Tyler H

OP, what sense is there in bouncing back and forth between one corrupt ideology and another? Why are you interested in hanging out with a bunch of child abusers who worship an imaginary being who will torture you for eternity for not loving Him? Why can't people who accept reason and evidence be your tribe?

Why do you value these things over anything else?

I thought studies said otherwise, but that might be old data.

For sure man. "Statism - it's just another religion." There's a keyword in culture that describes them all. We're a tribal species. We need our tribe to be philosophical though- not geographical, not ethnic, not cultural. We ask, "can you think? Do you agree words are the means by which we resolve disputes? That all interactions should be voluntary? Cool. Welcome to the tribe."

What is your criteria for proof?

So objectivity and reality do not exist, yet you continue to make objective statements about reality. It's becoming difficult to take you seriously.

My mistake. Here's where I thought you were conflating the two questions. I pointed out the distinction because while the argument works when worded as a contradiction I don't think it holds in regards to influencing people who don't listen to reason through methods that are not reason. Does this explain some of my confusion?

A dog chasing its tail is not a contradiction.

I agree with all of that. And I don't think there are many people, if any, whose minds can't be changed. I was just differentiating the meaning I inferred from each phrasing of the two questions which I thought you were using synonymously. And the only reason I pointed it out was because when phrased one way it's a contradiction and when phrased the other there is room for manipulation.

Then there has never been such a thing as a scientist, because every generation of scientists have had their own biases that had to die with them before the next generation was able to move on. The scientific method is like an asymptote: a perfect ideal that you reach for but can never fully attain. Same with the NAP: there is no such thing as a perfectly free society. The non-aggression principle is like one of the cardinal directions, it isn't a place in and of itself, it's a concept that guides actions. Furthermore, talking about it is easier than applying it. Things get difficult where the rubber meets the road. I'm not saying you can get more NAP by violating it, but I am saying the direction to choose may not be so radiantly clear. Of course I'm open to correction, but I don't see that how that logically follows from what I said. Also, I think we would need to define scientist. I don't think the scientific method is a perfect ideal you cannot attain. It is a set of steps you either follow or do not follow. If you do not follow them, then you are not doing science in that instance. Later, if you follow the steps, well then you are doing science. How often someone is allowed to waffle between the two in their professional work and still be labelled a scientist is debatable. I wouldn't say they need to reach perfection in always adhering to the scientific method, but a certain level of consistency would be required to categorize them as such in our minds, wouldn't you agree? And wouldn't you also agree that if someone were blatantly disregarding the scientific method while simultaneously calling themselves a scientist we would recognize that as a contradiction? I think the same is true for the NAP. I do not think it is a perfect ideal; it's a principle, and you are either following it or not following it at any given point in time. And how often you vacillate between that adherence will have an impact on your ability to support the claim that you follow the principle. Furthermore, if someone were in the act of aggression claiming that they adhered to the NAP we would recognize that as an affront to the concept. Which would be the same as saying "I think it is perfectly fine, nay just!, for you to be threatened with murder and thrown in a cage to be raped for not paying for my child's education/the national defense/the prevention of competition in industry/social welfare/<insert government program here>. Oh, and by the way I adhere to the NAP." Nope! No, you don't. Not until you change your tune on telling other people to use force for you so you don't get your hands dirty or face any risk. It is a corruption of science for someone not following the scientific method to claim that what they are doing is science, as we recognize is happening in the scientific community now. And it is a corruption of voluntarism to claim that an institutional system of coercion, or anyone who endorses it, is at all associated with the non-aggression principle. I push back so hard against this because the manipulation of language is the philosopher's undoing. It really matters how we say things. I was re-reading before posting and this part really stuck with me for some reason; why are these two things put together this way? So after some thought this is what I have to say, let me know what you think. A perfectly free society is, I think, an unattainable ideal, and necessary for the pursuit of that ideal is the NAP. However, a perfectly free society is not necessary for the pursuit of the NAP. Is there something in your life where you feel you cannot avoid violating the NAP? I don't mean to detract from the conversation, but it would seem to me that there is no reason we can't perfectly adhere to the NAP in our own lives which sparked the thought that maybe there was something where you felt violating the NAP was necessary and so therefore an unattainable ideal on which we can, at best, only compromise. I could be way off but these thoughts were floating around in my head so I thought I'd share them. If it's nonsense go ahead and toss them in the trash or tell me to go pound sand, or inform me on how I've misunderstood the content of your post.

Hmm, maybe. What do you mean by negative influence?

Sorry, I recognize equivocation has a negative, deceptive connotation to it and that's not what I meant. I just meant that you were treating the questions as synonymous. Perhaps I should have used the term conflating. I guess how I interpret the questions is that people who don't listen to reason, can be influenced- just not by reason. And people who's minds can't be changed, well if nothing can change their mind, neither reason, evidence, deception, appeal to self interest, nothing, then trying to influence their thoughts or behavior would be worse than a waste of time.

