Scientifical Truthiness and Manly Confidenceness

[jotabe]

Then we are done, Mr. Sts. Always a pleasure having you around, i hope to see you again. Remember, anything you need, just ask.
*hands the hat*
[aside] Such a nice fellow![/aside]

It's been long since that kind of words hurted me last. But i didn't forget. As i didn't forget what i felt towards the people that said them. Since then, i grew up, and learned that hating isn't right, and learned to decide my own emotions. But the contempt is still there, an objective contempt, the contempt i feel for the strong who abuses the weak.
And while those words don't hurt me anymore, i have several friends who are deeply insecure, but they are wonderful people, much much better than myself. And i know they hurt when they bump on people like you who tells them stuff like that.
So, yes, i'd say it matters to me.

And no, this isn't confidence, because i am an insecure person, i just am picky about whose oppinion matters to me. I just don't care about society enough to wish to build social skills. Everybody can live or burn, it's up to them.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Newton's discoveries are true. Just go and throw a brick to the air, and tell me if it doesn't follow the trajectory predicted by newtonian mechanics. Classical Mechanics, it's true. Or, if you prefer, it's very close to the truth in a certain experimental range... which it's more of "hard truth" than any other use of the word truth in our daily lives. Only mathematic truths are harder.

It doesn't, and you know it doesn't. It only follows it to within experimental error in most situations. Truth isn't a sliding scale. There have been plenty of theories that were close to accurate predictions, but might have fallen just outside the accepted bounds of accuracy, and they were cast by the wayside for that. Newton's theories weren't great accomplishments because they were true - they were great accomplishments because they were valuable to people. People looked at the theories and decided that they couldn't have done things which were of value to them without them, and therefore decided that the theories themselves were valuable.

Merit is a useful concept, but we cannot (should not) try to take it to an absolute scale. Merit concept was born in our minds out of the competitive pressure during our evolution, as a way to find members of your same species of whose partnership you could benefit. And that's exactly where it can be applied to, and that's why any merit is essentially a comparison to OTHER members of your same species. There isn't an absolute merit, and hence there is no way to know you are worth anything without comparing yourself ot others.
So, it can be observed and experienced, but only as a dynamic comparison. What we do believe in is the different scales we measure one another with. People who believes in "good" scales will associate to people who can enhance their chances to reproduce. People who believes in "bad" scales will not.

But how are you comparing yourself to others? You certainly don't have firsthand knowledge of their experience, their intentions, the full-spectrum effect of their intentions. All you're really doing is comparing what you believe about them to what you believe about yourself. You're comparing one set of interpretations to another. You're just looking at two things you made up yourself and calling one of them better or worse and letting that dictate back to you what you then conclude about the truth of your own existence. You're letting your ego make itself up, even if you think you're letting the world make your ego up.

You said you "call them like you see them", but you don't do you? You call them like you think you see them. A farmer says he saw lightning come down from a cloud and strike a tree. A high school physics student says he saw negative electric charge gather on the surface of the earth and travel through the tree as a medium on its way across the potential difference caused by the meteorological storm. A physics PhD reports something about the QED interactions that I wouldn't know the first thing about. A physicist a hundred years from now would likely report something different. None of them can purport to have actually known what happened - to call it like they saw it. All they can do is report their interpretation of their experience - what they think they saw, and all of them are right about that.

What actually happens when "lightning strikes a tree"? Hell if I know. All I can do is try and communicate some bit of information that I think will be valuable when asked about it. Merit is derived from my ability to provide value to someone - either to themselves or someone else. Scientists and experts are very good at this, but they aren't good or right or any of those other things simply because of the accuracy of their statements and the reliability of their inventions, but because of the value somebody finds in them. Some scientist out there can tell you with exacting precision about the frequency of a ladybug's wingbeats after years of grueling research. But Alexander Fleming gets the Nobel Prize for basically stumbling onto penicillin because lots of people find it valuable. That doesn't invalidate the ladybug guy's belief in his own value as a scientist.

