Formscapes vs. Professor Dave drama

[undeather]

1 hour ago, lostingenosmaze said:

@undeather I can't find that comment

 What video is that under?

Under Formscape's current video.
 

46 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

My science series was designed to preemptively completely deconstruct all of Dave's logic.

A fundamentalist scientist mind works in a very predictable way. You're never going to argue him out of his dogma because he would have an existential crisis if he realized how self-deceived he is about the nature of reality.

I think you can.
But you need to use the same rhetorical language though. Dave could never argue himself out of a well defined formal logic argument.
Some of his takes are nonsense, and provably so - all it needs is someone epistemically equipped enough to deal with his gibberish.

 

 

59 minutes ago, zurew said:

I think Dave is really egotistical and he will get butthurt and defensive by your last paragraph.

You don't even need to have domain knowledge about paranormal stuff or near death experience stuff in order to showcase Dave's unprincipled thinking. You could just continouasly ask him for an argument why all those things are stupid and if he cant provide a clear argument against them, then that alone will clearly showcase that he is emotionally and ideologically driven against those things and he is ruling out things in an unprincipled way and he is not serious in his thinking. 

You can push him on this: why does he act smug, when his confidence can't match the quality of argument he can provide against such cases. The objection of "I cant prove a negative" or the "onus is on you to provide a positive argument" - won't fly here, because he is taking a negative position against such cases and as long as he doesn't take an agnostic position on something (where you withold judgement, and you don't take any positive or negative stance against something), the onus is on him as well to justify his position. - Its the same with  God debates. If you take an atheist position where you say that God doesn't exist - you will have to provide justification for that claim. Its very easy, whatever claim make or stance you take you will have to provide justification for it unless you are taking an agnostic route. The problem for Dave with taking an agnostic route though is that he won't be able to justify his confidence and smugness.

I hope he get's butthurt - that was the purpose of that paragraph 
Yes, I think residing to a sophisticated argument based on formal logic would be the best way to deal with his antics.

[zurew]

Just now, undeather said:

I think residing to a sophisticated argument based on formal logic would be the best way to deal with his antics.

Yeah - if he would be forced to construct a formal argument (with premises and conclusion) that would be an absolute killer. He would probably struggle to construct a valid argument, let alone a sound one.

Forcing formal argumentation is really effective against people who are full of rhetoric, cause their inference making is showcased in 4k resolution in front of everyone and its much much harder to bullshit yourself somehow out of it.

[Leo Gura]

11 minutes ago, undeather said:

Dave could never argue himself out of a well defined formal logic argument.

Lol. You underestimate him

[Scholar]

You guys are totally missing the deeper dynamic here. Dave is a consequence of the current informational landscape, in that sense he is a actually a necessary and important consequence of this system.

 

The dynamic is fairly simple: It is takes less energy to create false information than it takes to falsify false information.

Due to the nature of the current informational landscape, in which information is freely distributed and accessible by everyone, there is only one result that can follow from this.

Most of the population are laymen in regards to all scientific realms, and therefore it is not possible for them to distinguish between authentic information and false information. This is necessarily so because no single individual could possibly understand all scientific realms.

Faith and trust in the institutions is therefore an essential part of the survival of civilization in regards to maintaining a coherent informational landscape. The truth is, most people who believe in scientific facts do not do so because of understanding. The only reason they believe it is because it is A) the first understanding of reality they have been confronted with (in schools: Evolution, Biology, Physics) and B) that understanding giving them a coherent and functional way to understand reality.

Because scientific knowledge in most regards is not practical for 99% of the population, they have no ability to truly verify the truth of any given piece of information or even informational model they receive. This means the only thing that could possibly maintain a coherent informational landscape is blind faith and trust in scientific institutions.

This does not only extend to laymen, but also to scientists, because they run into the same problem given the vast amount of information that would need to be processed to truly verify all information within the given landscape.

 

The idea that we can make science conscious is a failure of understanding this problem. This isn't a problem that can be addressed simply by changing how science functions.

The reality is, people like Dave, mildly informed dogmatists, are an essential part of maintaining the societies informational hygiene. The way science functions as an organism is by balancing structure against degrees of freedom. A degree of freedom, in any evolutionary system, is necessary to claim new information and to advance the structure itself, but too much degree of freedom leads to a dissolution of the structure itself, and therefore a collapse of the entire system.

