Oh but of course - "Because I object 100% to the notion 'humanity is great', which is clearly isn't,". Those are your words are they not? Since you object to the belief that humanity is great, therefore the opposite is true for you, or will you start eating your own words? And since we're talking about obfuscation now, let's discuss yours now. I've also provided several avenues of discussion,made admittances to your statements against me and yet you feel threatened having to admit the same things about yourself? Quite frankly I didn't need to quote you to know how you felt about the matter at hand because I know myself and my own weaknesses, contradictions and insanities (not all of it of course, but it's a long, arduous process) and because of that I know other's. If you knew yours, you would understand what I mean by that, and you would also know how fucking stupid you sound when you say things like "Humanity is hate".

 

So no quote to back up what you said I said "you yourself said that you believe there is not one great thing about us".
That makes you a liar. Because I object to humanity being described as great, doesn't mean, as I've said, that individuals can overcome their inbuilt circuitry and do great things. You've tried to paint a picture by numbers, but those numbers don't add up.
And by the way, your anger sort of proves my point. Well done.

 

Spoken like a true lawyer, unable to accept deductive reasoning and dismissing every word said on the grounds of them being driven by emotional responses, which is a genuine human response. Which brings me back to my original reply to this post "The OP is a perfect product of 19th century psychology where human beings are approached from an angle of mechanics". You hide behind a culture of denial, only allowing systems which seem related for you to a particular situation to use and try to gain the upper hand while dismissing other seemingly unrelated systems totally oblivious to the fact all systems are related systems, every thing is connected to everything else. You raving on about that one specific quote and not accepting the one I presented is like accepting the positive motion of a sine wave and dismissing the negative motion.

 

No, spoken like someone who didn't say what you said I did. And you got caught out doing it. A disingenuous poster.
And then I'm raving on about "one specific quote" after your last few attempts at smear and fake news.
Come on, man, get a grip on it.
I'm quite okay with being looked down upon by people like you, after all, when you lie, you lose.

 

Well I guess that's it then, deductive reasoning has been reduced to lying and case closed. I think everyone can judge for themselves whether I am a liar or not. What you have proven however is you are thoroughly a prisoner of your own illusions, to me at least.

 

No Sir, I wouldn't.

 

It's difficult to keep up with you because you keep changing your posts at high velocity, just wanted to add a side note to what you said about "when you lie, you lose.", I find that ironic considering governments and high-power corporate types and lawyers and so on lie all the time and all they do is win. :D

 

Yes I have an opinion about what you tell me.
I don't have an opinion about what you don't tell me.
Is this enough rational for you ?...
I don't hide behind an author about who I say nothing but a stupid crazy lopsided title, like you do.
Stop acting like you're the smarter here, you parrot.

 

"Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints".
Mick and Keef about human nature.

If we were a bunch of nihilistic savages, as the original poster suggests, we wouldn't have evolved to become the wonderful beings that we are wondering about what makes us human in an internet bulletin board.

 

Give that man a cupcake!

 

A question would be : "What are they winning ?"
And then : "What are they loosing ?"
S***t, I can't express like I would like, with english...
They loose what is really important ; they don't know it they believe they win.

 

Of course, they lose their humanity with every underhanded word and deed, they do gain money and power by doing so but none of them ever consider what use money and power have if they would be completely alone in the world. Fuck, if I was alone in the world all I would want is something to write and to draw on and something to write and to draw with. Hobbies and crafts and work are an important, crucial part in life.

 

I wonder about Dawkins' arrangement with the publishers. Often the publishers demand in the contract to have control over the title (and they like to make it controversial or exciting).

I think the brain is the best candidate to explain consciousness. Our lack of understanding about how consciousness emerges is no reason to suspect things for which there is NO GOOD EVIDENCE! Most our discoveries so far have been via finally understanding how things work which were not understood, and very few in discovering things of which were were totally unaware, so at least that is where the best odds are.

 

Deductive reasoning doesn't come in to it. You lied about what I said in an attempt to create your own narrative. The end.

Everyone has five minutes to edit their posts before the 'last edited' message shows at the bottom of it.
There were 14 minutes between my last post and your next one. Odd concept, I know, but it may pay you to check what your responding to before you fire off a reply next time.

See? ->->->

 

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Well the argument is that we aren't wonderful beings by default, which we're clearly not, and obviously that doesn't imply the species is unable to create technology, but a simple rebuttal to a very simple question, Jobbs and Gates never got billions of dollars by being non aggressive, un possessive, and never ever winning at all cost.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 15, 2018

This is the news.............

But Jobs and Gates are the exception. If your original assertions were true then everyone would be like Jobs and Gates and they wouldn't be exceptional.

Plus, of course, you're taking your measure as "success" in an economy (a human construct). And it's a market economy, dependent on the rule of law with a degree of liberty and choice and all the rest of it. None of that would exist if humans were only as you claim - people could just kill and steal instead.

With even a little thought, surely it's clear that humans wouldn't exist absent the propensity for social behaviour. Humans wouldn't survive infancy otherwise. And think about language? The human mouth and throat has evolved such that language is possible - human throats have evolved to such an extent that we cannot breath and swallow at the same time - a huge risk to the organism. And this all happened because it means we can better shout at and intimidate each other - thereby increasing our chance of reproduction? lol - I don't think so.

Hmmm. I was kinda with you until then. ;)

This is surely true.

Yes, there's some sense of.....shame? A rejection? Denial?

