Thread split from Texas is at it again: a study of INTP behaviour: Ti/Si loops

[scorpiomover]

They also, relative to a 1TB HDD, could only hold a tiny amount of knowledge, which was all that they had.

What Is the Memory Capacity of the Human Brain?: Scientific American:

The human brain consists of about one billion neurons. Each neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than a trillion connections. If each neuron could only help store a single memory, running out of space would be a problem. You might have only a few gigabytes of storage space, similar to the space in an iPod or a USB flash drive. Yet neurons combine so that each one helps with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to something closer to around 2.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes). For comparison, if your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that storage.

They have the capacity of about 1,000,000 Gb, which is the same capacity as 1,024 1TB HDDs.

Although I admire those people who can memorize great stores of knowledge, the depth, scope, and refinement of the knowledge that Google and books provide is far beyond any individual's capacity; e.g., not only thousands of papers on physics, but also their interpretation for the lay.

Well, if you've never tried to memorise information, then that would be one's perspective. But many people did, including myself. If you want to know if your teacher ever memorised things like times tables or poetry, and why he did, then you might know. Or, you could try it yourself, like I did. What I found, in many areas, including programming, is that if I know something myself, then when it's relevant to a topic, my brain will very often recall the precise info that was going to be useful, and in the way that it is useful, even when it's a very unusual application. If I look up something on Google, then I only get the info that Google explicitly has some reference to. It won't recall something that has an unusual application. Or, it might know an application, but it is often buried on the 51st page, after all the links to Korean boys body-popping. Or, it might know an application, but only those that have been mentioned, and not the ones that I would need. Or, it knows an application that I would need, but the ones that it pops up with, are not nearly as effective or as efficient as the ones that my brain comes up with.

In short, when it comes to what I've memorised, my brain is like a Super-Super-Google. Google is not a patch on what my brain can do with information that I've memorised.

Maybe one day, Google will become as efficient and as effective as my brain. But when that happens, then when someone wants a computer program, or a scientific theory, or anything else that requires the things that my brain does, such as thinking, or writing a new poem, or anything else, then, Google will make INTJs and INTPs superfluous. We won't need INTJs or INTPs anymore, for anything, because Google will already do it for everyone else.

 

[Duxwing]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

What Is the Memory Capacity of the Human Brain?: Scientific American:They have the capacity of about 1,000,000 Gb, which is the same capacity as 1,024 1TB HDDs.

You're comparing apples to oranges; e.g., no-one can perfectly and forever memorize five trillion (500Gb) of text whereas the brain's facial recognition technology remains unmatched, and one cannot copy information from one brain to another whereas this operation is trivial on a hard drive.

Well, if you've never tried to memorise information, then that would be one's perspective. But many people did, including myself. If you want to know if your teacher ever memorised things like times tables or poetry, and why he did, then you might know. Or, you could try it yourself, like I did. What I found, in many areas, including programming, is that if I know something myself, then when it's relevant to a topic, my brain will very often recall the precise info that was going to be useful, and in the way that it is useful, even when it's a very unusual application. If I look up something on Google, then I only get the info that Google explicitly has some reference to. It won't recall something that has an unusual application. Or, it might know an application, but it is often buried on the 51st page, after all the links to Korean boys body-popping. Or, it might know an application, but only those that have been mentioned, and not the ones that I would need. Or, it knows an application that I would need, but the ones that it pops up with, are not nearly as effective or as efficient as the ones that my brain comes up with.

In short, when it comes to what I've memorised, my brain is like a Super-Super-Google. Google is not a patch on what my brain can do with information that I've memorised.

I have tried (and succeeded) to memorize information: as the triviality, so the difficulty. However more quickly the brain can search itself than one can search Google, the brain cannot hold as much knowledge as reveals the almighty search engine.

Maybe one day, Google will become as efficient and as effective as my brain. But when that happens, then when someone wants a computer program, or a scientific theory, or anything else that requires the things that my brain does, such as thinking, or writing a new poem, or anything else, then, Google will make INTJs and INTPs superfluous. We won't need INTJs or INTPs anymore, for anything, because Google will already do it for everyone else.

We're discussing recall, not AGI, which could be the topic of another thread.

-Duxwing

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

You're comparing apples to oranges; e.g., no-one can perfectly and forever memorize five trillion (500Gb) of text whereas the brain's facial recognition technology remains unmatched, and one cannot copy information from one brain to another whereas this operation is trivial on a hard drive.

Of course we are comparing apples to oranges. The human equivalent of RAM is memory, and the human equivalent of HDDs are books. It's trivial to copy a poem by writing it out on paper, but takes a lot of time and effort to memorise it.

We're discussing recall, not AGI, which could be the topic of another thread.

What good is information if you can't use it? Recall is only worth having if you can process it. That in turn means that the value of recall is only dependent on one's skill in processing the information.

However more quickly the brain can search itself than one can search Google, the brain cannot hold as much knowledge as reveals the almighty search engine.

True. But for only 1000 pieces of information, there are 2^1000 = 3x10^89 Tb of data that can be revealed from it, of which, the vast majority will be worthless. If Google was set the task of figuring out the useful data from only 1,000 pieces of information, it would probably take thousands of years.

Google isn't useful as a revealer of useful knowledge, but simply as a storage and recall device, based on simplistic search engine. It's an extremely fast, but extremely stupid librarian. GIGO. What a human gains from using Google, is mostly down to his ability to figure out what search terms would be most useful to reveal the type of knowledge that he is looking for, and how he can interpret that data to answer the questions he seeks answers to.

I have tried (and succeeded) to memorize information: as the triviality, so the difficulty.

It should be the reverse. The more trivial the information, the less data one needs to store. Your difficulty in memorising trivial information is most likely due to your lack of interest in it. The information may have been incredibly useful to you, if you had only took a second to think about its potential usage.

E.g. poetry. IIRC, Robin Williams made a very good presentation in "Dead Poets Society" of showing how poetry is a very useful way to convince the woman of your dreams to date you. I gather that you would like to date, and have found this not so easy.

I also have learned much from memorisation of poetry itself on how to understand many things, especially science, that transformed my knowledge and skills from simple rote remembrance of rules, to being able to develop existing scientific theories way beyond their original incarnation, and to make predictions of what scientists would only discover 10 years later, with only an hour of thought, and put me at the top of the class in any science or mathematics class. I consider that well worth the effort.

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

Duxwing, what you're arguing is the basic argument advanced by young people who grew up with the latest technology of their time, and who consequently saw no reason to develop skills in the older technologies that their parents grew up with, before the new technology was available. It makes no sense to them to use the old archaic tech, when we have the new tech, and it frustrates them that they would even be required to make the effort.

I grew up when every kid in school had a calculator. I was required to learn times tables, and use log tables. So I too felt this frustration, probably far more than you realise. My maths teacher told us that for the homeworks and mock exams that he set us, we were only allowed to use calculators for the final answer, but not for any interim answers that were obtained in the process of working out the final answer. He explained that because calculators have only a finite number of decimal places, there was a rounding off, a margin of error, that was incredibly tiny, but when you have calculations of calculations of calculations, that tiny error could expand with each subsequent calculation, and would often produce a large error in the final result, and then we'd get the wrong answer, and be marked down in our exams.

