Oliver said:
I wanted you to note this to realize that you do a lot of insulting in
this thread, despite requesting that others not insult you.
I only do so once I've been attacked unambiguously, and mainly out of
sheer frustration.
I doubt you understand it perfectly, because you seem to associate it
with the concept of deluding yourself, or pretending to be something you're
not.
It has to be one of those things or else genuine self-alteration. The
latter is not a capability I have. (I think I mentioned my aversion to
"do-it-yourself brain surgery" once before? But regardless, I lack the
tools, and like any normal human being was also born with a severely
limited ability to "hack myself" software-wise.)
I understand that you're claiming it's beyond your means. I just don't
believe it.
Well that's strange, since you should think that I would know better
what tools I possess or don't possess than you would. Just as I expect
you know better what tools *you* possess or don't possess than I do.
Skills and knowledge for their use likewise.
Besides, even if I had the tools, skills, and knowledge, I wouldn't.
Not on your say-so, anyway. I certainly would not self-modify in a
manner suggested under coercive circumstances (e.g. "make yourself
believe me to be a god and worship me or I'll tarnish your reputation
in public!" or "modify yourself to value this penny stock absurdly or
I'll blow your frickin' brains out" or anything of the sort).
I don't think I ever said that damage cannot happen. Once again, you've
misunderstood what I am saying. I believe that damage *has* happened to you,
because you haven't learned to shrug off these insults yet. Once you learn
how, the damage will be negligeable, if not zero.
This is the final proof that you are NOT understanding me. I am not
TALKING about the insults "hurting my feelings" or some stupid thing
like that, where growing a thick skin fixes the problem. I am TALKING
about this kind of mudslinging, directed at me, convincing *other
people* to treat me poorly. To some extent a thick skin would help with
being treated poorly by my attackers' converts too, but past a certain
point I'd be a thick-skinned but very lonely person with no job or
social prospects, and that's damage no thickness of skin would
prevent.
Don't argue with me on this, because I've seen people turn away from
someone (and, once or twice, me) in response to this kind of
namecalling campaign, and past a certain point you'd have to be as
thick-skinned and dumb as a rock not to be harmed by it.
[snips what seems to be a progress report on his attempts to manipulate
me, and calls some of my more admirable traits "problems to overcome"]
What kind of wacko game are you playing here?
As I've said before, I think people are not getting the message you're
trying to convey in your posts. [snip improbable theory with no evidence]
I'm communicating my message as clearly as I possibly can with my
(considerable) knowledge and skill with the English language. The rest
is up to the fates, so there's no point haranguing me about it.
I suggest your model [snip insults]
It predicts people will understand and agree with your posts, but this is simply not the
case.
You conveniently ignored the fact that there is no evidence from which
to conclude what you are claiming. The silent majority of lurkers have,
by definition, not spoken. Those who have are those who already have
entrenched opinions, so these opinions not changing is unsurprising.
Explain to me how people with "negative credulousness" will "cancel out"
and become "zero" in your model.
People who believe the opposite of the declarative content of what they
are reading, instead of disbelieving it (not credulous) or believing it
(regular credulousness). Instead of thinking I'm evil after one insult,
then reverting to neutral after my response tells my side of the story,
they think I'm some sort of saint after one insult, then revert to
neutral. I expect these to be sufficiently rare (it certainly sounds
like they'd have to exhibit grossly abnormal reasoning) that leaving
them thinking abnormally good of me will leave vastly more thinking
worse of me. In fact the empirical evidence is that this is the case,
since previous mudslinging incidents I've witnessed did (sometimes even
despite some efforts to combat the effect) produce an overall trend
towards reduced opinion of the target, on average, rather than
improved.
YES!
Very good. I'm amazed that you've made this giant leap in
progress.
