3-4 Sep 2010
I woke up around 1:00 PM and took 1 piracetam and choline, and again at 10:00 PM. I have to shift my sleep schedule slightly backwards now, as I'm going to be on a podcast tomorrow at 10 AM with TheThinkingAtheist. And we'll be taking calls! I bet that's going to be interesting. Make sure to tune in!
We had a bit of an incident today with a squirrel, and things got just a little chaotic. He had learned how to scale up the side of the building, and climb onto our balcony to get to the bird food we leave out. The first time we found him, he had scared away all the birds and was just sitting in the bag of seed, munching away. We kept it inside after that, but he's a regular on the balcony now. Things escalated today, as my mother announced with a scream of "ZACH! GET OUT HERE! NOW!" in the tone of voice that suggests someone just experienced a severe shrapnel injury.
Almost, but not quite. As it turns out, someone had left a bag of peanuts sitting immediately inside the screen door. The squirrel, unable to find any bird seed outside, decided to tear his way through the screen to wander inside and grab some peanuts. Of course, he couldn't leave without jumping around and knocking a few things over first. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to grab my camera at this point. We're now faced with the task of replacing the screen door with something that's still permeable, but not to rodents.
I've noticed some interesting patterns among the people who try trolling on my videos. (After almost 2 years of this, you can't help but see patterns.) I've seen so many of them that they can be grouped into various highly predictable types, but the only ones that really intrigue me are the obsessive kind. There are individual users who have literally called me a faggot at least once a week over the course of an entire year. The same person. A year. I have to wonder why they would continue following me - but if someone wants to be a part of this whole thing I've started, I'm not going to stop them. Then there are the people who come to my Facebook page just to try and provoke everyone in the comments of every single post every single time, and it doesn't even work because nobody cares. Sometimes they just post the same pointless crap over and over (like a jezuzfreek777 video from 2007 - seriously), with no actual effect. It doesn't even reach the threshold of irritating, it's just too inane to bother with. It's like they're not even making any real effort. Do they realize how much I can piss people off, without even having to try?
Then there are the introlligentsia, the ones who keep coming back to my videos to make irrelevant philosophical points that are intended to call facts, knowledge, and science itself into question - as if their arguments are going to make it stop working. ("Oh no, this vaccine doesn't help anymore, because we can't really know anything. Correlation wasn't causation after all!") There are the ones who rattle off dozens of misplaced fallacies like they just read the Wikipedia article on it, while completely failing to notice their own. But my favorites have to be the ones who vehemently insist that there's been some kind of major change and now philosophers are finally making some real progress toward proving that a god exists, like it's the Human Genome Project or something. These are the ones who like to refer to some arcane theological "proof" and claim that no atheists can refute it, so that means a god exists. As if they're going to magick a deity into existence with an argument. The funniest part is how frustrated they seem to be with the fact that science works, there are still no gods, and none of their obscure nitpicking changes that. And I wouldn't even mind if any of them actually had some useful criticism that helped to refine how we come to know things, but their attitude just reminds me of a chapter from The Demon-Haunted World: "Obsessed with Reality". In their case, it's more like "Pissed with Reality".
The thing is, I'll still happily engage with them, even when the same person is making the same arguments for the twentieth time. It's a worthwhile investment, because every time they try to start shit, it just leads to more people watching my videos. So I'll tussle with them until they once again flounce off because I wouldn't argue within their frameworks of nonsense. But when they've all become so predictable, there's no longer anything surprising about what they do. And without the surprise, it's impossible to provoke any kind of novel reaction. Their homogeneity has led to stagnation - some diversity is needed if they expect to be successful. You have to randomize phaser frequencies before you fight the Borg.
It does make me wonder: Who's really being trolled here?
i can't help feeling that star trek analogy was for me :P
Looking forward to the podcast. Good luck.
Love the reference.
You will be assimilated, theists. At least you intellectually honest ones.
I really wish there were some more clear stats on atheism and theism in the world. It'd be so cool to know exactly how many theists are deconverted every day.
