MrGreyMan In reply to Talmarius [2016-06-20 17:43:43 +0000 UTC]

Indeed.

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MrGreyMan In reply to Kanjilearner3309 [2016-06-20 16:38:53 +0000 UTC]

Thank you.

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MrGreyMan In reply to burnicus [2016-04-26 10:18:54 +0000 UTC]

That might not be the case, as I can be a harsh critic. In this case, made only more so by my bitterness for the fact you seem to have bigbig-on-da 's ear.

Regardless, I will be leaving soon. I am told the final story I will write is almost done being proofread by my backup. I will be break it into five parts, post them once a week, and then leave.

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MrGreyMan In reply to SpaceMedafighterX [2013-03-15 14:55:15 +0000 UTC]

That's how Sexier By Design came about.

I can't say it was an experience I look forward to repeating, but being unemployed is making my high minded ideals about money seem trite.

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MrGreyMan In reply to buddyu415 [2012-11-25 05:46:47 +0000 UTC]

TY.

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nyernyernyer In reply to nyernyernyer [2012-11-21 15:32:59 +0000 UTC]

I was wondering, having read that a many scientists and uni students have fessed up to taking methylphenidate and similar drugs to boost mental performance. In anonymous surveys.

It seems that you managed pretty well. ..With college and grad school being about ten times as challenging as anything before.

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MrGreyMan In reply to nyernyernyer [2012-11-25 05:43:46 +0000 UTC]

Well, this is kinda an interesting issue for me. I mean, I might be able to get the drug legally, and I can say things like: "Well, I have this disability, so I need this extra edge to be normal," and whatnot. But, I kinda think it's all BS.

Did I get dealt a bum hand in this one instance? Yeah, I guess I did. But, so many people get dealt bum hands so often. Why did we--as a race--designate this one thing as something "fixable," while so many other inequalities go uncorrected? Also, why did this one edge get designated as something only accessible by those that "need" it? Caffeine has a similar affect; yet, you can get as much of that stimulate as you want.

I think it's a tad silly that only people with my "problem" get access to this mind enhancing drug. Cuz, let's face it, I clearly did quite alright without it, and if some "normal" could find the cure to cancer with it, why are we denying him/her it?
Can it be overused and dangerous if misused? Yes, but so can so many other perfectly legal things. If someone without ADHD thinks it might be helpful, why not let them give it a try?

Is intellectualism some "sport" that we can't use every edge we can get? Seems--well--stupid to me. Advancement isn't a race.

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nyernyernyer In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-11-26 15:33:57 +0000 UTC]

For starters, all ADD drugs I know of are powerful stimulants, chemically similar to meth or speed (amphetamine).
It's apparently harder to abuse them, though some manage that. It used to be possible to buy Benzedrine and such stuff without prescription.. it wasn't always pretty. No idea though how harmful it was.. but it's all in the past.

BTW, amphetamines apparently help with learning too... memory formation to be specific.
While some of my aunts were in med school in the 1950's, students could get the stuff before exam period.
Caffeine doesn't help with concentration, that is, apart from waking one up.

Silly? Nature of most legislation-- drug laws are silly. Non-addictive stuff like most psychedelics is so illegal, cannabis that less dangerous than booze is illegal most places (not here, at least, possession is not).
Afaik, getting some of these drugs shouldn't be hard, in the US. And then there are online pharmacies.

I agree with you on the 'fairness' issue. It's not a race, and it's not 'cheating'.
Then, I wouldn't want to live in a society where employers or schools would be pressuring people into taking nootropics, side effects be damned..
___________________________

What inequalities do you think go uncorrected?

Apart from stuff which can't be fixed yet- like variance in intelligence.

World would be a far better place if everyone was smart, it'd be harder to exploit people.

I wouldn't say ADHD is even a disease. Quite possible it's simply a different way of thinking, one that may be better suited for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and thus detrimental to cubicle dwellers.

Speaking of bum hands.. doesn't really matter imo.
Will and attitude is more important. Moderately bright people who work hard can achieve plenty.. and procrastinators like me can fuck up handsomely even being 98+ percentile in general intelligence.
All that boring stuff in college.

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MrGreyMan In reply to nyernyernyer [2012-11-26 19:00:26 +0000 UTC]

Well, I can't say I disagree with very much you've said. I do find people's emphasis on raw intellect instead of hard work slightly disconcerting, and I would agree that many things that are illegal probably should just be regulated instead.

