For example, I have long held that the appropriate response to people who claim that we create our own reality, the most directly effective method to prove to them that they are wrong, is simply to punch them in the face as soon as they voice the notion.
🤣 The fact that they made the statement which caused you to punch them in the face proves that they created their own reality. Had they not made the statement, you would not have been prompted to act in that manner.
Criminal provocation is a legal concept where an accused argues they acted under a sudden, temporary loss of self-control due to the victim's actions, typically reducing a murder charge to culpable homicide. It is a defense based on mitigating factors or diminished responsibility rather than a total denial of liability, often involving intense emotional distress.
or
We had to bomb Iran, who had done nothing to us, because they would not 'kiss my ass" like Saudi Arabia. It is all their fault.
The first-ish. Whimsical, not serious! I was merely fantasizing about the likely looks on the faces of the judge and jury if someone tried to argue that, *as expressed*, within a defense...
Your first type of example is of course sophistry whatever way you look at it; though the second type might be more problematic, at least in other circumstances. There's always a balance between public policy (which I expect would always trump the rape example in most jurisdictions), versus circumstances-based outliers in which the defendant has acted "reasonably".
I recall the episode of a friend's relative who was arrested in his first visit to the USA, basically for indecent exposure via stripping naked in a sauna. Because that's what he and his fellow sauna afficionados always did in every sauna he'd ever been in. The saving grace is once the police were persuaded of that (it took some persuading!), they released him without charge (with, of course, an instruction not to do it again!). :) So in that instance, public policy permitted some lenience.
Ah! You're not wrong, but you see, none of them ever ask "why did I create a reality in which random strangers punch me in the face?" They just call the police and claim that I am responsible. Solely responsible, for what happened.
I think this comes down to an increasing failure or inability to observe, discern and interpret one's environment and other people; in short, a loss of connection to the instinctual side of consciousness. And so, life's events are perceived as random and entirely outside of our control. A rather good example of this failure of the instinctual nature is portrayed in the film Dead Calm in which even the dog cannot sense the criminal nature of the rescued man.
On the Mustachioed Menace from Germany, until about 12 years ago (the Ukraine coup) Godwin's law held good: the first person to mention the MMG loses the argument (coz obvious fallacies). Since then a new law (the AntiGodwin law?) has come into play: now, the first person to *fail* to mention the MMG loses the argument.
On Kucharski's "what probability would people have put on an infectious disease shutting some borders for years and confining people to their homes for months on end in large swathes of the world? Would anyone have even thought to put a probability to such an event?” and your "He meant these as rhetorical, but the answers are yes, and the probability is not as small as one would have hoped". To add force to your proposition, I should add that I personally had to study global pandemics nearly half a century ago as part of a standard course in history and philosophy of science. The main text was the late W.H. McNeill's brilliant (and alarmingly readable!) history "Plagues and Peoples", which I still consider (in its second edition) remains the only reasonably definitive work on the subject (unfortunately McNeill died prior to covid).
Moreover, about 2-3 years *before* Covid I was reading a risk paper on black swans versus gray elephants in the room. IIRC the difference is that while black swans are nominally unforeseeable and unforeseen, gray elephants in the room are both foreseeable and foreseen and everyone in the field "knows" or at least expects they're going to happen. But when they eventually occur history is conveniently rewritten and they are rebadged as black swans so politicians can avoid blame for not planning (or, more typically, for panicking and not following whatever plans actually existed). Hilariously, the specific iconic example given in the paper was... drumroll... global pandemic: foreseeable, foreseen, and doomed to be denied....
Proposition: the people at the WEF are fake and gay.
Proof. The central assumption of the people running the terrorist organization known as WEF is the old idea of Artur Schopenhauer: the will is the source of unhappiness. This is obviously fake, because it is well known that the three main causes of unhappiness are 1) being a loser like Artur; 2) ingesting drugs in general and psychiatric drugs in particular; 3) following the "News".
The program of the WEF revolves around a correct reasoning that ends up in absurdity: "if people have a will, then they will be unhappy. By the counterpositive, if people are happy, then they do not have a will. Therefore, let's extinguish the will of people, to gift them eternal happiness." A conclusion that is clearly gay.
Then, they simply act as if there was no will, and then they maim, rob and kill millions of people, like psychotic clowns.
From the above lines, we see that the WEF terrorists use a fake idea to reach a gay conclusion, and thusly such people are correctly characterized as fake and gay, Q.E.D.
That argument against slavery doesn't really hold water. It at best shows that A and B cannot mutually enslave each other at the same time.
I suppose it would also hold true if being enslaved meant you could not hold any property of your own at all. Which may have been true in the antebellum States, but was not generally true in history.
