TrueTomHarley
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Posts posted by TrueTomHarley
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44 minutes ago, AlanF said:
Your hypocrisy is evident, TTH:
Come now. Since the purpose of impeachment is to remove a sitting president and he is going to be gone in less than a week anyhow, I think there just may be some grandstanding going on.
You may have noticed a Republican member of Congress means to file impeachment proceedings of Biden over Ukrainian matters. From now on nobody will do anything at all in those two Houses except try to impeach the other. Great system of human rulership that you advocate.
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46 minutes ago, 4Jah2me said:
So who are those "humble person who truly “does not think more of himself than it is necessary to think” " ?
You’re entire premise is wrong on so many things:
“American scholar of religion Holly Folk ... show[s] that, although there have been cases of sexual abuse by members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the number of perpetrators is not higher, and may actually be significantly lower, when compared to the prevalence of sexual abuse in other religions and in our modern societies in general. It is also not true, Folk said, that Jehovah’s Witnesses oppose reporting of cases of sexual abuse to secular authorities when it is mandated by the laws, nor that they sanction those who report. When governmental documents or media repeat unfounded allegations by anti-cultists, or single out Jehovah’s Witnesses falsely alleging that sexual abuse is more prevailing in their congregations than in other groups or in society in general, they are consciously or unconsciously supporting an agenda that attacks the Witnesses for reasons that have little to do with the protection of the victims of abuse.”
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“American scholar of religion Holly Folk show[s] ...that, although there have been cases of sexual abuse by members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the number of perpetrators is not higher, and may actually be significantly lower, when compared to the prevalence of sexual abuse in other religions and in our modern societies in general. It is also not true, Folk said, that Jehovah’s Witnesses oppose reporting of cases of sexual abuse to secular authorities when it is mandated by the laws, nor that they sanction those who report. When governmental documents or media repeat unfounded allegations by anti-cultists, or single out Jehovah’s Witnesses falsely alleging that sexual abuse is more prevailing in their congregations than in other groups or in society in general, they are consciously or unconsciously supporting an agenda that attacks the Witnesses for reasons that have little to do with the protection of the victims of abuse.”
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2020/02/i-almost-wish-there-would-be-more-public-response.html
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On 1/5/2021 at 9:26 PM, AlanF said:
And by sticking my name in the tale -- which is pure ad hominem -- you again prove yourself to suffer from Dunning-Kruger.
Can we agree that this fellow featured at video’s beginning is not pulling with both oars in the water? Lemon juice doesn’t make him as invisible as he anticipated?
Nevertheless, university psychologists Dunning and Kruger seem to think this loopiness has broad applicability, as though anyone might commit such a faux pas. Reading of this idiot in the newspaper “led to Dunning and Kruger to examine this phenomenon more deeply.” This suggests to me that they too might not be entirely pulling with both oars.
There is a sneering quality to this video. Rather than view this fellow as a mental health candidate, these psychologists—or maybe it is just the video-maker—seem to expand his nuttiness to whomever might disagree with them over matters of science. Specifically, it is hurled at me because I do not lap up every bit of evolution they want me to lap up. I do lap up some of it. It wasn’t me who put dinosaurs on the Kentucky ark. But I don’t lap up the works.
In their experiment to “examine this phenomenon” more thoroughly, Dunning and Kruger take the lazy person’s way out and employ graduate students as their guinea pigs. Obviously, it is easier for college professors to do this—always there are graduate students lying about—but are graduate students representative of the overall population? In the matter of low-information people tending to overestimate their knowledge, are they not significantly different than the overall population? Probably the difference is not enough to make the experiment worthless, but it is enough to relegate its conclusions from book-status to pamphlet.
The cure for Dunning Kruger syndrome, as proposed in the video, if not D&K themselves? ‘Taking in more knowledge’ is the antidote. I doubt this goes anywhere near as far as taking in more humility, and graduate students are not known for this quality. Young people in general are not known for it—all the more so those who have entered the competitive heady world of graduate school. Rather than advanced learning being a cure for Dunning Kruger, it is more likely to simply transform an ignorant braggart into an educated one. Which is worse? It is hard to say. On the one hand, it is “I can handle a stupid person, and I can handle a belligerent person, but a stupid AND belligerent person...” That’s a pretty tough combination, my coworker said as we were batting the topic around. So yes, eliminating half the problem—that of being stupid—would seem to be an improvement. On the other hand, equipping braggarts with knowledge doesn’t necessarily change them into more tolerant people—as often, it simply makes them more insufferable.