Due to the organic nature of these systems, we can even use the immune system as a metaphor. There is a simple reason why any immune system remains open such as to allow a degree of viral and bacterial agents to infect it. It must do so, otherwise it would become so strict in it's enforcement that it would attack it's own structure.

On the other hand, it must be strict enough so as to capture any potentially harmful agent. This means, sometimes it will overreact and attack agents which could in fact be even beneficial.

A system cannot be absolutely free, because it will undermine the structures necessary for the expression of freedom.

 

 

Now, this simple evolutionary dynamic is inherent to all systems which exist, including science. Science is not merely a method, it is a living organism, with living informational memory. It is an organ of the collective organism of mankind.

If you are wise enough, you will thank the Divine itself for the existence of people like Dave, who are nothing but a part of the immune system of this current informational age.

 

Evolution has patience. It will always prioritize survival over truth, because in the long term, to reach higher levels of complexities requires survival. If this means sacrificing some potentially novel pathways towards new types of truth, then so be it.

 

We live in a time in which our entire informational landscape is fundamentally threatened by the new informational dynamics that have formed over the past decade. And you should realize by the inevitably of this dynamic how serious of a threat this is. This goes beyond education, beyond people being ignorant. You cannot fix this with mere education. The reality is, most people believe in the things they do because of peer pressure and faith.

What will happen now is a new age of dogmatism, a new age of constriction, as a reaction to the degrees of freedom which have destabilized the very survival of this system. For the very same reason why religions existed in the past, they will now form once more.

 

 

The reason why arrogance is emphasized in this system is because blind confidence is what the population tends to be most attracted to. In a system in which there is no authority, arrogance itself becomes a signal for authority. It also allows you to dismiss information which otherwise would take time to falsify, and due to the dynamic I described, that would be a task doomed to failure.

Edited February 9 by Scholar

[Leo Gura]

32 minutes ago, Scholar said:

If you are wise enough, you will thank the Divine itself for the existence of people like Dave

After you thank the Divine for the existence of herpes.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

Due to the nature of the current informational landscape, in which information is freely distributed and accessible by everyone, there is only one result that can follow from this.

Most of the population are laymen in regards to all scientific realms, and therefore it is not possible for them to distinguish between authentic information and false information. This is necessarily so because no single individual could possibly understand all scientific realms.

From this doesn't follow that people have to be dogmatic about everything. From the premise you wrote only follows that yes, you will have beliefs and positions about things that you won't and can't verify on your own, but the fact that you are not open at all to change your positions , is a lack of epistemic humility and intellectual laziness problem.

The degree of confidence you have in a position, should be in parallel with how much research and knowledge you have about said position. To be able to paricipate in current society, its not necessary to take a position on everything - you can stay agnostic about a lot of things. 

 

Its also not clear from what you wrote why Dave is essential. Dave could be more intellectually honest and epistemically humble and that still wouldn't destroy the system. The fact that you are more honest about the degree of knowledge you have and you are more open to investigate from that doesn't follow that you will abandon all of your standards for knowledge.

Abandoning all the current scientific standards would actually destroy the system, but being more open and epistemically humble wouldn't.

 

[Scholar]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

From this doesn't follow that people have to be dogmatic about everything. From the premise you wrote only follows that yes, you will have beliefs and positions about things that you won't and can't verify on your own, but the fact that you are not open at all to change your positions , is a lack of epistemic humility and intellectual laziness problem.

I never said people have to be dogmatic about everything. Dave is close-minded against science denialism. It's like a white blood cell that will attack anything that calls into question science in a fundamental way. It's just an immunesystem response.

 

2 hours ago, zurew said:

The degree of confidence you have in a position, should be in parallel with how much research and knowledge you have about said position. To be able to paricipate in current society, its not necessary to take a position on everything - you can stay agnostic about a lot of things. 

This standard would lead to a complete degradation of the informational landscape, simply because the more ignorant you are, the more likely you will be to assert things with confidence. A flat-earther who will have this absurd theory and assert it with confidence will convince more people than a humble scientist who will, in humility, attempt to showcase why that person is wrong.

You cannot stay agnostic about things any longer because the informational landscape is a competitive, evolutionary landscape. This is the very reason why climate denialism has been a thing for so long. It's simply because the other side confidently asserts that they are correct.

 

2 hours ago, zurew said:

Its also not clear from what you wrote why Dave is essential. Dave could be more intellectually honest and epistemically humble and that still wouldn't destroy the system. The fact that you are more honest about the degree of knowledge you have and you are more open to investigate from that doesn't follow that you will abandon all of your standards for knowledge.