He taught the top set in maths in my school, and guaranteed all As to all his students, as long as they followed his instructions. I can tell you that literally every student in my year who was taught by him, got As in all the subjects that he taught them. Only one chose to not do everything that he asked for his A-levels, and he only got an A and a C, instead of 2 As. Everyone else got 2 As and all of us passed our Special Papers in maths.

The teachers in the lower sets in maths allowed their students to use calculators, and it showed.

I also noticed that because I was not reliant on my calculator, I was motivated to find more creative ways of calculating answers to maths problems in less steps and less time, and I would usually find lots.

The result of both factors was that the easy problems were much quicker solved by kids with calculators. But the more complex, complicated and difficult the problem was, the easier it was for me, and the harder it was for them, to the point that what would take them several hours, I would usually solve in 15 minutes or less.

What that showed me, was that when new technology comes along that makes it easier to do more of what the old technology did, such as Google versus memorisation, we get the same advantages and disadvantages as calculators versus working out the results by pen and paper. For simple problems, speed goes up, but accuracy goes down. For complex problems, speed and accuracy goes right down.

I still often use calculators and computers for many problems, as it does aid me. But I am aware of many of the pros and cons of them, and thus have a much better idea of when I'd be better off resorting to pen and paper.

 

[Duxwing]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

Of course we are comparing apples to oranges. The human equivalent of RAM is memory, and the human equivalent of HDDs are books. It's trivial to copy a poem by writing it out on paper, but takes a lot of time and effort to memorise it.

Humans are wetware and therefore lack such non-volatile memory as a HDD: we are terabytes upon terabytes of RAM. Copying a four-hundred bit poem on paper is hardly trivial when compared to copying it on a computer, and as the length of the poem increases to the amount of information that a cheap thumb drive can store (1 GB or eight billion characters) so paper copying comparatively becomes an absurdly laborious and difficult task.

What good is information if you can't use it? Recall is only worth having if you can process it. That in turn means that the value of recall is only dependent on one's skill in processing the information.

For counter-aphorism: what good is perfect recall if you know nothing? External memory sources and their associated search engines provide so much knowledge and so well organize it that memorizing such trivial details as phone numbers becomes wasteful and individuals can gather and comprehend information that they never could have.

True. But for only 1000 pieces of information, there are 2^1000 = 3x10^89 Tb of data that can be revealed from it, of which, the vast majority will be worthless. If Google was set the task of figuring out the useful data from only 1,000 pieces of information, it would probably take thousands of years.

It would not take thousands of years: a Google search considers many more pieces of information than one thousand and takes less than a tenth of a second.

Google isn't useful as a revealer of useful knowledge, but simply as a storage and recall device, based on simplistic search engine. It's an extremely fast, but extremely stupid librarian. GIGO. What a human gains from using Google, is mostly down to his ability to figure out what search terms would be most useful to reveal the type of knowledge that he is looking for, and how he can interpret that data to answer the questions he seeks answers to.

You know how Google Search works? If Google existed not, then the human would gain nothing, and only what is listed can be found.

It should be the reverse. The more trivial the information, the less data one needs to store. Your difficulty in memorising trivial information is most likely due to your lack of interest in it. The information may have been incredibly useful to you, if you had only took a second to think about its potential usage.

Great amounts of information can be trivial; e.g., the names and capitals of every country in the world. And of course I am not interested in memorizing information that I deem trivial: if I didn't, then I wouldn't.

E.g. poetry. IIRC, Robin Williams made a very good presentation in "Dead Poets Society" of showing how poetry is a very useful way to convince the woman of your dreams to date you. I gather that you would like to date, and have found this not so easy.

Memorize poetry to mesmerize a woman? :/ Sounds kinda sleazy and phony, but let's say that I wanted to.

Among the set of all possible sets of information exist ones that are better memorized than stored. My question is, "Which ones?" and my answer is:

-Not phone numbers
-Not addresses
-Not all of science
-Not all of history
-Not all of art
-Et alii ut opus

I'll let my phone, computer, paper, and the Internet so handle them that I can instead play Kerbal Space Program, and the rest I'll memorize because having that information in my head is useful. For the aforementioned poetry, me

I also have learned much from memorisation of poetry itself on how to understand many things, especially science, that transformed my knowledge and skills from simple rote remembrance of rules, to being able to develop existing scientific theories way beyond their original incarnation, and to make predictions of what scientists would only discover 10 years later, with only an hour of thought, and put me at the top of the class in any science or mathematics class. I consider that well worth the effort.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Duxwing, what you're arguing is the basic argument advanced by young people who grew up with the latest technology of their time, and who consequently saw no reason to develop skills in the older technologies that their parents grew up with, before the new technology was available. It makes no sense to them to use the old archaic tech, when we have the new tech, and it frustrates them that they would even be required to make the effort.

Ad hominem. The technology was developed in order to remove the need for that effort.

I grew up when every kid in school had a calculator. I was required to learn times tables, and use log tables. So I too felt this frustration, probably far more than you realise. My maths teacher told us that for the homeworks and mock exams that he set us, we were only allowed to use calculators for the final answer, but not for any interim answers that were obtained in the process of working out the final answer. He explained that because calculators have only a finite number of decimal places, there was a rounding off, a margin of error, that was incredibly tiny, but when you have calculations of calculations of calculations, that tiny error could expand with each subsequent calculation, and would often produce a large error in the final result, and then we'd get the wrong answer, and be marked down in our exams.

Erm... how many decimal places are we talking about? Eight? Sixteen? Thirty-two? Mathematics is inherently abstract, whereas concrete answers exist for the concrete world: the LHC can only measure to six decimal places. Therefore, rather than memorize tables, get a bigger calculator, not ask for concrete answers to variable problems, or directly use whatever mathematical horror (e.g., 1/3) generated the measurement-defyingly-long number.

And if none of those solutions are possible, then I (sincerely!) can only offer my condolences.

He taught the top set in maths in my school, and guaranteed all As to all his students, as long as they followed his instructions. I can tell you that literally every student in my year who was taught by him, got As in all the subjects that he taught them. Only one chose to not do everything that he asked for his A-levels, and he only got an A and a C, instead of 2 As. Everyone else got 2 As and all of us passed our Special Papers in maths.

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc. The one kid might have used the calculator because he was less motivated in general. Furthermore, you lack a priori tests.

The teachers in the lower sets in maths allowed their students to use calculators, and it showed.

You're confounding talent and teaching: the lower students lacked the upper students' talent.

I also noticed that because I was not reliant on my calculator, I was motivated to find more creative ways of calculating answers to maths problems in less steps and less time, and I would usually find lots.

Memorizing rather than recording useful information at school is not necessarily the only or best way to achieve this result.

The result of both factors was that the easy problems were much quicker solved by kids with calculators. But the more complex, complicated and difficult the problem was, the easier it was for me, and the harder it was for them, to the point that what would take them several hours, I would usually solve in 15 minutes or less.

Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

What that showed me, was that when new technology comes along that makes it easier to do more of what the old technology did, such as Google versus memorisation, we get the same advantages and disadvantages as calculators versus working out the results by pen and paper. For simple problems, speed goes up, but accuracy goes down. For complex problems, speed and accuracy goes right down.

Why can calculators vs. memorization be equivocated to Google vs. memorization of everything?