Better than the recommendation to take in more learning, which depending on one’s circumstances, may not be feasible, is the recommendation to take in more humility. The world of academia probably provides the least fertile ground for growing that counsel, whereas the world of spirituality is probably the most fertile. You won’t find Philippians 2:3 on the quadrangle—counsel “consider others superior to you.” Rather, it is usually just the opposite. Still, even in the most skewed comparison, everyone has at least one quality in which they are clearly superior. The trick is to find that quality and hone in on it like a laser beam.
The world of the head does not rule as it imagines it does. If not coupled with humility, then even when the heady person is right, he finds that people resent and will not cooperate with him simply as a reaction to how ill-mannered they are. It’s staggering how the high IQ can be coupled with an infantile EQ.
To underestimate the gravity of what you do not know is a human tendency that will afflict all to some degree. No one is immune to the Dunning - Kruger effect. The video acknowledges this, even if it does propose a faulty solution. But the humble person who truly “does not think more of himself than it is necessary to think” has a leg up on the one who consistently does think more of himself than it is necessary to think, even when his increased knowledge reveals to him that the subject is more massive still. That doesn’t necessarily humble him. As often, it puffs him up with self-importance at the thought of what he has been able to figure out.
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2021/01/the-dunning-kruger-effect.html
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13 minutes ago, AlanF said:
Translation: "I admit I am a liar."
One of the most gracious men on Twitter is Richard Dawkins. His kindness to even those with whom he disagrees knows no bounds. I am told that angels sign up for his podcast on etiquette lessons..
There! Happy?
ANOTHER GLORIOUS VICTORY FOR ALAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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1 minute ago, AlanF said:
Post a link to wherever you think he was that.
Of course, you'll never do that.
Oh, for crying out loud! Is there nothing you will not argue?
It was a general impression that my opponent and I instantly upon—our only common ground. I didn’t log his tweets in anticipation of you coming along later.
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2 hours ago, Ann O'Maly said:
anti-robotics activist Sarah Connor. It got pretty heated, I can tell you!
So much so that I hear the cop they sent to knock heads melted right down into basic elements.
Don’t bite Arauna. Annie’s hopes that you are camel riding on the African Savannah and have neglected the Terminator movies, so she can spring her trap! Tell her that even on camel, they have drive-in movies there and you are wise to her tricks.
She would never try it with JTR, I can tell you that! Where is that boy, anyway?
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16 minutes ago, Arauna said:
He said it more than once during debates.
Back when I traded remarks with an atheist who did like JWs one bit, I mentioned how nasty and petulant Dawkins was. It was our only area of agreement—he instantly conceded the point.
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Done, For an overall chapter reduction of almost 54%. And I didn’t use the Shermer stuff at all. Save it for another day.
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11 minutes ago, AlanF said:
You really do think you're clever.
But here's another one for you and your idiot girlfriend:
With apologies to Colossus—the Forbin project:
”Alan has released another insult missile, Mr President!”
”Oh my God!”
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2 minutes ago, AlanF said:
Much like my saying: "Hey TTH! If pigs could fly, where might they nest?" And you answered with speculation. And then I said: "See! That idiot TTH thinks pigs can fly!"
You would not speak so flippantly if you were more knowledgeable about Pig Science, a field in which they know more Pig Latin than you do the real stuff.
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4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:
If so, it is because they have rented out Colossus—the Forbin Project from Blockbuster. It is a 1970 movie, dated, in which an experiment parallel to what you describe goes awry.
I hear Alan was technical advisor for this one.
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1 minute ago, AlanF said:
And Dawkins never said what you claim. Rather, he was tricked by Ben Stein into speculating.
hehehe :))))))
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44 minutes ago, Ann O'Maly said:
They have developed a network of AI-controlled supercomputers called Skynet and the goal is to replace human civilian and military airplane pilots with machines.
