Who has more than one profile?

On page 7 Al and I are having some semblance of a discussion and therefore quoting each others words back at the other - just as anyone does.

What is it that you find unusual and comment-worth about that?




Do big egos need big fonts? Big, big fonts to make sure everyone can see!

Al, when you quote my messages you leave the nested markup hanging unclosed. If you don't want to properly close the nested markup, maybe you could change the font or something, to indicate who is saying what. Otherwise it looks like you are speaking my own words, without delineating that those are my words.



Yeah, we agree that we don't care too much what the other does, but just like you take issue with my 'bending words' I take issue with you implying, but neither owning nor disavowing, abuses of logic.



Sigh. I hold that (a) there are some truths which are easily known to most people, (b) some which may be easy for some to know and difficult or maybe impossible for others to know, and (c) there may exist some truths which cannot be known to humans.

I also hold that you seem to like to oversimplify. Particularly when deciding which 'ideological box' to put someone in.




Okay, I'm ready to give up, as you keep taking this in circles. That's the point you care about. The point I cared about was: your defence of childish name calling (or Obama) rested on a false dilemma fallacy.



You were the one who brought pedestals into the conversation. You spoke against placing obama on a pedestal.




That's good.



I believe that you have been focused on 'moral truths', while I've been focused on "truths about the physical universe".

The main thing which I wished you to 'see as I see' is that a particular interpretation of your earlier words does, in fact, give rise to a false dilemma argument.

Your interest in 'not putting obama on a pedestal' is not actually an argument in support of name calling.

Wanting others to be logical in the arguments they present is not the same as wanting them to change how they refer to the president.



Sure, I'm lazy at typing. Whatever.



That's a lot of writing about the law, in which I didn't see anything significant that I disagreed with.

It seems that one of the purposes of that text was to say: drawing conclusions with 'beyond a reasonable doubt' as a metric isn't useful or desirable to you, so you reject my earlier argument.

It's unclear to me the extent to which you might be denying value of acknowledging and working with uncertainty when seeking an understanding of the truth. Some of your writing gives me the impression that you actually think you that most/all of your positions are matters of absolute truth.




Okay. I can see that many of them are solipsists without even realizing it, yet I don't accept that this *must* be the case that one either accepts the existence of objective truth, or one qualifies as a classical solipsist. The positions might not be rational, but there are other positions people can have, for example the belief that everyone's mind (not just one's own) is sure to exist (on a non-physical plane), while the 'physical' world is an illusion, and toss in some more new age garbage to flesh it out into an pseudo-ideology and you have something which is neither solipsism nor an acknowledgement of objective reality.




Yeah, we agree that reality exists and those that deny it are incorrect.

I'm saying (among other things) that while we can *know* that hammers cause concussions, we cannot *know* everything.

The context here was you saying there are no estimates of truth, it either is or isn't.

I agree that truth either is or isn't, but the more important fact (imo) is that sane, intelligent humans deal almost exclusively with 'estimates of truth' (positions on how likely something is to be true) rather than actual truth.

We simply can't do any better, we usually can't know the absolute, definite truth. And given our capacity for error, its actually BETTER for us to work with estimates of how likely something is to be true rather than insist on reducing everything to absolutes all the time.

Its not perfectly clear to me whether you believe that the 'choice' one must make is exactly between (a) calling him Odumbo and (b) placing him on a pedestal.

If you are arguing that position, then this strikes me as a false dilemma fallacy.

One *can* call him 'Obama' while NOT placing him on a pedestal.



We may be using common terms in different ways. From my pov, when people use language to discuss and debate what may or may not be true, we often parse out our different overall positions into individual claims. Working with claims, and evaluating the accuracy of claims, is a good process for determining what may or may not be true.




Yes, of course. I was just saying that our legal system recognizes and embraces the ambiguity, the grey area, of evaluating 'how likely' it is that a claim is accurate, and making decisions based on this. I don't understand your position, but you seem (?) to be allergic to this nuance. "Beyond a reasonable doubt"




There are some objective truths which I am equipped to know, and therefore I know that those that deny the existence of any objective truth are wrong. Being wrong doesn't make them idiots, and I was wrong to imply so earlier - but the *ways* that such people often argue for the non-existence of objective truth usually shows them to be idiots.

Actually, what's really going on there is that I have prejudice and judgement towards people who haven't realized that some things can be said to be objectively true, so I just call them idiots. Their entire ideological perspective is flawed in ways that will prevent them from reasoning well, but... they aren't all actually _idiots_.

Recognizing that objective truth exists doesn't require or guarantee that I'm equipped to know all objective truths. I also have reason to believe that there are some which I don't know and which I couldn't readily know - particular truths that require a more advanced understanding of statistics than I have (not the areas of stats used for demographic research, but the kind used in physics).

That's just dealing with our tools (in this case, understanding of math), not saying anything about our emotions.

With every human I've met, and attempted serious discussion, I've found emotional biases that interfere with our abilities to recognize objective truths. None of us seem to be especially well equipped, emotionally, to recognize all objective truths.

