A revolution in thought

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Yes, that's his claim. Unfortunately there's not a scrap of support for this anywhere in the entire book.

Forget your idea of what constitutes proof for a second Spacemonkey. You have yet to show me that you understand the two-sided equation or to listen to his observations with a sincere effort to understand what he's saying. Your doubts are not allowing you to hear him because you are expecting the proof to look a certain way. You're doing this to yourself. You are so caught up in your own ideas about how the world works, that you can't let your guard down even for a second.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

This was an accurate observation and if you read on it becomes more clear how conscience works.

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

It becomes clear how Lessans' thought conscience works, but he never bothered to give anyone any reason to think he was correct. Merely calling something an accurate observation doesn't make it so.

That's not what he did. He described his observation at length. Let your doubt go Spacemonkey and listen to his words, or there's no place for us to go.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You keep saying that...

Because it's true. Lessans never bothered to include in his chapter any actual support for his assumption of the innate potential perfection of conscience.

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Oh well, what can I say?

Fuck all, apparently. But that doesn't seem to be slowing you down.

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Forget your idea of what constitutes proof for a second Spacemonkey.

Fine. Tell me what constitutes proof. Does Lessans saying something constitute proof that he was right about it?

Originally Posted by peacegirl

He described his observation at length.

Describing something still doesn't amount to supporting it.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Because it's true. Lessans never bothered to include in his chapter any actual support for his assumption of the innate potential perfection of conscience.

Fuck all, apparently. But that doesn't seem to be slowing you down.

It was not an assumption Spacemonkey. He was describing what he saw in the material world, which was not easily perceived by the average person. You are assuming that his observations were mistaken because he didn't have written data. All I can say is you are missing out. I cannot do more for you Spacemonkey unless you meet me halfway, which you're not doing. You are the one saying "fuck it", not me. You aren't giving him a chance because you won't allow yourself to. It's as simple as that, and there's nowhere for me to go from here.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

You are full of sour grapes LadyShea, and you are full of pomposity in the way you attack him.

I am not the one who wrote all my butthurt about not being granted an audience for my brilliant ideas down in a book and dedicated it to all of mankind.

Amazing that you don't see this.

That I don't see what? I am one of millions of people arguing on the Internet. I am not claiming special knowledge that will be considered the coming of the Messiah.

If you don't like the introduction, and you can't accept the things he shared in complete honesty, then this book is not meant for your ears.

Fine, so why are you still here trying to share it with me?

[Adam]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I am not the one who wrote all my butthurt about not being granted an audience for my brilliant ideas down in a book and dedicated it to all of mankind.

[LadyShea]

It was not an assumption Spacemonkey. He was describing what he saw in the material world, which was not easily perceived by the average person.

He saw the workings of potentially perfect conscience in the material world? Really? That's quite a trick!

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Would you stop it already? You're making him what he wasn't.

You are missing his reasons for why he wrote that. It was not to express disdain. You are making stuff up.

Let it go LadyShea. You are apparently not interested in why he prefaced the book the way he did; his frustrations at those who did not give him the time of day. You're only interested in pointing out that I'm wrong when I said he didn't berate anyone. I told you I misinterpreted what you said because I was referring to the reader. He did not berate the reader LadyShea. You are nitpicking as usual. You're effort to distract has gone to another level.

You are full of sour grapes LadyShea, and you are full of pomposity in the way you attack him.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

I am not the one who wrote all my butthurt about not being granted an audience for my brilliant ideas down in a book and dedicated it to all of mankind.

Where did he mention "my brilliant ideas". You are the one distorting his motivations. It was not butthurt LadyShea. You are as narrow minded as anyone could possibly be.

Amazing that you don't see this.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

That I don't see what? I am one of millions of people arguing on the Internet. I am not claiming special knowledge that will be considered the coming of the Messiah.

Yes, he is claiming special knowledge and you are so sure he doesn't have any that you have lost your objectivity. You have already decided that he has to be wrong (after all, look at the forums I've been to and they thought the same thing). Isn't that your reasoning? Well, it's completely biased and wrong, and it's hard to talk to you when half the things you say about him are filled with misinterpretations and untruths.

If you don't like the introduction, and you can't accept the things he shared in complete honesty, then this book is not meant for your ears.

