I originally started publishing my work to use the power of the crowd to check for errors. Before that I was doing it in persons so to speak via debates on irc.

My first topic was religion. It was easy, I learned a lot about being right and being wrong and rhetoric.

Now however no one reads my work as far as I can tell and I have no staff or funding to even access to research materials to test my data thanks to a global problem of information management issues coupled with greed.

Something that AI could help with is logical assessments of bodies of text.

Maybe some time in the future along with spell check and grammar check the computer will be able to logic check. To cross reference definitions and illuminate unfalsifiability and logical fallacies.

Not determine whether or not a piece is factually correct, but at least that is it logically consistent and makes a statement that could conceivably be tested at least in theory.

I personally would find such a tool of immense value.

It is patently absurd to demand a credit card just because I use a gmail account.

I’m not giving you my bank account numbers either. Or a blood sample. Or my mother’s maiden name.

If you think I’m being fraudulent then you may delete my account and be ready to prove your claim like all other reputable online business ventures which deal with the public.

I don’t appreciate being called a liar and or extorted for valuable information as my first experience with your site. Even eBay isn’t as brazen, PayPal may be a wholly owned subsidiary but at least it’s a separate entity.

I am willing to go to any reasonable length to assure you I’m not a spam bot, this includes a valid name, address, and even grudgingly a phone number (since I can just change it), but I am NOT granting your site near literal carte blanche just because you’re too lazy to actually administrate new accounts, or worse because you’re too incompetent to spot and rectify fraud.

If you won’t trust me with a gmail account why in the world should I trust you with my credit card numbers? I’m not buying from YOU. I may not even buy anything from your sellers at this rate.

If you persist in this Orwellian disrespect, and fail to activate my account with my actual email address, I will simply get a prepaid credit card with a penny as the balance and feed your system those numbers.

I will also never use gunbroker for significant purchases or sales(if ever), and I will denigrate your site’s practices whenever firearm resources are made mention of in my presence, which is more often than you may think, perhaps because I am the only CDWL holder in my circle of friends and I am in the process of obtaining an FFL.

I find it distressing that a site that functions under the good graces of an amendment designed to expand and assure personal liberty and trust would be so invasive and disrespectful of that liberty in other areas.

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Franklin

No computer savvy individual uses the email assigned by their ISP, if I have to explain why, then you may safely consider yourself excluded from said set of individuals.

This is an open letter, so consider your response carefully because it will be made very public.

http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=1245

Please activate my account as is.

Their response:

6/1/2010 10:33:24 AM
GBSupport1015 Your account would not require a credit card on file if you use 93axq@tempalias.com as your registration email address. The only reason the credit card requirement came up is because you changed your registration email to your gmail account. If you wish to use your gmail account for all emails to and from sellers/buyers we can place that as your public email and only your tempalias.com email for registration purposes. Right now the two email address are reversed and that is what is causing your issue.

My response:

6/1/2010 12:19:51 PM
Brandon Sergent I see. So GunBroker isn’t going to respond to the issue of it choosing to trample user rights and attempting to invade privacy on the flimsy grounds that everyone who uses a Google or other privacy respecting email providers is a thief, and a liar.

GunBroker is also making it abundantly clear that they are incompetent technically. Since apparently it’s not obvious, tempalias is far more temporary and anonymous (and therefor in your logic obviously used only for fraudulent purposes) than any free email account, most especially Gmail.

Your official position is that a TempAlias email is MORE permanent and trust worthy than a Gmail account.

You should judge each user on a case by case basis. It’s called administration and moderation and reputable websites with competent staff engage in that sort of behavior. I see that GunBroker does not and instead chooses to partake of the digital equivalent of racial profiling rather than above board due diligence.

Just to be crystal clear, (I thought it was obvious), 93axq@tempalias.com is a routing email address and it is temporary. Hence the name, Temporary Alias… Alias as in pseudonym, as in false name.

I used that email to prove to you that banning domains and free email providers is pointless from any cogent security perspective, I can make an email server in ram, I can buy any domain I want for 10$, make it an email host and register whatever untaken name I choose.

You’re not adding any security, you’re adding the illusion of security and that’s a liability.

You are demonstrating a level of incompetence that makes me infinitely averse to giving you any sort of important information. If you can’t understand the utterly simple concept that banning a free email server does precisely zip to protect your community, how can I trust you to competently handle your credit card database?

Put a manager on the line who can address issues of policy. I’m tired of talking to a minion who thinks their company policy is an unchangeable force of nature.

You will change this absurd policy or you will admit to the entire Internet by your refusal to do so that you are hopelessly ill equipped to run a website in the 21st century and that trusting your keystone cop operation with my personal information is tantamount to writing my password on my monitor.

Their response:

6/1/2010 2:19:52 PM
GBSupport1015 Dear Sir,

Please refer to the appropriate sections of the user agreement copied below. You are free to decide whether or not you wish to use the GunBroker.com website. If you do not wish to provide us with a credit card that is your choice.