If so, it is because they have rented out Colossus—the Forbin Project from Blockbuster. It is a 1970 movie, dated, in which an experiment parallel to what you describe goes awry.
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Shermer’s coverage of the four-battle war between creationists and evolutionists was worth the price of admission alone, and since the price was free—his Great Courses lecture series was a library checkout—it was doubly worth it. I don’t want my writing to be lame, so I will refrain from application of the Huck Finn enthusiasm for a certain traveling circus, “It didn’t cost nothing and it was worth it, too!” But in this case, it really was worth something, even though I paid nothing.
Most of the participants of the Scopes trial had ulterior motives, and the outcome of the trial was not what evolution advocates had hoped for. They had wanted Scopes to lose, so as to appeal the case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Scopes did lose, in the overwhelmingly religious state of Tennessee, inclined towards fundamentalism then and hotbed of it even now, but that state employed a “legal loophole” (Shermer’s term) so that the case went no further. In light of the guilty verdict, other states enacted anti-evolution laws for their schools, and textbook writers were so intimidated that they didn’t touch the subject for 25 years. It took the shock of Sputnik in 1958 to galvanize evolutionists around sudden fears that the U. S. was falling behind in science.
The fledgling ACLU, rallying to the defense, initially saw the case as a test of free speech, rather than squabbling over religion or science. Dayton Tennessee hoped the case would put their economically distressed town on the map. John Scopes, an out-of-town substitute teacher, thought the publicity might help his cause in a local love interest, says Shermer. He wasn’t even sure that he had taught evolution, but he agreed to be used as a test case for the evolutionist cause. Alan’s grandfather covered the trial for the Baltimore Sun and repeatedly “mocked the town's inhabitants as "yokels" and "morons.” (actually, it was H. L. Mencken)
Lead prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan was not the narrow minded “buffoon” that Alan’s grandfather made him out to be. Shermer points out that he was in most respects liberal-minded. However, in the aftermath of WWI, he became alarmed at the human cost of teaching evolution. Aghast at Germany’s embrace of the “pseudoscience” of social Darwinism, channeled into eugenics, he decided that the best way to stamp out that aftereffect was to stamp out the original effect. His distrust of science can be seen in his statement released to reporters after the trial:
“Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel.” He next devotes a few lines to the horrific advances of war that science had enabled, then concludes with: “If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world.” That statement will resonate with many today, not just Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Michael Shermer strives mightily to separate the science of Darwin from the “pseudoscience” of social Darwinism. I am willing to let that separation stand in the scientific sense, but it certainly does not stand in the sense that matters—that of common sense and human motivation. Newly minted atheists such as H. G. Wells acknowledged the corrosive effect of evolution. In his Outline of History, he states: “A real de-moralization ensued...a real loss of faith after 1859 [publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species]. Prevalent peoples at the close of the nineteenth century believed that they prevailed by virtue of the Struggle for Existence, in which the strong and cunning get the better of the weak and confiding....Man, they decided, is a social animal like the Indian hunting dog....It seemed right to them that the big dogs of the human pack should bully and subdue.”
It is just psychology Wells references. There is no scientific linkage, certainly no “proof.” But anyone who has seen 2001–a Space Odyssey instantly makes the connection. The starving hominid does not advance by loving his neighbor. He does not advance by displaying morality and decency. He responds by picking up a Darwin and beating his rival to death with it, and then all his buddies close in to make sure the kill is complete.
The only ones blind to this obvious connection are atheistic evolutionists, who wish to spotlight human advancement, not human regression. But my wife came across a young man in her ministry just today who opined that many of his generation were “returning to God and the Bible,” since “nothing else has worked out too well, has it?” Only atheist evolutionists are blind to the societally corrosive effects of their beloved theory. Hence, my hilarious joke that 93% of such evolutionists play drums, but the only song they will perform is Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Suffer through the latest innovation of “evolutionary psychologists” explaining how moral qualities evolved, pure storytelling enhanced by mostly irrelevant or ambiguous modern studies. See if you can hold it together as they explain how man’s preference for curvy women evolved because the straighter type didn’t have those convenient shelves for balancing lots of babies, presumably dropping them all to be gobbled up by hungry predators—all just a typical day in the life of our “struggle for survival.” Standby for their explanation on the evolution of religious devotion itself, that God is a superhuman cop to enforce, though threats of a hot afterlife, the do’s and don’t of evolving society, infinitely preferable to a human cop of whom you can pop one in the jaw.