So, instead of arguing I will just ramble on a bit, as I am prone to do.
Have you ever seen the movie Gattaca ? The part I remember most from that movie is the exchange:
Vincent: Twelve fingers, or one, it's how you play.
Irene: That piece can only be played with twelve.

That movie really spoke to me about the direction of our society. I think people do resist quick changes, but there are many advances that have made humans "better" in many ways that have been accepted. I feel the ending of Gattaca was put there to make people feel good. Is working hard often more important than anything else? Yes, but anyone can work hard.
The direction that society had taken was a little unrealistic, IMO. I think people would continue to judge people based on output, not genes. However, people with an advantage have better potential for better output, and who would not want to give their children every advantage they can?

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nyernyernyer In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-11-27 07:19:07 +0000 UTC]

My favorite SF film. It's only slightly silly and somewhat unrealistic, and I have a weakness for modernist aesthetics.
And it's a decent exposition to the nature/nurture debate too. Kind of sad.. SF in cinema is mostly crap.

Regarding output/genes.. and how people judge others. Don't forget most everyone loves quick solutions - prejudices, labels, numbers, first impressions.. all that simplifies dealing with others, and most brains are wired in a way that quick and dirty takes precedence over a more measured approach.

Then there's that whole mess of beauty/looks and how that impacts our perception of people. Experiments show beautiful people are thought to be better, more likely to be helped, thought more likely to be moral.. etc etc. Especially if they're of the opposite sex. It's an inborn bias of our monkey brain.

I've no doubt many parents are going to try to stack the deck once that's possible. It's a little worrisome, especially if one envisions such techniques very expensive and available for a generations only to the super-rich.
It'll get even weirder when merit becomes something that can be mostly bought and programmed.

Though, like the film says, there's no gene for fate. And nurture is essential to the outcome.
Doesn't matter if your genes are superb, if your family is crazy and not in a nice way..

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MrGreyMan In reply to nyernyernyer [2012-11-27 12:05:25 +0000 UTC]

There might be no gene for fate, but there is likely one for drive.

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MrGreyMan In reply to nyernyernyer [2012-11-20 18:28:35 +0000 UTC]

I do. I have a few learning disabilities as well.
I was diagnosed in 2nd grade, but stopped taking the medication in 11th grade. Then when I was writing my dissertation I ran into... some issues.

I had not followed up on any of it since 11th grade. I had 'hidden' everything throughout college and gradschool. However, in light of the difficulties I was having with my group and advisor I thought it would be best to come clean and get rediagnosed. ADHD this time (back in my day it was just ADD) and seems I still have the learning disabilities, but my brain has found other ways to compensate. A full breakdown of my IQ reveals some... 'discrepancies,' shall we say.

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MrGreyMan In reply to PlayfulElegy [2012-06-22 20:12:52 +0000 UTC]

I am sure the atheism you are thinking of is soft atheism or agnostic atheism, as opposed to Hard Atheism. Which is why I feel the need to point out I am not a Hard Diest, but an Agnostic Deist. I will write everything out in plain english, if you know a smattering of formal logic I can spell it out that way (the fact one is simply the negation of the other becomes a little more clear if you use logical symbolism)

The basic soft atheist claim is that they find it more likely than not that the universe was created without a purpose.

Logically, one can simply negate this claim and get:

The basic soft theist claim is that they find it more likely than not that the universe was NOT created without a purpose.
Or
The basic soft theist claim is that they find it more likely than not that the universe was created with a purpose.


Now, that's a far as my form of deism goes. I make no other truth claims. I don't make any claims about what that purpose is, or the nature of that Creator.

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PlayfulElegy In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-06-22 20:21:22 +0000 UTC]

That makes a lot of sense. I mean I'd still try to argue that saying a conscious entity creating the universe does take a bit more of a leap than saying a non conscious entity did, but that would presuppose that by deity one is meaning specifically something similar to your more standard fare of theistic claim rather than a more inclusive definition that would allow for one to say math or the total sum of energy in the universe is a deity in the fact that it could be considered a 'constant' or 'primal force'.

I'm also going to have at a guess and say that the freedom of that definition of deity is what gives you a preference of deism over atheism, yes?