OTHER LIMITATIONS

This Auction Site retains the right, at our sole discretion, to determine whether or not Member’s conduct is consistent with the letter and spirit of these Terms of Service and User Agreement. This Auction Site reserves the right to terminate service if a Member’s conduct is found to be inconsistent with these Terms of Service and User Agreement.

21. Termination. This auction site may, at its sole discretion, terminate Service should Member’s conduct fail to conform to this User Agreement or other rules of this site. Abusiveness or use of profanity directed toward this auction site or its personnel will result in immediate termination of the Member’s account here and will result in a notation appearing on the Member’s feedback.

***At which point they closed the support call.***

My response: I see, so you have no actual response and everything I said about you is true. I’m not shocked. Fools that would allow such a situation to exist in the first place obviously can’t be expected to react rationally to a valid concern.

Your response is typical of a thug mentality stereotypically applied to gun enthusiasts and why we have such a poor reputation in the country at large by default.

Behavior like yours only reinforces the flawed and largely inaccurate image of the mindless drooling gun nut the thought of whom being armed with a lethal weapon elicits emotion akin to seeing a gorilla running around with a machete.

I suppose the personal information you gather in this way fetches a price in excess of the one you’ve placed on your integrity. I don’t believe for a nanosecond that you fail to sell this information given your blatant disregard for your user’s privacy and rights, and even if you don’t your competency is so thoroughly questionable someone else almost certainly does.

Indeed I’m sure if caught you, you’d simply whine about your unconstitutional EULA and cry about it being your ball and you can do what you want with it. As if merely because something is legal, or if a warning is issued, it becomes ethical. Behavior like yours is why we feel the need as a society to attempt to legislate morality because fly by night exploitative operations like yours seem to demand it.

Any reputable and competent business would respond to such glaring need for revision of policy. A well run enterprise would adapt its policy to meet the needs of the its potential customers and would do so in a manner consistent with their rights.

Your slicked hair gleaming used car grin of a point to a clause in your catch all copy pasta EULA is indicative of why I should be deeply grateful that I caught on to your shenanigans early enough to avoid being burned by your pathetic “service.”

Further, I am grateful for your service because a simple test now exists of whether a given dealer is competent and respectful of liberty above and beyond the dollar. That is, if they are an active member of gun broker then clearly I should think very carefully about dealing with them. I would be much better off searching with traditional methods.

Were I a person of lesser character I would exploit your system for rampant personal gain, but I suppose I can take solace in the fact that no doubt hundreds of others already are.

How people like you sleep at night is beyond me. It’s a shame such a callous disregard for the rights of others has become business as usual. But such is the world we live in.

Now you may close the support ticket and resume your shameless fleecing of dupes and your enabling of fraud via negligent security practices.

I’m leaning towards Sam, (moon landing hoax supporter) I find it far more likely we lied about it to offset the sputnik disaster. But really what does it matter? Obviously we’ve been since. And we all know the government will lie to us at the drop of a hat anyway. What more is there of significance to learn from this?

And for the record the scoffing Ad Hominem from the party line supporters actually hurts your argument. If the best you can come up with is slander then your position is made to appear weak. Regardless of how strong it actually is.

It doesn’t make you look superior, or intelligent, it makes you look like a crass toadie.

Perhaps you can explain why the Russians did not tell the world that we were lying. After all, when you consider the bitter rivalry coupled with the fact that they were watching us very closely would certainly have known if we tried to fake anything

Just to be clear I’m not of the opinion we faked it, I’m just saying of the options, in my opinion it’s the more likely. But unlikely things happen all the time. However, to play devil’s advocate I’ll respond.

Yours is an argument from authority (the government’s) and presupposes the rather fantastic claim that no misinformation campaign is ever successful simply because the targets are powerful. If your faith is strong I can’t break it. ¯\(°_o)/¯

On the one hand imagine what it would take to prove the negative, that we did not go, or prove the positive that we did fake it. They would have to effectively goto the moon to prove the one, or come here (to America) to prove the other.

And on the other hand, who says they didn’t know? Who were the American people going to believe? Who was the rest of the world going to believe? Did it matter either way? Ultimately if it was a lie it was a lie to the American people and the scientific communities of non super power nations.

I think the majority of defenses of our moon landing in 69 ignores the political realities of then and now.

Both sides lied to their people all the time. Even if it was a propaganda victory it was temporary. They probably did know that we were capable of it, we just lied about the timing. Ultimately if we did fake it, I’m certain they knew, and looking at their reaction I’m certain they didn’t care all that much.

Judging by your last paragraph, you must not have been an adult during any part of the Cold War. The Cold War was more than just a military arms race. It was probably the longest and most intense propaganda war in our recent history. BOTH SIDES would go through great lengths and look for every possible means and opportunity to embarrass and discredit each other on the world stage.

Spending so much time and resources on a propaganda war of this magnitude while passing up the PERFECT opportunity to embarrass the USA would not have made sense to the Russians on any level. Your ignorance of this illustrates that you either have no idea what the Cold War was about or you have no clue what a propaganda war is.

Oh by the way, having worked for the government, I can tell you that it is IMPOSSIBLE for so many thousands of people to keep a secret like that for so long (especially since that would include some Russians would love to discredit us). However, one does not need to work for the government to know this. Anyone who has not lived under a rock and has watched the news knows that inside information gets leaked to the media on a continual basis.

