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Secrets..

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  • Fiendish_WarriorFiendish_Warrior Member Posts: 309
    edited April 2015
    @mlnevese I'm unsure of how to read your post. Rather than making assumptions, I like to ask questions for my own clarity. It doesn't mean there's anything inherently wrong with what you've written; it's just a recognition of the limitations of communicating in a written medium that allows for more interpretation than an oral one.

    If you don't mind, may I ask:

    (1) When you write, "I still do not think this is the case," what is the referent of "this"? My whole post? A part of my post? The biological response theory in general? The biological response theory in your particular case? None of these?

    (2) Are you simply denying its truth in response to my last sentence? Or are you constructing a refutation of the theory? The first is appropriate in the case of tautologies (because there is no easy way to refute them) while the second is only appropriate if you believe it's *not* a tautology. If it is the first, then the rest would read as a description of personal feeling, but if it's the second, then the rest would read as reasons in a counter-argument. The former is not open to further debate but the latter is.

    I hope this isn't tedious. I find that it helps to advance conversation in a productive way. Too often, we let our emotions color the way we read these responses in text or make assumptions about what is being said or implied, detecting anger or sarcasm where none was intended or assuming one has said one thing rather than another. I try my hardest not to do that and try to respect everyone. Asking questions is a way to accomplish those goals of mine.

  • mlnevesemlnevese Member, Moderator Posts: 10,214
    Basically I do not believe that it's a biological response. I started losing faith in humanity in general when I was around 18 and noticed that our history is always repeating itself. The actors change and the facts repeat themselves.

    After I became a lawyer I had contact with stories that most people would believe to be fiction and whatever hope I had for humanity was lost.

    In other words I like humans as individuals but humanity as a collective is rotten to the core. My words are personal feelings, of course. I have no wish to try to refute the biological theory.
    Fiendish_WarriorNatenJuliusBorisov
  • Fiendish_WarriorFiendish_Warrior Member Posts: 309
    Thank you! I'm glad I asked because my initial reading was definitely off-the-mark. It's interesting what you said about hearing stories and how they've affected you. I have a friend who is a police officer and he has echoed similar sentiments, saying that he wishes he could unlearn the things he has about people from his profession.
    mlneveseJuliusBorisov
  • Fiendish_WarriorFiendish_Warrior Member Posts: 309
    The Cliff's Notes of my views on this are:

    (1) Agnostic about biological response.
    (2) I know we, as creatures, are *really* good at detecting patterns. That might even be what our brains do best.
    (3) Pattern-detection makes it easier to succeed in our environments and so is a necessary ability for the kinds of creatures we are.
    (4) But it's unclear whether we're actually *discovering* patterns or *making* them (or both).
    (5) I fall on the "making patterns" side, and the diversity of patterns possible increases with the complexity of the data. See duck-rabbits. Or even see social rules and laws, the existence of which requires that we conventionally agree to the existence of a pattern and what it means.
    (6) Human beings, both individually and collectively, are complex.
    (7) Thus, it's easy to isolate sets of data and see just about anything, good and bad, better and worse, useful and useless, real or imagined.
    (8) Sometimes imagined patterns are useful and of practical benefit. Most of our social laws are, in a sense, imagined (i.e. are not inherent features of the natural, physical world).
    (9) This neatly explains how both optimists and pessimists can derive different conclusions from the same data. Although I personally don't usually like binary categories.
    (10) Many contradictory generalizations about humanity are true; they're just conclusions derived from highlighting different features of the same object. Like duck-rabbits.
    Naten
  • Fiendish_WarriorFiendish_Warrior Member Posts: 309
    Oh... and I have a tendency to zero in on the bad features of individuals that I don't know. I guess that's another secret of mine. If someone cuts me off, I think "What a... [insert insult here]" instead of "Maybe they just didn't see me?" It's a really really bad habit and I'm working on it.
    Naten
  • skinnydragonskinnydragon Member Posts: 110

    Oh... and I have a tendency to zero in on the bad features of individuals that I don't know. I guess that's another secret of mine. If someone cuts me off, I think "What a... [insert insult here]" instead of "Maybe they just didn't see me?" It's a really really bad habit and I'm working on it.

    Unfortunately I fear you may share this habit with most people. Anger and aggressiveness may be programmed responses to put us in better positions in primal groups
    Fiendish_WarriorNaten
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