The point I'm getting at is that your belief about your own value - your confidence in yourself is not and cannot be based on a comparison to someone else, because you are incapable of making that comparison with any certainty. Your confidence, or in your case jotabe, your lack thereof is a creation of your own mind, based solely on your own beliefs, and nothing else, even if you claim it's based on an objective evaluation of the people and standards around you.

[jotabe]

Well, sure you can say that. But all i can say is that truth is a work in progress. Don't let yourself get trapped by all the "we really cannot know anything", look what happened to Descartes. We don't have "all the truth" in an absolute sense. But scientific discoveries are biths of truth, they are true, even if they can only be applied to certain experimental ranges (like for example, newtonian physics can only be applied to large but not too large masses, and large spacetime scale).

I'll just say this: if you have a better definition of truth that corresponds with something operational (that is, not simply a philosophic concept), go ahead and tell us.

So i don't accept what you say. The idea that my assessments of others has no relation with reality is ludicrous, because evolution has shaped my genes to be able to evaluate my peers reliably in my own benefit. Unless my genes to that respect are bad, i will trust my judgement on others, and others' judgement on me (as long as i deem them worthy).

Also, Nobel prizes, as they are conceived, are awarded to those whose contributions could count as the "greatest benefit on mankind". That's why there are no Maths Nobel Prize

[Janus%TheDoorman]

You asked for a definition of truth, and simply put, I don't have the words to give it to you, but, allow me a bit of allegory and I think we may come to an understanding.

You know, probably better than I do, that what we call matter is mostly empty space. A professor of mine made the comparison that if the nucleus of a hydrogen atom was a golf ball, and it was sat in the center of a football stadium, the electron would be somewhere in the nosebleed seats. By some estimations, if you were to squeeze all the actual stuff in as closely as possible, with all the space removed, the Earth would fit in a teaspoon. So how is it then, that with all that space separating them, the proton and neutrons might be considered part of the same "thing" as the electron - an atom? It would seem to me that an "atom" is not so much a thing - not so much a noun, as it is the ongoing action and reaction between the nucleus and the electron - it's a verb. Electrons and nuclei don't become an atom, they "atom" together, and continue to atom for a while until some other thing happens, and then they ion or they molecule, or they photon or whatsoever we choose to call it.

On a larger scale, if one were to travel to Alaska, and found oneself out on a walk with an inuit, one would likely eventually come to the subject of snow. And, although I make some assumptions here, one would probably remark upon the sameness of it all, the smooth texture of the landscape, how the serene tranquility of it all surely bespoke that this was a simpler place than say, New York City where the garish clash of 10 million different cultures creates a billion different ideas every day.

And the inuit would call you silly, and point out that the landscape you were seeing was not the same, that there wasn't just snow, there was kanevvluk, and muruaneq here, natquik slightly to the left, and nutaryuk some distance in front of you. In his eyes, the landscape which had been to you smooth and unfeatured was as diverse and dynamic as New York City. Which of these men speaks the truth?

What I'm saying is that truth isn't something that is found in the world, truth can't be defined operationally because it's not a part of the operation of the universe. Like Ender said, you don't find truth, you create it. Science isn't in the business of finding facts, its in the business of creating facts. It's in the business of creating really good interpretations of experience that provide value to people.

And I didn't say that your judgment has no relation to reality, but merely that it's only one look at reality, that is not certifiably valid. I'm not saying that the truth is there but unknowable, but that there is no inherent truth to the universe without an interpreter. There is only potential and possibility, given form by whosoever is viewing it.

I said earlier that value was in the eye of the beholder. Deeper than that, truth is in the eye of the beholder. Truth is a creation of the mind, that is its fundamental operation. Just like the snow is formless before the inuit divides it, and the atom was formless before physicists divided it, the whole of existence is formless until the mind divides it.