“IMPOSSIBLE” ? Really? That’s a strong word. That’s also a positive claim. Good luck proving it.

And your focus on me personally (Ad Hominem) and making some sort of argument from authority (I was there, therefor I’m right) shows me that you have no logical rebuttal.

Why does it have to be many thousands of people? I’m sure the conspiracy people can shave that number down considerably, since the TV was enough to convince 99% of the world, and apparently petrified wood was enough to convince the international scientific community, it seems to be the actual number of people who absolutely needed to know could have been very small.

Time is of the essence. People have very short attention spans. Solid proof of a faked moon landing now would be a curiosity at best. It’s like how we reacted to the Hindenburg, we know the paint was effectively made of thermite now, but does anyone care? (Are we going to start building zeppelins?) No. Same with the moon landings. They SHOULD care, no question, but they don’t. And if you think otherwise, you’re the one living under a rock.

A brief stroll in our society shows what Americans really care about. By and large they care about looking cool, being entertained, making money, and getting laid, the end.

Your faith in the mass media is disturbing. Wikileaks, hello. Go put “HITB SecConf 2009 Malaysia: Wikileaks 1/8 ” into YouTube search and be educated.

Besides even the conspiracy people admit we’ve been back since. It would be absolutely impossible to prove the timing at this point. And would have been nearly impossible to prove back then as it would have been a fresh state secret and covering it up would have amounted to threats and destruction of evidence.

Seriously, what is the purpose of the CIA/FSB in your world? You really seem to think you absolutely can’t be fooled. That attitude makes you an easy mark. Where is your scientific skepticism? If I showed you grainy 10 FPS film of alien first contact at Roswell would you buy it?

Pardon me for not taking the government’s word on what reads like a patriotic fairytale of good government and pluck and determination. Go read Howard Zinn’s a people’s history of the united states and maybe then you’ll see why I have reason to doubt their word, on virtually everything.

I can’t imagine a way to prove that it happened When They Say beyond a shadow of a doubt anyway, so really its pointless to argue about. The first people that actually do something with the moon are going to be corporate anyway, not government so I don’t see what it matters.

Oh, so anyone who points out gaps in your historical knowledge is committing an ad hominem attack. (Or is it that you still failed to answer the question?)

As I said, it is impossible because (as I have pointed out) keeping that secret would also mean forcing the Russians to shut up. Considering that they would have had every means, motive, and opportunity to embarrass us (along with having a bigger military than we did), it would have been impossible to keep them quiet.

Also, consider that there was a huge anti-government/anti-establishment movement going on in the United States during that time period which often led to violent protests. Many people in the US would have been a willing and receptive audience for any anti US government propaganda. In fact, Howard Zinn (a prime example of this) would have loved to point out that the Moon Landings were fake but he chose to avoid mentioning them. This is quite telling. But I guess that pointing out your ignorance of the anti-government sentiment during this period is another ad hominem attack.

Don’t take this the wrong way but YouTube (while entertaining) is not a reliable source of historical education.

Good day.

Saying I’m wrong because I wasn’t there is not the same as exposing gaps. What I said is what I said, but if you wish to straw man me, be my guest. My contentions stand as you’ve produced no new arguments, regardless of where I’ve been, and frankly I could be a turnip and it wouldn’t matter That’s why the personal attack and the argument from authority are invalid.

Ontologically speaking it doesn’t matter who or even what I am with regard to the validity of my statements. Look into logic.

I invite you to refute my contentions if you can. The only way you can do that is to prove the moon landings were genuine beyond a shadow of a doubt and that they occurred July 20 ’69. Good luck. Not a lot of HD video from that era and the original recordings have been lost apparently because NASA needed a blank. (You couldn’t make something like that up.)

You’re not reading what I’m typing or you’re being willfully obtuse. I’m saying the Russians knew and I’m saying calling us on our bluff (if it was a bluff, again I’m not saying the landings were faked, merely that their being faked seems more likely) in this unique instance would have been more trouble than it was worth.

You seem to have a great many misconceptions about the nature of international stress. But of course that’s not shocking. Billions perhaps trillions of dollars have been spent to see that this is the case. The use of deception as a tool of statecraft is understandable and defensible.

My reasons for the Russians staying out of it apply to domestic activists as well. They have even less access to government, and the moon for that matter. Besides I’m sure someone said something at the time they were just ignored. According to Wiki the first book dedicated to the subject was published in 74. But you bring up an interesting point.

Perhaps no one noticed it was fake at all, Russians included until that period of time. The international situation was quite different by then.

But really, can you not imagine a situation where you know someone is lying but you also know you’re going to be categorically unable to prove it and so you refrain from trying? Have you never heard the phrase choose your battles?

Also, are you seriously going to sit there and try to damage Wikileaks credibility because it’s being discussed on YouTube? That’s patently absurd, you might as well say that the video above is false because it appears on vimeo.

If you want to pretend the TV is an unimpeachable source of data, be my guest. Personally I prefer to retain the ability to think critically.