It seems to me that you have simply replaced faith in God, with faith in science. That you can just prove the non-existence of God and just act like everything will just the same afterwords. As if the metaphysical construct that has been the foundation for all of morality throughout the ages can simply be thrown out, but that the morality that was logically deduced from it can stay. God and objective morality are a package deal - you can't have one without the other, at least authentically or with intellectual integrity.
Reason can only get you so far, and it will never cover the plethora of situations that the individual could get into. Each case is unique, and without a metaphysical guideline all values must be created by the individual on a specific basis. Does this mean that I believe in God? Of course not. God is a construct by mankind to give their life existential and moral meaning. Science, which I strongly advocate, is a system that is used to understand ourselves and the universe we inhabit - you can not base your life around it. It is up to you to ascribe reality with value, compared to a christian the accurate depiction of reality is a positive value, but you have not accepted the universe as meaningless yet, as if you still wish to have the morals of a dead god or a temple without a shrine.
"It seems to me that you have simply replaced faith in God, with faith in science."
I don't know about that. Merited confidence, earned through demonstrated efficacy, isn't the same thing as faith.
"That you can just prove the non-existence of God and just act like everything will just the same afterwords."
But I suspect it would have been the same beforehand as well.
"As if the metaphysical construct that has been the foundation for all of morality throughout the ages can simply be thrown out, but that the morality that was logically deduced from it can stay."
Well, yes. Obsolete things can be discarded. It's not as if we can legitimately be expected to keep using something that doesn't work - tradition isn't really a reason to keep this sort of thing around. (Also, I don't believe in objective morality either. The only thing I suspect we can logically deduce here is that there's no such thing.)
"It is up to you to ascribe reality with value, compared to a christian the accurate depiction of reality is a positive value, but you have not accepted the universe as meaningless yet"
I actually agree that the universe appears to have no inherent meaning - only that which each of us assign to it.
Actually, it's demonstrable that people have *not* gotten their morality from religion. If anything, religions gets it from people.
For instance, The Abrahamic religions used to be perfectly fine with slavery. There's even rules in the manuals on how to treat them! Modern people reject slavery. Modern churches do too, but the writings are *still* in the holy books to support it!
Birth control: The popes have been emphatically against it for centuries, claiming the bible say so. Yet most American & European Catholics use it, and other Catholics are trending that way. Eventually, the popes will give up.
Gay, women, and married priests... look how many churches now allow them, because the members insisted they do.
wow, the introlligensia trolling a post on the introlligensia
*twilight zone music*
it was a great interview ZJ, just started watching your videos recently
HOLY SHIT! There's one RIGHT THERE!
Very funny. For the record I'm not trolling, I watched all of his videos concerning gender identity/human sexuality and was forced to reconcile my own views, which up until then had been sorely lacking. I simply wanted to know what sort of morality stemmed from those views. I genuinely respect ZJ intellectually and look eagerly forward to more videos on morality. Also the Introlligensia is very real and they are always watching, waiting for a single moment when his argument breaks down or he commits a logical fallacy. Beware you have been warned.
"I simply wanted to know what sort of morality stemmed from those views"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_ethics
as you see "divine command "theory"" is just one of the possible meta-ethical justifications to choose from(and I would say it is a horribly incomplete justification, even if you would accept the existence of some divine ruler).
My own stands on this: since, from my point of view, every attempt of objective meta-ethics have failed to cross the is-ought-gab, I arrived at moral subjectivism(with often inter-subjectively shared premises as a bases for arguing normative statements) with descriptive emotivism as "rock bottom" basis(meaning: no matter which line of reasoning of my personal morals/ethics I traced back I always arrived at some emotional attachment and found that, on terms of pure logic alone, I would always run into an dead end(so the emotions have to be justification/premise enough(thats why its descriptive ant not prescriptive))).
