Saturday, August 25, 2012

Video of ants eating a lizard

I decided to have a little fun today by responding to some posts about this blog in a SomethingAwful thread. I don't normally make posts like this, but I enjoy the opportunity when it presents itself, and this was too good to pass up, so here we go.

Note that I am not going to post the names of the authors of the comments, because I'm lazy, and no one cares what your screenname is.

Here is the start of the "discussion" in the thread in question: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3493184&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=273


I'm going to address this first one out of order, just to get something out of the way:

"Do ultranerds just hate creative writing and music because it can't be quantified? Like, they have to enjoy some TV shows or movies right? How do they exist if they hate anything not set in a specific perfect sense. Like, no interpretations, no deeper meanings, all art must be one leveled and have one meaning. I'd love to listen to their Ipods or check their netflix list"

Ultranerds, niggers, Jews, fatties -- yeah, let's keep perpetuating what makes humankind absolutely abhorrent by generalizing people into predefined categories for the sole purpose of objectification and, ironically, obliteration of empathy. You're not partaking in Nazism here at all, no sirree. How silly of me to forget that it's not what fundamental social detriments you're promoting, it's how direct their manifestations are! It's only okay to dehumanize someone and label them when you're not shackling them and forcing them to work for you under inhumane conditions. They're just words and the other person should grow up and take it like a man, right? Or maybe I'm a fat, irresponsible, Jewish nigger-criminal for making a big deal about those latter groups being attacked unjustifiably.

Anyway, what we enjoy and what matters are obviously very different. Who cares if I enjoy chocolate ice cream, classical music, or hardcore porn? Who cares what your favorite fetish is, or how complex and subjectively fulfilling a movie is? You can do all of that in your spare time, but this blog is not about your spare time; it's about what matters. Very few of the things that I do really, truly matter, but that's part of being human. If you think otherwise, then congratulations on considering yourself special right alongside the other generation Y problem children. You wouldn't be reacting at all if I were wrong about this, and you know it.

It's important to note, here, that while this blog is about what matters, that doesn't mean that the blog itself "matters," or that it's one hundred percent accurate. Pursuit of accuracy does not necessarily warrant proclamations of accuracy, and in any case, if I really were some smug asshole getting off on "being right" and looking down on everyone else, not only would all of the entries here about no one being capable of truly knowing anything for certain not exist, but it wouldn't really be relevant to the importance or accuracy of the arguments themselves. Hitler was a vegetarian; does that mean that vegetarianism is a terrible idea? Chill with the personal drama/character assassination and focus on the arguments; to do otherwise is logically fallacious in spades. Sorry, but my eating babies is not going to make the arguments here go away, so it's up to you to, you know, argue back.

"In my experience yeah. The idea that art can have multiple meanings and is ultimately interpreted by the observer is anathema to them. They also hate anything that doesn't look like it involved a lot of technical skill."

I'm glad that I belong to a "them." What are we like in the wild? Are wild ultranerds different from domesticated ultranerds? Do our mating rituals differ? Please, all-wise Internet smartass, explain to me how people in my made-up category, who are different and should be treated differently from people in your made-up category, fail to understand that art can have multiple meanings.

Wait, what does art have to do with anything again? If we're going to bring the subject up, let's get a few things straight:

1. Art can have multiple meanings.

2. Pictorial symbolism is an inefficient way to communicate. If you want to say something important, then just say it.

3. All communication requires symbolism to some degree. However, some symbols are more efficient than others.

4. There's nothing wrong with captivating people emotionally through art. Just don't call it science, or use it to manipulate people for a cause. Make sure that they're aware that there is potential for manipulation so that they can enjoy the experience while still being in control.

5. I'd rather look at a beautiful landscape painting or listen to lush ambient music than ingest the loads of symbolism in a Poussin or pretend as though lyrics are musical in nature.

"Personally, I have no problem feeling bad for anyone who has suffered a tragedy, regardless of knowing them. And, surprise, there has never been a time when I was forced to choose between feeling bad for one person and totally ignoring someone else in a similar situation. Emotions aren't currency that you can run out of (for the most part)."


Every second, a preposterous number of horrible things occur on this planet; your ignorance of them forces you to choose those horrors of which you are not ignorant. Please stop pretending that you've attended the funerals of Africans who've starved to death, balling your eyes out the whole way. You know damn well that your mother and a starving African are not treated the same by your person.