Well its not like we have to choose between calling him 'odumbo' and placing him on a pedestal. We can refer to him as Obama without placing him on a pedestal.



Independent of whether a claim must be either true of false, we can and should make our own estimates of how likely a claim is to be one or the other. Consider why we convict based on conclusions that are "beyond a reasonable doubt".

I cannot know for certain what happened in Ferguson, but there are some things for which it's reasonable for me to conclude it 'almost certainly' happened.



.... are idiots in my opinion. But just because objective truth exist doesn't mean we are equipped to know that truth.

I agree. That same dis-informed propaganda has a hold on many white people. I don't mean the crazy extremist-racist white people, but also many of the so called 'anti-racist' white people.

As someone who is (a) against racism, and who is (b) hugely disappointed in the irrational cult called the 'anti-racist movement', I am most interested in what was really meant by this statement:



Can we all at least agree that there is nothing genetically different about white people and black people that would cause one group to be more likely to riot, break stuff, and burn stuff?

Al wrote:



I just disparaged "anyone who refers to the president as Odumbo", and then you raise something which hadn't occurred to me, but should have occurred to me.

But I don't agree with your logic, because people aren't always of the position that X is true or X is not true.

There could be two different thresholds of 'estimates of how likely something is true'.

Anyone who refers to the president primarily as 'Odumbo' isn't likely to be worth my time. But I still try to skim most people's posts most of the time. Not that I'm an Obama supporter - I am not - its just that there is a level of childish-troll-language that goes to low for me.

It seems that you are mostly unhappy with me for my quoting style, and the implications thereof. I really don't mean to be rude (not by thinking this, nor saying it, nor by acting according to this) but - as you correctly stated - I do have certain 'agendas' (purpose, focus, intent) and 'properly resolving our disagreement about quoting habits' isn't one of them at the moment. I am sorry if I've offended you, for whatever that is worth.

I do hope you know that I generally slice and dice everyone's comments, regardless of gender. Overall length and number of separate topics are the main factors influencing whether I do so.

I respect the fact that you don't care who I am. I do hope that, while not-caring-who-I-am, that you don't make implications that I am him. I feel that people ought to care if the implications they make about others are correct.

It's not 'all' as in 'exclusively', but yes all of those things are being done by white people.

All you have to do is watch the livestream feeds to see literally hundreds of white people participating in the protests, and the dozens of people setting fires and breaking windows are mostly white.

Also the news articles, videos, and photos available on line about the oakland protests show almost exclusively white people.

I have no idea if you are racist. And I've seen too much of the anti-racists trying to silence a viewpoint by accusing someone of being racist.

I want to know what you really think about any supposed intrinsic differences between white people and black people. What conclusion do you draw about differences you see in white people and black people rioting?

I cut an edit posts to save screen space, and to be clear about the portion to which I'm responding. Anyone can re-read the whole thread to see what was actually said. I have NO desire to make it 'look like you said something you didn't'.

When you have conversations in person, do you never try to focus in on a particular sub-topic?

Yes, in this particular series of posts I absolutely do have an 'agenda' - a focus of interest.

Fleta made a questionable statement about differences between what white people do and what black people do.

This is the ONE thing that I am most interested in, in this particular series of posts.

If we are talking about politically motivated protests which lead to property destruction....

....they have been doing so these past 2-3 nights, in Oakland.
And they did so during the occupy protests.



If we are talking about white people just burning **** for no reason, they do so after sports events and during pumpkin festivals.

It should not take you long to clarify what you intended by your comment.

If my attempt to rephrase it is completely wrong, you can just say so.

It seems that several of us are giving you a chance to clarify what *sounds* like a terribly racist comment.

And this is coming from someone who is tired of the anti-racists trying to manipulate the dialogue with shame, taboo, and false accusations of racism. I'm not saying you made an ignorantly racist statement, I'm saying that it sounded very much like you did.

Yes, lets *exclude* the vietnam war.
Exclude the KKK.
Exclude white people who are not 'inner city'.
And insist that *all* of these happen at the same time: rioting, looting, arson, and hit and run.

So, so convenient.

And yet these past few days a lot of WHITE PEOPLE have been rioting in Oakland.

Many people assume the oakland rioters are black, because the Ferguson rioters are black, and the oakland rioters are rioting 'for Ferguson'.

But, in fact, most of the rioting, breaking of windows, destruction of property, and lighting trash on fire in Oakland is all DONE BY WHITE PEOPLE.

And its being done for the same reasons: because of a combination of their indulgence in their individual anti-social and violent natures, and their collective belief in a ******** anti-racist ideology.

Did you really fail to even notice the quoted statement to which I was responding, and the significance of the time stamps?

No, seriously, WHAT ARE YOU SAYING ?
You've deflected the question by asking for evidence of some events.

What are you really saying? Are you actually saying that you think that there is a fundamental difference between white people and black people that leads to black people 'doing crap like that' while white people 'just wouldn't do it' ?