Originally Posted by LadyShea

Fine, so why are you still here trying to share it with me?

You're not the only one here. I have lost the desire to share the book with you because you come back with refutations that are not accurate. You keep saying that "greater satisfaction" is a modal fallacy, which it is not. How I can go on if that's what you say, and you say it with such force as if you're knowledge on this topic is greater than Lessans. It astounds me that you are this haughty everytime you make a remark like this. When you said no one is interested, you spoke for everyone in here, yet people keep posting, for whatever reason. You can't speak for others LadyShea, which you have a habit of doing.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

He saw the workings of potentially perfect conscience in the material world? Really? That's quite a trick!

Oh my god, there you go again. In your curiosity about the world (which is a wonderful trait to have), you are going to miss out on a treasure because of the way you are jumping to major conclusions that this work cannot be true according to your epitemological standards. This is really fucked up. There is something wrong here and you will not budge. You will continue to act as if your knowledge is more accurate than Lessans' 30+ years of analysis of a subject matter that you can't even come close to. What gets to me is your your self-righteous attitude. I feel it through the computer.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

There is something wrong here and you will not budge.

You have never given a reason why anyone should budge from the opinion that Lessans is wrong.

There are plenty of people who have dedicated their lives to ideas that are fundamentally unsound (white nationalists would be a good example). Not to denegrate Lessans' efforts, but telling us he exerted a lot of effort on his ideas does not automatically make them good ideas.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Where did he mention "my brilliant ideas". You are the one distorting his motivations. It was not butthurt LadyShea.

LOL

Originally Posted by Lessans

I can’t convince these people to give
me the time even though I have made discoveries that will benefit all
mankind. This pride is the first half of the primary problem; that the
very people who have the intellectual capacity to understand the
knowledge in this book refuse to investigate what must reveal, if
proven true, how unconsciously ignorant they have always been.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Oh my god, there you go again. In your curiosity about the world (which is a wonderful trait to have), you are going to miss out on a treasure because of the way you are jumping to major conclusions that this work cannot be true according to your epitemological standards. This is really fucked up. There is something wrong here and you will not budge. You will continue to act as if your knowledge is more accurate than Lessans' 30+ years of analysis of a subject matter that you can't even come close to. What gets to me is your your self-righteous attitude. I feel it through the computer.

You said he described what he saw in the material world. How could he see a potentially perfect conscience in the material world when, according to him, our conscience is not currently at the highest temperature? I am only questioning your claim.

[LadyShea]

Yes, he is claiming special knowledge and you are so sure he doesn't have any that you have lost your objectivity. You have already decided that he has to be wrong (after all, look at the forums I've been to and they thought the same thing). Isn't that your reasoning? Well, it's completely biased and wrong, and it's hard to talk to you when half the things you say about him are filled with misinterpretations and untruths.

That's not my reasoning at all. I have given you my reasoning for deciding he was wrong...namely the fallacies and mistakes and arrogance and crackpottery displayed in his work.

I do use your experiences around the web to try to demonstrate to you that my negative response to the book is not unique, is not an aberration.

[LadyShea]

You're not the only one here.

No, but I am one of only a handful that will talk with you, and you've told all of us now that we are not the ones to read this book.

I have lost the desire to share the book with you because you come back with refutations that are not accurate.

Feel free to demonstrate my inaccuracies rather than just asserting I am wrong. Any time now...I've been waiting.

You keep saying that "greater satisfaction" is a modal fallacy, which it is not.

Feel free to demonstrate that it is not rather than just asserting it is not.

How I can go on if that's what you say, and you say it with such force as if you're knowledge on this topic is greater than Lessans.

He used fallacious reasoning in his explanations and I recognize that. If you think he didn't, then by all means get to marketing the book to better people than me...how many more times over how many more years are you going to send it back to the editor and wait around for your next proof?

It astounds me that you are this haughty everytime you make a remark like this. When you said no one is interested, you spoke for everyone in here, yet people keep posting, for whatever reason.You can't speak for others LadyShea, which you have a habit of doing.

I never said nobody was interested, I said nobody is likely to be convinced that Lessans was correct. I drew that conclusion from the posts in these threads, and the poll we did over Christmas.