Oh, come on? Where's the fun in that? :D

I shall steal this line. In more serious places I always ask questions and folks seem to feel they need to answer them, when, in fact, they're rather rhetorical and indications of my thinking rather than a demand for answers.

So, if you spit in my face, steal my food and grope my missus, it's me that has the problem? Anger issues?

Clearly this is difficult for plenty of folk to grasp. :D

 

That was in response to a silly point about not having the internet, so I gave two examples of those who have used aggressive traits to build their tech empires. The reality is lots of people, in the business/economic framework that exists today, benefit from the same tactics gleaned from our shared past.
Of course not everyone can be chief, and just like those old age structures in history, from small units to villages to kingdoms, there are always going to be those left behind, subjugated, and kept in their place.

Your logic is flawed with your second point as I show above. Where there are winners, there will always be losers. Then of course it was rule by intimidation. Now it's the rule of law put in place by the elite. Regular people are still aggressive, possessive and prejudiced as always, as evident from road rage, to sidewalk rage to internet warriors, just the route to power is usually limited by said laws, and lack of education. And people still do kill, and steal, and all the other stuff.

As for social behaviour, it's not an either/or thing. The traits I write of are perfectly happy existing in social groups, small or otherwise, in fact they thrive off it. As those aspects of human nature carry on, so does that of nurturing children, though again it should be noted that lots of children still don't survive infancy even in the days of modern medicine, in part due to the consequences of man's hatred.

Finally, you lol at the characteristics of the stereotypical alpha male and their ability attract mates. Let me know when you see refuse collectors and toilet cleaners with trophy wives. lol

 

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Why do you think the brain is "the best candidate" to explain consciousness ?...

Yes, in most cases, brain is correlated with consciousness. Does a correlation means an explanation ?... Of course not.

Then, you have the NDE examples in large numbers : brains in coma states but conscious awareness and memory, consciousness often localized outside the body. What "GOOD EVIDENCE" do you need ?...

Then you have the nearly destroyed brains and the nearly non-existent brains correlated with normal consciousnesses and IQs (less repertoried examples than for NDE, but they exist).

All these testimonies and facts are severe breaches in the silly belief that brain could be the cause of consciousness.

Of course, you can choose in what you want to believe. I don't want to believe, I want the truth.

 

no , it is much more nuanced than that.
if i did those things and you got angry, it was not me you got angry at.
you got angry at the story in your head you told yourself about it (as a story)
(you created a good guy bad guy story or enemy image false set of thoughts)

however if you phrased it as " this person's actions have effected in such and such way, this outcome is what is bothering me because of my specific need to be respected was not met, my need for nutrition was not met, my need for autonomy was violated."
you are feeling upset still about the situation but not anger, you might be alarmed, you might be disappointed, you might need to re-act to it, but you never have to feel a thing toward me whatsoever because you made it clear to yourself in thought it was never about me that upset you but something deeper , several important requirements or needs were violated and these violations these requirements of yours are what the main concern is about.
anger at me becomes impossible.
your concerns and feelings are instead based on the REAL things bothering you.
you are not able to formulate ideas of good and bad guys or enemy image instead. your attention is on specific exact behaviors and what they led to , what needs and requirements of your were violated.
"X course of action (ways of doing things) by this person led to several of my requirements and needs being violated."
this is phrasing our thoughts to match reality as pure observation while removing fictional storytelling about good and bad guys ( which don't exist) reward and punishment( IE good and bad guys ) is fiction false phony.
in order for you to get anger and act on me in violence you HAVE to create a story in thoughts that YOU are the "good guy" and i am the "bad guy" and i DESERVE to be punished. and punishing is moral because you are the good character and i am the evil character, this is a description of every single act of violence possible.
so you might ask "well if you did these terible things to me what are your consequences?"
like i just stated for me to spit in yourface, steal your food and grope your missus
i would first have to think in my thoughts that i was a good character you are the bad guy and bad guys deserve to be punished because they are not human they are evil.
this fake false process of thought is called"reward and punishment"
all acts of violence all the way down to name calling is a process called "reward and punishment"
this phrase is a description of you telling a story about you being the good guy someone else being the bad guy and good guys are supposed to to tortured bad guys.
everyone torture is the good guy and the person being harmed is the bad guy in the "angry persons" mind.
it does not stop there we torture ourselves in our own thoughts with every tiny thing that is not perfect by punishing yourself calling ourselves " stupid idiot" and every name and worthlessness for not being perfect
all stemming from a false storytelling within thought process about good guys and villains

 

Last edited: Sep 16, 2018

By definition. But you were pointing to the fact there were "winners" as evidence of your premise, forgetting that the "losers" are evidence against it.

I don't think I lol'd at that. In fact I don't remember that being part of the convo at all.

I don't imagine DoubleTake would argue against that. You however seem to be arguing an absence of correlation means causation.

Cart before the horse. You call it silly yet you have already conceded that "in most cases, brain is correlated to consciousness". But you dispense with the obvious and instead pursue the bizarre.

The evidence you field is from people in extreme circumstances - near death experiences. It doesn't take much imagination to believe the brain can do strange things to one's perception under extreme circumstances - and circumstances don't come much more extreme than "near-death", do they?

I was somewhat "near-death", maybe, with a collapsed lung. Nothing changed. However life suddenly transformed into something where everyday hassle seemed the most trivial thing in the world, and grass and birds and humans seemed the most wonderful thing.......but no God, no out of body experiences, no supernatural anything.