Slaves have held other slaves in many societies. The one that comes to mind is the caliphate, but there are others.
Simply put, "proof" is always system-specific; anything can be proven if the initial premise(s) is/are accepted in a closed system. That's how compartmentalization works as an effective method to convince the "smart ones":
There you are, absolute proof that Mencken was/is right about the USA Presidency.
:
The Mencken quotation from the Baltimore Evening Sun of July 27. 1920, probably referring to Warren Harding, was
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron
-
I have been banned from several sites for saying that the current President is the Mega-MAGA-Moron and his followers are mere MAGA-Morons.
Silly me, I thought that the stupid started with Bush not Lincoln.
I always loved that quote but, consistent with my views on symptoms versus causes, I prefer to convert his last phrase to the plural: "will thenceforth be adorned by downright morons"
“There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” –
John Adams, 2nd President of the United States of America
-
“…There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it ever come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.” –
Daniel Webster
-
We are clearly in the grip of PSYCHOPATHS - People who can inflict pain, suffering, injury, even death without empathy, compassion or remorse. Yet the world sleep-walks along, barely noticing the mounting piles of bodies and dead nations, all preoccupied with their pension funds.
-
Iran on the other hand :
Persian Sufism is the mystical, esoteric dimension of Islam that flourished in Iran, blending Islamic monotheism with pre-Islamic Persian spiritual traditions like Zoroastrianism. Centered on direct personal experience of Divine Love, it heavily influences Persian poetry, music, and philosophical thought, emphasizing self-purification and inner knowledge over rigid orthodoxy.
Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God".[7] Alternatively, in the words of the Darqawi Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one's inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits".
"Proof! We all want it!"
We really don't.
For example, I have long held that the appropriate response to people who claim that we create our own reality, the most directly effective method to prove to them that they are wrong, is simply to punch them in the face as soon as they voice the notion.
Nobody has ever appreciated it.
Not once.
🤣 The fact that they made the statement which caused you to punch them in the face proves that they created their own reality. Had they not made the statement, you would not have been prompted to act in that manner.
I'd love to see you run that defense in court! :):):)
I know too much of human nature and myself to risk exposure. I have often joked that my epitaph will be, "She took care".
You mean :
Criminal provocation is a legal concept where an accused argues they acted under a sudden, temporary loss of self-control due to the victim's actions, typically reducing a murder charge to culpable homicide. It is a defense based on mitigating factors or diminished responsibility rather than a total denial of liability, often involving intense emotional distress.
or
We had to bomb Iran, who had done nothing to us, because they would not 'kiss my ass" like Saudi Arabia. It is all their fault.
The first-ish. Whimsical, not serious! I was merely fantasizing about the likely looks on the faces of the judge and jury if someone tried to argue that, *as expressed*, within a defense...
Like the two young men who murdered their parents [for the insurance] and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that they were orphans.
Or the immigrant that was charged with rape and claimed it was only sex, because he truly had no idea of the concept of rape.
Indeed!
Your first type of example is of course sophistry whatever way you look at it; though the second type might be more problematic, at least in other circumstances. There's always a balance between public policy (which I expect would always trump the rape example in most jurisdictions), versus circumstances-based outliers in which the defendant has acted "reasonably".
I recall the episode of a friend's relative who was arrested in his first visit to the USA, basically for indecent exposure via stripping naked in a sauna. Because that's what he and his fellow sauna afficionados always did in every sauna he'd ever been in. The saving grace is once the police were persuaded of that (it took some persuading!), they released him without charge (with, of course, an instruction not to do it again!). :) So in that instance, public policy permitted some lenience.
Ah! You're not wrong, but you see, none of them ever ask "why did I create a reality in which random strangers punch me in the face?" They just call the police and claim that I am responsible. Solely responsible, for what happened.
I think this comes down to an increasing failure or inability to observe, discern and interpret one's environment and other people; in short, a loss of connection to the instinctual side of consciousness. And so, life's events are perceived as random and entirely outside of our control. A rather good example of this failure of the instinctual nature is portrayed in the film Dead Calm in which even the dog cannot sense the criminal nature of the rescued man.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097162/?ref_=nm_flmg_job_1_accord_2_cdt_t_84
Ah, the Kantian Boof of objectivity.
And whilst you were lying there in hospital, did it not occur to you that you had just created your own reality?
I told you already we don't want proof.
“I want the proof.”
“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE PROOF!”
Prof Briggs' will is stronger than mine. Proof: I clicked.
