, I'll kick them in the Holy Nuts. Until then, my sheer disdain for Him
Do you hold it as a general belief that such a Creator could not create a physical universe where even a single bad thing happens? Which part of your materialism or rationalism does that belief come from?
ControlsFreak
7mo ago
My position (half of which I agree is unsupported by the linked article) is that maintaining a caloric deficit OR maintaining a low weight will cause lethargy and therefore reduced energy expenditure in people who are disposed to obesity.
Clearly, the latter half is supported by the linked article, and my contention is clearly with the former half. Do you have any evidence to marshal for this proposition? Any estimate of the magnitude of this effect? What assumptions are you using? Like, "An X Age, Y Sex, Zlb individual has a maintenance calorie requirement of A. They plan for a calorie budget of B, meaning an A-B deficit. At the moment that they start eating at that deficit, before they lose any weight, their body suddenly shifts to having a maintenance requirement of C, where, plausibly, C<=B." What numbers are you using, and where are you getting them from?
EDIT: Moreover, does this work in the other direction, too? If they start eating D calories, where D>A, does their body suddenly adjust to using more energy, so that their new caloric requirement is E, where, plausibly, E>=D?
ControlsFreak
9mo ago
I asked about this time. But just like when you mod comments, you sometimes make notes about how there is parsimony with prior comments by the offender... when we "litigate" this modding, it would be helpful if the mod comments are parsimonious with prior mod comments.
Unfortunately, your atheism is at least as unbacked by evidence and reason as either. You are personally as irrational as the trans ideologues, but you give yourself a pass out of pure self-serving smugness. From whence comes equality between methodological constraints of science and metaphysical theory of ontology? It's nothing but really old and really popular and so it seems "normal". You probably like the cultural/political connotations, and you may have been raised to believe such irrational things. If you're going to act like anyone is "given a pass", it is you, and every time you pull this schick, it eats away at the detente that the mods claim to believe in/enforce. The result of you continuing to break down the detente is that, unless the mods continue to protect you, your irrationality will no longer be given a pass. It'll be made clear that you're no different than trans ideologues.
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