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Nicky

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Everything posted by Nicky

  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).
  14. None of that is mysticism. The first two for obvious reasons (dreams are obviously a real thing, and it's beyond clear that they're related to reality, and alchemy is the precursor to science, practiced widely enough and for a long enough time that it very plausibly produced knowledge science is yet to reproduce...especially in the field of Psychology, which is far behind other natural science), as for the collective unconscious, if that's mysticism, then so is tabula rasa...because neither is empirically proven fact. And yes, I'm familiar with Jung at all, thank you for your concern. I know for instance that he never claimed "unus mundus" as his position. Not even close. He had about as much to do with unus mundus as Rand did with the question of gay deviancy. Jung wasn't a physicist.
  15. I hope the next words out of your mouth are "I was wrong". Because that's the only thing this obviously shows.
  16. Sorry to post in an old thread, but this jumped out to me as I was searching for something unrelated, and I just can't help myself: "Everyone who says that I am a Mystic is just and idiot. He just doesn't understand the first word of Psychology." ~Carl Jung *MOD NOTE, EIUOL* Split from another thread
  17. I submit to you that navigating the dangerous journey from South America or even Mexico to the US in hopes of a better life is an astonishing act of courage, and that, as far as you can possibly say that a handout or an entitlement is "earned", these people have "earned" it infinitely more than anyone who never actually did anything remarkable to improve their life, and is the beneficiary of it simply by "virtue" of being born in the right country. There's a stalemate over immigration policy in the US, and, if anything, the gap is widening between the sides (because of Trump's populist, disgraceful electoral platform that gave no choice to the opposition but to polarize in the other direction). So there's no "eliminating quotas", or any other change in immigration laws. That's not realistic. In fact, quotas are being tightened through executive discretion. The only realistic pathway for most economic migrants into the US is the illegal way. There's also no "effective border crossing controls". The US-Mexico border is massively long, it couldn't be locked down even if Congress, by some miracle, gave Trump all the money his putrid heart desires. So I suggest you forget about the "effective controls coupled with lifting quotas" pipe dream, because neither side of that equation is happening. Make a realistic choice, between: 1. turning a blind eye to the majority of "illegal" economic migrants who are peaceful and here to work for employers who hire them in voluntary employer/employee arrangements (I don't just mean illegal border crossers; a lot of "illegals" come in the Ayn Rand way: legally, but then overstay their visa)... but, at the same time, trying to police the minority who are criminals, and the employers who use force and threats to attempt to enslave "illegals" (best the authorities can do that; it's not gonna be perfect, or anywhere close to perfect, because immigration, especially when it's illegal, but even when it's legal, will result in higher crime rates). 2. attempting to stop all of them (in an unrealistic scheme that involves building a $10B+ wall that will only stop some of them...in all likelihood, the most peaceful, non-criminal portion, while driving everyone into the arms of the cartels and the exploitative black market). P.S. Point number 1 can be coupled with a "macro" approach, that looks at what kind of people are coming into the country (intelligence agencies can be tasked with this, they're quite adept at snooping on foreigners, and it's mostly legal for them to do so), and, if there's an ACTUAL danger (as opposed to the manufactured one Trump fed to his mouth-breather base), action can be taken. The executive branch has a lot of power in deciding who to let in and who not to let in/deport if they sneak in, so the legislative stalemate doesn't prevent the White House from keeping the country safe from any threat to the American way of life...including purely ideological/political (initially non-violent) threats like Marxism. Even the notion of blocking entire countries (who refuse to cooperate with US efforts to investigate would be migrants) is justifiable, as long as it's, you know: JUSTIFIED. With evidence instead of demagogy and populism.