The only way something can be true, the only sense in which something can be considered true is that you and you alone believe it.

[jotabe]

Well you know, when i use a word, i prefer that it defines something, something useful. The way you use the word truth is useless, it really cannot be used except in philosophical discussion, and even then it would only be used to say how it doesn't exist or is unknowable or.... so it would drop from language.

Yet the concept of truth as "a reliable statement that corresponds with reality" is useful. It's a work in progress, our truth now will be completed with the truth later on, the same way today truth completed the truth from the past.

merely that it's only one look at reality, that is not certifiably valid.

It IS certifiably valid. The fact that we can make predictions on what will happen in the future thanks to our truths, and those predictions are accurate, the fact that we can produce technology and it works, certify that our truths (science) are reliable.
More reliable than any other kind of "truths" mankind has managed to produce, btw.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Well said.

What have you been researching lately, anyway?

[Gravity Defier]

What have you been researching lately, anyway?

Manliness.

[jotabe]

What have you been researching lately, anyway?

Manliness.

Which is a miserable little pileness of secrets.

But enough talk, have at you! *bares fangs*

[Gravity Defier]

*bares fangs*

Vampire or dog? I mean, are you about to suck the life out of me or hump my leg?

[jotabe]

Well, now that you ask...

But no, vampire. Definitely:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMTizJemHO8

(brace yourself, incoming cheesy bad voice-acting, so bad it's awful).

[daPyr0x]

It's been long since that kind of words hurted me last. But i didn't forget. As i didn't forget what i felt towards the people that said them. Since then, i grew up, and learned that hating isn't right, and learned to decide my own emotions. But the contempt is still there, an objective contempt, the contempt i feel for the strong who abuses the weak.
And while those words don't hurt me anymore, i have several friends who are deeply insecure, but they are wonderful people, much much better than myself. And i know they hurt when they bump on people like you who tells them stuff like that.
So, yes, i'd say it matters to me.

But I'm not talking to them, am I? I'm talking to you. Helicopter parents raise dependent, ill-adjusted children who don't know how to deal with the real world. Welcome to generation Y - the entitlement generation. The more coddling people like that receive, the less likely they are to learn some key points that are important to survival in the real world. Most importantly, life is hard and that the only way to survive is to be able to stand on your own two feet. People are going to put you down throughout your life. Sometimes they might have legitimate cause for calling you stupid, sometimes they're just jealous and trying to make you feel insecure about your own abilities so that they can feel more secure about their own. Sometimes, they're just jerks. Doesn't really matter. You've got two choices - asses your value based on the responses you receive from those surrounding you, leading to severe depression when in less-than stellar environments, and a severe dependence when in encouraging ones. Or; asses your value internally, knowing that you are a strong person regardless of environment. The choice is yours.

IN OTHER WORDS, YOU'RE ALL PUSSIES AND THE ONLY WAY YOU'RE GOING TO FIND 'HAPPINESS' OR BE ABLE TO ATTRACT A HALF-DECENT MATE IS TO MAN UP, GROW A PAIR, AND MAKE LIFE HAPPEN THE WAY YOU WANT IT TO

[jotabe]

If you are talking to me, then you are vastly missing your target, because your words don't reach me. You don't get it? i don't care how you think people has to act to be happy. I decide how i want to pursue my happiness. If i don't want to grow a pair (seriously, you have an issue if you need to use macho language all the time), i won't do it, and i will be well damn happier than you, i can assure you. So don't be so bent on generating contempt and resentment on others.

Entitlement? The guy who feels he is entitled to put down others has just spoken. The guy who thinks that the fact that there are jerks in the world entitles him to be one.

What do i feel entitled to? do you even know? Don't you even see that being insecure is totally the opposite to feeling entitled?

[Gravity Defier]

asses your value internally

I know exactly what you meant (assess) but this still made me laugh.