A sufficiently advanced computer may be utterly incapable of feeling empathy for either individual, but if it's programmed to help those in need when presented with their struggles, then that's what it's going to do. It's not going to reflect on all of the wonderful memories that it had with the sufferer, or frown politely for two seconds while reading about his or her plight in the newspaper.

"loving shallow bitches. People want to have sex with you, so logically you must be dumber than me. Kneel before my superior intelligence!!!"

 Jesus Christ we are having a field day."


IQ test time:

All subjectively attractive people are subjectively desirable company, but not all subjectively attractive people are objectively intelligent.

I'm not going to search for fast cars by inspecting every red car that I encounter on the sole grounds that some red cars are fast; I'm going to inspect cars known for their speed. This doesn't mean that no red cars are fast, and it would be completely idiotic to either believe otherwise or believe that that's what I'm espousing.

"Ultranerds have the BEST ideas on education reform."

My, what a lovely, utterly empty post you have! Would you like to add anything else? Are you interested in helping people to come around to your way of thinking, or do you prefer to keep them against you so that you can feel superior? No interest in discussion, just yelling and harassment? Ah, I see.

But I'm the one with the superiority complex -- you know, the one who doesn't label people or associate them with others due to said label. The one who doesn't make snarky side remarks and instead writes thought-out premises. Right.

I might proclaim the average person to be an asshole, but if you're not the average person and I'm not lumping you personally into a category or calling you ugly for disagreeing with me, then why do you care?

"I love it when it's the ultranerds who aren't even smart enough for the STEM subjects they champion (as evidenced by his rejection of all mathematics beyond arithmetic as unnecessary). How does he plan on having Physics taught in his curriculum without a good basis in maths anyway?"

IQ test time:

Some people incapable of solving complex calculus problems would like to do away with having advanced math courses forced upon the general public using public money, or forced upon a college student as basically a commercial to the TV program that is their major. Some people really good at solving complex calculus problems feel the same way. Some people incapable of solving complex calculus problems want advanced math courses to be forced on the general public. Some people really good at solving complex calculus problems feel the same way.

Incidentally, it's amazing how every single one of you has to make these issues about flinging unfounded accusations at the opposition. Oh, I want to do away with complex math being forced onto people with no interest in it, so I must be bad at complex math. Oh, I'm not smart enough to do complex math, so therefore, people not smart enough to do complex math should be forced to do complex math and waste everyone's time and money, even though they're never going to use a single bit of it in everyday life. Well, you eat your own poo-poo, buddy. Therefore, you're wrong about everything. Take that!

"I woulda given... well, I woulda given SOMEBODY'S left nut to actually have classes on Hammurabi or the Boxer Rebellion somewhere in K-12. Also, dude's clearly never actually taken a class on Psychology OR Poli Sci"


More of the same. If you'd bothered to read more than a few lines from that post of mine, you would have encountered the bit where I stated that anyone interested in any subject should have the freedom to pursue it whenever they want, free of charge, for the betterment of both themselves and society at large. Do you really think that it makes any degree of sense to teach subjects to children if they're uninterested -- especially if the subjects have no practical value in everyday life? Why should my money go toward bored, tired children learning about the Pilgrims? Are the Pilgrims going to fix our political structure? Are the Pilgrims going to cure AIDS? If children are bored in the classroom, we've already screwed up. Maybe you love the Pilgrims, but that's your personal interest, and you're free to pursue that interest however you see fit in your spare time.

And not that it matters, but for the record, I've taken my fair share of Psychology and Political Science courses. I don't care about Sigmund Freud's archaic ideas, unfounded paranoia regarding Iran's nuclear program, how democratization is going to save poor people in Haiti from having to subsist off of selling bananas to tourists, or how four mental disorders belong in category A while another four belong in category B. And I definitely don't care about memorizing acronyms and buzz words for the purpose of passing tests; if the average person off the street understands at least a little about the process of a dominant nation leeching off of another, poorer nation for its natural resources, then it's stupid to fail them just because they've never heard the term "dependency theory" before.

"The philosophy bits are hysterical. Seriously, the reason why philosophy is taught like that is because it's part of critical thinking. The philosophy teachers want you to come to those conclusions on your own, not because the teacher proselytized you onto the One True Way like a loving cult leader.

 Also, any bet this ultranerd's idea of the one dominant philosophy is Objectivism and the not-so-famous person is Ayn Rand?"