I don't appreciate this "teacher to stupid student" tone, as I've told
you a thousand times before. I'm not here to "make progress" at
whatever it is you're trying to do, either. I'm here to explain to you
what *I* know, and why you are wrong. And you again have missed the
point. Anyone who always believes the negative of the absolute value of
whatever they hear is a lost cause and I may as well ignore them
completely. As soon as I was insulted, that subset of the population
hated me and nothing I do will fix that, obviously. I may as well
concern myself solely with the remainder, especially those who are
actually somewhat rational.
This applies to anyone whose behavior is to always believe the good and
the reverse of the bad too. Whatever happens, their opinion of me can
only improve, and I don't need to do anything to ensure it.
Good. I think we just have to work on your perception on what is
feasible and what isn't.
No, "we" do not have to "work on" anything. What exactly do you think
this is? It seems you think that you're a teacher and I'm a backward
student of some sort. That is false. You and I are random people in a
usenet group, one pseudonymous and the other possibly not, engaged in
some kind of discussion. You seem to have some beliefs that I'm "wrong"
and need "correcting". Unfortunately you have expressed them in the
presence of third parties, which necessitates that I publicly correct
those beliefs. Which is what I am doing, as well
as (since you don't seem quite as rabidly irrationally hostile as some
others) hoping to actually convince you of the truth of what I am
saying.
However, it is becoming apparent now that your opinion is just as
entrenched as the others, and you're simply slightly smarter than the
rest of the drooling pack, enough so as to use sly and sneaky methods
in preference to foaming at the mouth to try to either a) convince your
audience of what a moron I allegedly am or b) trick me in some way,
apparently into dropping my guard or, if possible, into self-modifying
in a self-destructive way.
Those efforts are doomed to failure. I will not permit you to tell only
your side of the story; I will tell mine as well and the audience, such
that still follows this thread, will have to make up their own damn
minds rather than just take your word for it. I know you don't like
this, not having the last word and not having your opinion stand
uncompeted-with by any dissenting voices, but, as they say, tough.
Furthermore, even had I the capability for self-modification you seem
to believe I have (one of numerous evidence-free beliefs you hold, I
note), I have strong built-in safeguards in place against being
manipulated in any way into developing self-hostile beliefs that would
lead to self-destruction (through depression, suicide, turning to
drugs, apathy, or any such effect) or into developing irrational,
empirically ungrounded beliefs that would make me more susceptible to
similar or worse behavior (e.g. as a particularly notorious example any
attempt to get me to believe, without evidence, that I'll get to sleep
with 72 virgins if I just hijack this plane and crash it into a
national monument). Basically, you can't convince me to dislike myself,
and you can't convince me of unfalsifiable BS or of actually-false BS,
including but not limited to any weird theory under which my best
course of action would be to let you attack me with impunity, or would
be more actively self-destructive or even criminal, or anything else
like that.
If everyone on the planet had such strong mental defenses against
brainwashing, I know of at least two tall buildings that would probably
still be standing, and a lot of crusades, inquisitions, witch-hunts,
and what-have-you that would never have occurred...
Okay. There's a step I eventually want you to take which is to realize
that the perception of whether something is damaging or not is exactly that:
a perception[snip rest]
I'm not here to take "steps" like some student. Stop suggesting
otherwise.
The perception of whether something is damaging or not is, like all
perceptions, better when grounded in reality than when completely
hallucinatory. Numbing myself to pain will not
mean I don't lose the use of my arm if something cuts it off, and it
may mean that I don't sense the arm is being damaged in time to take
action to preserve it.
Likewise, numbing myself to pain will not mean I don't lose a friend or
whoever if someone's mudslinging campaign convinces them to leave me,
and it may mean that I don't sense the danger in time to prevent this.
In either case, depending on how fast the damage is done nothing I do
might save the arm or the friendship, but if I do nothing, then the
loss becomes certain.
Consider this: It actually *helps* your credibility if you're willing to
admit you're wrong when you actually do believe you're wrong.
And when I don't believe I am wrong? "Admitting" it in public then
would be damaging, since I'm not being honest, and the "admission"
itself can be proven wrong. Actually being wrong would also be
damaging, but not if inconsiderate pricks don't call public attention
to it and not if, given that they do, I'm able to make the problem go
away somehow and leave things in doubt.
