The Deadly Spread of Bulverism on ATS

reply to post by Serdgiam

Dear Serdgiam,

You're absolutely right and I apologize. Open wide the doors of this den of ill-repute, and let the Demon Rum flow freely. Find a young lady of questionable morals for me. We should have all the fun we can. This place has gotten dark and dreary.

The PSA is completed, and we return to our regularly scheduled hilarity. Come on, everybody. Drinks (and Pizza) are on me.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by charles1952


His notion only works for objective claims. If your premise is subjective, then I do not have to prove it is wrong, nor do I have to be pertinent to it, in order to refute it.

e.g.
You say, "blah blah Syrian war."
I say, "how might we know what is the wrong or right thing to do, without a God to command what is right or wrong?"

That is, you're using his sentiment wrong.



Reply to C.S. Lewis: (if he were alive)

Thoughts are subjective and objective, therefore debate will become subjective. As such, demanding objective discourse is an irrational thought for a subjective mind.

Granted, the above notion doesn't disprove your notion, but it does, however, show that your notion is irrational, moot, trivial, or irrelevant to a higher regard.

That is, all notions are debatable, whether the refute is pertinent or not. What matters to retort, is what is thought to be the highest regard.

Thus, your plea is irrational by the very act of discourse; and what is irrational, is wrong.

-Would be a fun forum game to troll people in history. I wonder what he would say back to me?

reply to post by Bleeeeep

Dear Bleeeeep,

Thanks for chiming in, I appreciate it.

Would you clear up something for me? I'm not clear on your use of subjective v. objective. If, by subjective, you mean a person's opinions, things that are internal to himself, Bulverism, strictly speaking, does not apply. "I like Bock beer" is not something civilized people argue over. It's perfectly acceptable to ask "Why do you prefer it to Pilsner?"

Bulverism, as I believe Lewis describes it, is the idea of taking it for granted that the other person's statement is wrong, skipping over the truth or falsity of it, and devising some rationalization for why the person is wrong.

Since a person's taste is neither true or false, Bulverism does not take place. But if that's what you mean by subjective, what can we make of your statement:

If your premise is subjective, then I do not have to prove it is wrong, nor do I have to be pertinent to it, in order to refute it.

How do you refute something that is neither right or wrong in itself? Or do I misunderstand your use of the word "refute?"

You say, "blah blah Syrian war."
I say, "how might we know what is the wrong or right thing to do, without a God to command what is right or wrong?"

That is, you're using his sentiment wrong.

Assume that your example begins with the statement "We will save Syrian lives by bombing right now according to Plan X." The response, referring to God is a non sequitur, it is not assuming the other person is wrong, nor ascribing some psychological motive to the speaker. Therefore, it is not a Bulverism.

Thoughts are subjective and objective, therefore debate will become subjective. As such, demanding objective discourse is an irrational thought for a subjective mind.

I'm really sorry, but I've read this four times and I don't understand it at all. Would you please restate it?

Granted, the above notion doesn't disprove your notion, but it does, however, show that your notion is irrational, moot, trivial, or irrelevant to a higher regard.

Might as well restate this as well.

That is, all notions are debatable, whether the refute is pertinent or not.

I might be still misunderstanding but any refutation is, by it's nature, relevant.

What matters to retort, is what is thought to be the highest regard.

in discussions and debate, I thought the "highest regard" was using reason, to the extent possible, to determine truth.

Thus, your plea is irrational by the very act of discourse;

Sorry. What plea? Are you saying that any exchange of ideas is irrational?

and what is irrational, is wrong.

Allow me to go off the subject for a moment. I often like the irrational, and find it to be a good. Love, the smell of flowers, trust, music, all irrational, but perfectly wonderful.

I know I'm misunderstanding you, but, together we'll get somewhere.

With respect,
Charles1952

P.s. Did you like the picture of the girl and the beer? That's irrational. - C -

Wrabbit2000

I have to agree... It was less colorful with amber everything and dot matrix sucked. DOS 3.2 was a pain in the butt as well....but we could feel special for having some arcane knowledge few did way back then. lol.... I was just mastering DOS and full system .bat file menus (they worked too!) when the first Windows came out.

Nothing has been the same since.

There went the neighborhood.

DOS is still alive and well. And is even more arcane these days..... There are a lot of things you can do to clean your system, in fact, if you boot into DOS instead of Windows. Plus DOS is still the best way to perform certain types of automation. Most of the old commands exist, and there are some newer ones.

