Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Nicky

Regulars
  • Posts

    3835
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    195

Nicky last won the day on October 14 2023

Nicky had the most liked content!

3 Followers

Previous Fields

  • Relationship status
    No Answer
  • State (US/Canadian)
    Not Specified
  • Country
    Not Specified
  • Copyright
    Copyrighted

Recent Profile Visitors

17886 profile views

Nicky's Achievements

Senior Member

Senior Member (6/7)

600

Reputation

  1. I don't care. You shouldn't be allowed to moderate your own conversations. This whole site has gone to shit ever since guys like you have been given mod powers, because you don't understand the basic rules of having a conversation online. You're either a mod or a participant in a conversation, asshole. You can't be both. There are other mods on this forum. You're supposed to let them moderate, when you decide to participate in a thread.
  2. I would too. But not with you. With someone at least modestly rational. This has been my position for years, by the way. Only reason why you're not on my ignore list is because I can't ignore mods. And you know this, so I have no clue why you keep trying to get into a conversation with me. Especially since the only tool in your arsenal is the delete button, every time someone calls you out on your bullshit.
  3. Not really, no. Not definitively, because Genetics is a young science. I can tell you that it has nothing to do with the subject at hand though. You don't need Genetics at all to understand why what you posted is nonsense.
  4. This part of it is understood just fine. Your claims contradict basic, well researched Biology.
  5. Too bad he never read a book on basic biology. The nervous system runs through the body, and sends signals to the brain through the mechanism of action potentials (a change in polarity that travels down an elongated cell)...which, in vertebrates, is in the skull. There are neurons (literally NERVE CELLS) everywhere in the body. They exist in even the simplest animals. Even some plants (like those carnivorous ones) have cells capable of generating an action potential. Doesn't mean they have brains. That's how sensory information gets to the brain: a specialized organ of up to 86 billion neurons, which processes sensory information, decides what is the appropriate reaction to that information, and directs the body to react appropriately. There are also ganglia through the body, which are clusters of nerves that are nothing like the brain, and simply regulate the automatic functions of individual organs (and handle communication with the brain). The heart has them too. You can get a heart to beat in a jar (or in the palm of your hand, when you rip it out of the chest of your enemies), for instance, because of this. In the heart, they contain approximately 40 thousand neurons. If my math is correct, that's 0.000005 percent of the ones in the brain. Very clearly, it's 40 thousand neurons that have nothing to do with anything except the function of the specific organ. No organism could ever evolve to move some of its central brain function to another organ. It would be ridiculously inefficient.
  6. Well people are challenging the "science" on nutrition, for sure. This guy for instance demolishes the whole structure nutritional guidelines are built on. It's basically one giant, politically driven lie. The studies it's based on are a joke. Unfortunately, his suggested solution is to change the guidelines, not to get the government out of the nutrition business, but the actual effect of what he's saying is that he is making it very hard for anyone to continue taking anything the government organizations have to say on nutrition seriously.
  7. Not sure if this made international news, but, recently in Japan, a baby boy who stopped developing in the womb and was born weighing 268 grams through C sectio, was nursed in an ICU for five months, and then released from hospital with a clean bill of health.
  8. There's plenty of research proving this wrong, just a quick Google search away.
  9. Well that's arbitrary nonsense. But if, instead, you said "open the gateway to an unconscious part of the brain", then that would be a valid hypothesis.
  10. Positive changes don't come out of thin air. Somebody must be acting on principle, to cause them. Probably not anyone actually in the Cuban government (though it wouldn't be impossible), but, clearly, somebody is a rational actor somewhere along the causal chain. It's important to keep in mind that very few things have a single cause, and the specific statement "the government does not respect X" is technically reification. It suggests either a single actor or a single minded group. They're both wrong. The first factually, the second for an even worse reason. If you want to be more exact, the source of policies in Cuba is a hierarchy with a variety of different people, on different levels of the hierarchy (some within the government, some outside of it, some exercising legitimate power born out of competence, but, unfortunately for the Cuban people, most not so much) all playing a role in a variety of ways. Some are totally rational, some are totally irrational, most a mix of the two.
  11. Yes, cowardly racists are the real victims here. Everyone knows they wouldn't actually have the balls to act out their beliefs. Only thing they can do is hide behind a hat with the initials for a meaningless catchphrase on it. It's so clever of them. What a great social movement this trumpism is. Just out of curiosity: what exactly is the Chicago PD supposed to do to help these poor victims you've been hanging out with? Free high speed Internet into their moms' basement for life?
  12. Jung went through a period of severe mental illness, in his late 30s. He kept a journal through that period. He never published that journal. In fact, his heir refused to publish it too, for 37 years. The journal was only made available to the public in 2008, 37 years after his death. Describing that state of affairs as "he derived his ideas from a psychotic break" is willfully dishonest. P.S. The reason why Jung did not want those journals published is fairly easily explained by one of his most famous quotes: "beware of unearned wisdom". None of his ideas came to him through "mystic" experiences, psychotic breaks or LSD trips. He just happened to have a psychotic break, midway through a hugely productive, rational life, and he documented it in his private journal. That's all.
  13. There's no confusion. That's the definition you, I and Jung are all working with. (minus the heart part, that's an odd metaphor to use for that which is outside of reason). As per that definition, Jung was not a mystic. Only action he ever ascribed to his heart is pumping blood. Everything else he did with his rational brain. He may have been liberal with his logical leaps, but he wasn't attempting to turn off his brain at any point, or take any knowledge from people who he believe did so. Of course, many so-called mystics use reason more than you'd think, it's just that they speak in metaphors to express it. So someone being classified a mystic doesn't mean rational people should disregard the wisdom they might produce. Jung called himself an empiricist (which is neither a mystic nor a rationalist). Empiricists have major flaws, but mysticism is not one of them. Also, Jung transcended a lot of those flaws, he just didn't have a better word than empiricist for describing himself. That inference (mysticism is outside of reason, therefor it's the consequence of emotions) could only be valid if you first accepted that emotions are necessarily divorced from reason. Jung didn't believe that. Not many people believe that. Certainly not on this board, but not in general either. Emotions are only divorced from reason in totally irrational people (which is a theoretical concept, because such people couldn't survive). You correctly identified that mysticism is outside of reason. But that also means that it's outside of most emotion. Mysticism is based in arbitrary propositions, and the emotions resulting from such propositions. It has nothing to do with most emotions (which result from rational thought, and possibly intrinsic archetypes, if Jung is to be believed).
×
×
  • Create New...