Good day to you as well

P.S. I hate having to write in this teeny little box. I’ve had to edit for proofreading like 10 times.

huseyin hasan 1 day ago

http://xkcd.com/258/

innomen 23 hours ago
Sorry about the older beginning I was using a draft document and pasted a bunch of unrelated stuff hehe.

—

*facepalm*

Yes yes yes let’s all just suspend critical thinking and logical skepticism to evade the ridicule of our peers. I’ve been made fun of! Oh noes! I better submit to the will of the group right away.

Name calling and insults are the mark of true genius right?

After all, a vote is always a reliable means of determining truth, that’s why experimentation and evidence are not required for construction of valid hypotheses and theories, right? I mean the guy on the TV said so, and then we took a vote, so that makes it true, yes?

If you people seriously think its more likely that we landed people on the moon and brought them back alive in 1969 using an aluminum can, a bunch of explosives, and a calculator, than it was that our government probably lied in an effort to evade nuclear war and preserve the American way of life, be my guest. You’re perfectly entitled to that opinion.

I respectfully disagree.

Here again for the record, since apparently very few of you have reading comprehensions to match your snideness; I don’t know if we went to the moon in 69, and I find the narrative of the claim that we did unlikely.

Having an opinion on which is the more likely isn’t the same as having an opinion on which actually occurred. Maybe if I put it in a popup book you guys would understand. /frustrated

You people keep attacking me like I’m a conspiracist and as a result I’m inclined to defend them because your attacks are all intellectually bankrupt. They amount to slander and attempts at shaming, and I loath that behavior on principal.

Not one of you asked me specifics and then offered to refute, which should be easy by now. You jumped right into assumption and insult. So before you call me a witch and cart me off to the stake at the behest of your TV masters let me make it abundantly clear, I can defend a group of people without being a member of that group. If you weren’t all so self obsessed, you’d be able to understand that concept.

It’s called principal, look into it.

You’re like a bunch of radical fundamentalist Muslims with your intolerance of a dissenting viewpoint, which is hilarious because I ultimately agree with you. My point is simply that what apparently occurred is absurdly unlikely. Kinda like winning the lottery, and we all know no one has ever won the lottery right?

But no, you children can’t even handle that, not only must I agree with the rest of the class, I must apparently have some unshakable faith that teacher’s word is law, that the very idea of any deception from them is literally ridiculous, and join in the making fun.

I’m so tired of intellectual cronyism. Face it, you’re just as ignorant of the events of that day on the surface of the moon as I am. Even if you were alive then, unless you were about 240 thousand miles away from where I am now, all you have to go on is someone or something’s word. The difference between us is I don’t feel the need to cleave to some authority figure’s version of events to retain my self esteem. I’m aware that saying “I’m not sure” is actually a mark of intelligence and worthy of respect.

Let’s be clear, I’m not talking here to the scientists who have attempted to refute the conspiracy theorist’s assertions one by one with hard evidence (clavius.org for the win). No one commenting on this thread is from that group. The only people on here are the faithful armchair labcoats that know as much about rocket science and history as I know about the joys of motherhood.

I’m talking to a bunch of people who watched a discovery channel special this one time and think they’ve got it all figured out. People who have CLEARLY never had an unshakable belief and then tested it and found to their total shock that reality disagreed. Having never tasted such absolute refutation you people apparently don’t even have a concept of the value of skepticism or the purpose of experimentation.

No real scientist is responding to my claim, which amounts to an opinion, because they know it’s futile. It would be like arguing which color is prettiest. At best the only rational response that can be made is an attempt to convince me personally that my criteria is wrong. And you haters haven’t even asked me what my criteria is. Because you don’t need to know, you have your state assigned faith and that’s enough for you. Well awesome possum, some of us need more.

The burden of proof is on the claimant.

Fact: You people claim we landed two humans on the moon in 1969, walked them around, took pictures, and brought stuff back safely.

Prove it.

The only thing I have to prove is that I have an opinion.

Your move.

Innomen, I think you have spoken eloquently and have laid a valid argument. I agree that the things that have been discussed up to this point have all been a matter of opinion, and therefore since none of us were there (with the exception of 2 people…) the only thing we have to go on are reports and the words of others. To answer these questions with any definite precision would require an immense amount of work, expense, and would probably still result in those who are skeptical of the events of ’69 to remain so. Not really worth it in my opinion. Before I go on, I will also state that I really don’t know what happened. I just know that the evidence shown in support of the moon landing is strong enough for me to believe it.

I do think that we landed on the moon with that first mission. Mostly because I believe that Occham’s Razor can be applied in many situations like this (most conspiracy theories in general fall into this category). The simplest solution is often the correct one… From what you have said, it seems that you are applying the same principle in the other direction, and I can appreciate that. Travel to the moon is no small feat. It is full of challenges and extremely difficult equations. I admit that I am no “rocket scientist” (sorry, had to…) All that went into producing a vehicle to take us there as well as the physics of making it happen are beyond my comprehension at this point. The idea that our government would lie to us is also nearly a given. There is so much we dont know that it is easy to fill in the blanks with whatever we can conjure up. However, from the images, video, websites and interviews I have seen on this topic I am more likely to believe that the event actually took place. I dont know if you have ever seen the interview with Buzz where he was asked about the moon landing being faked. I am not saying that is the “smoking gun” by any means, but I think his reaction speaks volumes.