Of course, this becomes a problem only if someone *publicly* accuses me
of wrongdoing. Then there's no way to avoid credibility loss, save by
mounting an effective defense, wherever the truth may lie.
It's similar to a hypothetical man put on trial for something that
shouldn't be a crime, such as music downloading or a nonaddictive drug.
The only chance to avoid being wrongfully punished for an action that
harmed no-one else is to mount an effective defense and get a
not-guilty verdict, whether or not he actually did the deed.
This just indicates that a) you don't publicly accuse someone of
something unless you can prove it's true and b) you don't publicly
accuse someone of something harmless for which it isn't fair to expose
them to public scorn or worse.
I.e. if you
make some claim, and later you find out you're wrong, it's a good idea to
say "Oops, sorry, I was wrong about that." Most reasonable people won't
think you're an idiot for admitting that you were wrong about something
No, they'll just think I'm an idiot for having been wrong in the first
place. Small comfort. Fortunately, I'm very rarely wrong, and tend to
qualify anything I say of a factually-decidable nature for which I
don't have the evidence to support a confident assertion anyway. Even
the accusations of being wrong are, by and large, from either people
whose *opinion*, not factually decidable, differs from mine, or people
accusing me of something just because they personally don't like me or
got annoyed and something of mine was the proximate cause (whether or
not I was just the messenger, or they were getting annoyed by something
that wasn't unreasonable behavior, doesn't seem to matter to some
people; people get up on the wrong side of the bed and snap at me for
something innocuous, and unfortunately some of them do it in the
presence of third parties...)
[Snip another, this time fairly blatant, attempt to manipulate me into
potentially developing self-hostile beliefs]
Apparently, every definition I can find of "traumatic" says that it
should be used only to refer to physical injury, and so according to
"dictionary English", insults are not traumatic either.
Those definitions are broken. People generally regard as traumatic a
variety of non-physically-injurious events, including but not limited
to:
* Observation of war horrors (which alone may induce PTSD; the 'T'
stands for "Traumatic");
* Rape without real injury;
* Methods of torture that are not physically damaging (but do induce
pain); and
* Serious damage to one's personal or professional life, including but
not limited to job loss, loss of close friends or companions, actual
deaths of same, and loss of treasured property.
Snow *does* leave most people with a memory for life.
But not a seriously painful one, barring a bad skiing accident,
ice-related car accident, or similar.
"Results from fracture in other areas of the bony hook than in pars
interarticularis."
www.condell.org/libertyville/neurosurgery/neurology-glossary.php
"Relating to a physical wound or injury. Traumatic spinal cord injury refers
to damage to the spinal cord that has occurred as a result of an injury (eg,
following a car accident) rather than a medical condition or complication."
These are definitions for medically-specialized usages, not colloquial
usage, of the word.
I'm not trying to liken it to this. We're dropping the analogies and
metaphors, remember? I'm refering to a literal snowflake. I am demonstrating
to you that there exists scenarios where (4) is the optimal solution.
And I'm telling you that this one isn't one of them, that no case us in
which the expected damage is over a certain magnitude, and that no case
is in which the cause is the malicious or irresponsible conduct of a
person. The latter requires either prevention of the action achieving
its goal, prevention of the damage, or deterrence. The current
situation falls into both of these classes: the antagonists are people,
not snow clouds, and they are behaving largely maliciously, and
meanwhile the damage can easily reach a magnitude far in excess of
anything that can reasonably be tolerated, judging my multiple previous
incidents in which things comparable to this caused eventually
intolerable harm. (Harm that no amount of being thick-skinned would
protect against, by the way.)
Funny. I'd just not leave a $10'000 item lying around where people can
walk up to and smash it. But I thought we were dropping the analogies.
That was later, and we are, since you plainly don't comprehend them. In
this instance, the $10,000 item is my reputation, and the only way to
not "leave it lying around where people can walk up to and smash it" is
to become a recluse. Which is a "solution" we've been over and over a
thousand goddamn times.