DOS Commands

More on topic. What is the best known defense against Bulverism?

in discussions and debate, I thought the "highest regard" was using reason, to the extent possible, to determine truth.

Of course you would think that. People have been mistaking sleep paralysis for Yeti for thousands of years.

And I realize I've only been your stalker-fan for 12 minutes so am probably not very good at it yet, but if you would just provide more leading clues to your precise location I could explain to everyone why. Why what? Just WHY.

This thread is helpful, as I am pursuing a private degree in learning to insult others properly, and it's coming along ok, as my valued comrades at this forum have been educating me in how to see the flaws in others in nearly every thread. Today for example I learned that gay people are innately wrong because there were legends even eons ago in Mesopotamia, which explains why Obama wants us all to fall given he's from Chicago. I mean sheesh, like all that isn't so obvious.

I got a little out of breath in such leaping to conclusions, but that's probably the asthma from the chemtrails which obviously are killing us or why would the US government have built an antenna station? And speaking of UFOs, I think it's obvious that you are deluded because everyone knows cows die of wolves and other natural causes all the time.

See, I have potential. The electromagnetic sort, like Tesla, who was a genius and the second coming until the CIA obviously killed him because Monsanto wants to control everything, and they're the evil villians responsible for the kind of mind-altering MKULTRA chemicals that can cause sleep paralysis in the first place. I rest my case.

reply to post by charles1952


Objective statement: anything that is viewed with a single perspective or is thought to be true in regards to a subject
E.g. Triangles are geometrical shapes with 3 sides

Subjective statement: anything that is viewed with multiple perspectives, or is thought to be a potential truth, or is unable to be known to be true or false
E.g. Plan X saves lives. (Think of it like Plan X was to stop someone from killing Hitler's mom while she was pregnant with Hitler. You could objectively say, "Plan X was to save 2 lives and it did so", but then we could subjectively say, "Hitler causes the death of a bunch of people in the future and Hitler and his mom eventually died so what did you really save?" or we could say, "my friend's name is triangle and he doesn't have 3 sides" - thus your objective fact becomes subjective in different perspectives.)

news flash: everything is subjective because our minds see differences

Refute, dispute, debate, argue: to make a statement in opposition to another's statement
E.g. The lawyer refuted my claim to the car, but I won my case, and claim to the car, on the grounds of a spoken word agreement.

Pertinent: directly related to the subject matter
E.g. It is not directly pertinent to mention the golden rule in regards to a spoken word agreement, but it is of moral regard, which is what an agreement is related to - moral regard.


You said, "in discussions and debate, I thought the "highest regard" was using reason, to the extent possible, to determine truth." When I said, "what is thought to be the highest regard."

What I wrote expressed that people hold things at different values from one another, and they will use what they think is of a higher/highest regard when debating a subject.

What you wrote expressed only a subjective higher regard, which effectively proved my statement true, and your statement to be daring enough to misconstrue what I said, in attempt to make yourself seem right.

And the rest of your post is basically arguing just to argue so I'll pass on that, thanks. But I do feel like you need to understand subjective and objective. You should know that everything is subjective whether we want it to be objective or not. We can't say triangles are always objective - reality doesn't work that way; and for the very same reason, it is irrational to try to force objectivity.

The art of debating is sadly dying due to the internet, resulting in anonymity being constantly abused, therefore resulting in bulverism.

Wouldn't be a bad idea to have debating reintroduced into the school curriculums, and maybe even a debating exam/test to gain access to this site.

Wishful thinking huh? :-/

reply to post by OpenEars123


Hasn't school debate devolved into whomever speaks the fastest wins? I don't think it is about counterarguments anymore, at least not for debate teams.



Need to remove the timers.

reply to post by Bleeeeep



To be honest and being from the UK, I have no experience with debate teams.

I always 'assumed' it was to teach and learn how to debate properly?

Looks like I was wrong there :-/

Agreed, timers don't seem to be helping the cause.

RedCairo

bigfatfurrytexan
By giving out more accessibility, there has been an increase of mendacity.

I was just realizing a few weeks ago that back when few people had home computers, almost nobody had the internet, and I had to either wade through USENET (albeit alt.sex.stories was tempting lol) or pay CompuServe 8 bucks an hour to be online, that the overall quality of people was certainly better. Sure, there were the hysterically emotional, armchair pedantic and socially unglued people then too, but there weren't very many of them.