I respect your rational questioning of the facts. I too feel that it is our job to question, and it is up to every person to form their own opinions based on logical reason and common sense. I just respectfully disagree with your position. I think the burden of proof now falls on the defendant (using your assignment). NASA claimed to have landed on the moon, and provided proof. If that proof was not good enough to convince people, then they are the ones who now needs to provide proof and sound reason as to why that is not the case. If someone just stood in front of a microphone and made the claim but showed nothing in way of proof, I would be much more likely to believe that it was all garbage. That did not happen in this case.

While neither of us can truly prove what did or did not happen, I think the only thing we can really discuss at this point is the question of who really has to prove what. Logically, it seems to me that NASA is no longer shackled with the burden of proof. Even still, scientists have refuted nearly all of the claims of skeptics and given more proof to the validity of the original claim. At some point, you have to just let people believe what they will and move on.

The human mind is meant to find patterns and analyze. Admittedly, sometimes this results in looking too hard for an answer that is actually quite simple.

Cheers

Thank you for your thoughtful and complete reply.

You make an interesting point. I’ve never considered under what conditions the burden of proof might effectively shift, but now that I have the idea makes a lot of sense.

While it may apply here I still have what my father used to call an “uh oh feeling” when it comes to an issue where people are constantly using arguments from authority.

Also, the people on your side are fighting in effect for the right to rest on their laurels. Not that that has any bearing on the truth but it comes to bear emotionally when I realize that because the “other side” is winning we’ll have no real motivation to go back to the moon. They encourage a “been there done that” attitude.

The simple fact is we can’t get back to the moon, and really that’s the more important statement.

People seem to forget. Correctly arguing a point isn’t made easy by it simply being the truth. I see flawed logic all the time used to defend correct assertions, and when those assertions are made by people with flawed ethics I can’t help but jump in.

Basically what I’m saying is I just don’t like the ethics or the social cost of the mainstream position in this case, I know well how authority stomps on dissent, and this causes every fiber of my being to want to defend the “moon landing kooks.” And it’s easy to do, because like it explains on clavious, no legitimate historian pretends absolute knowledge or proof. Thus by default my “bad guys” are on shaky ground.

Thanks for your time. Lets go back tomorrow, regardless of what we did yesterday.

*The rest of the debate is rehash and does not include me. As you can imagine it’s a just whole bunch of scoffing and insults. Sad really.

More than 20 states have some mechanism for citizen-driven legislation

via A Supreme Court case that puts Scalia and gay rights advocates on the same side. – By Dahlia Lithwick – Slate Magazine.

Since slate takes its sweet time getting to the point I’ll tell you now, this issues is about whether or not a list of 139K people who petitioned for legislation to repeal to gay marriage should have their names released to the public.

More than 20 states have some mechanism for citizen-driven legislation

Oh wow, 20 out of 50 states allow citizens to participate in government. I guess that’s the difference between democracy and a democratic republic eh?

It makes my skin crawl to think of just how many morons think they have some control over their government. And it makes my heart ache to then think about what good they could accomplish simply by realizing that they don’t.

But the signatories—citing harassment and threats against those who organized for Proposition 8 repealing gay marriage in California—asked a court to enjoin publication of their names.

The threats are a police matter. I’m with Scalia, on this one, it you want to be in politics be ready for bullshit. If you’re backwards enough to hate the gays enough to sign a petition asking for their basic civil rights to be repealed, stand up and be honest about it. the only thing worse than a bigot is a spineless closet bigot.

Bopp replies that even with regard to a bond issue, “with modern technology, it only takes a few dedicated supporters and a computer … to put this information on the internet, MapQuest it … and then encourage people to harass them,” as occurred with the Proposition 8 supporters in California.

Yeah and it only takes a court order (actually just a threatening letter will do the trick most of the time since ISPs are spineless, just ask the EFF) to an ISP to remove that publication. Quit pretending like we have a free Internet and that your bigot clients are at the mercy of said big bad intartubes.

“for the first century of our existence, even voting was public—you either did it raising your hand or by voice,”

I say we return to those days of public votes. If you’re not proud enough of your position to note it publicly then don’t take one. I also think selling votes should be legal; Why should advertisers be the only ones to profit from a rich candidate’s desire for power?

It’s understood that money gets you elected, why not put that money into the hands of the public directly? Don’t worry, I know that’ll never happen. In fact I’m well aware that nothing significant will ever happen to the government by choice. Reform is an illusion.

“Wouldn’t it be legitimate public interest to say, I would like to know who signed the petition, because I would like to try to persuade them that their views should be modified?” He adds, “Is there public interest in encouraging debate on the underlying issue?” Bopp replies: “It’s possible, but we think this information is marginal.”

This leads Scalia to bring down the house with: “What about just wanting to know their names so you can criticize them?” Scalia notes that the disclosure of your name is “so you can be out there and be responsible for the positions you have taken.”