-Duxwing

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

Copying a four-hundred bit poem on paper is hardly trivial when compared to copying it on a computer,

400 bits = 50 bytes = 50 letters. I can write that in probably 15 seconds. Takes me longer than that to plug my USB key and copy something.

and as the length of the poem increases to the amount of information that a cheap thumb drive can store (1 GB or eight billion characters) so paper copying comparatively becomes an absurdly laborious and difficult task.

Why would anyone copy eight billion characters by hand without a good reason? It would take too much time. Again, not a good example.

You're still not understanding. You were a baby when Google was invented. I am of Google's generation. There were many such search engines, most of whom are gone. You've probably never heard of any of them, and probably will not use any of them. The only reason that you even got to use Google, was because my generation made it popular. You have Google, because we wanted you to.

Why did we want you to have Google? Because people like me and Jenny could see that it would be useful, even though we'd already seen the benefits of memorisation. We never assumed that things were either-or, in some kind of dilemma of only complete extremes. We knew the benefits of memorisation. We also saw that Google could be beneficial too.

We're just pointing out how just because we have Google, does NOT mean that memorisation is not always useful. We already had libraries before Google. If memorisation was not useful, because we have faster search facilities like Google, then libraries would have replaced memorisation, and no-one would have memorised anything since libraries were common, for over a hundred years.

You can use both.

Neither are we dictating to you when it's better to use Google, and when it's better to memorise. That is your choice.

Your teachers won't require you to memorise stuff. There will be some courses where it will be incredibly useful to memorise certain things. But if you want to be grossly inefficient, that's up to you. There will be some courses where it will be mandatory to memorise certain things. But if you don't want to, then you don't have to take that course. Maybe there are some mandatory courses where it will be mandatory to memorise certain things. But they will only be mandatory if you want to get a high-school diploma or a university degree. No-one is going to require that you finish high school or that you have to go to university. It's all your choice.

YOU choose what you want to memorise, and what you don't want to. The consequences are not down to you. But they never are. The consequences are down to what the laws of physics say must happen as a result. Sometimes they work in your favour, and sometimes not. But you still choose.

As a consequence, you can choose to not memorise one thing, and to not memorise another, and another, until you have chosen to not memorise anything. But all of that is still your choice.

No-one is trying to persuade you of anything, except that memorisation is available to you and to everyone else, and that we've found it to be sometimes useful, and none of that is something that you have any way to disagree with.

So get with the program, kid. Start making sense.

 

[Duxwing]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

400 bits = 50 bytes = 50 letters. I can write that in probably 15 seconds. Takes me longer than that to plug my USB key and copy something.

I didn't say to a computer: I said on a computer, where the process is Right-Click -> Copy -> Right-Click -> Paste. Furthermore, a computer can automatically make thousands of copies and throughout the world distribute them in milliseconds.

Why would anyone copy eight billion characters by hand without a good reason? It would take too much time. Again, not a good example.

That's my point:without a printing press or computer, only by hand can books, newspapers, and magazines be copied.

You're still not understanding. You were a baby when Google was invented. I am of Google's generation. There were many such search engines, most of whom are gone. You've probably never heard of any of them, and probably will not use any of them. The only reason that you even got to use Google, was because my generation made it popular. You have Google, because we wanted you to.

Why did we want you to have Google? Because people like me and Jenny could see that it would be useful, even though we'd already seen the benefits of memorisation. We never assumed that things were either-or, in some kind of dilemma of only complete extremes. We knew the benefits of memorisation. We also saw that Google could be beneficial too.

You're arguing from age and against the person unless you explain why you think that Google makes people who use it dumber.

We're just pointing out how just because we have Google, does NOT mean that memorisation is not always useful. We already had libraries before Google. If memorisation was not useful, because we have faster search facilities like Google, then libraries would have replaced memorisation, and no-one would have memorised anything since libraries were common, for over a hundred years.

You can use both.

Now you're backpedaling; unless you misunderstood my point, you were rebutting my rebuttal of Jenny's point that Google makes you dumber.

Neither are we dictating to you when it's better to use Google, and when it's better to memorise. That is your choice.

Your teachers won't require you to memorise stuff. There will be some courses where it will be incredibly useful to memorise certain things. But if you want to be grossly inefficient, that's up to you. There will be some courses where it will be mandatory to memorise certain things. But if you don't want to, then you don't have to take that course. Maybe there are some mandatory courses where it will be mandatory to memorise certain things. But they will only be mandatory if you want to get a high-school diploma or a university degree. No-one is going to require that you finish high school or that you have to go to university. It's all your choice.

YOU choose what you want to memorise, and what you don't want to. The consequences are not down to you. But they never are. The consequences are down to what the laws of physics say must happen as a result. Sometimes they work in your favour, and sometimes not. But you still choose.

Ad-hominem: you're just trying to unsettle me by trying to make me fear failing my courses.
Strawman: I didn't even suggest that memorization categorically is wrong.

As a consequence, you can choose to not memorise one thing, and to not memorise another, and another, until you have chosen to not memorise anything. But all of that is still your choice.

You're strawmanning into a categorical denial of memorization's utility my rebuttal of Jenny's argument that Google makes "us" (whoever uses it) dumber.

No-one is trying to persuade you of anything, except that memorisation is available to you and to everyone else, and that we've found it to be sometimes useful, and none of that is something that you have any way to disagree with.

^More backpedaling and strawmanning (see previous points).

So get with the program, kid. Start making sense.

Please stop trying to so throw your age around as to make me feel scared and small.

-Duxwing

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

I didn't say to a computer: I said on a computer, where the process is Right-Click -> Copy -> Right-Click -> Paste.

No, it doesn't. You've missed out important steps in the process. It won't work your way.

Furthermore, a computer can automatically make thousands of copies and throughout the world distribute them in milliseconds.

No. It can't. That would be obvious to anyone who knows about computers. I work with them. You don't. You're talking about some idealistic introverted intuitive vision of a utopia that just doesn't exist.

That's my point:without a printing press or computer, only by hand can books, newspapers, and magazines be copied.

What has printing presses got to do with this? Printing presses are pre-Google. They belong to my side of the discussion.

Printing presses are only relevant if you're trying to argue that without all non-by-hand copying methods, then only by hand can books, newspapers, and magazines be copied, which would be a trivial tautology. Proves nothing, as you have done.

You're arguing from age and against the person unless you explain why you think that Google makes people who use it dumber.

I'm arguing from knowledge against someone who lacks the experience and personal experiments to even be capable of forming a reasonable opinion. I also didn't suggest that everyone who uses Google makes them dumber. I specifically said that it was people like me who got kids like you into Google in the first place.

The idea that Google makes people who use it, dumber, came from you. You worry that using Google makes you dumber, not me. You think that using Google makes you dumber, not me.

I just think that if you're not reasonable about how you use Google, you'll get dumber. But that's not Google's fault. That's your fault, for not being reasonable.

Now you're backpedaling; unless you misunderstood my point, you were rebutting my rebuttal of Jenny's point that Google makes you dumber.

No, because what I wrote there was always part of my viewpoint, from before I even joined this site, and has never changed. You're arguing rubbish, and you know it.

Ad-hominem: you're just trying to unsettle me by trying to make me fear failing my courses.