Why? Because 8 bucks an hour is a lot of money to spend on a slow dialup service in 1993, so nearly everybody was "an employed adult." Add to that the element of having to be interested in computers, and able to set up and navigate the internet to begin with, and it really was a drastically different spectrum of people online. We had actual conversations in CompuServe... you would rarely have seen one post that looks like entire threads of things look like now.

I think if the internet in 1993 had operated as it does now in the social arena, my life would have been very different, since I wouldn't have "fallen into it" but would have run screaming into the night.

Fortunately, by the time the web became the bangkok market of conversational hazing, I had a very thick virtual skin.

I remember those days - the state of the art in USENET reading software was a DOS USENET reader program that did everything in stages using 14.4K baud modem (100x slower than a 128Mbit broadband). First you would go online and first update the list of currently available USENET groups (eg. alt.discussion.ufos), then pick out the ones that sounded interesting and discard the ones you didn't want to subscribe to any more. Next, you would download the headers of every update to each forum discussion topic, then you could pick out the ones you wanted and then do the full download of the actual discussion replies. Then you disconnected from the dial-up, read through the discussions, wrote up your thoughts, have them saved for the next time you went online, and then when you were finished you could go online and send them or just cancel them.

Now someone, just reads an article, shoots off a reply "You're a nazi sympathizer", or "You're a Zionist shill" and then goes their merry way.

reply to post by RedCairo

Dear RedCairo,

Potential? Heck, you display an unrecognized genius! (Well, I recognize it, so it's not completely unrecognized. What can you do? We're all controlled puppets anyway.)

You are the first stalker-fan I've ever met. I always thought that a stalker-fan was what stalkers used on hot days when they couldn't find air conditioning.

By the way, do you know Bleeeeep? I'd give a nickel to read, or listen to, a conversation between you. "The bloodied field of strife," doesn't begin to do justice to what I would expect to be the outcome.

I do wish you would spend more time communicating with your mother. If you are still asking "Why?" it indicates you're not as close as you should be. Any 8 year-old will tell you that the eternally true answer to "Why?" is "Because I told you so."

Today for example I learned that gay people are innately wrong because there were legends even eons ago in Mesopotamia, which explains why Obama wants us all to fall given he's from Chicago. I mean sheesh, like all that isn't so obvious.

Of course, it's obvious. Someone slotted you into the beginner's course when they should have started you much further along. (See genius, unrecognized, above.)

See, I have potential. The electromagnetic sort, like Tesla, who was a genius and the second coming until the CIA obviously killed him because Monsanto wants to control everything, and they're the evil villians responsible for the kind of mind-altering MKULTRA chemicals that can cause sleep paralysis in the first place. I rest my case.

I can't find even the smallest flaw in your argument. You just have to have a long talk with Bleeeeep.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by charles1952


I'm chuckling at the bulveristic sleepers not so cleverly hidden in your examples

always a slant - eh wot Charles?

:-)

I was thinking about this (and thanks Charles for the pretty girl with the beer!), and from what I have seen;

Most people "win" arguments by "winning" the debate. It has nothing to do with who is right or wrong, objectively, and everything to do with who argues their point the best to the subjective "panel" (whoever that may be in a given venue).

Even at the professional debate level, we see this to be true.

So, when we have a wide variety of information and opinions colliding on the internet, we do not pursue the point at hand, but we are privy to simply argue it. You can technically argue against anything as long as you keep objective items out of play.

Perhaps if more people were educated in the scientific method (I know, I know, I harp on about this a lot) that people would learn its not about proving yourself, but about exploration.

Perhaps what it comes down to is there arent as many explorers anymore. Even our education system discourages active exploration in lieu of rote memorization. Which is a sad realization for me.

reply to post by Serdgiam


You are not the only one advocating for the scientific method, or who laments it's apparent abandonment by significant portions of the population of this planet. But fear not, for although the number of people willing to correctly engage with the universe may be smaller at the moment, and those capable of properly observing and examining events might be looked at as loonies or servants of dark masters, there is still a hard core of determined wielders of the blade of thought, unprepared to recede into dark places, despite the pitchforks levelled at our chests.

Courage dear chap!

reply to post by TrueBrit


Thanks mate!

It just hadnt quite hit me before. As a child, I was exploring EVERYTHING. And the feeling it gave is incomparable to anything.

Perhaps some new discoveries will show that there is still so very much to explore out there. I just wish science wasnt corporatized like pretty much everything else these days.

I think on the horizon are some interesting things. Both beneficial and detrimental to us as a species, and it is up to those of us who will not cave in, to continue holding that torch so others can see in their darkness.