  18. There are many kinds of physical jobs, including relatively high skilled ones, that require very low computational abilities. I think a lot of low IQ individuals have to the potential to do impressive things. There are likely some highly successful athletes, for instance, with IQ under 80, including some in team sports where the selection process is extremely unforgiving, and you need both physical and social skills to advance through the many levels of selection standing between a talented kid and a professional career. Those athletes could just as easily be productive (significantly productive, well above minimum wage) doing all sorts of regular jobs that require physical agility, endurance, and the ability to work with others in a stressful atmosphere...as long as someone believed that it was worth it to prepare them for such a career. What's keeping low IQ individuals out of these jobs isn't that they lack the capacity for doing the job, it's the bias created by the Psychologists that built IQ up into the be all end all measure of a person's worth on the job market. And the fact that the education system is built on that premise. Jordan Peterson makes the argument that even the US military, which desperately needs personnel, turns away low IQ individuals. But he forgets that the military needed personnel far more than they need it now, at times in the past, and yet they happily turned away blacks when there was a societal, pseudo-scientific stigma attached to their skin color. And they turned away 50% of the population (women) from combat roles until this decade. So that doesn't mean anything. In general, the correlation between IQ and financial success doesn't prove anything. The cause can be the low IQ, or the general bias against low IQ. We would only know which if we actually gave these people a chance to prove themselves (that would involve changing the education system, where the bulk of the damage is done to the self esteem of people with low IQ...because school curricula and IQ tests are developed on the same premise that this narrow set of abilities are the only ones that matter).
  19. If IQ is an objective measure of intellect, then we have problem. But, like I said: Jordan is jumping to conclusions in a field outside his expertise. IQ is not a good measure of intellect, I don't care what the US military says (in this case...I actually do rely on US military studies on language learning, but this makes no sense whatsoever: the language learning stuff relies on studies, this does not). He's basically just saying "the US military says so, for unspecified reasons, so get on board...which is not a good enough reason to get on board. And, again: this is a pretty throwaway point he makes when people obsessed with the issue probe him on it. It's not his field of expertise. (check out his take on Islam, on youtube...that should illuminate his capacity for refraining from definitive statements on things he's not an expert on). He doesn't believe personality (which IS his field of expertise) is set in stone/genetics, so why would you ever take his word on the notion that intellect (especially once freed from the arbitrary bind to IQ) is set in stone/genetics?
  20. Jordan Peterson (who I think is a brilliant thinker and public speaker) makes a very interesting point about social statistics: the real issue isn't the 60/40 split between the masses. The real issue is between the outliers: when there's a 60/40 split between two large groups of people, the spit between the extremes (the people who out-perform the group, meaning the over-performers) is far greater (95/5 to 99/1). For instance, in NYC (or NYS, I'm citing this out of memory, so I'm not entirely sure which), an overwhelming majority of genius level IQ tested high-school students are ethnic Ashkenazi Jews. A crazy amount, something like 49 out of 50 "genius" IQ students in NY are Jewish. That's a natural consequence of Ashkenazi Jews being, on average, about ten points above the average population, in IQ. Which is not that much. But small statistical differences result in overwhelming differences when it comes to outliers (in this case, geniuses). Another good example of this, often cited by Jordan Peterson, is the radical split in prison population, by sex...pretty sure it is above 9 to 1 in "favor" of men...despite the fact that, on average, personality traits that favor criminality, between men and women, tend to be around 60/40 percent...which, on the surface, doesn't seem that significant until you look at the results in outliers. And, of course, outliers determine the future of a society. It's hard to argue with that. Albert Enstein (a person who can be objectively judged to have had superior intellect, without an IQ test) was more important than 5 billion people, all added together, who lived since. Clearly. If high IQ really does equal superior intellect, then no one else really matters in the NYC school system on a societal level, except Ashkenazi Jews. And no one really matters on the African continent, period. So, if you buy into IQ (like Jordan unfortunately does...but with a caveat: he does not claim any kind of omniscience, he is open to counter-arguments, and I think he would be blown away by someone challenging his definitions, I don't think he ever met someone able to do that), you can't really dispute these types of conclusions. The only possible avenue of attack against that position is attacking IQ (and social sciences in general, because Jordan is correct: IQ is one of the better parts of social sciences). Jordan, as far as I know, only makes one decent argument for IQ: there's a strong corelleration between IQ and financial success in the West. Which is somewhat of a non-sequitur.
  21. According to happiness, she was attracted by his initial rejection (which she interpreted as independence, even though it wasn't), and dumped him because he got too clingy (which is psychological dependence). So how did you get from there to the exact opposite?
  22. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's a "back to basics" type book, focused on fundamental principles instead of the artificial self esteem building advice in the modern self help industry.
  23. My advice is blunt. If you don't want to hear it, don't click on the spoiler tags:
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