Interested yes...for a number of reasons.

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by Peacegirl

There is an entire section related to conscience and how it functions (in Chapter Two), which leads up to the discovery.

Not quite. There is an entire section dedicated to how the book claims conscience works. However, the promised undeniable evidence never materializes. Remember how the reader will be led, step by undeniable step, until they are simply unable to deny it is correct? The chess-game comparison?

There is not even an attempt made to make a case for it.

The author does not seem to have noticed this.

It gets funnier in your case. You DO know this is the case, but you simply refuse to deal with it. Hence the sadly transparent attempt at evasiveness by responding with "there is a whole chapter dedicated to conscience and how it works".

Because I clearly ask you to point out where I can find any reason to believe the book is correct in it's claim. You just do not want to say the actual truth, which is "There does not seem to be any". Or "I am sure there is some, but I cannot find it".

Am I to understand that this is a tactic your father would have approved of? I wont lie: he strikes me as rather dim. But not dishonest.

...Unless he purposefully waffled around the issue of the reason to believe conscience works the way he claimed? The writing does become extraordinarily woolly and disjointed between the part where he begins to claim conscience works that way and the part where he moves on as if he has made a perfectly undeniable case for it.

Is the truth even funnier than I thought? Did he think he could just blather a bit and pretend his point was proven, and that no-one would notice?

Surely not? Surely no-one is THAT stupid, as well as arrogant?

Then again, you are. You are doing just that right now. I say "There is just no reason to believe conscience works that way. It is not just not proven, or even supported... no attempt is even made!" And your answer is "There is a section on conscience."

Either you are doing your father a grave disservice by associating it with such foolish, transparent dishonesty, or you are just carrying on the family tradition.

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

You have never given a reason why anyone should budge from the opinion that Lessans is wrong.

There are plenty of people who have dedicated their lives to ideas that are fundamentally unsound (white nationalists would be a good example). Not to denegrate Lessans' efforts, but telling us he exerted a lot of effort on his ideas does not automatically make them good ideas.

That is true, but his observations can be tested. What people are doing is theorizing about the impossibility of every human being reacting with a strong conscience. They're not thinking in terms of how they themselves would react to the changed environmental conditions, but only in terms of how others would react, which is the problem.

Decline and Fall of All Evil: Chapter One: The Hiding Place

p. 43 The corollary, Thou Shall Not Blame, when it
is extended does not mean that we will be forced to condone what
hurts us, but we will be shown how to prevent these evils by
mathematically extending the corollary. And the amazing thing is
that both sides of this equation are correct. Christ said, “Turn the
other cheek” and Durant said, “This is impossible.” Just think about
this for one moment. Would you believe that both principles are
mathematically correct?”

“How is that possible?”

“God made the reconciliation of these two principles the time
when He would reveal Himself to all mankind. But to get here you
can see what had to be done first since the paths leading up to this
understanding were camouflaged with layers upon layers of words that
concealed the truth.”

“Is proving that man’s will is not free the key to open the door and
your second discovery?”

“Of course not; I just told you that the fiery dragon must be killed
to get the key. First, I must prove that man’s will is not free so we
can come face to face with the fiery dragon (the great impasse of
blame), and I will prove it in a mathematical, undeniable manner.
Then I shall jab him in the right eye, then the left, then I shall cut out
his tongue. I took fencing lessons for the job. And finally I shall
pierce him in his heart. Then when I have made certain he is dead.”

“I thought you killed him already.”

“I did, but there was a dragon for each person, so instead of giving
everybody a sword; steel is high these days, I shall slay him so the
whole world can see he is dead.”

[peacegirl]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

Not quite. There is an entire section dedicated to how the book claims conscience works. However, the promised undeniable evidence never materializes. Remember how the reader will be led, step by undeniable step, until they are simply unable to deny it is correct? The chess-game comparison?

There is not even an attempt made to make a case for it.

The author does not seem to have noticed this.

It gets funnier in your case. You DO know this is the case, but you simply refuse to deal with it. Hence the sadly transparent attempt at evasiveness by responding with "there is a whole chapter dedicated to conscience and how it works".

Because I clearly ask you to point out where I can find any reason to believe the book is correct in it's claim. You just do not want to say the actual truth, which is "There does not seem to be any". Or "I am sure there is some, but I cannot find it".