I am not a fan of magical thinking. You won't get intellectually honest people and epistemically humble people fighting these types of informational cancers. They wouldn't stand a chance against the overconfident assertions of the delusional sophists that are currently convincing the masses of complete parallel realities.

 

Of course, if there was a magic wand and we could make everyone perfectly rational and informed and mature, then I would wield that wand. But that's not how this world works. You can't just replace your immune system with magical nanobots that will somehow be able to detect intelligently what will harm you and what will not. In the same manner, Dave and his popularity are a product of this system. Humble people are not popular.

Leo is the best example. Most people find him convincing because he asserts his positions with a complete lack of humility and an almost inhuman arrogance. That's incredibly appealling.

There are plenty humble scientists around, none of them will ever achieve the kind of popularity necessary to fight the rampant dimwittery that is going around today.

Edited February 9 by Scholar

[zurew]

@Scholar To be clear, I agree with you on a lot of things like:

• ignorant people will be persuaded by bullshit much more than by in depth analysis ;
• that stateing things with 100% confidence is much more attractive to people much more than being intellectually honest and having humility ; that people don't have time and are not educated enough to do their own research on every topic, therefore all of us are reliant (to different degrees) on taking on certain positions on blind faith;
• that the given the current incentive structure makes it so, that witholding information or lying about things or being dishonest and using pure rhetoric without substance are things that can elevate your success in general much more than the opposite of all these things.

 

Where we disagree is the idea that scientist becoming more honest and them having more humility would destroy the current scientific institutions.

49 minutes ago, Scholar said:

I am not a fan of magical thinking. You won't get intellectually honest people and epistemically humble people fighting these types of informational cancers. They wouldn't stand a chance against the overconfident assertions of the delusional sophists that are currently convincing the masses of complete parallel realities.

Im not suggesting that they would win the fight, all I tried to point to there is that scientist having more epistemic humility and intellectual honesty wouldn't destroy the institutions (it was a reply and a disagreement with your point or implication that the current scientific institution requires as dogmatic and intellectualy lazy people like Dave in order to survive).

49 minutes ago, Scholar said:

You cannot stay agnostic about things any longer because the informational landscape is a competitive, evolutionary landscape.

This is the second point I disagree with.

Take a regular person, that person can participate in society and work and live their lifes just fine, without needing to state and have visibile positions about everything. If you are not a famous person, most people won't give a fuck about what you believe in . 

Can you get social credit for taking up certain positions? Sure you can, you can also get negative social points,  but in order to live a regular life, you don't have to.

 

Edited February 9 by zurew

[Scholar]

11 minutes ago, zurew said:

Where we disagree is the idea that scientist becoming more honest and them having more humility would destroy the current scientific institutions.

I never said this. Dave is not a scientist.

 

11 minutes ago, zurew said:

Im not suggesting that they would win the fight, all I tried to point to there is that scientist having more epistemic humility and intellectual honesty wouldn't destroy the institutions (it was a reply and a disagreement with your point or implication that the current scientific institution requires as dogmatic and intellectualy lazy people like Dave in order to survive).

I don't disagree with this in a strict sense. But it's wishful thinking.

 

11 minutes ago, zurew said:

This is the second point I disagree with.

Take a regular person, that person can participate in society and work and live their lifes just fine, without needing to state and have visibile positions about everything. If you are not a famous person, most people won't give a fuck about what you believe in . 

Can you get social credit for taking up certain positions? Sure you can, you can also get negative social points,  but in order to live a regular life, you don't have to.

I don't disagree with this. IF x was the case, then y. But X is not the case.

Also this is a myopic view. Democracy relies on an informed public. Opinions matter, sense of reality and ethics matter.

And most importantly, you are assuming people are reasonable, which is not the case. One of the problems is that reasonable people do not stake out positions confidently, which is actually necessary in a democracy. This is why people like Dave are necessary given the current environment.

 

You are talking about some higher level scientific aims, but Dave is trying to ensure that society doesn't fall for BS like flat-earth or evolution denialism. That's his function. It is limited, but it is there.

Edited February 9 by Scholar

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Scholar said:

he asserts his positions with a complete lack of humility and an almost inhuman arrogance. That's incredibly appealling.

Appealing? Lol. That's why people hate me.