Why would I want you to fail your courses? You'll still be at home, on the internet. It's not going to get rid of you. It won't make you more rational. I want you to pass your courses, because you'll have to be more rational to pass them, and then that will mean that you'll be more reasonable, and less likely to start arguing rubbish arguments for the sake of trying to improve your debating skills in order to impress girls.

Strawman: I didn't even suggest that memorization categorically is wrong.

Among the set of all possible sets of information exist ones that are better memorized than stored. My question is, "Which ones?" and my answer is:

-Not phone numbers
-Not addresses
-Not all of science
-Not all of history
-Not all of art
-Et alii ut opus

You made it damn clear, that you believed that there wasn't anything worth memorising, which would mean that memorization categorically is wrong.

You're strawmanning into a categorical denial of memorization's utility my rebuttal of Jenny's argument that Google makes "us" (whoever uses it) dumber.

She only argued that over-dependence on technology trades skills for convenience, which is not the fault of technology, but using technology in an unreasonable manner. Google doesn't make you dumber. You do.

^More backpedaling and strawmanning (see previous points).

Google doesn't make you dumber. You do, by arguing backpedalling and strawmanning, when you can't follow what is being said.

This is why I keep bringing up that you're 16. I met plenty of kids younger than you who make sense. You don't. I can excuse it on you being so immature. Or, if you prefer, I can categorise you as an ignorant redneck. You know lots of big words. You clearly have the abilit to string them together to make arguments. You just don't understand that arguments are for figuring out the truth, not trying to persuade people of what you want them to believe.

Please stop trying to so throw your age around as to make me feel scared and small.

I just gave you a way of viewing things, that even if you found no uses for memorising things, you could still agree, and you still kept arguing. You make others feel scared and small, for no good reason.

 

[Duxwing]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

No, it doesn't. You've missed out important steps in the process. It won't work your way.

Go on...

No. It can't. That would be obvious to anyone who knows about computers. I work with them. You don't. You're talking about some idealistic introverted intuitive vision of a utopia that just doesn't exist.

Please explain, you're just denying it and arguing ad-hom.

What has printing presses got to do with this? Printing presses are pre-Google. They belong to my side of the discussion.

Printing presses are only relevant if you're trying to argue that without all non-by-hand copying methods, then only by hand can books, newspapers, and magazines be copied, which would be a trivial tautology. Proves nothing, as you have done.

Copying can be done by hand, press, or computer. You say that hand is better than computer. Therefore in your argument remain only the hand and press. Almost no-one has a printing press, and using one for personal copying is even slower than copying by hand. Therefore in your argument remains only the hand, which cannot make 50,000 quotidian newspapers ere the morrow.

I'm arguing from knowledge against someone who lacks the experience and personal experiments to even be capable of forming a reasonable opinion. I also didn't suggest that everyone who uses Google makes them dumber. I specifically said that it was people like me who got kids like you into Google in the first place.

Please present the knowledge; otherwise you're still arguing ad-hom.

The idea that Google makes people who use it, dumber, came from you. You worry that using Google makes you dumber, not me. You think that using Google makes you dumber, not me.

No, the idea came from Jenny. "The problem with tech is that it automatically dumbs us down".

I just think that if you're not reasonable about how you use Google, you'll get dumber. But that's not Google's fault. That's your fault, for not being reasonable.

Why do you think so?

No, because what I wrote there was always part of my viewpoint, from before I even joined this site, and has never changed. You're arguing rubbish, and you know it.

Your viewpoint has not changed since you joined? :headscratch No, I'm not arguing rubbish, and what good is insulting my argument?

Why would I want you to fail your courses? You'll still be at home, on the internet. It's not going to get rid of you. It won't make you more rational. I want you to pass your courses, because you'll have to be more rational to pass them, and then that will mean that you'll be more reasonable, and less likely to start arguing rubbish arguments for the sake of trying to improve your debating skills in order to impress girls.

You missed the point, and what? Girls? Now I'm just baffled. I debate to gain and spread knowledge, and even if I didn't, ad-hom.

You made it damn clear, that you believed that there wasn't anything worth memorising, which would mean that memorization categorically is wrong.

I don't recall that. When?

She only argued that over-dependence on technology trades skills for convenience, which is not the fault of technology, but using technology in an unreasonable manner. Google doesn't make you dumber. You do.

See her categorical statement.

Google doesn't make you dumber. You do, by arguing backpedalling and strawmanning, when you can't follow what is being said.

(See Jenny's categorical statement)

This is why I keep bringing up that you're 16. I met plenty of kids younger than you who make sense. You don't. I can excuse it on you being so immature. Or, if you prefer, I can categorise you as an ignorant redneck. You know lots of big words. You clearly have the abilit to string them together to make arguments. You just don't understand that arguments are for figuring out the truth, not trying to persuade people of what you want them to believe.

Ad-hom. Are you here to debate, or to try to hurt my feelings?

I just gave you a way of viewing things, that even if you found no uses for memorising things, you could still agree, and you still kept arguing. You make others feel scared and small, for no good reason.

You rebutted my rebuttal and were bent on implying that Google dumbed people down.

-Duxwing

 

[Polaris]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

E.g. poetry. IIRC, Robin Williams made a very good presentation in "Dead Poets Society" of showing how poetry is a very useful way to convince the woman of your dreams to date you. I gather that you would like to date, and have found this not so easy.

You were a baby when Google was invented. I am of Google's generation. There were many such search engines, most of whom are gone. You've probably never heard of any of them, and probably will not use any of them.

No. It can't. That would be obvious to anyone who knows about computers. I work with them. You don't. You're talking about some idealistic introverted intuitive vision of a utopia that just doesn't exist.

I'm arguing from knowledge against someone who lacks the experience and personal experiments to even be capable of forming a reasonable opinion.

...it was people like me who got kids like you into Google in the first place.

It won't make you more rational. I want you to pass your courses, because you'll have to be more rational to pass them, and then that will mean that you'll be more reasonable, and less likely to start arguing rubbish arguments for the sake of trying to improve your debating skills in order to impress girls.

Er...who's not rational here...?

So get with the program, kid. Start making sense.

Actually, that "young kid" is making a lot more sense than you, scorpiomover. How about you just start addressing his points which contained none of the sort of rubbish ad hominems, baseless assumptions about his experiences and skills, assumed lack of dating options, and motivations for debating....etc, etc.

You continue to provide tiresome anecdotal "evidence" as back-up for your so-called arguments and additionally attempt to intimidate Duxwing with your "I am older and therefore more experienced than you" bullshit. Who on this forum is going to take that kind of reasoning seriously? Not me, for starters.

 

[Jennywocky]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

You know, I thought the topic [which I started] was "Texas' choice of textbooks."

If anything is tiresome, it's having y'all (including mods) steal my thread to soapbox and bitch at each other. I made an unfortunate mistake in tacitly condoning a shift by wasting time responding to Scorpion way back... but then again I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition or I wouldn't have bothered.

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

You know, I thought the topic [which I started] was "Texas' choice of textbooks."

If anything is tiresome, it's having y'all (including mods) steal my thread to soapbox and bitch at each other. I made an unfortunate mistake in tacitly condoning a shift by wasting time responding to Scorpion way back... but then again I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition or I wouldn't have bothered.

