— SteemCN

Pick anything from psychology. anything you want and try to support it.

You have made declarations. I haven't seen any arguments.

I did make arguments in my post. go read it again and make counter arguments,

You and I must've read different books! I admit the book isn't written in the same dry academic style as his research, but comparing him to Tony Robbins?!! The article I linked to doesn't read like self-help to me.

the link and the book are two different things.

And by 'anthropology', you mean those guys who say anything is valid within the context of every specific society?

that's sociology you are thinking.

o if one society believes the earth is flat, they're right, and if another disagrees, they're also right—you mean those guys?

sigh...now you are just shooting yourself on the foot

"You didn't bother much to debate me before"

You and I apparently also have very different recollections of the past! I remember our arguments lasting for weeks. But I guess that's just me.

"Now, what does that tell you, about you? :)"

Your premise is false (see above), so it tells me nothing. And I never made money using unethical means, which is more than I can say about you, considering the current post.

I spent much time and energy trying to explain things to people, including you, as rationally as possible, as calmly as possible, trying not to attack their character in the process (though my human nature sometimes gets in the way - see previous paragraph), and as far as convincing anyone is concerned, that whole time and energy was mostly wasted (but it was quite profitable in other respects). Just to give an example, in my whole life I only ever managed to convince 1-2 people that god definitely does not exist, and managed to sway a couple more into something that can maybe be described as 'agnosticism'. And I'm the most well-informed atheist I know when it comes to arguments (as opposed to, say, historical knowledge or theology etc., things that have nothing to do with whether god exists). Every atheist I know wouldn't be able to hold his own against someone like Alvin Plantinga, much less push their own point. Internet-atheists, I call them sometimes, or pamphlet-atheists.

If I had to put into a single word what I thought was missing from CFT, or from steemit, it would be "seriousness". People just aren't serious about the things they claim to be serious about. That's why it's hard for me to believe something like steemit will replace academia. When I was debating at uni, it was like proving things with math: a person could hate you, but he had no choice but to accept your argument. Things were fair, people obeyed rules (of logic), and you could tell Truth was their real aim, not personal justification or glorification. In the real world, where people merely USE 'truth' to gain some practical benefit, most of the time you can't convince them of shit. Talking to them is the equivalent of a sane person suddenly walking into a loony house. I spent most of my life actively engaging people who believe in 'weird things' (to use Shermer's term), and while it taught me much about human nature (most of it utterly disappointing), it taught them nothing about what I was trying to confer. Most people just aren't influenced by arguments, they're influenced by, as you would perhaps put it, Power! The ones who have a really open mind and can be swayed by logic are few and far between, so rare that I'm getting close to considering them evolved types of humans!

About psychology etc., it's far easier to type a comment like this one (people whom I debate on fb tell me they can't keep up), than to launch what I would consider a proper argument (it would closely resemble an academic treatise, and would require just as much time to write). I do hope you realize that the discussions people have on steemit, as well as the ones at CFT, were more closely related to pub-level banter (του καφενέ), than real investigations into the truth of the matter. And just as I would engage someone in a pub differently than I would engage an imagined reader of an academic essay, similarly I try to make concise and not very profound replies to your own comments. So you ask me to prove tomatoes exist, I give you a tomato. What I am supposed to do in the context of a steemit discussion? You ask me to pick anything from psychology and try to support it, so I give you a link to the research your own comments against the validity of the social sciences were partly based on. What am I supposed to do? I gave you the article, now you tell me why you think the research is invalid. Sure, it's not physics, sure, there is a statistical possibility that their findings could be wrong, and they mention all that in the article, but the same is true for even the hard sciences. Look at medicine for Christ's-sake, which normally should be the equivalent of engineering, since it has very real-life consequences.

Maybe I make the innocent mistake of failing to mention things because they are self-evident to me. Here's one: you do realize (I really hope you do) that for me to prove what you're asking me to prove, would mean to tackle, among many other things, the entire corpus of people like Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper (and that's just the names you'll recognize) - you do realize that, right? I would have to define what science is - and I would have to be objectively right about it, which means the next Nobel prize would probably go to me - and then take every single science or science-wannabe one by one, and assess them and decide whether they are real sciences. One could devote their entire life in doing that, and fail. But you're asking me to do it in the steemit comments section. So take the fact that the first step would have to be to define what science is, add to that the fact that I studied philosophy of science for 3 years, and the result is chaos! I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I made an original contribution to the discipline regarding Hume's problem of induction. Some of the greatest philosophical minds of the last century, such as Kuhn and Popper and Russell, who toiled endlessly on the subject, thought they were dealing with a single problem, when in fact they were conflating two different problems, and it was partly the reason they found the issue so intractable in the first place. My professor was so impressed he gave me a full mark immediately and said I should prepare it for publication (unheard of for an undergraduate), which I never did (that's one of my faults, I often undermine myself in that way, for some reason). The title of the essay was 'The two problems of induction', and my professor said the claim was so groundbreaking that I should change the title to something more modest, and he gave me back the paper. I returned it the next day, having changed the title to 'The two problems of induction?' He looked at it, and with a completely serious face, not a hint of a smile or a grin, said "that'll do".

Now I know your reply will be that that is completely beside the point, and 'please spare us the hagiographical anecdotes - we get it, you're very smart - or at least you think you are', but again, you're missing the point (as you often do), which is: "this is hard stuff, and I should know, because I did such and such at uni". (Plus I think the anecdote is somewhat entertaining, but that may just be me.)

What you do here, by your own admission, is 'ranting'. You used the word yourself. I've met many talented individuals in my life, and you're one of them. But, in my view, like in so many of the other cases I know, you're just wasting your brains. (I understand it all depends on what your goals are - but what I mean specifically is I think you'd make a good thinker if you tried - if you just fucking sat your ass down and did the work instead of being an internet troll! Just replying to all these comments you receive every day takes an immense chunk of your time I'm sure! There's little time left for real research and thinking!)

Also, any debate that happens on this level (steemit, CFT), should rely on "Good Faith" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith ). You can't just send me on errands trying to prove to you the most basic things. You're like an eel, slippery and cunning. You can't just say "no" like a little child and think you've defeated an argument (not talking about me, I just see this is what you do with every poster who challenges you). Like Daniel Dennett says, a philosopher's ideal world would be one in which, if one makes an illogical statement, or refuses to accept a valid argument, their head would simply explode! Sadly, that's not what happens in the real world. In the real world people can keep insisting, like stubborn babies - can even start uttering nonsense statements that create a strong suspicion that they've gotten drunk behind their laptop screen - and live to tell the tale.

Anyway, this has been my own ranting! Now I can expect the good ol' papzee-poison! - "I will punish you to the exact same extent to which you stole my precious time with this pointless meandering filth!"

RE: Science Under Attack

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