Despite my better judgment I find myself liking both of these characters. Debate is at the core of legitimate social change. The very fact that debate has no place in modern politics is a big part of why I have so little faith in the system. Opinions and choices are made well before they are discussed in public usually by economics considerations, or simple self service.

you can’t run a democracy this way, with everybody being afraid of having his political positions known!”

Damn right. Lucky for you life appointed judges, we don’t live in a democracy.

“I’m sorry, Justice Scalia, but the campaign manager of this initiative had his family sleep in his living room because of the threats!”

I am SO tired of this kind of argument. Every time I hear it my blood boils because I end up thinking about the dim frothy whore in that Nick Cage movie “Knowing” where she’s screaming into a payphone about “The Chul-Dren.” She was using their safety as an excuse to push her own mindless agenda and that is the case here as well.

Newsflash: Actions have consequences. If what you are doing is putting your family under fire then stop doing it or be damn sure the risk is worth it.

This is why I don’t think we should let men with families be active duty police or soldiers. Would we not blame an obsessive mountain climber or sky diver to some degree if he ended up dead and left his family alone? Why not cops and soldiers? Because we need them? In my view that’s worse. The skydiving father’s life is less valuable because we don’t profit off of it? Messed up.

new view of democracy that assumes the other guys want to hurt you so bad they shouldn’t even be permitted to know what you’re doing.

Given the previously mentioned status of debate I’m happy about that. I’d love to see a form of cold war between the parties. Like with one actually trying to dismantle the other. It would be more honest and there would be an objective. As it stands the party system looks to me like a fight designed to be unwinnable. And since the whole point of a fight is something you’d rather not have to do, where is the logic in sustaining it for it’s own sake?

Anyway, my opinion is that the right to participate in government demands that you be honest about who you are and what you want. However if a person wants to speak anonymously they have every right to do so and should be completely protected. I’m a big fan of TOR, Wikileaks, and other such technologies and systems, but when it comes to government, you have to have debate and accountability. And you can’t do that hiding behind secrecy.

That same logic is why secret evidence is not tolerable in our court system.

indirectlyrelated.png (PNG Image, 1080×411 pixels) – Scaled (92%).

I don’t see an intellectual value difference between blindly accepting one dogma over another regardless of its source or even its veracity. Intellectual value comes from CRITICAL thinking, most merely accepting whatever is fashionable at the time, as neoatheism clearly is now.

The fact is the world is too complex to understand and discover on our own, we have to take people’s word for things, have to, no choice. That includes atheists. So I’m tired of them all pretending that despite all the books billboard blogs and magazines they didn’t absorb atheism they discovered it.

I find it amusing that the recent rise of atheism’s popularity being correlated with the recent atheist mass advertising push and legal acceptance of same, goes apparently unnoticed by the neoatheist community.

Some atheists openly admit to using rationality to inform ethics. Which I discussed here…

http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=784

Atheism is simply the lack of theism. How can a lack of something generate content? Obviously atheism is being used as a label to cover a more positive, in the presence of something sense of the word, information campaign.

So far the push is benevolent in nature and that’s grand, clearly the neoatheists are ethically superior to the condom bashers, honor killers, and the genital mutilators of the world but that’s no reason to abandon critical thought.

I reject the idea that I should not ask whats in the cake just because its obviously better than the gruel. People like Sam Harris clearly want money attention and power as much as the next man and you can only get so far with that agenda on a negative campaign. But atheism by definition has nothing to offer, it merely rejects the offering of atheism.

The neoatheists forget that fact and blindly lap up the implied and hidden positive message along with the overt and infinitely defensible negative one. the big bang theory for example has become a de facto creation dogma. Now the BBT may be correct, but that’s not at issue, the point is it has nothing to do with atheism. Atheism simply says there is no god, the BBT is simply an alternate explanation for creation and yet neoatheists accept it as part and parcel.

That bothers me. It’s like the idea that if global warming were a myth we’d be better off not exposing it because of the positive changes it would trick us into making. I disagree. We should do the right thing for the right reasons.

http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=242

Atheism is the new satanism in the sense that many people are turning to it merely to escape other things and mainly to piss off mom and dad and other elements of society they consider to be square. (I really can’t think of a modern version of the word. Wordsmith Fail.)

Neoatheism and the cult of youth are closely related and the vast majority of neo atheists are as useful to the status quo in their belief of rebellion as a typical Chinese citizen is to that government. Indeed a huge portion of the neoatheist argument for itself is that atheists are more law abiding. They are in prison less, they stay married longer etc etc.

Then of course there’s the arrogance coupled with intellectual consumerism. and there’s plenty to be annoyed with on that front.

Do all these 20 somethings really think they’ve figured anything out for themselves? I was an open atheist by the time I was 12 as a result of the problem of evil and tolerant parents and I grew up in the south without the Internet and certainly without atheist billboards. I resent being officially in the same category as the vast majority of the neo atheist movement, who are rapidly building a hateful secular dogma of which this image is a grand example.

