Terrence Howard on Reality

[zurew]

16 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

So much phylosophy just to justify your frustration and ego...

Stop, you are hurting my feelings bro, where is the benefit of the doubt?

 

But, yeah true, you are pretty much right; 

I think there is very much merit in thinking that his ideas were rejected exclusively because of racism - I think we should enable him and ecourage him and tell him that thats actually the case (and we shouldn't ever ridicule him or hurt his feelings, or tell him thats improbable, or ask for evidence - because all of those things are very much bad and has nothing to do with truth, but enabling him endlessly  has very much everything do with truth and enabling all his behavour is very much beneficial to him and couldn't ever hurt him) 

Edited June 21 by zurew

[Salvijus]

Just now, zurew said:

Yeah true, you are right; 

I think there is very much merit in thinking that his ideas were rejected exclusively because of racism - I think we should enable him and ecourage him and tell him that thats actually the case (and we shouldn't ever ridicule him or hurt his feelings, or tell him thats improbable, because all of those things are very much bad and has nothing to do with truth, but enabling him endlessly  has very much everything do with truth and enabling all his behavour is very much beneficial to him and couldn't ever hurt him) 

You can disagree with someone without roasting them and calling them names. That's what normal humans do. 

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Salvijus said:

You can disagree with someone without roasting them and calling them names. That's what normal humans do. 

No, thats not what normal humans do. Normal humans dont pretend , that  there is a reasonable room for disagreement  in all cases - normal people very much understand that there is such a  thing as a delusion. its only on this forum , where some of you guys pretend that you are completely agnostic about all claims and that you have no priors at all.

I already brought you this very straightforward example - If Howard would tell you that he is your father , you wouldn't just say "well, yeah, there is pretty much room for disagreement there and we just disagree" - you would hopefully say: "no buddy, you are delusional" ; or you would hopefully say something that won't just enable or validate him into thinking that you two are coming from equal epistemic grounds regarding him being your father.

Edited June 21 by zurew

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Salvijus said:

You can disagree with someone without roasting them and calling them names. That's what normal humans do. 

But bro, this is the internets.

[Leo Gura]

Impressive level of maturity from NDT here:

 

[Salvijus]

33 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Impressive level of maturity from NDT here:

 

That was actually beautiful. More power to such respectful interactions. 

I wonder how much he was actually holding in, trying not to explode, haha. But regardless, that was nice to watch. 

[zurew]

13 hours ago, nuwu said:

Quirky concepts such as “1+1=3” can be legitimate philosophical teasers, and even if we do not consider Howard’s attempt to transpose these ideas into mathematical models immediately reasonable (if not a disservice to grounding issues of platonic abstraction), ad hominem attacks such as ridicule are always unhelpful with respect to the inherent narrow-mindedness necessary to expand upon fantasy.

Yes, ad-homs won't have any effect on the truth value of the proposition Terrence Howard put forth. If you read this thread from the beginning , you will see me writing down things that will imply that Howard's character flaws or his inability to establish his proof doesn't necessarily mean, that he is wrong. 

On 2024. 05. 27. at 10:51 AM, zurew said:

Calling him names doesnt establish that his ideas are wrong, but it does reinforce a social/institutional standard, where you first needs to establish that you know what you are talking about (again, by for example steelmanning the theories you try to challenge), before you are given time and attention by highly educated people

 

@nuwu But the main thing is that , what you described above isn't what happened here - He didn't get ridiculed for wanting to challenge math , he got ridiculed for going on side tangents that has nothing to do with the substance of his proof and they are purely rhetorical moves by him. (to avoid engaging with the actual substantive and good faith pusback that he already received from professionals [for example, from Neil deGrasse Tyson]).

So yes, if he is using certain rhetorical moves that has 0 to do with the actual substance - I will react to that, and I won't approve of it   and I will sometimes ridicule it . Some of you guys might call that bad, but I think it does reinforce certain social norms that push people to use less rhetoric and focus more on the substance. And again, on the opposite end of all of this, I think allowing and enabling him for going on side tangents and allowing using certain rhetorical moves is actually bad and does reinforce certain social norms that I would consider to be bad. 

@nuwu Notice, what you tried to do - you probably categorized some of my statements as pure rhetoric and you tried to sway me to focus back  on the substance. Thats a kind of move im talking about that should be applied on Terrence Howard (and frankly thats what Ive been trying to do by the tool of ridicule). I think its good to enforce social norms like this.

In this specific case, his rhetorical move was to blame everything on racism, which again - knowing all the context surrounding his case and how many people have already responded to him with a substantive criticism and given that he has shown no evidence that would indicate racism - that is a ridiculous claim. 

13 hours ago, nuwu said:

You should assume others are making the worst case of their own opinions.

Sure, the rule Omega - we can do that , but there are certain things that are necessary for a steel-man

1. You have to understand exactly what specific argument or point the other person tries to make, because if you don't, you will just end up creating an argument that the other person won't approve of and  will just consider to be a strawman. Its on him to articulate himself well enough so that people can start to steelman his position.  
2. We have to make sure that we are talking about a proposition (A declarative statement, that has the capacity to be true or false) - if we are talking about something that don't even has the capacity to be false or true, im not sure what can be steel-maned there.

Until now, I havent heard him say  anything other than something incredibly vague "math is wrong, because of physics"; which I would consider as a category error . I would put it equivalent to saying "gravity has 4 legs" - thats a category error as well, because gravity doesnt have the property of having legs - so whatever gravity means there, semantically is not the same as what we generally mean by gravity. I can make that category error go away (in the gravity case), but it isn't clear at all whether that would actually cohere to the position what that person originally meant. -  I could say, " I have a horse who has a name of 'gravity'"- but that probably isn't what that person originally meant by it. 

This is why its hard to engage with certain people's criticism who doesnt have a deep enough understanding of the subject they are trying to critique. Because they will strawman the whole field with certain positions and errors that the field doesn't really make or has - but for that to be recognized, one needs to have a proper contextual understanding of the field . (btw this is why I have been asking certain people on this forum to correct me, because there is a good chance, that I don't have some necessary contextual understanding of something that would make some of my statements either false or maybe even make some of my statement not even being capable of being true or false)

Edited June 22 by zurew