If you think I'm a popular person you really don't get me.

Edited February 9 by Leo Gura

[Scholar]

48 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Appealing? Lol. That's why people hate me.

If you think I'm a popular person you really don't get me.

I think most followers find this appealling.

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, Scholar said:

I think most followers find this appealling.

You guys who like me are stuck in your own little bubble

[Thought Art]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You guys who like me are stuck in your own little bubble

Lol, yeah. 
 

In for a rude awakening when it pops. 

Edited February 10 by Thought Art

[Yousif]

23 hours ago, Scholar said:

 

Evolution has patience. It will always prioritize survival over truth, because in the long term, to reach higher levels of complexities requires survival. If this means sacrificing some potentially novel pathways towards new types of truth, then so be it.

 

 

Evolution is the other side of truth, evolution is the changing side of the unchanging truth.

 

It doesn’t prioritize survival over truth, it is the other side of truth, change (evolution) =  unchanging ( the truth) 

it is the finite human body that puts survival first because it’s driven by fear so it’s humans  that prioritize survival over truth not the pure force of evolution.

This is a very important distinction to be aware of.

evolution is simply the notion that the nature of life is change, and it’s not patient, it’s always changing, and there’s no pace, because there’s no time in the real world. 
 

I think you’re talking about the scientific evolution which states that everything is evolving to a higher and more complex state but that’s nothing but a delusion, there’s no higher and lower in the real world. 
 

and what I described above is the true evolution, which simply means everything is changing, without the notion of changing to better or worse, there’s no such a thing as better or worse.

 

[Scholar]

44 minutes ago, Yousif said:

It doesn’t prioritize survival over truth, it is the other side of truth, change (evolution) =  unchanging ( the truth)

This is pedantic. Evolution does prioritize survival over truth in the short term, in the sense I was speaking about.

 

If everyone got enlightened today, civilization would instantly collapse, all enlightened people would die and a new generation of humans would replace them achieving greater levels of complexity. It could take a million years until that civilization would reach that level of enlightenment, but once it did, it would be stable. It would not cause the destruction of the system.

 

To maintain the states we are speaking about requires an extremely robust and intelligent system which can sustain such a state. This requires evolution.

Edited February 10 by Scholar

[DocWatts]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You guys who like me are stuck in your own little bubble

Best thing I did for my intellectual development over the past five or six years was to take a step back from this site, along with Ken Wilber, Integral, Spiral Dynamics, and the other paradigmatic 'scaffolding' I'd been relying on, since it forced me to develop my own perspective. #PierceTheBubble 

[undeather]

Quote

Best thing I did for my intellectual development over the past five or six years was to take a step back from this site, along with Ken Wilber, Integral, Spiral Dynamics, and the other paradigmatic 'scaffolding' I'd been relying on, since it forced me to develop my own perspective. #PierceTheBubble

I can relate to this so much! 

Communities like this one, as much as I love it, tend to lock you into a certain paradigm (if you are not extremely catious).
It's a bit like being an active member of an atheist/materialist subreddit - just on the opposite side of the ontological spectrum.

Leo preaches the virtues of contemplation, questioning believes and studying onces tendencies or conditionings.
Yet I would argue that you find at least as much ignorance on here as anywhere else!
 

Edited February 10 by undeather

[Yousif]

5 hours ago, Scholar said:

This is pedantic. Evolution does prioritize survival over truth in the short term, in the sense I was speaking about.

 

If everyone got enlightened today, civilization would instantly collapse, all enlightened people would die and a new generation of humans would replace them achieving greater levels of complexity. It could take a million years until that civilization would reach that level of enlightenment, but once it did, it would be stable. It would not cause the destruction of the system.

 

To maintain the states we are speaking about requires an extremely robust and intelligent system which can sustain such a state. This requires evolution.

First off, you never know what will happen if everyone got enlightened so stop assuming that your assumption is correct, there’s no distinction between simple and complex.
 

You start your argument with an assumption, take your assumption as correct without a real base to your assumption, then start predicting how things turn out, 

Your whole argument is wrong, 

 

and I’m gonna say it again, since you missed it the first time.

humans prioritize survival out of fear

Evolution itself, real evolution, is nothing but change, not worse nor better, not simple nor complex, these are dualities, meaning they’re one and the same and anything can be looked at as simple or complex, or good or better.

Dualities are relative, what’s simple for me might be complex for you, and what’s bad for me might be good for you.