Phillip Johnson, University of California law professor, founding father of the intelligent design movement, according to Shermer, “accuses scientists of unfairly defining God out of the picture by limiting the search for causes to only natural causes. He complains scientists who postulate that there are supernatural forces or interventions at work in the natural world are being pushed out of the scientific arena on the basis of nothing more than a fundamental rule of the game.” Of course. The “rules of the [science] game” are written so that he will lose. He should accept it, as Jehovah’s Witnesses do, instead taking his shots that science is not the all-powerful tool of discovery that it pretends to be, but instead he urges “that the rules be changed to allow methodologigical supernaturalism.”
“Okay,” Shermer says, “but what would that look like? How would that work? Since science is based on natural causes, what are we supposed to do with a supernatural explanation?” His words appear to indicate that he doesn’t really disagree that the game is rigged—he just doesn’t know how to fix it. His words reveal the fundamental weakness of science; it is not equipped to analyze things that are “examined spiritually.” In theory, scientists acknowledge their inadequacy on such things and pass on judgement upon them. In practice, many of them come to feel that their discipline has the lock upon discovery as they seek to run their “competition” off the road.
It spills over into other fields. Luke Thomas Johnson says of the allied “historical-critical approach” to biblical criticism, “the historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent, or the supernatural, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead, and so forth. Well, fair enough. The historian can’t talk about those things, but that methodological restraint ... very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is ‘the historian cannot talk about these things, therefore they are not real.’” This quote taken from a review contrasting biblical interpretation models of Johnson and Bart Ehrman. I disagree with the historical-critical method of Ehrman, though I applaud him for one very clever aside that if you know a Latin phrase and also a perfectly fine English phrase meaning the same thing, you should always use the Latin so that people will know you are educated.
I once had a long discussion at the door of a committed evolutionist. At length he said, “What difference does it make, anyway? Either way, we’re here.” I replied that if there was a Creator, just possibly he had intentions for the earth and might not tolerate its ruination. But if there was no God, then any hope for the earth would come from human efforts alone, “and they’re not doing so well.” The man’s wife, who up to this point had not said a word, responded with “That’s a good point.”
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4 minutes ago, AlanF said:
I'm perfectly well aware that your writing and thinking are horrendously sloppy. That's why much of what you write is of Meh quality.
If you ran Twitter, banning JWI for his unforgivable sin of implying you do not know everything would hold priority over banning Trump.
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1 hour ago, AlanF said:
Yet another fine example of, as Wolfgang Pauli once said of an errant colleague's paper: "it's not even wrong".
Ah, I see our clever boy is not going to fall into the “negation fallacy” trap! What a guy!
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1 hour ago, AlanF said:
I did not say that I could not find the lecture -- I said that TTH did not bother to give a source reference.
Lord NO! @JW Insiderwhat on earth is wrong with you? implying that there was something Alan did not know?!
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1 hour ago, JW Insider said:
And I did not bother to read the previous 14 pages of this topic. I just now started here from the end intending to work backwards.
In other words, you admit to committing the logical blooper of ad reversum fallacy.
For once, I have high praise for Bart Ehrman, who says that if you know a Latin expression and also a perfectly fine English expression that means the same thing, always use the Latin, so people will know you are educated.
Creation-Evolution-Creative Days-Age of the Earth-Humanoid Fossils-Great Flood
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Your hero does.
What is democracy, he said, but “the pathetic notion that individual ignorance adds up to collective wisdom?”
He is a good writer. I have adapted his comparisons to other areas. Such as “When searching religion, look for the people who are individually praised but collectively maligned.”