I know, I know, I'm not adding anything valuable in here but it seems to me you all could use some lightheartedness and I'm wondering how many times and for how long you guys can really go on about confidence, knowing you're not going to change any minds. Not to mention, all of this pussy (hate that word, though I guess it creeps me out less when it is being used to describe a guy) talk combined with Truth vs truth vs you're misrepresenting what I said makes me think Bill Clinton is on trial again or something.

[jotabe]

Lol
i must say they brought it on themselves
Sometimes i feel like a pocket size biblical plague XD Imagine punishing someone to have pointless arguments with me for the rest of eternity...

[Gravity Defier]

They may not be done with you yet, you know. Actually, I think Janus was last night but Cameron may have a few things. And by all means, if it tickles your fancy to keep going, don't let my silliness stop you.

[jotabe]

I'll be done for today there are more things to life than pweb

[Gravity Defier]

there are more things to life than pweb

Don't shatter my world of delusions! I choose to believe that is blatantly false until April 2011, so get thee back into your Pweb cage, boy, and like it.

[daPyr0x]

Yeah I think we're all pretty done here. I mean, for how long can one really argue against someone who refuses to do so much as consider the opposing points being made? I'm just the only one with enough free time (internetz at work ftw!) to keep it up.

jota: When did I infer that I'm entitled to anything? I'm entitled to free speech based on the wonderful nation in which I reside. I choose to use that free speech to express my opinions how I wish to on a board on the internet, a "free" resource. Insecurity is merely the standard response to doing something for which you feel entitled to receive praise and not getting it.

I actually find it kind of amusing to see you say exactly what I have been saying the entire time, the basis of the argument that you have so vehemently been against numerous times, and continue to argue somehow "against" it. "I decide how i want to pursue my happiness." It's more obvious now than ever before that your arguments are based on a disagreement with my method of communicating combined with a chip on your shoulder towards those with overconfidence who have gotten "ahead" of the meek based solely on their internal belief that they can and not on the objective evidence towards your value that you hold so dear.

Now I'm through.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Welcome to generation Y - the entitlement generation. The more coddling people like that receive, the less likely they are to learn some key points that are important to survival in the real world. Most importantly, life is hard and that the only way to survive is to be able to stand on your own two feet.

I think you're close, but slightly off the mark in your assessment of my generation. Everyone born after 1990, yeah... I'm not sure what goes on inside their heads, but...

My generation grew up in a time when peace in the Middle East seemed like a real possibility - the Gulf Wars were over, the Oslo Accords were signed. The economy was booming, and the internet was connecting cultures and information from around the globe. The culture wars in the US had already crested a high point - the Rodney King incident, the race riots, and the OJ trial were all done and gone before any of us got to middle school.

For about 4 or 5 years, right when Gen Y was forming up a worldview, things were great, so far as we could tell. Then things took a turn for the worse. Just when most of us were completing our first courses in government and history, the Lewinsky scandal brought the Clinton presidency crashing down around itself, and the 2000 election was by any measure a fiasco of epic proportions. Right when we were hitting adolescence, 9/11 destroyed our idea of a peaceful globe, and the dot-com bubble burst. Now, as we're graduating from schools and entering the economy, we meet the worst recession since the Great Depression.

I know that some in our generation have determined to shut their eyes and ears and try and wait it out until someone else fixes it, but Generation Y also holds a few million people who all saw the promise of a better world, and aim to see it delivered on, even if we have to pick it up and drag it ourselves.

So please, the next time you ask a 20-something anything and they respond "I dunno, ask my BFF Jill", remember that we hate them more than you do.

[daPyr0x]

I know that some in our generation have determined to shut their eyes and ears and try and wait it out until someone else fixes it, but Generation Y also holds a few million people who all saw the promise of a better world, and aim to see it delivered on, even if we have to pick it up and drag it ourselves.

So please, the next time you ask a 20-something anything and they respond "I dunno, ask my BFF Jill", remember that we hate them more than you do.

I read this and the only thing I hear is this song...

