Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby PufPuf93 » Tue May 26, 2020 11:41 pm

^^^^^^

Hi Cordelia!!

Very happy to see you. :lovehearts:

More later, just got home from coast, doctor and shopping. First time seeing Humboldt Bay in full CV19 regalia.
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby Cordelia » Wed May 27, 2020 10:54 am

PufPuf93 » Tue May 26, 2020 10:41 pm wrote:^^^^^^

Hi Cordelia!!

Very happy to see you. :lovehearts:

More later, just got home from coast, doctor and shopping. First time seeing Humboldt Bay in full CV19 regalia.


^^^The necessary costumes to be worn in our Grave New World!

:hug1: C
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby norton ash » Wed May 27, 2020 3:25 pm

^^^The necessary costumes to be worn in our Grave New World!


The current Humboldt. Enjoy, Puf.
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby Cordelia » Wed May 27, 2020 3:45 pm

^^^
Wait...

Image

Not without a mask! :oops:
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby Harvey » Sat Jan 16, 2021 8:28 pm

Jack: So if you can't delete my account, can you give me a perma ban or something? Soon as possible. Cheers.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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Harvey

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:31 pm

What's the need?

There is no account deletion, in the sense of removing posts.

You've never done anything bannable.

If you're unhappy, why not just stop posting? It's what most everyone does, sooner or later. Less drama.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby PufPuf93 » Sat Jan 16, 2021 9:32 pm

Harvey » Sat Jan 16, 2021 5:28 pm wrote:Jack: So if you can't delete my account, can you give me a perma ban or something? Soon as possible. Cheers.


Don't leave Harvey.

This moment will pass.

I appreciate the two strong minds. One of the aspects I have found most useful for myself about RI is that people don't agree. Plus one sees items at RI far before if ever mentioned in msm or that is too edgy for most forums.

I am not for anyone leaving or being banned (in general, probably would never have banned anyone).

Sorry I have so little to offer. :sun:

Note this was typed before Jack's post.
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby Belligerent Savant » Tue Jan 19, 2021 12:22 am

PufPuf93 » Sat Jan 16, 2021 8:32 pm wrote:
Harvey » Sat Jan 16, 2021 5:28 pm wrote:Jack: So if you can't delete my account, can you give me a perma ban or something? Soon as possible. Cheers.


Don't leave Harvey.

This moment will pass.

I appreciate the two strong minds. One of the aspects I have found most useful for myself about RI is that people don't agree. Plus one sees items at RI far before if ever mentioned in msm or that is too edgy for most forums.


Echo the above.

I've had similar intent as yours, Harvey, numerous times. I've promised to avoid certain threads only to return within a few days (to the understandable chagrin -- or indifference -- of quite a few, I imagine). I may yet cut myself off at some point, as Jack suggests above.

FWIW, your take is much valued here. I'm not alone in this sentiment.
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby Elvis » Tue Jan 19, 2021 4:58 am

Do stay, Harvey—talk to us.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby Grizzly » Thu Mar 18, 2021 6:21 pm

I've had similar intent as yours, Harvey, numerous times. I've promised to avoid certain threads only to return within a few days (to the understandable chagrin -- or indifference -- of quite a few, I imagine). I may yet cut myself off at some point, as Jack suggests above.

FWIW, your take is much valued here. I'm not alone in this sentiment.


No he is not. I value the input...as this board seems to be waning badly.
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby PufPuf93 » Sun Apr 04, 2021 8:36 pm

Seems like a good place to plant this maybe timely article. Plus I am tender towards anything UC Berkeley (Cal). Several posters that have now spent well over a year cherry picking issues in a cascade seemingly unknowing of their support of the fascists. I do think most of us still at RI are anti-war / Empire by force and guile, and anti-neoliberal economics. Not so sure how many stand on social justice.

from: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the- ... ket-newtab

Here is a link to a nifty chart can't get to copy here: https://pocket-syndicated-images.s3.ama ... 40f187.png

The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity

We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.

Quartz Corinne Purtill


In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

Let’s take a look at Cipolla’s five basic laws of human stupidity:

Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

No matter how many idiots you suspect yourself surrounded by, Cipolla wrote, you are invariably lowballing the total. This problem is compounded by biased assumptions that certain people are intelligent based on superficial factors like their job, education level, or other traits we believe to be exclusive of stupidity. They aren’t. Which takes us to:

Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Cipolla posits stupidity is a variable that remains constant across all populations. Every category one can imagine—gender, race, nationality, education level, income—possesses a fixed percentage of stupid people. There are stupid college professors. There are stupid people at Davos and at the UN General Assembly. There are stupid people in every nation on earth. How numerous are the stupid amongst us? It’s impossible to say. And any guess would almost certainly violate the first law, anyway.

Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Cipolla called this one the Golden Law of stupidity. A stupid person, according to the economist, is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.

The uncle unable to stop himself from posting fake news articles to Facebook? Stupid. The customer service representative who keeps you on the phone for an hour, hangs up on you twice, and somehow still manages to screw up your account? Stupid.

This law also introduces three other phenotypes that Cipolla says co-exist alongside stupidity. First there is the intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself and others. Then there is the bandit, who benefits himself at others’ expense. And lastly there is the helpless person, whose actions enrich others at his own expense. Cipolla imagined the four types along a graph, like this:

The non-stupid are a flawed and inconsistent bunch. Sometimes we act intelligently, sometimes we are selfish bandits, sometimes we act helplessly and are taken advantage of by others, and sometimes we’re a bit of both. The stupid, in comparison, are paragons of consistency, acting at all times with unyielding idiocy.

However, consistent stupidity is the only consistent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous. Cipolla explains:

Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior. An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty maneuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defenses.

With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy.

All of which leads us to:

Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril. This brings us to the fifth and final law:

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

And its corollary:

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.


We can do nothing about the stupid. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those who transcend them are the makeup of the non-stupid. Those progressing in spite of their stupid possess a high proportion of people acting intelligently, those who counterbalance the stupid’s losses by bringing about gains for themselves and their fellows.

Declining societies have the same percentage of stupid people as successful ones. But they also have high percentages of helpless people and, Cipolla writes, “an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity.”

“Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the [stupid] fraction and makes decline a certainty,” Cipolla concludes. “And the country goes to Hell.”
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby norton ash » Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:06 pm

The stupid person is terribly valuable to capitalism of course. They harm themselves, harm the planet, harm culture and civilization, all the while they fill up someone else's bank vault.
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby PufPuf93 » Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:51 pm

norton ash » Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:06 pm wrote:The stupid person is terribly valuable to capitalism of course. They harm themselves, harm the planet, harm culture and civilization, all the while they fill up someone else's bank vault.


One thing that I liked or was amused by at least was that depending on one's perspective the groups vary.

Personally, I am a pessimist and figure human population is going to severely drop and question is more when, how, fast, and how horrific. Also what segments of the elite will survive and prosper is open to question. Reminds me of a PKD novel where the surface of the Earth is a vast park with limited population. The elites enjoying the surface spend their time producing wars to broadcast to the mass of humanity who live isolated underground producing war materials and watching the war on the surface remotely.

By no design, the cv19 is a test of humanity that humanity is failing. Doesn't matter if cv1 is the big pandemic to kill us all or not, it is shameful how poorly the USA has done despite all our advantages. The failure is because we have lost our ability to function together as a society. We have become a society of lies, narcissisms, greed, and chaos. Many of us do not live a secure existence.

I need to rest.
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby Blue » Tue Apr 06, 2021 6:26 pm


By no design, the cv19 is a test of humanity that humanity is failing. Doesn't matter if cv1 is the big pandemic to kill us all or not, it is shameful how poorly the USA has done despite all our advantages. The failure is because we have lost our ability to function together as a society. We have become a society of lies, narcissisms, greed, and chaos. Many of us do not live a secure existence.

I need to rest.


Hey Puf, I think there are a couple of posts discussing this in the main coronavirus thread. However I vacillate between "things are done poorly and inhumanely due to greed, etc." and "things are done this way or allowed to happen this way due to a plan." Which is almost a relief if that's possible. Someone or thing is causing humanity to behave like a virus. Not just oh, the naked ape tree is psychotic. Because who wants to believe we are all a part of that?
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Re: Rhetoric and the art of Collaborative Discussion

Postby dada » Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:35 pm

"I do think most of us still at RI are anti-war / Empire by force and guile, and anti-neoliberal economics. Not so sure how many stand on social justice."

Is there any other way to build empires?

I think the problem of neoliberal economics is the exploitation at the heart of it. But being anti-exploitation is as much an economic position as it is a high moral code, verging on religion.

And maybe all economy is like that. Like, all war is holy war. They say that after jihad comes the inner jihad. The greater jihad, the real jihad. So I think maybe while we may be anti-jihad, we haven't gotten beyond inner jihad yet.

But what do I know. Maybe some of us have. I think how one feels about social justice comes down to how they respond to the notion that truth is bent by the will. For one perspective, that's the definition of propaganda. For me, it's more like a prism. Bending light, spectral refraction.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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