The "Texas vs Science" thing is rather boring. The responses are usually the following:

1) Them thar Texans are stupid. They're sooooo dumb. They can't understand how evolution is true. It's more true than anything else in science (when other things have been found to be millions of times more accurate). Ha. Ha. Ha. I'm so clever. They're so stupid. I have nothing to make myself feel good about my life but laugh at these people.

2) People should be allowed to think for themselves. If they don't want to believe in evolution, then they shouldn't have to.

This then filters on to the matter of education, where the responses are usually the following:

1) People shouldn't be denied being taught evolution. They are being made stupid, by not being taught science.

2) We have a public school system. Someone has to decide what the kids will learn. They can make decisions for themselves when they are adults. Till then, they are under our charge. We don't believe in evolution. We believe in creationism. So we think that it would be reasonable to teach them that. When they are adults, then they can learn for themselves, and then choose what they think is right.

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

Er...who's not rational here...?

Actually, that "young kid" is making a lot more sense than you, scorpiomover. How about you just start addressing his points which contained none of the sort of rubbish ad hominems, baseless assumptions about his experiences and skills, assumed lack of dating options, and motivations for debating....etc, etc.

You continue to provide tiresome anecdotal "evidence" as back-up for your so-called arguments and additionally attempt to intimidate Duxwing with your "I am older and therefore more experienced than you" bullshit. Who on this forum is going to take that kind of reasoning seriously? Not me, for starters.

Really? Then consider that the position that I stated in post #23, allows for every POV, and he still tried to claim that it was categorically wrong. How can anyone be interested in the truth, when everything is wrong, unless it's what makes him feel like his ego has been stroked?

But, in the interests of accommodating your points, which may have some ground to require addressing, I'll answer his last response to my posts.

 

[redbaron]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

Really? Then consider that the position that I stated in post #23, allows for every POV, and he still tried to claim that it was categorically wrong. How can anyone be interested in the truth, when everything is wrong, unless it's what makes him feel like his ego has been stroked?

Trust a bored INTP to take things out of context for the sake of ego-saving semantic argument.

I always thought scorpiomover was incredibly dense, but I also thought he was just some sheltered teenager, so I didn't think much of it.

Now that I know he's apparently an adult, I feel a curious mix of amusement and pity. Is there a name for that yet?

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

Go on...

Both the selection process and the copying process. For one thing, you have to select the objects in the explorer/Finder windows, which takes time. For another, you may be using a headless server, and so would have to type them out manually. So you're only talking about a GUI environment, and then it depends on the speed of the GUI environment. It also depends on what types of devices you are copying from and to. If you're copying via an FTP window, then you can only access the devices much more slowly. I've used all sorts of environments for copying, where I've had to wait a long time for things to copy. Sometimes, it was much quicker to write them out by hand.

Please explain, you're just denying it and arguing ad-hom.

To copy and distribute something thousands of times in the world in a few milliseconds, requires that all of those destinations are accessible and writable in only a few millionths of a second. That requires a very good internet connection and almost instant accessibility to all those locations over the internet. Theoretically, you're right. But I've had to write routines that update dozens of servers and the whole process takes a lot longer, because it is common that some of those locations and servers can be accessed almost instantly, but many can't, and take a lot of time to access and update. I usually have to write the code to perform multiple passes, because some will take so long to access, as to hang up the rest, and make the whole routine end up getting stuck and blocking 90% of the following servers from being updated.

Copying can be done by hand, press, or computer. You say that hand is better than computer.

I am saying that if we take 2 different logical entities P and Q with different properties (p1, ..., pn) and (q1, ..., qn), then P > Q by one norm (distance metric, or in general understanding, measurement scale), and P < Q by another norm. It depends on the criteria that we choose. Each thing is better or worse depending on the way we choose to evaluate their value as a quantitative measurement. The computer is better than the hand by some methods of measurement, and worse by other methods of measurement.

Therefore in your argument remain only the hand and press.

In my argument, even though in some ways, the hand is more advantageous than the computer, the computer still exists, and still is more advantageous in other ways.

Almost no-one has a printing press, and using one for personal copying is even slower than copying by hand. Therefore in your argument remains only the hand, which cannot make 50,000 quotidian newspapers ere the morrow.

Your argument rests on the current situation in which you find yourself, and considering only the norms, i.e. that ways of evaluating things that you choose to evaluate them. I am simply willing to take a "big picture" view of things, which considers far more situations and far more was of evaluating things that you seem willing to consider.

Please present the knowledge; otherwise you're still arguing ad-hom.

I was having to do all sorts of tasks, before the internet, because the internet didn't really become commonplace here until 1995, when I was 24. It was still incredibly slow until broadband, which really only started becoming common around 2000. I've also been in several programming jobs with high performance requirements where anything taking more than a few seconds, really held people's work up quite considerably.

No, the idea came from Jenny. "The problem with tech is that it automatically dumbs us down".

It does. When I was a kid, and people didn't have calculators, mobiles and computers with them all the time, and when most people didn't use credit cards, everyone could add up in their heads, because they needed to, to know how much money to give for what they wanted to buy, and to have an idea of how much money to bring with them to the shops. Today, most people really stuggle to add up without a calculator, even most adults. Necessity is the mother of invention. When you're not forcing your brain to keep doing arithmetic in your head, the mental faculties atrophy, and that's what I see.

The same follows with other things as well. When I was a kid in the 70s, we wouldn't see the types of arguments that we see online. People would recall things much quicker, because they couldn't just look things up on Google. That same ability to recall things from memory, that would support one's view, worked in general, and made people think of things that supported one's view, and contradicted one's view. So people had much more multi-faceted points of view.

These days, it's not that hard for people's arguments to be trounced online. Usually, their views are not that sophisticated, and are often contradicted clearly by things that they already believe. They rely on Google to build their arguments. So their brains are not used to throwing up the things that support their view, and consequently their brains also are not so habituated to throw up other things as well, such as those things that might contradict their POV. So it becomes very easy to quickly find something that contradicts their POV. As a result, even their initial positions do not consider all that much, other than what they've recently experienced or been told about, and so their views are a lot more one-dimensional.

No, the idea came from Jenny. "The problem with tech is that it automatically dumbs us down".

Jenny was talking in general. You were specifically talking about Google, and seemed to focus mostly on that. You may have got the idea from Jenny. But Jenny wasn't specifically talking about Google, and that changed the argument.

Why do you think so?

Google is a tool. "A poor workman blames his tools." It's not Google's fault that other people get dumber. If someone isn't recalling things as well as they can, then if they spend some of their time reading, and some of their time deliberately trying to discuss and accomplish tasks without relying on Google, then their brains still have regular motivation to keep their mental faculties high.

If, however, they never bother to exercise their mind, then their mental faculties will be likely to atrophy, out of the choice to not regularly engage in mental exercise.

The situation is not much different than a couch potato saying that he doesn't need to exercise because everything is so much quicker to get to by car, which it is.

Your viewpoint has not changed since you joined? :headscratch

I only joined this forum in May 2011. I was already 41. I'd been using the internet for 16 years, and been around for 24 years before that. I'd had plenty of time to see both sides in all sorts of situations.

No, I'm not arguing rubbish, and what good is insulting my argument?

When I was nice to you, you kept dismissing my points, and kept arguing as if you knew everything and I was an ignorant idiot. Maybe it's your style of communication. But it just made discussions and debates with you very boring, because you weren't listening.