I’m a deist for logical reasons, and I also resent being lumped in with rock tossing fundamentalists. My god supports the axioms and that’s all. My god is closer to Einstein’s Old One than any neoatheist conception of what a god is. and if they want to call me a stupid fuck for that, be my guest. I’ll disregard them as surly as I disregard the people selling heaven on my doorstep.

http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=324

http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=280

Cards come in three primary flavors. Emotion, Status, Experience.

Examples.

Emotion: Love “You’re not in love, you’ll never understand.”
Status: Race “You’re not black, you’ll never understand.”
Experience: Occupation “You’re not a solider, you’ll never understand.”

This apart from the fact that understanding does not equal agreeing, the X card is any argument point designed to exclude an opponent on grounds other than rationality. For which the only implied defense is metamorphosis of the debater, not the idea.

It is a clever form of the argument from authority or perhaps Ad Hominem. As a good rule of thumb anything that applies to the person rather than the claim, is probably unfair or fallacious, and all X Card arguments apply to the person.

The two most common froms of this variation are the kid and race cards. Routinely people without children or who are of a given race are shunned in discussions of those topics when dissent it offered.

The solider/cop card is gaining in popularity. Mainly it is used in debate about national defense policy or criminal law policy to shut down liberal view points.

This is interesting because we don’t tolerate it under any other circumstances. Indeed in most other areas of life we respect objective distance.

The entire justice system for example is not so much to protect us as it is to dispassionately decide what to do with criminals. Doctors are also encouraged to have emotional distance. And the concept of conflict of interest is at the heart of every contract we sign.

If anyone attempts to eject you from an argument or dismisses a claim of yours based solely on some state of being that you can not or do not possess make sure you’re not being carded.

The work around is to cite the lack of universal agreement among the target group.

Example: You argue with a police officer over drug law, he says you can’t understand till you’ve walked a beat, simply point out the existence of LEAP.

If they’ve said something that the entire target group does (or must) agree with then they’ve probably said something nonsensical, unfalsifiable, or unrelated. in which case you’ll need different tools to shred their point. Google for list of logically fallacious arguments, there are plenty.

In this age of atheist resurgence many atheists attempt to defend their positive claim of absence by appealing to logic.

This is perfectly acceptable so long as the claims made apply to where ever logic applies.

To once again illustrate what I mean I’ll respond to a specific instance of this argument.

This video makes the classic neoatheist mistake, it injects our logic into an area where there is no reason to expect it exists. In an area where the rules of logic are different different things become impossible and possible.

This argument rests on the assumption that the cube and the building are analogues to the universe and any inaccessible adjacent area, or for conceptual purposes, an “outside”.

This is unfair.

Neoatheists love to crush absurd claims with logical arguments because logic is inescapable. But given that the vast majority of modern neoatheists picked up their beliefs from others rather than deducing them for themselves, they are by and large unaware of a few fundamental facts about logic itself.

Anyone who has studied debate is aware of logical fallacies, and to understand them you have to understand what logic is. Ultimately logic is a link in a chain, indeed if the logic is not tethered to something it is referred to as circular logic and is dismissed as flawed. Logic in and of itself has no value. It is a bridge between two things, and these things must be understood before you can begin to understand why the cube argument is inapplicable to the question of what exists “outside” the observable universe.

One end of the logic chain is very well understood, the claim. The other end atheists really hate to discuss if they are even aware of it, and I hope to explain why that is. That end is the axiomatic end.

Axioms annoy atheists because they are real, and unprovable. They are base facets of reality. 1=1 is an axiom. There’s no proving it because it just “is.” Once you grant that 1=1 you can proceed to build logic on those axioms and in turn use that logic to make valid claims.

But in order for those claims to be valid, both the logic and the axioms (or premises in the context of debate) must be valid.

The cube argument and those like it are logically flawless. Hence its popularity. But it is not scalable to the extent presented in the video above. It is only scalable within the confines of our axiomatic system.

Our logic is based on our brain’s structure which is in turn based on the structure of the universe, and I don’t mean its shape, I mean its rules. Neoatheists like to overlook the fact that while they make claims about random chance and infinite possibilities (such as when they attack the fine tuning style of argument) they also have a very logicentric (new word I think) view of all existence.

Put another way, they are more than happy to grant an infinite number of possible universes potentially generated by logic and physical law but they balk at the potential existence of alternate let alone infinite potential logics and axiomatic frameworks.

They literally cannot imagine a sphere of existence based on a different axioms which in turn would be bound by a totally alien logic, and since they can not imagine it, it must therefor not exist. This kind of black and white egocentric thinking is the exact same sort of behavior they thrive on attacking, just in different forms.

Any claim made about impossibilities in this universe must be by definition limited to this universe. Limitations outside of it by definition are unknowable. This is not to say that claims can not be made, for example, we exist so we know that “outside” has not annihilated us. This is not a claim of limitation, this is a one way claim and is therefor valid.

The area outside the universe very probably has a different set of axioms and logic. The potential permutations of what this axiomatic landscape could look like is truly infinite and unbounded except where potential claims apply to us where in the claims become testable.

We know the outside for example did not reverse gravity in our universe yesterday, but we only know that because we can see our universe, we can not know it directly.

Claims about extending our axiomatic landscape to areas where it has no business being are reminiscent of the inability for some people to conceptualize potential changes in time. Time “just is” to many people but the matter is actually up for debate.

The cube outside the universe could very well have the amazon river, mars, and the DNA of last Tuesday in it. Obviously the box in my back room doesn’t have a square circle in it, but the box in my back room is bound by the axiomatic framework of this existence.

Outside the universe is not so bound.

As to the problem of defining god, here is my lengthy response to that aspect of the argument.

http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=324

QM in a nutshell: “I don’t know the answer to this multiple choice, but I know it’s going to be A B C or D, and that’s the same as knowing the answer. Me not knowing the answer means there is no answer. I feel so much better.”

Just because a particle’s velocity and position can’t be known at the same time does Not mean a particle HAS NO velocity or position at a given time.

Yet that’s exactly what QM would have us believe. They are a whole culture of lab coats covering their eyes and believing the world has gone dark.

QM is the science of giving up.

Our inability to solve the problem has no bearing whatsoever on the possibility of the final state.

It’s like looking at a lighting rod and seeing lighting strike 1 inch to it’s left and asking yourself in shock, “Wow! What were the odds of that?” Well apparently 100%, since it happened.

QM is the gambler’s fallacy grown to the size of an institution. It’s a philosophy of acceptance for non answers based on existential confusion. A tolerance for fudged numbers, and claiming success when you got close enough to the mark when an actual answer presents itself. A stealing of credit. The science of hedged bets.

“Hey look, I told you the answer had a high possibility of being a positive number, I’m a genius!”

QM at best introduces randomness, or exposes us to a new unknown order. Chaos itself follows rules, else we wouldn’t be able to make statements about it, or calculate probabilities.

Free will as an actuality can not exist given our current understanding of reality. Quantum indeterminacy or not.

In our time line mutually exclusive events remain mutually exclusive. Our choices may branch into alternate time lines but that might as well be mythology for all the impact it has on our world. A cosmic game of woulda shoulda coulda.

In the here and now, events have only one outcome. If you want to pretend your brain world is somehow exempt from the laws of nature be my guest, but as for me, I’ll skip the magical thinking.

The illusion of free will is enough, and the existence of permanent unknowns is tolerable for me, but then, I’m a grown up like that. *shrugs*

I can’t imagine a more self important attitude. It’s like listening to arguments on how earth HAS to be the center of everything.

It’s puddle thinking.

It’s a religion infesting particle physicists. And until I see some of these quantum miracles (macroscopic teleportation, entanglement, and related quantum weirdness) applied at the macro scale, I’m not buying it.

The whole quantum world is viewed third hand. From instruments and abstraction to our sense organs and finally to us.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/writingscience/Ferris.htm

Read that.

Obviously there is more going on. And yet we invent fictional worlds or ignore the problem.

This is inexcusable behavior for scientists. And their laziness is infecting the future.

The Company is a name I give to the institutions that put their own interests above those of the people these systems require to live. It has three main parts, Government, Church, Corporation. there is no head, no Illuminati, The Company is an outgrowth of systemic greed and insecurity, a consequence of the basic existence problem with group goals.

Example, a company formed to fight cancer, in order to fight it must exist, thus preserving cancer by definition can be construed as in the company’s best interest, the company itself has no way of assigning value to cancer one way or the other except as a function relating to it’s primary directive, exist. These memetic organisms react in an autonomic fashion.

We think we are building organizational cruise missiles, selfless suicide bombers to kill our problem and die in the blast, but that is not so, because they have to have a will to live to make it to the target and once they reach the precipice, they hesitate. You can not solve a primary problem with team work. You can only solve secondary problems. Put another way, we do get somewhere, but we can never get the carrot.

Typically when you talk about The Company to an intelligent willful person they will reject the very notion of being manipulated, having bought the Horatio Alger mythology that position is a function of personal strengths, rather than predetermined conditions and levels of conformity.

The very smart ones tend to think they’ve gamed the system, gotten away with something. But that’s called “the take away” a sales technique wherein you make the customer think they are getting away with something when in fact that was the plan all along.

In America, if you see movies or TV, if you read magazines news papers or play games, anything that takes a group of people to make publish and distribute, you’re being manipulated. Books are the only exception, because books can be produced by a single individual. Anything made by a group is suspect by definition since it was made by a group that had to have an organizing principal, that principal is the heart of The Company.

Simple repeated exposure has a profound impact on the brain, it treats all events it witnesses, fictional or otherwise, as real. Your conscious mind may know it is fiction, but the rest of your brain can not by dint of it’s construction.

They know well the adversarial heart of man and the best way to harness the beast is to con it, not corner it.

You can’t game a system if you play by its rules and if they aren’t trying to silence or kill you, you’re playing by its rules. Even I am their pawn, because everything I say comes from someone stripped of all status, indeed labeled as insane. (I’m a medicated single poor bipolar.) As with Cassandra, regardless of the truth of my words, I will not be believed.

The appearance of conformity, IS conformity. Power is about context control and illusion.

The very thought that you are immune, that you are gaming the system, is Part of the system.