Am I to understand that this is a tactic your father would have approved of? I wont lie: he strikes me as rather dim. But not dishonest.

...Unless he purposefully waffled around the issue of the reason to believe conscience works the way he claimed? The writing does become extraordinarily woolly and disjointed between the part where he begins to claim conscience works that way and the part where he moves on as if he has made a perfectly undeniable case for it.

Is the truth even funnier than I thought? Did he think he could just blather a bit and pretend his point was proven, and that no-one would notice?

Surely not? Surely no-one is THAT stupid, as well as arrogant?

Then again, you are. You are doing just that right now. I say "There is just no reason to believe conscience works that way. It is not just not proven, or even supported... no attempt is even made!" And your answer is "There is a section on conscience."

Either you are doing your father a grave disservice by associating it with such foolish, transparent dishonesty, or you are just carrying on the family tradition.

What is the discovery Vivisectus? The evidence does materialize, but you're placing the cart before the horse. He has to state the principles before we can test it; but you're not even giving him a chance. You're jumping to the conclusion that his observations can't be true, which is not something any serious investigator would do. Sam Harris demonstrates that there is a continuum of well-being in different cultures and he defines "well-being" in a way that can be objectively measured. His ideas come from observation, and although his term is different than the term "greater satisfaction" it is similar in many respects. To reject Lessans' observations just because he can't prove it in the way you demand, is foolhardy. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. You've rushed to judgment and you're going to regret it one day. This time could have been spent reading the book and asking relevant questions and you would have gotten so much more out of it. But you have no questions; just criticism for knowledge you have no grasp of.

[peacegirl]

Intermission: Something to think about

Angelina Jolie inspires women to maim themselves by celebrating medically perverted double mastectomies

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

That is true, but his observations can be tested. What people are doing is theorizing about the impossibility of every human being reacting with a strong conscience. They're not thinking in terms of how they themselves would react to the changed environmental conditions, but only in terms of how others would react, which is the problem.

Just because observations can be tested does not make them good ideas, they have to be tested to prove they're good ideas.

Your primary argument is that Lessans was very smart, worked really hard, and he made testable claims. This does not make a convincing argument. You've been told this numerous times, in different ways.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

I have asked people to show me a dog that can recognize his master from a picture. They could set it up where the dog hasn't seen his master in quite awhile, so we would know he would definitely be excited to see him either in a picture, a video, or skype. I have never seen this. Experiments that have tried to prove that dogs have this ability have not been conclusive.

See, this is why I wrote that I wasn't interested in a response from you on the subject at hand. What you wrote isn't even marginally responsive to my question.

I understand why you talk past the other posters here (and everywhere else). You've candidly admitted that your father's writings are your Bible and that nothing could ever change your mind regarding the correctness of what he wrote. Thus, your mind is closed.

I'll gladly converse with you on any subject except your father's writings, but on that topic I'll only converse with others. Engaging the staunchly closed-minded is something of a fool's errand, wouldn't you agree?

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Sam Harris demonstrates that there is a continuum of well-being in different cultures and he defines "well-being" in a way that can be objectively measured.

Did you read The Moral Landscape, or merely watch his TED talk on YouTube? Can you tell us what his argument was, and what evidence he presented that amounts to a demonstration of this continuum? What was the methodology proposed for measuring "well being" and how was well being defined?

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Intermission: Something to think about

Angelina Jolie inspires women to maim themselves by celebrating medically perverted double mastectomies

After considerable research and thought, she had a surgery that reduced her chance of breast cancer from 87% to 5% so she can be there for her 6 young children. Her mother died at 56 from cancer so she knew better than most what she was choosing.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by peacegirl

Intermission: Something to think about

Angelina Jolie inspires women to maim themselves by celebrating medically perverted double mastectomies

And the Lulz keep coming.

You really are a sad, pathetic, ignorant twit.

Oh, everyone be sure to check out that Web site's claims that the Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag operation.

[Stephen Maturin]

Damn, that "Health Ranger" clown is a bigger whackadoo woomeister than I remembered.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Damn, that "Health Ranger" clown is a bigger whackadoo woomeister than I remembered.