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could
now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

Too accurate.

I was more commenting, though, on the changing attitudes of parents, investing consistently more and more of their time and energy into protectionism rather than preparation for their children and the effects that this has on the populace, specifically the young adults of the current generation.

[jotabe]

I know that some in our generation have determined to shut their eyes and ears and try and wait it out until someone else fixes it, but Generation Y also holds a few million people who all saw the promise of a better world, and aim to see it delivered on, even if we have to pick it up and drag it ourselves.

Well, we certainly can't hope that the same [slashthrough] blundering confident idiots [/slasthrough] people (old geezers) who got us in this fix to get us out, the same you can't expect apple-trees to give pears.


dap: did i ever prevent you from saying anything you wanted to? I'd find it difficult even IF i wanted to (big if there), as there is an ocean between us.

Insecurity is merely the standard response to doing something for which you feel entitled to receive praise and not getting it.

Well now i am completely certain that you have no idea what you are talking about when you talk about people's insecurity: one of the possible worst experiences for an insecure person is not meeting a bully like you (it's something we are used to and some of us deal better with it), but receiving praise. Praise makes you feel like you did something really wrong, because others think it's done right. Praise makes you feel dishonest, when you believe you don't deserve it. Praise makes you want to disappear from the surface of the earth, and then you have only two choices: quitting whatever you were doing, or convincing yourself you are a fraud, and that you have to live as such.

The only way to get rid of the impostor syndrome is to examine as objectively as possible the achievements of the others and see how they are hardly ever better than your own, no matter how confident they are (they are the real fakers).

What do you have against objective evidence? It is what has allowed us to create our technological society, so next time you talk about it, you'd do well in showing some respect, young whippersnapper.

[daPyr0x]

Wow, so, as an insecure person I;

a) Can't take others giving me a hard time.

"i have several friends who are deeply insecure, and they hurt when they bump on people like you who tells them stuff like that. "

b) Can't take others giving me praise for good work

"Praise makes you feel like you did something really wrong"

c) Must find fault with others to make me feel better about myself

"The only way to get rid of the impostor syndrome is to examine as objectively as possible the achievements of the others and see how they are hardly ever better than your own, no matter how confident they are"

And that's, in your eyes, a preferable way to live....


I think I'd rather be satisfied with myself internally such that I needn't live this way, and I can actually get laid!

[jotabe]

a) Well, there is a difference between others giving one a hard time, and berating them deliberately. It's a fine distinction that comes when you have feelings. It's also a weakness: when you have feelings, those can be hurt purpousefuly by others.

b) I thought you thought insecure people were in need of praise? Praise is always a lie, anyway, a manipulation. Believing praise you play straight into the hands of the other person.

c) Wrong again: you don't have to find fault in others: you have to be ables to assess others accurately, and use as strict patterns to assess them as you use to assess you. It's much more preferrable to make a mistake assessing others (like insecure people) than assessing one mistakenly (like confident people), anyway.

I think I'd rather be satisfied with myself internally

Ignorance is bliss.

and I can actually get laid!

As long as she isn't a virgin, or she doesn't want an actual relationship, that is.

[Syphon the Sun]

b) I thought you thought insecure people were in need of praise? Praise is always a lie, anyway, a manipulation. Believing praise you play straight into the hands of the other person.

Are you intentionally being deceptive or just really, really thick? I'm putting my money on the former, given that you're now pretending his argument is exactly in line with your own. His argument all along has been that third parties don't get to determine your self-worth.

Insecure people don't need praise. Insecure people need to stop deriving their self-worth from whether or not they get praise. That's why they call it self-worth. Which is the whole problem people have with being a relationship with somebody that's insecure: they don't want to spend all their f*ing time coddling you and telling you just how super-duper you are just so you don't think you're a worthless piece of sh*t all the time.

But if you're having fun caricaturizing his argument to be the exact opposite of what he's been saying for two pages, now (longer, if you count other threads before this), have at it.