Thank you.

reply to post by Serdgiam

Dear Serdgiam,

Darn it all, I had already entered you as a friend. Well, I do it again, three times.

Discussion, as with so many other things, has changed it's goals from the greater to the lesser. If I get into a discussion and learn that I've been thinking wrongly, then I've been strengthened and improved. If my partner in conversation and I discover a new idea, then we're both better off.

But for some reason, we think winning a debate is meaningful. Perhaps it's only a way to try to gain dominance over someone, short of physically attacking them. Maybe it's an ego boost. All of those reasons are trivial and childish compared to learning, understanding, and seeing truth more clearly.

Our schools went through a time of "values clarification." Since it appears they fouled it up so badly the first time, maybe we should take another try at it. I hereby appoint Serdgiam as Secretary for Getting Our *^&%$ Country's Head On Straight.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by charles1952


Thats exactly how its turned out, isnt it? Its not about discovery, but dominance. It seems to be our modern cultural story that is carried out in everything from governments to individuals.

Sadly, I am not sure I wish to accept that position given that it is currently furloughed...

I will wear the title with honor. My threads seemed to get a spark out of you previously, and this one (amongst a couple others) have relit mine. Sometimes that pilot light just goes out for a bit, you know?

While my pain dictates many things, the threads I posted are just a small percentage of what else is going on. I firmly believe that we can make a change for the better, and we dont need some type of government overthrow or violent revolution to get there. We have all of the tools at our disposal, but perhaps just saying that isnt enough. Maybe its time to show how to use them so that ALL can benefit, and not just a chosen few.

Like TrueBrit said, perhaps it is a time where these things (bulverism) are not just common but preferred. That doesnt mean the vanguards of exploration should close that gate, but perhaps it might be good to show others how to open it. Being wrong isnt some catastrophic event, it just shows us that the path we are currently on could use some new bearing. How could we expect individuals to not "bulverize" when the government they grew up under does the same thing? How could we expect that when our leaders use bulverism to spread propaganda?

Maybe it really is time to look to ourselves, and those around us, for what true leadership really means. I think that might be what it comes down to.. we have lost sight of what a leader truly is and many are just emulating those that wear the "mask" of leadership, but know nothing about it.

reply to post by Spiramirabilis

Dear Spiramirabilis,

What joy to see you again! I can't tell you how long it's been since I've had a rousing "eh wot." My heart is full, singing a symphony of joy. (Ok, one doesn't "sing" a symphony, but I have poetic licence to drive my 6 cylinder metaphor wherever I please.)

I'm chuckling at the bulveristic sleepers not so cleverly hidden in your examples

I hope you mean the OP. I wasn't intending to put any in my other writing, but if I have, let me know and I'll scold myself and issue an apology.

Within the OP, I admit that my examples weren't entirely balanced. (But that's because the people who agree with me are better, cleaner, taller, and are more proficient whistlers. Don't hate us.) I did try to put in a counter-example or two, and I did invite people to add their own examples.

I will also admit that I'm a sneaky, sly sort of fellow. The sort that you don't want to take home to mother.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by Serdgiam

charles1952
reply to post by FyreByrd

 

Dear FyreByrd,

Thank you very much. Is logic taught anywhere in the US anymore, or is it a specialist course you have to attend college to receive? ATS is a place to learn things, maybe your bit from Dodgson, and Lewis', will be a start.

By the way,

you will so continually rnvounyrt in nookd,

I prefer to do it clothed, myself. But then I always was kind of shy.

With respect,
Charles1952

I, too, like my belief clothed, clothed with reason and compassion.

Logic is not taught in primary or secondary schools here in the US. At the college levels it is taught but only required for certain majors.

I find two problems with logical reasoning.

1) the normal mistakes of inference that we all tend to make if not careful.

and

2) Traditional logic (Aristotle, Eucld, Liebniz, Boole) is no longer sufficient to explain reality. The most basic law of logic is that of the "Excluded Middle" (a 'thing' must either possess a given attribute or must not possess it) - - "Logic Made Easy" byD. J. Bennett, pg 30).

The cat (thing) is dead (attribute) or the cat is not dead.

Quantum physics proves this 'axiom' of logic in error with the Scrodinger's Cat thought experiement where the cat is dead and not dead until observed.

I believe that there are people working this problem, but as I have so much difficultly with truly understanding and applying traditional logic, I'm down right afriad of a teritary logic.

I believe this is right on the edge and essential to the next dominate worldview.

Nice Chit Chat.