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MrGreyMan In reply to PlayfulElegy [2012-06-22 20:41:42 +0000 UTC]

The reason I prefer deism over atheism is because I was an agnostic for an number of years (which I still think is the most logical of theistic positions) but after some deep self examining I came to the realization I was more comfortable with the idea that there was a conscious Creator than I was with the idea there wasn't. Simple put, I still felt agnosticism was the best position, but I wasn't agnostic.

I blame social brainwashing.

But, yes, as soon as you start adding other qualities to the Creator the analogous behavior between theism and atheism brakes down. Essentially, assuming anything other than It simply having a will is too much.

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PlayfulElegy In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-06-23 02:33:49 +0000 UTC]

even then, I would say that asserting it having a will of it's own is a bit too much as well, as attributing any qualities to the entity is further assertion than I believe necessary.

Whenever I refer to myself as an atheist, I begin to think that I would be better referred to as an agnostic/apatheist, as I don't claim to know anything about the qualities of what make the universe come to be, nor do I really care about it more than an interest in my origins (Though I don't like using the term agnostic to refer to myself, as it furthers the misconstruction that being an agnostic and being an atheist or being a theist and being an agnostic are mutually exclusive, when in reality they talk about 2 completely different things (belief versus knowledge).

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MrGreyMan In reply to PlayfulElegy [2012-06-23 03:23:09 +0000 UTC]

even then, I would say that asserting it having a will of it's own is a bit too much as well, as attributing any qualities to the entity is further assertion than I believe necessary.
I agree, it is as baseless as any other claim made about said Thing. An example of another arbitrary attribute one could baselessly assign to this Thing is that it's insentient.

Which, coincidentally, is the very quality the atheist assign to it.
Hence my original statement.

As to the rest, where would you put yourself on Dawkins scale: [link] I find it a good rule of thumb.

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PlayfulElegy In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-06-23 05:55:49 +0000 UTC]

4, but not because it's equally probable for there to be a specific god or no god. Rather it's 4 because whatever created the universe is essentially unknowable due to the fact that the definition of universe is 'a perfectly closed system' which means observation of what created it (which would be outside it's perview) is effectively impossible, and pointless as there is no interaction with things outside a perfect closed system.

Not to mention because of that we can't set any probabilities for it due to lack of information.

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MrGreyMan In reply to PlayfulElegy [2012-06-23 14:20:27 +0000 UTC]

4, but not because it's equally probable for there to be a specific god or no god. Rather it's 4 because whatever created the universe is essentially unknowable due to the fact that the definition of universe is 'a perfectly closed system' which means observation of what created it (which would be outside it's perview) is effectively impossible, and pointless as there is no interaction with things outside a perfect closed system.
Why, that's my favorite answer to the question; it's almost verbatim the one I used to give and I still cannot find fault with it.
Quite right, "equiprobable" is a very misleading term. In my opinion no true agnostic would use it, and you also have a bit of Tarski's undefinability theorem in there as well. Very good.

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PlayfulElegy In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-06-23 17:00:36 +0000 UTC]

But that's more a logical reason for not believing in any specific pre creation situation. On a personal level, even if the actual creator appeared before me and gave sufficient evidence for their creation of the universe, I'd believe in their existence, but I wouldn't really change my behavior because they told me to without them giving proper reasoning for it. Being all powerful doesn't exactly make you right, it just means you hold leverage.



Further, from what I'm reading, it sounds like this is what I use to explain to people how I believe 'free will' works. Basically 'free will' isn't actually free will, but rather the fact that you can never truly predict your own future actions even with perfect knowledge because the attainment of knowledge about what you will do will affect what you will do, which gives the illusion that you are picking independent of past events. By technicality the ability to assess your own actions and their consequences and change your decisions based on those assessments are what I would call the 'Prerequisite and reason' for free will.

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MrGreyMan In reply to PlayfulElegy [2012-06-23 18:08:04 +0000 UTC]

Well, "right" could mean "hold leverage;" it's hard to say.
I don't think I would quite express my disbelief in free will as you have, but the gist is certainly the same. You sound a little bit like Adam from my Deae Ex Machinis: Alpha story.
Anyway, I don't believe I've ever found anyone I have less to argue about over these matters, and I've been doing this quite a while.

It's actually a little disconcerting.