I tried different methods to improve things. The approach of reminding you of your age, and of your youthful inexperience, seemed to make you stop dismissing what I was saying, and made you stop ridiculing and criticising me all the time, and seemed to make you sit up and take notice of what I was saying.

You missed the point, and what? Girls? Now I'm just baffled.

Most geeks were told in science class that science shouldn't care about people's feelings, and the only things that matter are reason and evidence. They often took that to mean that in conversation, other people's feelings, interests and opinions didn't matter. Knowledge, such as science, is about what is in your head. When I think about things in my own head, I can't afford to let myself decide something is true or false, just because it might upset someone else. But when I'm talking to someone else, I'm communicating what is in my own head to another person. If I communicate in a way that ignores their feelings, then I'm communicating to them that when I interact with them, I don't care about accommodating them at all, which in turn says that I intend to walk all over them and treat like like dirt if I'd get the chance. If they have any self-respect, they will not give me that chance, by steering clear of me. Then if they are rational and reasonable, I wouldn't get to date with them.

It took me till my late-30s to realise that a lot of the dating opportunities that geeks like me had missed, was because of our failings. I would hope that you don't have to wait till then to change, because a lot of your dating opportunities would have passed you by.

I debate to gain and spread knowledge, and even if I didn't, ad-hom.

Same problem. When you debate, you're communicating. You're doing the equivalent of making a web request. If you ignore the protocols, and keep treating the server like shit, then the admins will lock your IP out. They won't share their info with you. You'll end up making decisions based on ignorance.

When you communicate with others, but don't show respect for their views, then the same thing happens. They get defensive. Their walls go up. They don't tell you what they know that is pertinent. You're not going to hear many of the other side. So you'll end up with an extremely one-dimensional viewpoint. It doesn't matter if you're right. Such a view will be far too one-sided to reflect reality in any reasonable way, and is simply unworkable for anyone. For that reason, your view will be a warped version of reality, and will cause you problems if you try to test it out in reality, as you told me before, that you almost killed yourself trying to do so. It will also be far too unworkable and unrealistic to be of benefit to anyone else. So then your debates will be likely to be of no help to you, and will be likely to be of no help to anyone else, and will most likely be just a hindrance to you, and a hindrance to others.

Your current debating style is thus not fit for the purpose of gaining knowledge, and not fit for the purpose of spreading knowledge, and is grossly inefficient.

You made it damn clear, that you believed that there wasn't anything worth memorising, which would mean that memorization categorically is wrong.

I don't recall that. When?

Among the set of all possible sets of information exist ones that are better memorized than stored. My question is, "Which ones?" and my answer is:

-Not phone numbers
-Not addresses
-Not all of science
-Not all of history
-Not all of art
-Et alii ut opus

I looked up the latin phrase that you ended with. Google translated it as "and others, such as the work". However, "opus" generally refers to any large task of value, not just in work. So it could be translated as, and makes more sense as "and other things, including anything of any value", which realistically means "anything that is actually worth doing".

See her categorical statement.

I did, which is why I wrote:

She only argued that over-dependence on technology trades skills for convenience,

Her statement was a general observation, which would obviously have exceptions. You stated that her statement was a categorical statement, which implies that there were no exceptions. Therefore, you only thought of her statement as if it was absolute, when it clearly didn't have to be, and made a lot of sense if it wasn't, but no sense if it was, and therefore, was most likely made as a non-categorical general observation.

Her point was about over-dependence on any one type of technology, which is using it always, with no exceptions, as a categorical solution. It's convenient, because you don't need to keep yourself open to multiple options. But it equally limits one to not seeing exceptions, which was exactly what you were doing.

(See Jenny's categorical statement)

See the comment above on how you are clearly wrong about claiming that her statement is categorical.

Ad-hom. Are you here to debate,

I'm here to learn how to get on with intransigent people, and also here to discuss.

Debate is a 4-person process with an audience and specific rules. It's not feasible to have a debate here, unless you set some formal guidelines and everyone follows them. This is an open forum, which allows for a free-for-all discussion. People here are not following rules of debate. So I still don't know how you could ever have gotten it into your head that you could be here to have a debate.

You wrote:

I debate to gain and spread knowledge,

If you mean that you're here to discuss ideas and put them to the test by means of pointing out flaws, and testing your ideas by means of others pointing out flaws in them, then may I remind you of of Schopenhauer on the subject of debate?

Generally, a disputant fights not for truth, but for his proposition, as though it were a battle for life and death. He sets out to work whether right or wrong.

Debate is generally unproductive in a search for gaining and spreading truth, because it is a process that seeks to defend its position even when it's wrong, and seeks to knock down other positions even when they are right. Thus it seeks to hide the flaws in one's own views, and seeks to create flaws in other people's views even when they don't exist, and seeks to present any such flaws as invalidating other people's views, even when those flaws do not invalidate their views.

It's incredibly inefficient as a method of sharing information.

or to try to hurt my feelings?

I'm trying to get you to wake up and realise that you're being incredibly inefficient. You won't learn much this way. Most people will simply clam up and not inform you. You'll also make them feel so defensive that they won't learn from you. It's not fit for your purposes.

You rebutted my rebuttal and were bent on implying that Google dumbed people down.

At the moment, Google does. But only because so many assume that having Google makes using their own minds and memories purposeless, and that makes them so completely reliant on Google, that they won't add to what Google can already tell me without them. It makes them completely superfluous to what other people already have.

It also makes them no better than a browser with a dumb idiot who just types his desires into Google and follows them blindly, which detracts severely from the power of the mind they could have used, but didn't.

Things don't have to be that way. But currently, that does seem to be the way that so many people use things like Google.

More fool of us for making ourselves be no better than a dumb idiot with a computer terminal.

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

I always thought scorpiomover was incredibly dense,

Why would you think that? I normally take a fair bit of time thinking about a thread before I post. Have you not taken into account that I thought a lot about the things that I post, before I post?

Or is there another reason why you made this statement?

 

[SpaceYeti]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

This has rely become a discussion about needing to memorize and not? I mean, sure, memorizing can ne useful, not only with numbers, but it's a simple fact that people tend not to care about things which have no use to them. When I look up directions, I look up driving directions... because I'm going to drive there. What use would finding walking directions be to me if I'm driving? Conversely, what use to me is there in memorizing a phone number that's stored in my phone that I take everywhere I go?

As technology advances, the utility of certain things fade. I couldn't venture into miles of wilderness and make a log cabin and live off the land, but why would I do such a thing? We have technology which makes many things unnecessary. These things may still be useful in a pinch or even good fun for some people, but they have no utility in day to day life for most people. That's just the way it is.

I also remember back when I had to memorize phone numbers (or at least write down the ones I wouldn't use enough to ever remember), but I no longer need to do that, so I don't. I don't begrudge youngens who never needed to do that any more than I begrudge youngens who drive on roads instead of hiking, or youngens who live in heated homes, or any youngen who takes advantage of any aspect of modern society. Technology isn't there for us to not use.