(See what I did there? I accused you of misrepresenting his argument. Then I explained how. Which is totally better than making an accusation and refusing to back it up when asked to explain.)

[jotabe]

Of course insecure people don't need praise. We DO NOT WANT it either. Got it? Let me attempt a visual message:

Sheesh, shows what you know about being insecure.

We mostly filter out positive feedback, and if any put a minus sign on the positive feedback if we let it in. So positive feedback becomes negative, just as negative feedback. We do not want your oh so important feedback on how badly we suck if you have no responsability to tell us. We don't need you to tell us we are good to make us feel good. Who ever asked for your coddling? plus, it would be wrong. Quite the opposite, if anything, if you really want to help (which we do not want you to) because you'd die in 24 h if you didn't, you have to give them difficult tasks so they learn responsibility and decision making. And give them neutral, critical feedback. "Insecure pussy" is not part of any critical feedback.

I was in a relationship with a deeply insecure girl. You know what the problems were? What i was and was not supposed to do regarding the education of her child, money and the relationship with her grandmother. Hey, what a surprise! Having to coddle one another so we don't think we are "a worthless piece of sh*t all the time" was never an issue. We coddled when we felt like.

So, please, stop talking about stuff you don't know about. Or talk, as you guys claim to live in a country where it's every good citizen's duty to call pussies to the insecure people.

[Syphon the Sun]

That's funny, considering you're the only person I've ever heard claim anything even remotely close to that nonsense. But keep pretending you represent the insecure population, bud. It couldn't be that you represent only your own little f*ed up worldview wholly unrelated from the rest of the insecure population at large. I'd sort of like to see a thread called "Jota Talks," where you just spout your absurdity all in one place. You can talk all about how praising someone for their work is lying/manipulation, how making it unlawful to possess a gun deters the people who currently unlawfully possess guns from possessing guns, etc.

And I'm not even sure what you're getting at with your story about dating an insecure girl. I wouldn't have expected an insecure person to be upset that they have to give their insecure partner "self-worth." They want it in return. It's pretty silly (and hypocritical) to demand your partner not be needy and insecure if you have those exact same qualities. Pot, Kettle, black, you know the drill.

[jotabe]

Sure, whatever.

Ok, you guys win. I am just saying nonsense, and lying and stuff. And you are right calling and demeaning insecure people all you want.

Meh, Spain's losing in the football world cup it's all your fault, i tell you!

[Luet]

I'm sure that I don't represent the norm (I know I don't, in fact). But I have been wanting to say that after reading this thread, I find Jota far more attractive than the other males posting in here. Sorry.

[Gravity Defier]

I have been wanting to say that after reading this thread, I find Jota far more attractive than the other males posting in here.

Agreed. But then, I think you and I are similar in many ways.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

That's understandable.

[jotabe]

O_o
i never thought i'd see that valentine card again...

And thanks, girls

[CezeN]

That's understandable.

<(0_o<)-.-<)

[daPyr0x]

I continue to be thoroughly entertained by this thread.


That is all.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Did you just ... have that waiting?

[daPyr0x]

I didn't, just happened to stumble upon it. But it's an awesome way of displaying my point. The fact that the background was transparent and thus blends perfectly with the board...well, that's even more awesome.

jota: Nobody says you're lying, just that the logic behind your reasoning is flawed. There's no need to blow arguments out of proportion because they disagree with your preconceived conclusions. There's no need to make things personal or out of context (ex. me saying I can get laid doesn't mean I choose to, as I decidedly choose not to with women who are virgins or don't want relationships at this point in my life. Completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, though)

I'm not surprised to hear the two women on the board chime in as such. Congratulations to you, jota, for that. My misogynistic ways have never been so appealing to women when I display them so vividly for all the board to see. Regardless, practically every woman says that at some point. Of course they love the guy defending the epitome of the "nice guy" role on paper. We all know how that turns out, though.