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PlayfulElegy In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-06-23 18:35:25 +0000 UTC]

Well, in terms of morality, I prefer the 'give me a good enough explanation as to how following this will bring about maximum happiness [the scale I would like to use, but can't because we can't scale happiness yet] and I'll follow it.', as simply being stronger than me and using that doesn't make them much more than a bully.

I'll have to read the story. But yeah, most of my philosophy about reality is basically constructed using the scientific method (I don't have enough understanding of the multiple philosophies to accurately tie myself to one)

But as for agreement, it's usually good, because it means your views have similar bases, and therefore makes discussion about points that differ between the two more interesting.

For example, I for one think that 'A Brave New World' had a good skeleton for society (though it would definitely need to be more empathetic, and not engineer social classes)

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MrGreyMan In reply to PlayfulElegy [2012-06-24 16:15:16 +0000 UTC]

Sadly, logic can't provide axioms with which to work logic on, however.
You need an meta-rational (or irrational) system to get those, like emotions.

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PlayfulElegy In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-06-24 21:03:29 +0000 UTC]

I'm actually not sure which of my points that is in reference to.

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MrGreyMan In reply to PlayfulElegy [2012-06-24 21:29:04 +0000 UTC]

Hehe, sorry, this was more of a response to what you said about my story, but I did not want to clutter that up with this, so I kinda tried to talk about it here, but I see you saw through my clever ruse. I was more responding to your wish to be a computer.
You could run into a problem like this:
[link]

I kinda wish I had longer more insightful things to respond to you with. Normally, I am the one in a conversation that is overly verbose, but the truth is -I think- I am better at responding and explaining than anything else, and I've agreed with almost all of what you said. Additionally, you seemed to have a capable understanding of what you were saying, so I haven't felt like I've had anything constructive to add.

However, if you are interested, it's clear to me your world view would most closely align with utilitarianism. [link] However, I would be a little surprised if you did not already know that.

There are some problems with the basic Utilitarianism. It was, in fact, something I was trying to illustrate in that story. The Utility monster [link] objection.

And, to think, right after writing that story someone made this comic. [link]

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PlayfulElegy In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-06-24 21:50:56 +0000 UTC]

Well, it's not my personal wish to be a computer (or make everyone the computer), but rather it's what I think would be necessary in that situation. It's more of 'when you are trying to run everything, emotion will cloud your judgement' than 'emotions are bad, no one should have them', especially seeing as my end goal is maximum happiness for others.

Yeah, I relate my view of the world as an amalgamation of utilitarianism based humanism. As for the utility monster objection, I think it puts the utility of the device itself over it's end goal. If it's end goal is maximum happiness, then you can't simply eliminate everyone, as you are getting rid of what would create happiness, and losing your potential happiness.

And for the comic, it shows another issue with the utilitarian model as we stand. without placing the concept of 'diminishing returns' on excess happiness, we can end up favoring those who are already happy, further you'd have to factor in other emotions besides happiness and their relation to the index, and that just makes the system all the more complicated. It's honestly why I don't think my system is effective. It requires far more resource and a fundamental understanding of how happiness works and it's gauging in order to create such a system.

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MrGreyMan In reply to PlayfulElegy [2012-06-24 22:57:42 +0000 UTC]

But, that's the very problem with having a computer run things. Not that it will wipe out other's emotions, but that it will not be able to accurately adjust to something that tries to meta-game the system. If it works solely off of logic it will be unable to generate new axioms. Eventually, something would evolve to take advantage of that fact. It's intelligence would not matter if the underline principles were static. You need some irrationality in order to make such corrections.

Perhaps this is (finally) something we can disagree on. There does seem to be a large group out there that think that emotionalist computers would be better at running things than humans (like the guy that writes [link] ) But, I disagree.

Now, sure, you could start talking about how you could program the computer to be better than that and make it so it's meta-game proof. However, I think you are then just starting down the "it would be better if something better was in charge" road. Clearly, a thing without any problems would be better than something with problems, but I don't agree an emotionless machine is that thing.

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PlayfulElegy In reply to MrGreyMan [2012-06-24 23:21:43 +0000 UTC]

I can see where you are coming from with this point, but I also see it as a double edged sword. you need to be able to out game someone else to prevent abuse of the system, however at the same time an emotional system can feel itself being cheated and respond poorly to it. I guess the issue is finding a balance between cold and logical processing and emotional response.

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