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Messages - TSTwizby

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226
Life Advice / Re: Discussions and debates
« on: April 23, 2012, 12:26:38 am »
Quote from: Leafsnail on April 22, 2012, 08:18:13 pm
It's about likelihood, isn't it?  You can make an argument which provides evidence for your side and makes it more probably true.  Sure, you can't make it 100%, but you can boost it above the 50% that whoever's judging the debate should have at the start.

Also, keep in mind it's kindof a game.  It's a game that can help you think about your viewpoints, but it's a game nonetheless.  It's not about changing people's minds so much as putting together all the evidence and arguments for your side as well as possible while punishing any weaknesses in your opponent's case.  I don't expect to change anyone's mind while debating (indeed I kindof hope not to, considering I'm virtually always on the side I don't agree with).

A discussion's gonna be different though.  If you've got people actually expressing their beliefs then you really shouldn't have "sides" at all, I'd say.

I think you're misunderstanding my question, though I also think I agree with you. It isn't so much about debates, and more about the nature of statements/facts/opinions.

227
General Discussion / Re: Dream Interpretation: Alien Space Battle
« on: April 22, 2012, 05:55:25 pm »
Quote from: runlvlzero on April 22, 2012, 05:53:55 pm
Yeah, I toooooootaallly was not trying to say that, haha =)

Not exactly entertainment, but not serious business either, just like free association is not 'serious'.

Hell, I think if you talk to allot of scientisty PH.D's in medicine... psychology and psychiatry are two different things, psychiatry is faaar from scientific. Most good psychiatrists will acknowledge that. Psychologists, are in the serious business of trying to predict actual behaviors and find reliable ways of modifying them. Psychiatrists are just there to talk too =) that kinda thing. I've dealt with allot of both. Subtle nuances are hard to convey on the web...

Mahatma Gandhi I respect for what he had to teach, regardless of 'why' or 'how' he came up with it (I have no clue). I hope that makes a little more sense.... enough beating a dead horse... thanks for taking the time to read through all this thread if ya did =)

Yeah, sorry about all this. I think I get what you're saying now, and I can respect that.

228
Life Advice / Re: Facial hair or lack thereof.
« on: April 22, 2012, 05:53:42 pm »
Quote from: ChairmanPoo on April 22, 2012, 04:48:54 pm
Imo there's a point for it. Children can be really cruel, and it might help prevent ostrazicing their less well-off peers.

There is absolutely nothing that will prevent children for ostracizing their less well-off peers if that is what they want to do.

On a more on-topic note, according to a study done in the US which I can't find anymore but is still listed on Wikipedia on their school uniforms page, school uniforms have no real effect on anything in terms of attendance, grades, or drug use, and somewhat curtail academic ambition. On the other hand, a different study in Kenya (http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/impact-distributing-school-uniforms-childrens-education-kenya) showed a significant increase in attendance of poorer students on the introduction of school uniforms, though their numbers are kind of weirdly stated. My guess is that the discrepancy can be accounted for in part, at least, by cultural differences and the fact that the Kenyan poor are significantly poorer than the American poor. In any case, rules about hair, barring extreme cases, being in the same category of 'make everyone look the same rules' as uniforms are probably ineffective in the US.

229
General Discussion / Re: Dream Interpretation: Alien Space Battle
« on: April 22, 2012, 05:44:11 pm »
Quote from: runlvlzero on April 22, 2012, 04:46:25 pm
P.S. And hell yeah, sometimes you just can't take shit seriously, so don't. Otherwise you will just go insane and rock back and forth in a corner, when you should be pulling a Spartan 'we'll just fight in the shade' line.

NO, EVERYTHING MUST BE SERIOUSLY, EVERYTHING!!!!!!

...
But seriously, (heh), I interpreted what you were saying as 'this method with give you cold, hard facts about your personality and life', which I'd say is taking it kind of seriously. If you're looking at it for entertainment, you can interpret whatever you want.

230
General Discussion / Re: Dream Interpretation: Alien Space Battle
« on: April 22, 2012, 02:46:42 pm »
Quote from: runlvlzero on April 22, 2012, 05:01:02 am
In the above scenario I would just pick the interpretation that had the most meaning to me at the time. Or the one that I felt would be the most useful as a meditative tool.

I'm sorry, but I can't take much of what you say seriously after this. Picking and choosing what data or interpretations you use and what you ignore is the worst possible way of finding things out, for the same reason as in a courtroom the judge can't ignore the prosecutor if they think they smell funny, and that a scientist can't only publish data which supports their hypothesis. You are guaranteed to be biased in your interpretation, and worse, that bias is unpredictable and therefore uncorrectable.

231
General Discussion / Re: Dream Interpretation: Alien Space Battle
« on: April 22, 2012, 04:06:49 am »
The problem I have with dream interpretation is that there's almost always more than one way to go about it. For example, I've had these dreams which sort of follow a pattern, where I'm in some place (A hotel, a fair in New Mexico, my house) where there is some sort of danger (Zombies inexplicably created by my grandfather, a mountain-sized velociraptor, a DF-style hydra) that is threatening everyone around. I always completely ignore everyone else and rush to save myself (I hijack the car and drive away, climb up a mountain, hide in a bedroom) with greater or lesser success (The car doesn't work and I need to stop the zombies by kicking them in the head, I'm about halfway up by the time the velociraptor reaches the fair, the Hydra misses me the first time around, but then catches my scent and attacks) though I always wake up before actually dying. So does this mean I ignore other people's problems and focus on protecting myself? Or does it mean that I think other people can handle themselves just fine without my help? Or that I don't acknowledge other people as being real? Or maybe part of the horror of these dreams is that I can't help the other people? Very confusing.

232
Life Advice / Re: Discussions and debates
« on: April 22, 2012, 03:28:31 am »
Quote from: Fenrir on April 21, 2012, 11:30:39 pm
It was necessary for me to read this a few times before understanding. Are you telling me that, because the sentence “That frog is ugly,” does not contain the pronoun I, anyone who has the ability say “That frog is ugly,” (which is what you seem to mean by “all potential speakers”) must invariably think that the frog is ugly? That does not make even a little sense, so I strongly suspect that I have misunderstood.

I'm sorry if it was unclear; I meant to say that, according to what I see as your interpretation of the phrase 'That frog is ugly', the statement either has no meaning when presented without a speaker or else describes a universal viewpoint. Again, I am assuming you will accept as valid the possibility of statements without speakers, which you might not.


Quote from: Fenrir on April 21, 2012, 11:30:39 pm
It is a statement that assumes I beat Dwarf Fortress. Who says “X happened when Y,” without first assuming that Y happened? It would be like saying “X happened at 2:00 PM today,” when it is eight in the morning. It would seem to require an assumption by the speaker, not the listener.

Again, this is only the case if you assume both that there must be a speaker and that the listener knows something about that speaker. "Who says X" isn't a very strong argument.


My main point there was that I say statements, in order to be statements, must continue to have a single, definite truth value no matter what context they are made or interpreted in, independent of speaker or listener, assuming basic definitions and similar are agreed upon beforehand. This still leaves a bit of looseness, like the case of 'I like pickles' which would seem to be a case where differing speakers imply different truth values, but if 'I' is interpreted as 'the speaker', then it becomes a different statement for each speaker with varying truth values rather than one non-statement.

233
Life Advice / Re: Discussions and debates
« on: April 21, 2012, 09:53:11 pm »
Quote from: Fenrir on April 19, 2012, 08:19:24 pm
This is almost accurate. “That frog is ugly,” and “I do not find looking at that frog enjoyable,” have exactly the same meaning, and they both have truth value.
This is simply not true. The statement 'that frog is ugly' is independent of the context of the speaker inherent to the statement 'I do not find looking at that frog enjoyable'. If I only have the statement 'that frog is ugly' to work with, I must conclude therefore that all potential speakers find the frog ugly.
The obvious counterargument to this is that statements cannot exist independently of a speaker and therefore no statement has any meaning without a speaker attached. However, I claim that that it is impossible to determine a speaker in all cases is obvious, and therefore that statements must exist independently of the speaker or else not have meaning in these cases (for example, the phrase 'Rats are stupid' graffiti'd onto the side of a building has no speaker sufficiently associated with it to provide the context to a random passerby necessary to interpret it). I acknowledge that my argument here relies on the claim that statements necessarily have meaning.


'You celebrated when you beat Dwarf Fortress' either is not a statement, as it can neither be true nor false without beating Dwarf Fortress first, or else is a false statement if you interpret it as 'You beat Dwarf Fortress and then you celebrated'. A loaded statement/question is only loaded because the listener makes an assumption on hearing them, which is completely unrelated to any logical meaning of the statement.

234
DF Gameplay Questions / Re: List of Vampire Facts
« on: April 20, 2012, 12:22:54 am »
Sorry if this has been mentioned before, I did a cursory search of the thread but could easily have missed it.

When vampires take on false identities, when exactly does it take effect? I've just had an immigrant enter calling themselves 'Hamlet Nomalbavast'. I went ahead and assigned them their labors, waited for any more immigrants to come, then went back and checked again and they were Dumed Libashatir. For now I've got them locked in a room with some high quality food and drink, in the hopes that they'll either sleep, eat or drink soon, giving me more definitive proof.

235
General Discussion / Re: Dream Interpretation: Alien Space Battle
« on: April 20, 2012, 12:11:37 am »
Quote from: Itnetlolor on April 19, 2012, 11:46:57 pm
Did that in a similar kind of dream, except it was based more in my town, and I used an alien power armor I captured (by jumping an active unit, riding them like a bull, and forcing them into a wall (and of course, kicking the ass of the pilot after I managed to force-open the access port); sorta like a Jockey in L4D2) to hop aboard a strike cruiser buzzing past, take down it's security forces, and hire some local townies as the crew of my new ride; ready and able to take down the rest of the armada.

That's better than the ones I've had... The only lucid dream I've ever had involved me wandering around an enormous airport in New Mexico after skydiving into a forest. I realised I was dreaming after I survived landing.

As for meaning, look not to the dream but to your actions within. It doesn't mean much that you dreamed you lost your clothes in school, but it does say a bit about you whether you went and hid in the bathroom, went looking for them, or stole someone else's.

236
Life Advice / Re: Discussions and debates
« on: April 19, 2012, 06:54:35 pm »
Yes, sorry. Thank you for your responses, but I think you mostly picked up my use of the word 'debate' and ran with it more than I meant to.

Quote from: Capntastic on April 11, 2012, 04:10:40 am
This is incorrect.  Everyone can have an opinion, yeah, but there are opinions that are 'correct' and opinions that are 'incorrect'.  This is the difference between truth and falsehood.  There are also opinions that are 'right' and 'wrong' to have- and these are based in one's method of belief.  If someone comes to an opinion through study, thought, and the advice of those learned in a subject, certainly their perception is more hard fought, and more respectable than someone who just 'feels' a certain way.

I think you are conflating what I'd call 'opinions' and 'statements' here. By my understanding of the terms, an opinion is a statement which is not factual, and therefore neither objectively neither true nor false, such as 'blue is a nice color' or 'that frog is ugly'.  A fact would be a statement which has an objective truth value, whether or not that value is known, such as 'the sky is blue' or '1 + 1 = 3', or 'there is life on some non-Earth planet'. Of course there is sometimes a very fine distinction between the two, such as between 'that frog is ugly' and 'I do not find looking at that frog enjoyable', which are statements which have similar meanings as used in normal conversation, but only the later of which has an actual truth value.

The problem I have whenever I talk to people about these things is that I insist that statements are either factual or not factual, and that because of this the only possible value from a discussion can come from identifying the relevant factual statements and determining their truth values, and they insist that I have completely failed to understand any aspect of what a discussion, statement, or truth value is.

237
Other Games / Re: Pokemon-Online: Totally Free Pokemon Multiplayer Battle Simulator
« on: April 18, 2012, 03:46:27 pm »
Well, you could always hope to catch someone off guard with a FEAR. But it's so well known nowadays that you're unlikely to trick anyone.

238
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: Fortress Design
« on: April 18, 2012, 04:06:51 am »
I usually just try to follow the geology. I dig out some bedrooms wherever I can, since that's usually the first thing I'm rushing to do, then I look for a nice soily area to set up farms/food preparation/dining/grazing areas with some farmers/butchers/tanners workshops nearby, with a loom and clothier not too far off. I usually dig down to the caverns next, so I can find some water and set up a well to use for a hospital, which I put my sparring room next to just in case. Apart from that, I usually dig out some veins of whatever and then convert the space to workshop/bedroom/tomb areas depending on what's needed.

I've always wanted to set up a fort divided into sections based off of jobs, like with a group of farmers down in the caverns, a group of craftsmen/traders up on the surface and a group of smiths down near the magma, each sending the necessary items to the other and each with their own sleeping/eating/hospital areas. Maybe a big castle on top with the nobles and some servants. I keep putting it off, though I think that I'll do it in the next release when minecarts will solve most of the problems with it.

239
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: The worst animals ever.
« on: April 18, 2012, 03:14:46 am »
For me right now this is camels, mostly because they keep wandering into my fortress somehow, getting cornered by random passersby and kicking them off the stairs. But in general, I think I'm going to have to agree about ravens. Every evil embark I've tried so far ends up besieged by undead ravens after they kill themselves by trying to fly while coated in gunk which makes them fall unconscious every few seconds until they break all their bones.

240
Other Games / Re: Pokemon-Online: Totally Free Pokemon Multiplayer Battle Simulator
« on: April 18, 2012, 03:12:06 am »
Alright, sorry. I interpreted your last sentence as 'eventually everyone's going to realise how overcomplicated and boring the game is and give up on it'.

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