Perhaps my wording was a little less than appropriate; I was not appealing to any meta-ethical justifications in any of my previous comments. I didn't mean a specific type of morality, such appealing to a deity or any other metaphysical constructs - objective morality included. - I simply wanted to know the full extent of ZJ's moral philosophy as I thought that perhaps he may have appealed to an externalized notion of morality in order to justify his own claims of sexuality. A notion that I now believe to be untrue.
As far as your claims go, I agree with you almost entirely. I believe all morals to be based, at least partially, upon irrationality. This does not mean that I discourage the use of reason to solve moral problems, but simply that I think all faculties of the full human subject should be utilized, that is reasoning and unreasoning, both have their uses and limitations.
Besides, to limit the individuals choice of moral actions to the contents of a wikipedia article seems to me to be destructive and alienating to the innate creativity of the human subject.
Very funny. For the record I'm not trolling, I watched all of his videos concerning gender identity/human sexuality and was forced to reconcile my own views, which up until then had been sorely lacking. I simply wanted to know what sort of morality stemmed from those views. I genuinely respect ZJ intellectually and look eagerly forward to more videos on morality. Also the Introlligensia is very real and they are always watching, waiting for a single moment when his argument breaks down or he commits a logical fallacy. Beware you have been warned. ;)
Another Sagan quote would be appropriate here: "Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don't, others will."
I happen to be a huge fan of Carl Sagan and also this quote. Besides if no one disagrees with you, then you won't ever grow more knowledgeable. Socrates said something along the lines of "Knowledge is the assumption of ignorance, while ignorance is the assumption of knowledge."
oh no! he's looking for ... LOGICAL FALLACIES!!!!
If you were looking for logical fallacies on youtube you'd be busy for the rest of your natural life. And there are better places to look for this sort of thing than ZJ's blog.
But really, logical fallacy sniper? on the interwebs? Go to any Christian forum and try to find "Appeal to Authority", you'll have metric TONS of people to deal with. Or the ever present "Ad Hominem Attack".
Oh, and
the best way to be sure of the troll-ness of a troll is when they say
"I'm not trolling"
or
"I'm not a troll"
Although, I personally am making a mistake here I must admit.
I can see a sign from my point in the intertubes, it says
"Don't feed the trolls"
So saying that you are not a troll makes you more likely to be a troll, logically speaking then everyone is a troll. One may either be "A" or " not A", but since you defined "not A" as being "A", then all possible variations result in "A". You appear to have no grasp of the context or humorous intention of my comment. Do you really think I claimed to be part of a secret organization that patrols the internet looking for logical fallacies or bad argumentation? Maybe the ";)" could have tipped you off?
The irony of the comment was that it was supposed to be so pretentious sounding and arrogant that it lampshades its self in order to lighten the mood. However, if you have to explain it it no longer remains comical.
since I somehow cannot answer directly under your comment it has to do here.
"I simply wanted to know the full extent of ZJ's moral philosophy "
to write all that down would really be some herculean task(for anyone)
"I believe all morals to be based, at least partially, upon irrationality. This does not mean that I discourage the use of reason to solve moral problems, but simply that I think all faculties of the full human subject should be utilized, that is reasoning and unreasoning, both have their uses and limitations." *redefining "irrationality/unreasoning=emotional impetus"*
I would go even further than that. I would say
a)all actions(by a subject) are based partially upon emotions(if you trace it back far enough)
b)a human subject cannot function with any of the two missing(its not a matter of choice("should be utilized"))
Explanation:-why it cant function only with his emotional impetus should be clear, it would just have no idea how to react on those emotions
-why it cant function only with reason lies in the structural nature of reason itself. Reason always starts with a set of premises and derives it conclusions from there. Some(most) of the premises derive from other lines of reasoning, but all those combined lines need some initial premise(s) which cannot derive from reason itself.
"Besides, to limit the individuals choice of moral actions to the contents of a wikipedia article seems to me to be destructive and alienating to the innate creativity of the human subject."
from your comments before it made the impression that your choices in the matter seemed to be even more limited, so the article was just to give a glimpse of a far greater variety.