JasonC Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 I like John. I think he sometimes makes real contributions to CM discussions, and to history discussions. Sometimes he just does useful foot work with Google Fu, and shares the results with us. Perhaps a bit enthusiatically at times, and at length at times, but those are easy enough to take. I don't think the right bath can cure Alzheimers or that anyone but Oswald killed JFK. Error is not crime. It is the natural state of man. Morals are not in play in matters of conceptual analysis. Most things you know, no one knew a few hundred years ago, but they were men as good as any of us (most of them). And a fair number of the things you know just are not so, including a number that everyone agrees with you about. (The evidence is not yet in - and may not be for 1000 years, on this or that question, with no one the wiser in the meantime). Point being, men are allowed to be wrong about things. No, you don't need to agree with them about it, or to refrain from calling them on it. But it doesn't make them rogues or you a saint, that they are wrong about something and you are not. All that said, craziness is also not a crime, or a sin. But it also isn't a choiceworthy condition, and sometimes needs actual help. Help does not consist in pointless hostility or elevating another person's failings into sins. Perhaps some think they are helping third parties through such things, in the mistaken belief that only they notice or that those others require flashing neon warning signs. We don't. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agusto Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 I don't think the right bath can cure Alzheimers. Take a bath of nice, warm water an add 15-20 pieces of piranhas. After 20-30 Minutes, no doctor will be able to confirm Alzheimers on the patient anymore, no matter how bad the disease was before the bath. Sucsess guranteed. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seedorf81 Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 Isnt it more like that everything we do in life is based on our drive to satisfy or most basic instincts? Every wish higher than that is just abstracted. When we send a robot probe to mars for example we do that not out of learned fear or insecurity but rather because we hope that the knowledge gained will one day help us to fill our plates with more food, make us live longer and give us the chance to increase the rate at wich we reproduce (ie have more sex). Well, it looks like you gave a perfect example of my theory, because from your reply I could draw the conclusion that: - you are (even though you say "us" and "our") insecure about whether you will have enough food on your plate in the future, - you're insecure about the length of your life, - you are (and this stuns me, considering the obvious and worrying huge increase of the human population) insecure about the "reproductivity" of mankind (and or your chances of getting laid enough :cool:). That this insecurity causes confusion and/or trouble can be deducted from the fact that your arguments are contradictory in themselves. More food and more people, with longer lives, don't go well together. And, but talk about stating the obvious, having more sex doesn't have to do anything with growth of the population. And I do hope that you realize that the length of you're life is less important than what you do with it. IMHO we do not need to do anything on Mars. Lowering, or at least stabilizing, the human birthrate is a first priority for giving everyone on this planet a decent life. And if only individuals would settle for a little bit less.. (Except for Battlefront games and modules that is!) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agusto Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 Well, it looks like you gave a perfect example of my theory, because from your reply I could draw the conclusion that: - you are (even though you say "us" and "our") insecure about whether you will have enough food on your plate in the future, - you're insecure about the length of your life, - you are (and this stuns me, considering the obvious and worrying huge increase of the human population) insecure about the "reproductivity" of mankind (and or your chances of getting laid enough :cool:). I anticipated that arguement. However fear cant be, although it surely is a powerful emotion, the prime element that drives humanity "forwards". Fear is something that is learend by experience. Not itself, but what a person fears or doesnt. The little child does neither fear fire nor heat, only after it made the experience of the pain connected with beeing burnt it learns that this is something fearsome. This means that different people who led different lives will have different fears. However IMO this is not true for what people try achieve in their lives. If you look at societys no matter how different from each other, all by some mean or another pursue the ultimate goal to satisfy the human drives, only the ways they try to achieve that differ. Some societies do that better than others and some are so weird they dont manage that at all (wich are usually the ones based on fear, especially fear of beeing punished by for example a deity. The Jihadists dont blow themselves up because they are so crazy but because they either fear about or want to improve their afterlives. The latter even speaks for