On the humor-filled feminist syllogism, in practice the real proof of any similarly structured propositions seems to be ontological rather than evidential: you make it so by reverse-engineering the meanings of the words used. Just about all political arguments seem to rest on such techniques... see also George Orwell's Politics and the English Language https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
On the Mustachioed Menace from Germany, until about 12 years ago (the Ukraine coup) Godwin's law held good: the first person to mention the MMG loses the argument (coz obvious fallacies). Since then a new law (the AntiGodwin law?) has come into play: now, the first person to *fail* to mention the MMG loses the argument.
On Kucharski's "what probability would people have put on an infectious disease shutting some borders for years and confining people to their homes for months on end in large swathes of the world? Would anyone have even thought to put a probability to such an event?” and your "He meant these as rhetorical, but the answers are yes, and the probability is not as small as one would have hoped". To add force to your proposition, I should add that I personally had to study global pandemics nearly half a century ago as part of a standard course in history and philosophy of science. The main text was the late W.H. McNeill's brilliant (and alarmingly readable!) history "Plagues and Peoples", which I still consider (in its second edition) remains the only reasonably definitive work on the subject (unfortunately McNeill died prior to covid).
Moreover, about 2-3 years *before* Covid I was reading a risk paper on black swans versus gray elephants in the room. IIRC the difference is that while black swans are nominally unforeseeable and unforeseen, gray elephants in the room are both foreseeable and foreseen and everyone in the field "knows" or at least expects they're going to happen. But when they eventually occur history is conveniently rewritten and they are rebadged as black swans so politicians can avoid blame for not planning (or, more typically, for panicking and not following whatever plans actually existed). Hilariously, the specific iconic example given in the paper was... drumroll... global pandemic: foreseeable, foreseen, and doomed to be denied....
Turns out a guy who invades his own country isn’t that bright. Who could have seen that coming?
An example of a proof.
Proposition: the people at the WEF are fake and gay.
Proof. The central assumption of the people running the terrorist organization known as WEF is the old idea of Artur Schopenhauer: the will is the source of unhappiness. This is obviously fake, because it is well known that the three main causes of unhappiness are 1) being a loser like Artur; 2) ingesting drugs in general and psychiatric drugs in particular; 3) following the "News".
The program of the WEF revolves around a correct reasoning that ends up in absurdity: "if people have a will, then they will be unhappy. By the counterpositive, if people are happy, then they do not have a will. Therefore, let's extinguish the will of people, to gift them eternal happiness." A conclusion that is clearly gay.
Then, they simply act as if there was no will, and then they maim, rob and kill millions of people, like psychotic clowns.
From the above lines, we see that the WEF terrorists use a fake idea to reach a gay conclusion, and thusly such people are correctly characterized as fake and gay, Q.E.D.
That argument against slavery doesn't really hold water. It at best shows that A and B cannot mutually enslave each other at the same time.
I suppose it would also hold true if being enslaved meant you could not hold any property of your own at all. Which may have been true in the antebellum States, but was not generally true in history.
Slaves have held other slaves in many societies. The one that comes to mind is the caliphate, but there are others.
George Polya covered this better than anyone, IMO (no offense, Professor!)
Simply put, "proof" is always system-specific; anything can be proven if the initial premise(s) is/are accepted in a closed system. That's how compartmentalization works as an effective method to convince the "smart ones":
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/the-highest-level-operatives-are
Other than that, cognitively, there is a hierarchy between various sources of "proof" and the least convincing is the empirical one:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/what-makes-you-think-you-are-right
There you are, absolute proof that Mencken was/is right about the USA Presidency.
:
The Mencken quotation from the Baltimore Evening Sun of July 27. 1920, probably referring to Warren Harding, was
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron
-
I have been banned from several sites for saying that the current President is the Mega-MAGA-Moron and his followers are mere MAGA-Morons.
Silly me, I thought that the stupid started with Bush not Lincoln.
I always loved that quote but, consistent with my views on symptoms versus causes, I prefer to convert his last phrase to the plural: "will thenceforth be adorned by downright morons"
“There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” –
John Adams, 2nd President of the United States of America
-
“…There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it ever come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.” –
Daniel Webster
-
We are clearly in the grip of PSYCHOPATHS - People who can inflict pain, suffering, injury, even death without empathy, compassion or remorse. Yet the world sleep-walks along, barely noticing the mounting piles of bodies and dead nations, all preoccupied with their pension funds.
-
Iran on the other hand :
Persian Sufism is the mystical, esoteric dimension of Islam that flourished in Iran, blending Islamic monotheism with pre-Islamic Persian spiritual traditions like Zoroastrianism. Centered on direct personal experience of Divine Love, it heavily influences Persian poetry, music, and philosophical thought, emphasizing self-purification and inner knowledge over rigid orthodoxy.
Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God".[7] Alternatively, in the words of the Darqawi Sufi teacher Ahmad ibn Ajiba, "a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one's inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits".