Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design

[Windmill knight]

So it's from this perspective where I just don't get why people had such trouble with the idea of a material universe. I know all the intellectual problems with it, and it has been debunked repeatedly by science and revelation and even a lot of my own personal experience. But the grooves are still there, like the feeling I could survive psychologically in a nihilistic universe. I think that is less true now than it was, say, 10 years ago. But I wonder what influence this may have had on my instinctive substratum.

[...]

Yeah, unfortunately I'm familiar with the pattern as well. I think I may have exhibited it either in whole or in part. I did become pretty incensed from your first reply to me, telling me to go read Stove after reading and thinking what I did of him.

What do you think of the fact that you get a stronger emotional response from someone challenging your intellectual understanding of some book than the idea that the universe may or may not be a purely material (i.e. dead) place?

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, but I feel the urge to defend Stove :) Take it for what it's worth, but "Darwinian Fairytales" might be the most impressive philosophical work I've ever read. That doesn't mean we should take everything Stove writes as Gospel truth (obviously), but for me, he is definitely one of the unsung heroes in intellectual history. I wonder how many more there were over the centuries - thinkers who saw what's going on, but whose voices weren't heard, and then eradicated from the canon.

Yes, Stove is polemical, he hails from a right-wing background, and in his career he has written stuff that has triggered and offended almost everybody - but he is not "unsophisticated" or simplistic. His philosophical arguments can be very sophisticated indeed. But he combines this with a heartfelt, honest standpoint that he ruthlessly advances against the "idols of our time". And who has ever said good philosophy needs to be convoluted to the point of being barely intelligible? Who has ever said rigid thinking can't be polemical? In fact, if you are disgusted by what's going on in intellectual life, as you should be, it's almost a given that you'll be polemical.

A good example is when Stove discusses some idiot thinker who advanced the theory that altruism was somehow instilled in a naturally non-altruistic society by certain elites. He presents the theory quite dryly, and just when you begin to wonder "hm, could there be something to it?", Stove writes in the next paragraph: "Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous than that?" When I read that, I almost spilled my coffee laughing!! And what a liberating laughter that was! Because no, he doesn't "weigh pros and cons", or treats this theory with a respect it doesn't deserve. He just calls it out for the bullshit it is. Finally!! When you begin to doubt your own experience, you begin to engage in endless sophistry with your gaslighter, Stove just gives him a roundhouse kick - "you're welcome". But he doesn't only do that: he goes on and shows precisely why it's ridiculous and doesn't add up. It's just brilliant. And as opposed to works by many other philosophers, it's truly useful. It's uplifting, liberating, interesting and an overall catharsis. At least it was for me.

If you want a bonus, check out Stove's essay "A Farewell To The Arts", in which he mounts a devestating attack on the Marxist-Postmodernist-Feminist takeover of the universities - written in 1986, decades before Jordan Peterson!

https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/arts.html

It's brilliant, and sad, because Stove was absolutely crucified after he wrote that. He WAS a bit of a troll, but so is Jordan Peterson. Some things just deserve to be trolled.



Added: Here's Stove's essay in full, in a better readable format, for those interested:

And the reason Stove, one who looks at the essence of things pretty damn well, was able to write an essay like this at that time is because there really is nothing new under the sun when it comes to the methods used to deceive. Every child is forced to learn the art of bullshit early on. So he’s looking at these things with the eyes of a child when they first encounter this in a textbook, look around to scan for signs of sanity in the room, and quickly figure out that they can easily simulate it for a good grade. Hell, I remember being in composition class in high school, and like any other student, found clever ways to meet the “minimum word requirements” of essays. The fact that I managed to get an A in composition simply by getting really good at pseudo-intellectual fluff, fooling the teacher into being impressed with it, is frankly horrifying. The sad thing is after years of doing this because you had to, you tend to forget that it was a “trick” in the first place, and can start believing that this is actual work, something that has meaning and value. You identify with it and find yourself defending those efforts, which when it began, was a cause for snickering at how dumb the teacher is to even accept it.

What happened to some of those snickering kids? Well, perhaps some got so lost in their own farce, they became Darwin, or feminists, or Marxists, etc. They weren’t supposed to take their antics into adulthood, but here we are. And I suppose it’s not surprising, if it fooled composition teachers, why wouldn’t it fool a crapload of other adult “intellectuals”?

I suppose the reason it works, partly, is because we’re all taught how to bullshit by a bunch of adult bullshitters who often forgot this about themselves, and their job and paycheck depends on it anyway, so it’s a mix of conscious and unconscious pseudo-intellectuals and liars running the show - which includes the education system.

This is why Caesar said start with education. Why are we encouraging kids to fluff to get a good grade in the first place? Well if the teacher can no longer even recognize it as such, it’s just a continuing cycle, a forgotten “inside joke” that went too far. People like Stove step in and try to remind everyone what they’re doing, but only a few are around who still value true concise and rational basic logical thought to care. It’s really terrifying and indeed has spread to science and arts alike - it’s a cancer.

 

[whitecoast]

What do you think of the fact that you get a stronger emotional response from someone challenging your intellectual understanding of some book than the idea that the universe may or may not be a purely material (i.e. dead) place?

You mean in the context of this thread? I think it’s becauae the latter isn’t really news to me at this point.

 

[Turgon]

You mean in the context of this thread? I think it’s becauae the latter isn’t really news to me at this point.

You do realize that your response is, for lack of a better term, emotionless or 'dead' in a certain respect. Like there's no life or anything meaningful in learning that the universe is alive and there's greater intelligence all around shaping our reality and much more in ways that are beyond our comprehension, yet being revealed step-by-step. It's as if we're discovering "god" and it has the potential of being a series of remarkable revelations for all of us and for you as well if looked at from the 'right' perspective. But if it's 'old news' to you then I'm not sure what to say. It's like your asleep and not phased by the deeper implications. Simply a dopamine hit whose novelty has worn off. In which case you are more entrenched in the materialistic mindset more than you can possibly imagine.

Another thing that's struck me is that maybe you want to avoid responsibility. Because if there's no meaning in this for you, then you have nothing to be responsible for and can live your life in a whimsical way without care or concern for either yourself (in a deeper, real sense) and other people. A shortsighted way of 'protecting' yourself from criticism, taking ownership of how you think, feel and behave, dealing with the pain and suffering that we carry with us, as well as the 'criminal mind' that exists in you as well as taking an honest look at yourself in the mirror, because what you would see may very well terrify you.

Until you can start making attempts to cross that barrier and stop hiding behind intellectual wiseacring, which isn't a mark of intelligence, then as far as I can see, you can talk as much as you want about doing the Work and point out the flaws of others but are unwilling to go there yourself.

 

[Windmill knight]

You mean in the context of this thread? I think it’s becauae the latter isn’t really news to me at this point.

I mean that it seems to me like your intellectual center may be misusing your emotional or sexual energy - to borrow G's terminology - and that's coming through in this discussion. You didn't show any enthusiasm about the case against ND and in favor of ID. Above, you made it sound like the issue of the strictly material world wasn't really much of a problem for you ("I just don't get why people had such trouble with the idea of a material universe").

Many other forum members could have also said that "it wasn't really news" (it's the Cass forum, remember?), but the info presented is very strong scientific confirmation, and so many of us were excited.

In contrast, something relatively minor, like your disagreement about the value of a particular author, got you incensed and put your brain in action. Does that mean that the significance of the case for ID has not really sunk in, that you don't really care for it, that you really like intellectual discussions, or that you are very identified with being the knowleadgeable biologist? A combination of those or something else? I don't know.

 

[Joe]

Copernican Revolution is a very common word choice to describe paradigm shifts because it was one of the earliest and did, literally, involve a change in worldview. Not sure why you're asking because of how off-topic this is, but more recent ones could include catastrophism, the new ID critcisms of ND, skepticism about low-fat guidelines, electric universe cosmology/astrophysics, germ theory, general relativity succeeding newtonian models of gravity...

None of those involved a whole scientific complex that was totally scrapped in favor of something better. That was the point, that scientists today are loath to do that, despite the evidence that it needs to be done.

I mean he thinks they're insufficient to account for all nature's variation, and he would be right. All I was saying it was sufficient in at least some other areas.

The point is not that they are merely insufficient to account for other variations, but that the other variations strongly suggest that the entire natural selection idea, from its basis, is flawed and needs to be scrapped for something else.

Okay. So, what you're saying is that a lot of the time when I see manifestations of the theory of, say, inclusive fitness, that is an artifact of my perception of the world? And that there are other explanations out there which could be more true, and explain more of the variation observed in altruism and cooperation? I know ID lends itself well to explaining the origins of life and the like. I wonder what ID has to say about squirrel calls or eusocial shrimp, or if there's still a lot to learn on that end of things...

ID would say that it is designed. The core of the debate here is not over the idea that the natural world is designed, but HOW it is designed. Neodarwinists says its 'designed' but by 'accident'. Logic, reason, intuition and observation all say that is likely to be complete nonsense.

You know Joe, I would by lying if I didn't say this is one of the most bizarre and surreal mirrors I've ever received. And honestly the more I try and think about all these things said to me, the less certain I get about whether I've even made any inroads at all.

Maybe that's a good thing, a good place to start. Ya know, totally (or largely) scrapping your view of yourself for something better, exactly what neodarwinists refuse to do: show some humility.

So it's from this perspective where I just don't get why people had such trouble with the idea of a material universe. I know all the intellectual problems with it, and it has been debunked repeatedly by science and revelation and even a lot of my own personal experience. But the grooves are still there, like the feeling I could survive psychologically in a nihilistic universe. I think that is less true now than it was, say, 10 years ago. But I wonder what influence this may have had on my instinctive substratum.

Like I said previously, a lot of this seems to be merely an intellectual exercise to you. There's not much you can do directly about that, other than being aware of it and realizing that there is an whole other part of the experience of life and its meaning that you are not very familiar with. Perhaps as you age and experience more you'll understand more.

I suppose what I had in mind about this was that our emotional and moral faculties play a large role in our attitudes and values, arguably more than thinking in many people (they are machines, etc), and some people can find ways to justify certain things with X belief or Y belief, as Haidt has discusses in his book.

And did it not strike you that the perspective of people who happily live their lives in illusion was not the best example or reference to provide to people on this forum?

 

[luc]

Whitecoast, it's good that you seem to have made at least some effort admitting being wrong. But still, there are many problems with your thinking patterns, and I think it doesn't do you any good.

You know how we all are very bad at knowing ourselves and spotting what's really going on with us. So you should consider the possibility that you really don't know. This is what I see: your mind seems completely disconnected. It's as if you are shifting puzzle pieces around in your mind, only they don't exist. Therefore, you completely miss the points we are making and can't follow our reasoning. The result is this: as bizarre as this mirror looks to you (in your own words), as bizarre your responses here look to us. There is a huge disconnect on many levels.

The question is: are you willing to acknowledge this, and do something about it?

I'll give you a few examples along those lines.

Copernican Revolution is a very common word choice to describe paradigm shifts because it was one of the earliest and did, literally, involve a change in worldview. Not sure why you're asking because of how off-topic this is, but more recent ones could include catastrophism, the new ID critcisms of ND, skepticism about low-fat guidelines, electric universe cosmology/astrophysics, germ theory, general relativity succeeding newtonian models of gravity...

The problem was that in your bizarre defense of scientific orthodoxy, you just searched in your mind for some cut-and-dry stock answer. You didn't think at all about it. There was no intention whatsoever in understanding the point or finding the truth. Reflecting on such things for a while, you would have discovered lots of nuances, problems with the scientific orthodoxy, shades of grey etc. You would have come back with a question, or with an interesting thought or observation in the spirit of getting to the bottom of this. From the outside, your unthoughtful recital of some paragraph in some textbook doesn't look pretty. It's totally shallow.

Okay, well I concede the idea that squirrel calls are evidence of natural selection is false.

Can you see how your mind works if you look at this sentence? Where is the drive towards truth? It's as if you were in a debate club and someone assigned you a random position you need to defend in order to score points.

I kind of feel like you answered your question in the first paragraph with your second paragraph; namely, in that I can't and don't see myself. But I guess that was your point.

Why are you phrasing it in such a convoluted way? What Joe wrote isn't some intellectual puzzle to be solved. But your mind sees it like that. Where is your desire to truly understand? Where is the connection to reality and experience? The drive towards meaningful truth?

Stove's book kind of goes over some of the reasons why the additional parts of the theory were necessary to explain observations that weren't part of Darwin's original thesis. I mean he thinks they're insufficient to account for all nature's variation, and he would be right. All I was saying it was sufficient in at least some other areas. And I just added the numbers for illustrative purposes. Putting numbers of that nature to something as complex as ecosystems is reductionistic and kind of a large can of worms when you consider how many ways there are to quanitfy this or that. You tend to see statistical quantification like that more often when systems are more stripped down, like in laboratory environments where variables are much easier to control.

Not at all what you originally said. You are making up new intellectual-sounding thought-salad as you go along. Have you understood the original argument I brought up at all? Have you even tried? Is there any desire on your part to think things through, to understand, to get to the bottom of all this?

Okay. So, what you're saying is that a lot of the time when I see manifestations of the theory of, say, inclusive fitness, that is an artifact of my perception of the world? And that there are other explanations out there which could be more true, and explain more of the variation observed in altruism and cooperation? I know ID lends itself well to explaining the origins of life and the like. I wonder what ID has to say about squirrel calls or eusocial shrimp, or if there's still a lot to learn on that end of things...

It is apparent that you didn't think about any of this, or about our arguments. Have you at least tried to understand? Has it occurred to you, for example, as I already have pointed out earlier, that when your very assumption is complete nonsense (i.e. "selfish genes"), your argument, by logical necessity, collapses? Even if this "theory" could explain everything in the universe, it still would be rubbish? And also, that ID is not an alternative theory to "selfish genes", but an alternative theory to Darwinian evolution? That "selfish genes" is rubbish no matter what, even if Darwinism was true? Again, have you even tried to understand - and to get to the bottom of this?

Another example would be a response I felt like giving to Joe's recent post about scientists discovering "wireless" communication, after he said, "Here's a recent news item about a discovery about how the brain works, or rather, how science doesn't understand how the brain works, and points to the non local nature of mind. How might neo-Darwinists spin this one?" Even though I believe the mind is non-physical, and that supporters of ND disagree with that, I felt like pointing out that non-local doesn't mean exactly the same thing as non-physical (moreso it means action at a distance), and that the article just talked about neurons stimulating one another through the electrical fields they generate, and how that doesn't seem like anything ND-believers don't already believe in about what's possible in physics.

Why can't you understand arguments? Why can't you stop and think for a second about what Joe meant? The point Joe was making had nothing to do with materialism being false, and everything to do with ND being false, and the anticipation of the ridiculous mental gymnastics NDers will have to perform to explain this non-local phenomenon. Instead of trying to understand, your mind brought in some nit-picky argument that is completely irrelevant! Do you want to get to the bottom of all this or do you want to win an argument - defending a lie?

Thanks for sharing. My road was slightly different. I discovered and came to appreciate virtue and self-cultivation before I learned more about the supernatural parts of reality. Kind of like what Laura said, about how even if those things weren't mandated in any way by higher intelligences, they were still worthwhile values by her assessment and would live in accordance with them anyway.

That doesn't make any sense to me. What are you even talking about? When you first encountered Laura's work, you didn't know about the Cs? Or what? Or did you work from the assumption that it's all wrong, but that it looks like a fun debating society? What IS it that you think or thought - or are you just making things up as you go along? It's very weird!

More of the same:

I suppose what I had in mind about this was that our emotional and moral faculties play a large role in our attitudes and values, arguably more than thinking in many people (they are machines, etc), and some people can find ways to justify certain things with X belief or Y belief, as Haidt has discusses in his book.

Emotional and moral faculties are intrinsically tied to how we perceive the world, i.e. materialistic or recognizing something higher. How is it that your mind cannot come up with something so obvious? If you wanted to find out what's going on, or to deepen your understanding, this would be the very first solution to your "puzzle" that would come to mind, no?


All these examples come down to this I think: Why can't your mind follow such straight-forward arguments? Not to mention coming up with them yourself after just a little thought?

I think you gave part of the answer yourself:

But I wonder what influence this may have had on my instinctive substratum.

Yeah, unfortunately I'm familiar with the pattern as well. I think I may have exhibited it either in whole or in part. I did become pretty incensed from your first reply to me, telling me to go read Stove after reading and thinking what I did of him.

Another thing I notice I can do in everyday conversations is, if I find a flaw in an argument for something, even if I believe the balance of facts and logic is in favor of it, I may still bring the point up anyway. Hence why I felt the need to mention again and again that I believed in ID, just not for Stove's reasons against ND. There's also an earlier conversation I've had with Joe talking about if there's a premature consensus starting to form to try and push back just to be sure all the bases have been covered. I know there's a fine line between that and contrarianism for its own sake, which I have been guilty of in the past, but not for a long, long time, unless there's some other triggering component.

I do my best not to back down from intellectual challenges, because it's in that fire that you do get stronger. But even when I do argue back about something (if I see a problem with something), that doesn't mean I'm not internalizing some of the things which I didn't see problems with. I may not bring it up or verbally acknowledge it if it's still an emotionally charged debate, I guess because of pride.

The problem is that if you argue for a lie, you internalize the lie. You rationalize it by saying it's to "cover all the bases", but the effect is the same. Whitecoast, a debate society can be a fun challenge, but this is not what finding truth and getting to the bottom of things is all about. You literally mess up your brain if you defend lies. And your responses here show how you ended up living in your own mental world, in your own bubble, where you can't follow arguments, can't see reality, and are incapable of distinguishing between truth, your past and present thoughts, and between valid arguments and your "debate society assignments". This is not a good state to be in!!

 

[Laura]

Whitecoast, I've been watching what amounts to a display of your inner landscape and I have to say that I am concerned. I think I already mentioned that what struck me most forcibly was your apparent inability to perceive "the crux of the matter" and there have been a number of mentions of "selection and substitution." These effects appear to play out over and over again and yet I think - feel? hope? - that you are sincere about really wanting to "go somewhere" with your personal development. I'm stymied for how to help you get over this barrier; because barrier it surely is. But I'm not sure it is a fear barrier such as Gurdjieff describes; you know, sitting between two stools.

I went back to Ponerology searching for clues. Here's what I found:

Lobaczewski wrote:
During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life’s complicated laws. Is it worth pondering the properties of human nature and man’s flawed personality, whether one’s own or someone else’s? Can we understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not undergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and blaming the victim?

You are a product of such "good times" as are so many who were born in the generation after my own. I got a taste of it too being a teenager in the 60s.

L writes:
Perception of the truth about the real environment, especially an understanding of the human personality and its values, ceases to be a virtue during the so-called “happy” times; thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave well enough alone. This leads to an impoverishment of psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by peaceful means.

During “good” times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient factors. It is better to think about easier and more pleasant things. Unconscious elimination of data which are or appear to be inexpedient gradually turns to habit, then becomes a custom accepted by society at large. Any thought process based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise to correct conclusions; it further leads to subconscious substitution of inconvenient premises by more convenient ones, thereby approaching the boundaries of phenomena which should be viewed as psychopathological.

Such contented periods, which are often rooted in some injustice to other people or nations, start to strangle the capacity for individual and societal consciousness; subconscious factors take over a decisive role in life. Such a society, already infected by the hysteroidal state, considers any perception of uncomfortable truth to be a sign of “ill-breeding”. J. G. Herder’s iceberg is drowned in a sea of falsified unconsciousness; only the tip of the iceberg is visible above the waves of life. ... In such times, the capacity for logical and disciplined thought, born of necessity during difficult times, begins to fade. When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified at every social scale, whether individual or macrosocial, until they revert to “bad” times.

We already know that every society contains a certain percentage of people carrying psychological deviations caused by various inherited or acquired factors which produce anomalies in perception, thought, and character. Many such people attempt to impart meaning to their deviant lives by means of social hyperactivity. They create their own myths and ideologies of overcompensation and have the tendency to egotistically insinuate to others their own deviant perceptions and the resulting goals and ideas.

In the European languages, “Austrian talk” has become the common descriptive term for paralogistic discourse. Many people using this term nowadays are unaware of its origin. Within the context of maximum hysterical intensity in Europe at the time, the authentic article represented a typical product of conversive thinking: subconscious selection and substitution of data lead to chronic avoidance of the crux of the matter.

Information selection and substitution: Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible: including those generally described as conversive, such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.

We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential process was proper in principle and has almost arrived at a conclusion and final comprehension within the act of internal projection, but becomes stymied by a preceding directive from the subconscious, which considered it inexpedient or disturbing. ...A conclusion thus rejected remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious way causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be totally harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own subconscious, and is often accompanied by a feeling of tension and bitterness.

We speak of selection of premises whenever the feedback goes deeper into the resulting reasoning and from its database thus deletes and represses into the subconscious just that piece of information which was responsible for arriving at the uncomfortable conclusion. Our subconscious then permits further logical reasoning, except that the outcome will be erroneous in direct proportion to the actual significance of the repressed data. An ever-greater number of such repressed information is collected in our subconscious memory. Finally, a kind of habit seems to take over: similar material is treated the same way even if reasoning would have reached an outcome quite advantageous to the person.

The most complex process of this type is substitution of premises thus eliminated by other data, ensuring an ostensibly more comfortable conclusion. Our associative ability rapidly elaborates a new item to replace the removed one, but it is one leading to a comfortable conclusion. This operation takes the most time, and it is unlikely to be exclusively subconscious. Such substitutions are often effected collectively, in certain groups of people, through the use of verbal communication. That is why they best qualify for the moralizing epithet “hypocrisy” than either of the above-mentioned processes.

The above examples of conversive phenomena do not exhaust a problem richly illustrated in psychoanalytical works. Our subconscious may carry the roots of human genius within, but its operation is not perfect; sometimes it is reminiscent of a blind computer, especially whenever we allow it to be cluttered with anxiously rejected material. This explains why conscious monitoring, even at the price of courageously accepting disintegrative states, is likewise necessary to our nature, not to mention our individual and social good.
....

Grey-haired Europeans living in the U.S. today are struck by the similarity between these phenomena and the ones dominating Europe at the times of their youth. The emotionalism dominating individual, collective and political life, as well as the subconscious selection and substitution of data in reasoning, are impoverishing the development of a psychological world view and leading to individual and national egotism. The mania for taking offense at the drop of a hat provokes constant retaliation, taking advantage of hyper-irritability and hypo-criticality on the part of others.


America’s psychological recession drags in its wake an impaired socio-professional adaptation of this country’s people, leading to a waste of human talent and an involution of societal structure.
*
Now, the above is the background description of the times and the general problem of the influences you have been subjected to all your life; you were born into it. A fish hatched in a dirty river doesn't know any different; he CAN'T know any different. But a human being is different from a fish; as Stove describes it, humans ARE different.

But now we come to one of the particular problems that this present cycle presents us: drug induced characteropathies. Lobaczewski again:

During the last few decades, medicine has begun using a series of drugs with serious side effects: they attack the nervous system, leaving permanent damage behind. These generally discreet handicaps sometimes give rise to personality changes which are often very harmful socially.

The cytostatic drugs used in treating neoplastic diseases often attack the phylogenetically oldest brain tissue, the primary carrier of our instinctive substratum and basic feelings. Persons treated with such drugs progressively tend to lose their emotional color and their ability to intuit a psychological situation. They retain their intellectual functions but ...

Results similar to the above in the psychological picture may be caused by endogenous toxins or viruses. When, on occasion, the mumps proceeds with a brain reaction, it leaves in its wake a discrete pallor or dullness of feelings and a slight decrease in mental efficiency. Similar phenomena are witnessed after a difficult bout with diphtheria. Finally, polio attacks the brain, more often the higher part of the anterior horns, which was affected by the process. People with leg paresis rarely manifest these effects, but those with paresis of the neck and/or shoulders must count themselves lucky if they do not. In addition to affective pallor, persons manifesting these effects usually evidence an inability to comprehend the crux of a matter and naiveté.

Character anomalies developing as a result of brain-tissue damage behave like insidious ponerogenic factors.... traumatizing our psyches, impoverishing and deforming our thoughts and feelings, and limiting individuals’ and societies’ ability to use common sense and recognize a psychological or moral situation.

Brain tissue is very limited in its regenerative ability. If it is damaged and the change subsequently heals, a process of rehabilitation takes place thanks to which the neighboring healthy tissue takes over the function of the damaged portion. This substitution is never quite perfect; thus some deficits in skill and proper psychological processes can be detected in even cases of very small damage by using the appropriate tests. Specialists are aware of the variegated causes for the origin of such damage, including trauma and infections.

****
Now, I've included the part of PP where Lobaczewski discusses brain damage due to drugs of various kinds and pathogens, for a specific reason. I'm aware that you have done some experimentation and I am wondering if this has had something to do with your apparent inability to let go of the false personality, the egoic self-image you have created, which is so clearly on display here. Lobaczewski discusses what to do for people who have this selection and substitution problem, this inability to see or get to the "crux of the matter" as follows:

In any method or technique of analytical psychotherapy, or autonomous psychotherapy, as T. Szasz called it, the guiding operational motivation is exposing to the light of consciousness whatever material has been suppressed by means of subconscious selection of data, or given up in the face of intellectual problems. This is accompanied by a disillusionment of substitutions and rationalizations, whose creation is usually in proportion to the amount of repressed material.

In many cases, it turns out that the material fearfully eliminated from the field of consciousness, and frequently substituted by ostensibly more comfortable associations, would never have had such dangerous results if we had initially mustered the courage to perceive it consciously. We would then have been in the position to find an independent and often creative way out of the situation.

In some cases, however, especially when dealing with phenomena which are hard to understand within the categories of our natural world view, leading the patient out of his problems demands furnishing him crucial objective data, usually from the areas of biology, psychology, and psychopathology, and indicating specific dependencies which he was unable to comprehend before.

***

So, as I said, I AM concerned about this situation and I hope you can take all of the above onboard.

 

[genero81]

The problem is that if you argue for a lie, you internalize the lie. You rationalize it by saying it's to "cover all the bases", but the effect is the same. Whitecoast, a debate society can be a fun challenge, but this is not what finding truth and getting to the bottom of things is all about. You literally mess up your brain if you defend lies. And your responses here show how you ended up living in your own mental world, in your own bubble, where you can't follow arguments, can't see reality, and are incapable of distinguishing between truth, your past and present thoughts, and between valid arguments and your "debate society assignments". This is not a good state to be in!!

Really good analysis, luc. WC, you have some fundamental presuppositions that need to be scrapped. You're not seeing it because you're lost in your own mental games. This not for some intellectual fun, debating sciency stuff. We're attempting to get to the bottom of things. And not just for our own good, but for all those who may come after us or are yet to find us. For our children (if we have any) and their children.

Yeah, this is really weird. Weird that you aren't seeing what most everyone else is. Weird that you're responses have to be taken apart just to try and make sense of where it is exactly you're coming from.

I just read Laura's post which popped up while I was writing this. I will post it anyway, but I'm afraid that that is the case; you appear to be suffering the effects of ponerization. OSIT

 

[Renaissance]

Well this was in response to luc's comments about the consequences of living in a material universe. I suppose the crux of what I was trying to get at was even if there is no externally imposed meaning by designers, we still need to create our own meaning in life, our own values, etc. Because we need those things like air. So I suppose for a sizeable few years of my life I just accepted the performative contradiction. So it's from this perspective where I just don't get why people had such trouble with the idea of a material universe. I know all the intellectual problems with it, and it has been debunked repeatedly by science and revelation and even a lot of my own personal experience. But the grooves are still there, like the feeling I could survive psychologically in a nihilistic universe. I think that is less true now than it was, say, 10 years ago. But I wonder what influence this may have had on my instinctive substratum.

This is a common argument used in support of atheism: that 'God' isn't needed for people to be good because people create good themselves. I think this appeals to those who don't have a developed 'authority' moral taste bud, to use Haidt's terminology. One issue with this is that the authority drive remains strong whether or not this moral 'taste bud' is developed or not. Where it remains highly undeveloped, it appears that authority is given almost exclusively to the false self and it's basic beliefs. It's a contractile existence that does not, by its nature place trust in or really bond with others, or see reality.

If you feel you could survive in a nihilistic universe, where is your 'faith' placed? It would seem that it would have to be based entirely on the self since reality would have no real meaning. I'd suggest that it would actually need to be based on the false self which is supported by ideological possession, identification, fantasy and intellectualism. The nihilistic universe is thus a reflection created out of the STS mind. In essence, I see it as a core belief that 'I am God' or 'I am the highest authority'. It's not like people go around consciously thinking these things, but I'd say it is a common deeply held program that we all have to different degrees and forms the basis of what Samenow referred to as the criminal mind expressed through the self image seeking control and power.

We can see how over the course of Western history, with Darwinism, ND, materialism, certain aspects of liberalism, along with dysfunctional families, relational trauma, etc. that we've been positioned to trust in ourselves as the ultimate authority. On a social level, I think we can see how this leads to authoritarian doctrines, fascism, totalitarianism, etc. On an individual and 'everyday' level this shuts out reality. It makes genuine communication difficult as there isn't a fundamental recognition of value outside the self, and so reception of such value is more or less closed off. I say 'more or less' because it is obvious that we do take in outside information to different extents - but I'm speaking specifically on the 'core belief' level. Intellectual debates do not necessarily reach through to this, even if we might 'concede' various points or piece new data into our intellectual framework. Such effort can easily feed the self image in one way or another, be a means of buttressing it, or can be just be an aspect of our dissociative bubble. Just the same with many types of 'religiousity', of which intellectualism can be one type! Our core beliefs just seem very difficult to reach. But that's really when we're just wondering around. It seems there are keys that can unlock our access and open doors. ID and the unmasking of ND seems like such a key, if people are actually fed up enough to utilize it.

It is interesting how people have talked about the material in this thread bringing a sort of relief. I think one possibility for this feeling is that there is this common undoing of some deeply programmed material-based restrictions in our concept of ourselves and the world. But I think it's not just that. I think it's also about moving from an intellectual conception of Mind toward something like a reality based recognition of the Divine Mind.

 

[Laura]

It is interesting how people have talked about the material in this thread bringing a sort of relief. I think one possibility for this feeling is that there is this common undoing of some deeply programmed material-based restrictions in our concept of ourselves and the world. But I think it's not just that. I think it's also about moving from an intellectual conception of Mind toward something like a reality based recognition of the Divine Mind.

Beautifully said, Renaissance. A real, renaissance, eh?

 

[John G]

Yeah, this is really weird. Weird that you aren't seeing what most everyone else is. Weird that you're responses have to be taken apart just to try and make sense of where it is exactly you're coming from.

It's weird but unfortunately common for debate boards. He does like Behe's view but not Stove's. Stove is basically saying humans have their different traits and aren't doing any natural selecting that could change to a new species even if there could be a bunch of required random mutations. Behe says there can't be this change to a new species randomly. Thus it makes sense to be like Stove and throw out natural selection since it's not going to ever get you a new species anyways. No need to contort reality to save an idea that isn't even required. This bias in science to contort reality to save ideas like ND/materialism slows progress. That wireless brain communication experiment, which shouldn't have been too shocking even for mainstream science, shocked the experimenters and made the reviewers require a triple check. Luckily it is an easily repeatable experiment. Ideas like psi, quantum consciousness, and an information based reality aren't so lucky.

 

[hlat]

The problem is that if you argue for a lie, you internalize the lie. You rationalize it by saying it's to "cover all the bases", but the effect is the same. Whitecoast, a debate society can be a fun challenge, but this is not what finding truth and getting to the bottom of things is all about. You literally mess up your brain if you defend lies.

The predator's mind used to be abstract to me, until I saw it in action in darwinism.

It is interesting how people have talked about the material in this thread bringing a sort of relief.

I like in this thread how true real science has defeated false fake science.

 

[Jones]

I'm kind of feeling comforted that I (we) have a creator and I can kind of feel something firming up in me. This gives me hope because it prompt the question 'why was I created - for what purpose?' anart told me years ago that I was designed to be food. Maybe she was right, maybe not - but that stuck with me. Is that what the creator intended, or is that just a position that I bought into through environmental influence/learning/experience? Having read this thread, but only just started on the recommended reading, I get a vague sense that I wasn't created to be food - but that's what ended up happening.

I'm wondering if there's a connection between the false idea of evolution/random mutation and Gurdjieffs Law of Accident - was he referring to ponerogenic influence of the idea of evolution/random mutation? And we're under the Law of Accident when we believe evolution/random mutation without question? The whole idea of evolution/random mutation seemed to give me an idea of helplessness along the lines of Gurdjieffs 'man can do nothing'.

At the same time as all of this is going on I'm getting glimpses of that slimy predators mind and it feels as though it has been behind impulses that I've been fighting for some time. But it's kind of like as soon as the impulse/or thought arises that I've been immediately trying to shut it down with a more socially acceptable, moral or virtuous thought or impulse - selection and substitution! Also meaning that it was never exposed to the light - and because of that I never really developed skills to adequately deal with it and the way that I was dealing with it was burning up a whole heap of energy for no real growth. I kept combing over different scenarios asking myself how could I make such idiotic and harmful decisions and choices and there was this slippery little oyster of a thought or impulse that would slurp into the darkness the instant I perceived it and I'd select and substitute a more virtuous, moral, or socially acceptible thought or impulse. It felt like my heart was trying to drag the dead weight of the rest of my body along with it without fully perceiving what was causing the dead weight.

Then in some circumstances I allowed that slimy thought/impulse to express - probably more that I didn't have the energy to fight it and I've found that there is something else that tied up with that thought/impulse that isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's something that has the ability to make good or right choices for the circumstances even though it may not be generally perceived as moral or virtuous. Kind of something that is reflective about the idea that it is good to be not nice sometimes - I'm having difficulty defining it.

I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here - just trying put into words to what I've pulled together through reading the thread so far.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

I'm kind of feeling comforted that I (we) have a creator and I can kind of feel something firming up in me. This gives me hope because it prompt the question 'why was I created - for what purpose?' anart told me years ago that I was designed to be food. Maybe she was right, maybe not - but that stuck with me. Is that what the creator intended, or is that just a position that I bought into through environmental influence/learning/experience? Having read this thread, but only just started on the recommended reading, I get a vague sense that I wasn't created to be food - but that's what ended up happening.

The problem with a statement like "we were designed to be food" is that by itself, it's just a unidimensional answer, which means it doesn't really answer anything. Even if it's true, that doesn't mean that is our sole purpose. Perhaps we are designed so that we can learn to not be food? Or to just do something worth while and meaningful even if we continue to be nibbled on. The point simply being: there is more to us than that. There are untapped potentials. And there is a higher purpose.

Then in some circumstances I allowed that slimy thought/impulse to express - probably more that I didn't have the energy to fight it and I've found that there is something else that tied up with that thought/impulse that isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's something that has the ability to make good or right choices for the circumstances even though it may not be generally perceived as moral or virtuous. Kind of something that is reflective about the idea that it is good to be not nice sometimes - I'm having difficulty defining it.

I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here - just trying put into words to what I've pulled together through reading the thread so far.

Sounds to me like you're describing the process of personality development. At first, there are all sorts of influences pulling in multiple directions. It's confusing, because we don't know what value to place on each of these influences. But some will make us feel as if we have betrayed something within us, and that's a clue. The more we teach ourselves not to do those things, the better we will be able to recognize them, and the clearer will be our internal hierarchy of values. It's the process of recognizing what is "more us" versus what is "less us", and becoming more in charge of our own actions. Sometimes the right thing to do will be recognized by society as virtuous, sometimes it will not. But you can only know for yourself, by being true to who you are. It's a long process, but that's just the way it is. There's no free lunch in the form of a universal, external set of rules to follow. Those 'rules' need to be discovered and made your own. And that's evolution, at least on the human level!