 

[Duxwing]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

Both the selection process and the copying process. For one thing, you have to select the objects in the explorer/Finder windows, which takes time. For another, you may be using a headless server, and so would have to type them out manually. So you're only talking about a GUI environment, and then it depends on the speed of the GUI environment. It also depends on what types of devices you are copying from and to. If you're copying via an FTP window, then you can only access the devices much more slowly. I've used all sorts of environments for copying, where I've had to wait a long time for things to copy. Sometimes, it was much quicker to write them out by hand.

You also have to find scraps of paper, and the context is personal applications (not headless servers, etc.).

To copy and distribute something thousands of times in the world in a few milliseconds, requires that all of those destinations are accessible and writable in only a few millionths of a second. That requires a very good internet connection and almost instant accessibility to all those locations over the internet. Theoretically, you're right. But I've had to write routines that update dozens of servers and the whole process takes a lot longer, because it is common that some of those locations and servers can be accessed almost instantly, but many can't, and take a lot of time to access and update. I usually have to write the code to perform multiple passes, because some will take so long to access, as to hang up the rest, and make the whole routine end up getting stuck and blocking 90% of the following servers from being updated.

Therefore we instead ought to send letters through the mail? I said that I computer can, not that it always will.

I am saying that if we take 2 different logical entities P and Q with different properties (p1, ..., pn) and (q1, ..., qn), then P > Q by one norm (distance metric, or in general understanding, measurement scale), and P < Q by another norm. It depends on the criteria that we choose. Each thing is better or worse depending on the way we choose to evaluate their value as a quantitative measurement. The computer is better than the hand by some methods of measurement, and worse by other methods of measurement.

In my argument, even though in some ways, the hand is more advantageous than the computer, the computer still exists, and still is more advantageous in other ways.

Agreed.

Your argument rests on the current situation in which you find yourself, and considering only the norms, i.e. that ways of evaluating things that you choose to evaluate them. I am simply willing to take a "big picture" view of things, which considers far more situations and far more was of evaluating things that you seem willing to consider.

How do you know what is going on in my head? And how relates it?

I was having to do all sorts of tasks, before the internet, because the internet didn't really become commonplace here until 1995, when I was 24. It was still incredibly slow until broadband, which really only started becoming common around 2000. I've also been in several programming jobs with high performance requirements where anything taking more than a few seconds, really held people's work up quite considerably.

Technology marches on, and we’re not talking about a 1970s computer.

It does. When I was a kid, and people didn't have calculators, mobiles and computers with them all the time, and when most people didn't use credit cards, everyone could add up in their heads, because they needed to, to know how much money to give for what they wanted to buy, and to have an idea of how much money to bring with them to the shops. Today, most people really stuggle to add up without a calculator, even most adults. Necessity is the mother of invention. When you're not forcing your brain to keep doing arithmetic in your head, the mental faculties atrophy, and that's what I see.

The mental faculties existed for a purpose that no longer exists. By the same logic, we ought to complain that most people cannot accurately hurl an atlatl or identify the weakest mastodon in a herd.

The same follows with other things as well. When I was a kid in the 70s, we wouldn't see the types of arguments that we see online. People would recall things much quicker, because they couldn't just look things up on Google. That same ability to recall things from memory, that would support one's view, worked in general, and made people think of things that supported one's view, and contradicted one's view. So people had much more multi-faceted points of view.

...data? Also, when one is a kid, everything seems bigger, and everyone else, smarter.

These days, it's not that hard for people's arguments to be trounced online. Usually, their views are not that sophisticated, and are often contradicted clearly by things that they already believe. They rely on Google to build their arguments. So their brains are not used to throwing up the things that support their view, and consequently their brains also are not so habituated to throw up other things as well, such as those things that might contradict their POV. So it becomes very easy to quickly find something that contradicts their POV. As a result, even their initial positions do not consider all that much, other than what they've recently experienced or been told about, and so their views are a lot more one-dimensional.

Or you simply never heard their opinions because the Internet didn’t exist. Again, data? You’re talking about all of Western civilization.

Jenny was talking in general. You were specifically talking about Google, and seemed to focus mostly on that. You may have got the idea from Jenny. But Jenny wasn't specifically talking about Google, and that changed the argument.

I was using Google as a counter-example.

Google is a tool. "A poor workman blames his tools." It's not Google's fault that other people get dumber. If someone isn't recalling things as well as they can, then if they spend some of their time reading, and some of their time deliberately trying to discuss and accomplish tasks without relying on Google, then their brains still have regular motivation to keep their mental faculties high.

People are not “dumber” if they cannot recall what they never memorized.

If, however, they never bother to exercise their mind, then their mental faculties will be likely to atrophy, out of the choice to not regularly engage in mental exercise.

Or they will have something memorized. Testing your hypothesis would require memorizing without remembering.

The situation is not much different than a couch potato saying that he doesn't need to exercise because everything is so much quicker to get to by car, which it is.

The couch potato still must walk around, and muscle atrophy and hypertension will kill him if he gets no exercise: walking serves a purpose, whereas pointless memorization by definition does not.

I only joined this forum in May 2011. I was already 41. I'd been using the internet for 16 years, and been around for 24 years before that. I'd had plenty of time to see both sides in all sorts of situations.

Now you’re arguing from authority.

When I was nice to you, you kept dismissing my points, and kept arguing as if you knew everything and I was an ignorant idiot. Maybe it's your style of communication. But it just made discussions and debates with you very boring, because you weren't listening.

I am listening, and I am disagreeing.

I tried different methods to improve things. The approach of reminding you of your age, and of your youthful inexperience, seemed to make you stop dismissing what I was saying, and made you stop ridiculing and criticising me all the time, and seemed to make you sit up and take notice of what I was saying.

Thereby creating an intellectual power relationship that I want not.

Most geeks were told in science class that science shouldn't care about people's feelings, and the only things that matter are reason and evidence. They often took that to mean that in conversation, other people's feelings, interests and opinions didn't matter. Knowledge, such as science, is about what is in your head. When I think about things in my own head, I can't afford to let myself decide something is true or false, just because it might upset someone else. But when I'm talking to someone else, I'm communicating what is in my own head to another person. If I communicate in a way that ignores their feelings, then I'm communicating to them that when I interact with them, I don't care about accommodating them at all, which in turn says that I intend to walk all over them and treat like like dirt if I'd get the chance. If they have any self-respect, they will not give me that chance, by steering clear of me. Then if they are rational and reasonable, I wouldn't get to date with them.

Ad hom.

It took me till my late-30s to realise that a lot of the dating opportunities that geeks like me had missed, was because of our failings. I would hope that you don't have to wait till then to change, because a lot of your dating opportunities would have passed you by.

Ad hom, ad baculum, and false premise, too: I have had and seized dating opportunities, both of which would have been well fulfilled had my partners’ emotional health been better.

Same problem. When you debate, you're communicating. You're doing the equivalent of making a web request. If you ignore the protocols, and keep treating the server like shit, then the admins will lock your IP out. They won't share their info with you. You'll end up making decisions based on ignorance.

Even if you’re right, then your criticism is hypocritical: you treat me like that.

When you communicate with others, but don't show respect for their views, then the same thing happens. They get defensive. Their walls go up. They don't tell you what they know that is pertinent. You're not going to hear many of the other side. So you'll end up with an extremely one-dimensional viewpoint. It doesn't matter if you're right. Such a view will be far too one-sided to reflect reality in any reasonable way, and is simply unworkable for anyone. For that reason, your view will be a warped version of reality, and will cause you problems if you try to test it out in reality, as you told me before, that you almost killed yourself trying to do so. It will also be far too unworkable and unrealistic to be of benefit to anyone else. So then your debates will be likely to be of no help to you, and will be likely to be of no help to anyone else, and will most likely be just a hindrance to you, and a hindrance to others.