This is what I was responding to. What this not the question you wanted answered? I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that you were equivocating how to influence people who don't listen to reason and how to change a mind that can't be changed. The former being the question which I believe our best answer at this point in time is the original answer you provided (living your principles, being genuinely happy) yet still unsolved as we can't successfully reproduce the result we desire with this method, and the latter being an obvious contradiction. I think we agree on enough here that it might not be all that productive to hammer out the edges just yet, would you agree?

It uses rationality to disprove rationality? If it disproves rationality then rationality is no longer a viable method of disproof. You can't see the contradiction in this statement?

But that wasn't the question. It's not that they can't be changed, it's that they resist change by way of reason and evidence. Why would a Christian try to convert someone who said, "there's nothing you could ever possibly do or say to get me to believe in God"? The wise choice, if they're interested in getting as many people through the pearly gates as they can and their isn't a sentimental tie, would be to move on to people they could persuade. That's all it is. If you reject reality we have nothing to talk about.

My argument is that anything less than the scientific method is not the scientific method at all. The scientific method is a set of steps, each necessary but not sufficient. If you skip a step or vary from the method in any way then you are no longer adhering to the scientific method. You may be following some steps of the scientific method, but without all the constituent parts you do not have the scientific method. Saying people who manipulate data to advance their own agenda are adhering to the scientific method in any way is exactly the kind obfuscation I worry about permeating the philosophical arena. The same with the NAP. It's a principle which posits that all actions are allowed but for actions of physical aggression. Therefore if you act in a physically aggressive way, you are no longer adhering to the NAP. If you make the exception that there are gradations and there is no way to adhere to it in the ideal, then you leave a crack in the foundation for evil to gain social acceptance. I really think the language and specificity are important, especially with the constant co-opting of language by sophists.

Like I said before, if you mean there are fewer violations of the NAP then I completely agree. You wouldn't say there is more or less scientific method in this experiment. Either the scientific method was followed or it wasn't. In the same vein anything that isn't consistent with the NAP should not at all be confused with adherence to the NAP else it soils the principle, just as saying any experiment that failed to follow the scientific method did follow the scientific method. Blur the line and the manipulators and looters will take advantage. That's my concern with the phraseology. Perhaps I'm just being nitpicky but I do have the urge to push back, and I think that's the reason but I'm open to correction.

So this is why when you asked "what is reality", Meister, I said I would stop debating. If you can't accept reality and the evidence of your senses, and your mind's ability to process them, then there is no reason to debate at all.

I thought you were generalizing with these statements, but now I think you might have been directing advice towards another poster and confused them with me. Could that be the case? Because I totally agree with what you're saying so I don't know what I said to imply otherwise. I've been working on make it good or make it gone since I started listening. But to the discussion on whether the question is difficult or not I think I understand. Is it your contention that answering the question is simple, but implementation is difficult? And I'm inclined to agree except for the fact that, as you said, you could spend all that time, do everything right, and still not get through to someone. This signals to me that the question of how to change the minds of people who don't listen to reason is not entirely solved. I suppose I'm searching for a deterministic solution in a world of free will, but I would hate to assume I have the answer and stop looking for another. Am I making sense? Of course I don't mean not to work with the best ideas we have on changing minds but I don't want to assume there are no other undiscovered solutions. That was the reason for my objection against the remark that the question wasn't a tough question.

My apologies. That which exists. What is existence? That which is able to be detected or measured, regardless of our knowledge of the means with which to do so. That's the definition I work with, I'm always open to improvements upon it. Because it seemed to me we were talking about two different things so I was trying to clarify. There's the question of how to change people's minds who don't listen to reason, and the question of when to accept that you can't and move on. While I agree that the answers you gave are maybe the best we have for persuading people without reason, there must be more or the problem would be solved. If we had the answer then we could be out there changing the minds of the unreasonable right now. It seemed to me that your remarks to which I did not respond (and I agree with most everything you said in regards to this) were more applicable to enhancing the relationships in your life (including the one with yourself), hence the question, which I admit should have been framed more obviously as a request for clarification. I apologize if I've misunderstood your posts. Perhaps through mine you can see where maybe I've gotten confused and clarify.

No objection there. In a free society people can live however they want as long as the participation is voluntary. There can be little communist communities, constitutional republics, whatever. However I'm still confused; why call themselves Alt-Right, why not just white separatist? Why ethnostate, why not just freedom of association? Do you see how these terms imply a statist association?

Authoritarian crapitalist centrism. I always thought that left/right political spectrum was about more/less government, but I guess that would put the left right next to the biggest mass murderers ever so.... turns out they avoid that by making it about egalitarianism.

Audiobooks Peaceful Parenting series Bomb in the Brain series I just started at podcast 0, most of my favorite stuff is below 1000.

You don't think how to influence people who don't listen to reason is a tough question?