my theorie as the sexual drive may be adressed by the promise of the 72 virgins.). Actually beeing a person mostly driven by fears is even a recognized pathological state, its called neurosis. That this insecurity causes confusion and/or trouble can be deducted from the fact that your arguments are contradictory in themselves. More food and more people, with longer lives, don't go well together. And, but talk about stating the obvious, having more sex doesn't have to do anything with growth of the population. And I do hope that you realize that the length of you're life is less important than what you do with it. IMHO we do not need to do anything on Mars. Lowering, or at least stabilizing, the human birthrate is a first priority for giving everyone on this planet a decent life. And if only individuals would settle for a little bit less.. (Except for Battlefront games and modules that is!) This is not contradictionary. We (or most people) know that eating as much as they can will kill them, that overpopulation can lead to an decreased livespan and beeing able to control the brithrate on a large scale by means of superfetation prevention is only something that we achieved in the last century and only in the worlds more developed countries. Only 200 years ago and in some poor countries still today it was/is absolutely necessary to have a high rate of reproduction because the life expectancy was/is so low. I agree with with you that our prior goal on earth should be giving everyone a decent life. However this does not contradict with exploration of space since huamity is a more resource hungry species than earth has ever seen and maybe at some point in the far future we will need to aqcuire other places where we can harvest resources in order too maintin a decent life quality for everyone. Even if opulation grwoth was stabilized we would still need more and more resources to supply us, since our drive to lengthen our livespans and further increase our lifes quality would keep techonological development at a high rate even if it was ensured that everybody can lead a decent life by todays standards. EDIT: Besides all of the above, i believe that even fear itself is motivated by the human basic instincts. Why do people fear beeing killed? They have the drive to survive. Why would someone fear hunger? He has the drive to eat. Why would someone fear living a life without sexual partners? The human sexual drive is a strong one. So obviously fear is not the prime motivation that makes humans act. It is only one side of the coin. You could also view life from a different perspective and say "I do it because it feels good" instead of "I do it because of beeing afraid of not feeling well". IMO the first one is the simpler and more direct explanation of motivation. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nidan1 Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 Get a hold of a movie called "Defending your Life", written by Albert Brooks, and also starring Meryl Streep and Rip Torn. It pokes righteous fun at all these theories about how fear motivates our lives. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c3k Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 And if only individuals would settle for a little bit less.. And I open the door for anyone holding this opinion to immediately shed every extraneous vestige of civilization that they'd like to shed. However, do not EVER assume that I should follow you. (Years ago I had neighbors in Vermont. 10+ acre plots. They were TOTALLY into minimizing their "footprint". LOL! Outhouse, woodstove, solar-maximized house, hand-powered pitcherpump well, no electricity or phone line. You want pancakes in July? Got to bank up that wood stove and cook 'em. We laughed during a nighttime blizzard as we could see one of them carry a lantern out to the outhouse in -10F to -20F temps. They laughed about that the next day, too. Gradually, they eased into modernity, one step at a time. Gas stove; life was so much better. Telephone; only for work. Electricity; for lights, really, it's safer. Indoor plumbing came a few years later.) Yeah, "people consume too much". LOL. What they MEAN is, "OTHER people consume too much, and I should be in charge of distributing and allocating resources because I'm smart enough to see this truth." Back OT: As much as I hate being spammed by overly-many links in threads, Kettler's google-fu is pretty good. When he goes overboard, I scroll past. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanonier Reichmann Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 Do you have any idea how long it took to train that agent and get you to accept him into your confidence? And then he botches the job! You'd be frowning too. Clearly he wasn't trained in the same school that produced Trotsky's assassin was he. Regards KR 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatehunter Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=83390 verified? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjkerner Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=83390 verified? Whew, oh yeah, verified, er...make that Certifiable! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Franko Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 It's been awhile since I checked on this thread. Nope. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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