Your current debating style is thus not fit for the purpose of gaining knowledge, and not fit for the purpose of spreading knowledge, and is grossly inefficient.

I don’t want to ad-hom, but you’re describing yourself. Perhaps you’re projecting?

I looked up the latin phrase that you ended with. Google translated it as "and others, such as the work". However, "opus" generally refers to any large task of value, not just in work. So it could be translated as, and makes more sense as "and other things, including anything of any value", which realistically means "anything that is actually worth doing".

It means “etc,” and I wanted something fancy. Deal with it.

I did, which is why I wrote:Her statement was a general observation, which would obviously have exceptions. You stated that her statement was a categorical statement, which implies that there were no exceptions. Therefore, you only thought of her statement as if it was absolute, when it clearly didn't have to be, and made a lot of sense if it wasn't, but no sense if it was, and therefore, was most likely made as a non-categorical general observation.

Her statement was a categorical claim. She never mentioned observation.

Her point was about over-dependence on any one type of technology, which is using it always, with no exceptions, as a categorical solution. It's convenient, because you don't need to keep yourself open to multiple options. But it equally limits one to not seeing exceptions, which was exactly what you were doing.

Which she has since explained.

See the comment above on how you are clearly wrong about claiming that her statement is categorical.

Claiming that it is categorical now would be incorrect; when she posted her comment, I was correct. We may be thinking of different tenses and therefore confusing ourselves.

I'm here to learn how to get on with intransigent people, and also here to discuss.

Debate is a 4-person process with an audience and specific rules. It's not feasible to have a debate here, unless you set some formal guidelines and everyone follows them. This is an open forum, which allows for a free-for-all discussion. People here are not following rules of debate. So I still don't know how you could ever have gotten it into your head that you could be here to have a debate.

Very well, I’ll adhere to your definition: are you here to disagree, or are you here to ad-hom?

You wrote:If you mean that you're here to discuss ideas and put them to the test by means of pointing out flaws, and testing your ideas by means of others pointing out flaws in them, then may I remind you of of Schopenhauer on the subject of debate? Debate is generally unproductive in a search for gaining and spreading truth, because it is a process that seeks to defend its position even when it's wrong, and seeks to knock down other positions even when they are right. Thus it seeks to hide the flaws in one's own views, and seeks to create flaws in other people's views even when they don't exist, and seeks to present any such flaws as invalidating other people's views, even when those flaws do not invalidate their views.

It's incredibly inefficient as a method of sharing information.

Poorly done debate is inefficient. Good debaters admit defeat and gracefully win.

I'm trying to get you to wake up and realise that you're being incredibly inefficient. You won't learn much this way. Most people will simply clam up and not inform you. You'll also make them feel so defensive that they won't learn from you. It's not fit for your purposes.

Again, you seem to be projecting.

At the moment, Google does. But only because so many assume that having Google makes using their own minds and memories purposeless, and that makes them so completely reliant on Google, that they won't add to what Google can already tell me without them. It makes them completely superfluous to what other people already have.

It also makes them no better than a browser with a dumb idiot who just types his desires into Google and follows them blindly, which detracts severely from the power of the mind they could have used, but didn't.

Things don't have to be that way. But currently, that does seem to be the way that so many people use things like Google.

The slope is not nearly so slippery as you say, and intellectual progress has continued after the emergence of Google--with or despite it.

More fool of us for making ourselves be no better than a dumb idiot with a computer terminal.

You seem to be implying that I am a dumb idiot with a computer terminal. If playground insults are your thesis, then I want to leave.

-Duxwing

 

[scorpiomover]

Re: Texas is at it again (creation vs science)

Which she has since explained.

Claiming that it is categorical now would be incorrect; when she posted her comment, I was correct. We may be thinking of different tenses and therefore confusing ourselves.

It was clear to me from the start, that she was not claiming a categorical viewpoint. For starters, she used a computer to make the claim here in the first place, which as you correctly pointed out, is a technological advancement on pen and paper. So it would not make sense to suggest that she was making a categorical statement.

Her statement was a categorical claim. She never mentioned observation.

You kept arguing with her, even though it was reasonably clear that her position was non-categorical. Thus, your position was most likely categorical.

But, in case you weren't, and you were misunderstanding things, or she was, I gave you and her a way for both of your views to be valid, in both empirically categorical and empirically non-categorical ways, so long as you both accepted that it would be at least logically possible to have exceptions to your general principle. She did not disagree with the position I laid out. You did. Thus, your position had to be read as a categorical claim that denied even the possibility of exceptions to your position.

Now you’re arguing from authority.

Thereby creating an intellectual power relationship that I want not.

Ad hom.

Ad hom, ad baculum, and false premise, too: I have had and seized dating opportunities, both of which would have been well fulfilled had my partners’ emotional health been better.

Even if you’re right, then your criticism is hypocritical: you treat me like that.

I don’t want to ad-hom, but you’re describing yourself. Perhaps you’re projecting?

Very well, I’ll adhere to your definition: are you here to disagree, or are you here to ad-hom?

Poorly done debate is inefficient. Good debaters admit defeat and gracefully win.

Again, you seem to be projecting.

You seem to be implying that I am a dumb idiot with a computer terminal. If playground insults are your thesis, then I want to leave.

I had considered that. But it makes sense to me, that if you felt so hurt, then you would have tried to find a compromise that worked for everyone. I offered you that. You responded to argue. Even in this post, where you beg off that I should stop arguing, look at what you do:

You also have to find scraps of paper, and the context is personal applications (not headless servers, etc.).

Therefore we instead ought to send letters through the mail? I said that I computer can, not that it always will.

How do you know what is going on in my head? And how relates it?

Technology marches on, and we’re not talking about a 1970s computer.

The mental faculties existed for a purpose that no longer exists. By the same logic, we ought to complain that most people cannot accurately hurl an atlatl or identify the weakest mastodon in a herd.

...data? Also, when one is a kid, everything seems bigger, and everyone else, smarter.

Or you simply never heard their opinions because the Internet didn’t exist. Again, data? You’re talking about all of Western civilization.

I was using Google as a counter-example.

People are not “dumber” if they cannot recall what they never memorized.

Or they will have something memorized. Testing your hypothesis would require memorizing without remembering.

The couch potato still must walk around, and muscle atrophy and hypertension will kill him if he gets no exercise: walking serves a purpose, whereas pointless memorization by definition does not.

The slope is not nearly so slippery as you say, and intellectual progress has continued after the emergence of Google--with or despite it.

Still arguing.

You're just arguing and arguing until everyone stops arguing, and lets you keep the delusion that she was making a categorical statement, and that you're being reasonable by agreeing with her. If you want someone to stop making you feel bad, it's not reasonable to do so, if you keep trying to knock them down, even after they've given you a position in wich you can be correct and so can they. It just makes you look as if you're using the claim of being hurt by ad hom attacks, to get your way.

 

[Melkor]

*Sets up a small mining troupe and begins to daintly hack away at the text wall*