4 ms·

I think you might want to add a little more analysis there.

by SirWart 18y ago

mynameishere 18y ago
I think that the person who makes a claim has to prove it. Especially when it is prima facie nonsense. Presumably no one is disagreeing with my 2nd "wrong", but who knows.
- derefr 18y ago
  I think "for nothing" meant "for fun" or "just because I feel like it," not "to procrastinate." And no, a person who makes a claim simply has to defeat any challenges to it--in science, this is known as 'falsifiability'.
  - mynameishere 18y ago
    A statement is falsifiable if it can potentially be shown false. His statements are certainly falsifiable, and I'm not criticising them on those grounds, but they are so annoying, almost unnatural, that I don't even want to bother with it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability ...is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. It's probably stupid of me to respond to people by saying "wrong", but like everyone else I get weary, and so I have two conflicting feelings: One feeling, to show why someone is wrong. A second feeling, to merely assert that he is wrong. The latter is quite a bit more efficient. I have this feeling almost every time I read one of nostro's comments, but usually suppress the urge. Oh, well. I mean, here's what he's positing: That abilities are based on different capacities for pleasure/pain, or somesuch. It's so silly, so unrealistic, that such a claim really does require actual evidence to even be taken seriously. The whole evolution of man would be nothing but redirecting pleasure and pain, rather than language, and intelligence, and motor skills, (etc, etc, etc) if that was the case. NONSENSE. Of course, since no evidence exists for such a thing, no evidence was presented. And that is that. It's not easy to prove a negative and so I just say, "Wrong". This rubs people badly. Oh, well.
    - DougBTX 18y ago
      > The latter is quite a bit more efficient. Faster, perhaps, but apparently not efficient at getting people to agree with you. > That abilities are based on different capacities for pleasure/pain If what you achieve depends on how you think about work, and how you think is controlled by how your brain works, then you can't dismiss the argument out of hand. But I'm no neuroscientist, so don't ask me....
    - dhs 18y ago
      You're wrong. At least I think so. Because you're not meeting your opponent at the same level of argument. I'm simplifying somewhat, but...you appear to be saying that, for some definition of "cause", the evolution of man is "caused" by "language, and intelligence, and motor skills, (etc, etc, etc)". It is wrong, you say, to claim that the "cause" could be "nothing but redirecting pleasure and pain" (I'm not sure from where in the original you get that "redirection" aspect, but I'll copy it over). But your argument is at a different level that that of the OP. Whereas the OP offers a theory, or maybe rather a hypothesis, of what could "cause" the evolution of language, intelligence, motor skills, &c., suggesting pleasure/pain differentiation as a primitive process, you just claim language, intelligence, &C. as somehow "primitive" processes in causing human evolution. You're not even trying to find out what "causes" them, whereas the OP is. You claim "non-falsifiability" for your opponent's claim, which I don't take for granted: it seems possible to check whether there are differences in the pleasure/pain differentiation of individual test subjects, and see whether that is correlated with those individuals reaching their goals. You just seem to want to avoid meeting the argument. Which is wrong, I think.
      - mynameishere 18y ago
        You claim "non-falsifiability" for your opponent's claim No, I said the opposite. You just seem to want to avoid meeting the argument I didn't want to argue at all. I wanted to assert just like the parent asserted. We both asserted and now it's over.

I think you might want to add a little more analysis there.

by SirWart 18y ago

I think you might want to add a little more analysis there.

I think that the person who makes a claim has to prove it. Especially when it is prima facie nonsense. Presumably no one is disagreeing with my 2nd "wrong", but who knows.

derefr 18y ago
I think "for nothing" meant "for fun" or "just because I feel like it," not "to procrastinate." And no, a person who makes a claim simply has to defeat any challenges to it--in science, this is known as 'falsifiability'.
- mynameishere 18y ago
  A statement is falsifiable if it can potentially be shown false. His statements are certainly falsifiable, and I'm not criticising them on those grounds, but they are so annoying, almost unnatural, that I don't even want to bother with it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability ...is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. It's probably stupid of me to respond to people by saying "wrong", but like everyone else I get weary, and so I have two conflicting feelings: One feeling, to show why someone is wrong. A second feeling, to merely assert that he is wrong. The latter is quite a bit more efficient. I have this feeling almost every time I read one of nostro's comments, but usually suppress the urge. Oh, well. I mean, here's what he's positing: That abilities are based on different capacities for pleasure/pain, or somesuch. It's so silly, so unrealistic, that such a claim really does require actual evidence to even be taken seriously. The whole evolution of man would be nothing but redirecting pleasure and pain, rather than language, and intelligence, and motor skills, (etc, etc, etc) if that was the case. NONSENSE. Of course, since no evidence exists for such a thing, no evidence was presented. And that is that. It's not easy to prove a negative and so I just say, "Wrong". This rubs people badly. Oh, well.
  - DougBTX 18y ago
    > The latter is quite a bit more efficient. Faster, perhaps, but apparently not efficient at getting people to agree with you. > That abilities are based on different capacities for pleasure/pain If what you achieve depends on how you think about work, and how you think is controlled by how your brain works, then you can't dismiss the argument out of hand. But I'm no neuroscientist, so don't ask me....
  - dhs 18y ago
    You're wrong. At least I think so. Because you're not meeting your opponent at the same level of argument. I'm simplifying somewhat, but...you appear to be saying that, for some definition of "cause", the evolution of man is "caused" by "language, and intelligence, and motor skills, (etc, etc, etc)". It is wrong, you say, to claim that the "cause" could be "nothing but redirecting pleasure and pain" (I'm not sure from where in the original you get that "redirection" aspect, but I'll copy it over). But your argument is at a different level that that of the OP. Whereas the OP offers a theory, or maybe rather a hypothesis, of what could "cause" the evolution of language, intelligence, motor skills, &c., suggesting pleasure/pain differentiation as a primitive process, you just claim language, intelligence, &C. as somehow "primitive" processes in causing human evolution. You're not even trying to find out what "causes" them, whereas the OP is. You claim "non-falsifiability" for your opponent's claim, which I don't take for granted: it seems possible to check whether there are differences in the pleasure/pain differentiation of individual test subjects, and see whether that is correlated with those individuals reaching their goals. You just seem to want to avoid meeting the argument. Which is wrong, I think.
    - mynameishere 18y ago
      You claim "non-falsifiability" for your opponent's claim No, I said the opposite. You just seem to want to avoid meeting the argument I didn't want to argue at all. I wanted to assert just like the parent asserted. We both asserted and now it's over.