Critical thinking should be taught from the first grade onward, and involves analysis of individual scenarios and problem-solving, just like arithmetic. If we give our children math problems, why not logic problems, or ethics scenarios to contemplate? Furthermore, why would ANY of that warrant random people's names being dropped, meaningless isms, and other excess baggage? When was the last time that you walked into a math class where children were learning times tables, and had Zhou Bi Suan Jing name dropped as being an "important person in the history of times tables"? Better memorize his name and understand his "contributions," kids, or you'll be failures at this math thing!

Yeah, or what you're saying is utterly irrelevant to actual critical thinking, which is much more about abstraction, process management, methodology refinement, and meta-cognition than being given five gigantic slabs of historical mush with cute names to memorize. How should anyone be expected to think critically when they're given only a handful of worldviews to read about, each self-contained and closed-off? Why should we be presented ANY worldviews, named or unnamed, instead of be equipped with the cognitive tools to allow us to solve everyday logic problems in an emergent manner, case by case?

"Here's transcendental idealism, Platonic realism, Buddhism, Christian mysticism, Stoicism, nihilism, epistemological nominalism, existentialism, and, uh... Foucault, yeah, Foucault. Don't forget that guy. He said some stuff once, just like everyone else to have ever lived, so that means that you should read about what he said, because, like, you can decide for yourself if it's true or not and stuff. Other people say stuff sometimes, too, but they're not famous, so... yeah, I guess you can think critically about what they say, too, but not in this class, okay? Only Foucault!"

I have no idea where you grabbed Ayn Rand from. Maybe you should read the posts on this blog tagged "capitalism," "Zeitgeist Movement," "value system," and "social transparency." I might as well be the anti-Ayn Rand.

...And the guessing game continues!

"People who fetishize engineering majors and are terrible at math are really common. Most of the time, STEM nerds who sneer at arts and humanities seem to have a habit of being bad at their own major, really. They seem to think that everything else is really easy, so their 2.3 average as an electrical engineer is worth way more than a psych/journalism/literature major's 3.6.

 Hearing a CS major call my math major underwater basket weaving and then end up complaining about having to learn proofs and set theory because they're pointless for him to know is just the most precious thing."


First, do a search on my blog for "set theory," and you'll see that I find it invaluable. Funny, though, that you're so territorial of your major that you don't even realize that set theory is not exclusive to it, and is applicable to the entire universe. Jeez, even the first portion of the second sentence of Wikipedia's article on it -- that silly, transparent site with all those wrong people -- makes this apparent!

You are not cool or important for understanding object-orientation and abstraction.

Just as a fun aside, I'll state that I hold two degrees and maintained 4.0 and 3.8 GPAs at the schools from which I got them, respectively. I will withhold the names of the schools for the sake of preserving my anonymity. I can't remember scoring lower than 100 (and often got a 105 after answering the extra credit questions) on a college math exam, either. Sure, I never got to Calc 3, but it wasn't part of either of my degrees, so I never got the chance to try.

Since I don't want to engage in a pissing contest, though, I'll stop here and chuckle a bit to myself at how bizarrely self-preserving and competitive you are. This isn't Facebook, where my cooler Internet picture warrants you checking yourself out in the mirror for an hour.

Seriously, one more irrelevant ad hominem or assertion that you know more about me than I do and I'm going to have to vomit. Your insipid insights into "why" I post what I do are nauseating, as is your insistence that any of this matters. Hopefully, we can be free of Calc courses for people who will never use what they've learned someday, and if we can't, then we might as well call ourselves the Jeopardy culture.

"His thing about freudian psychology reminds me about somebody who was bitching about calculus. "I don't know why they even teach you about limits. After that chapter you'll never use them again because you learn derivatives."

Except that guy somehow managed to pass calculus."

So did I! Am I cool yet?

"He probably still is in school. Only someone who's still in their "rebellious gently caress-you-all" phase could unironically demand history to be dropped from schools."

I'm quite out of school, and work full-time for a systems integrator maintaining their internal network. I get raises and people enjoy my company immensely. I hold the babies of co-workers and participate happily in potlucks and parties. Unfortunately, I just can't bring myself to give a shit about what I'm doing, because it isn't making society better off.

Look, if you're interested in history, no one should stop you from learning about history. I love reading about Canaanite polytheism, the Migration Period, Paul the Deacon's Lombards, Saami shamanism, Genghis Khan, the history of the Sikhs, the Napoleonic wars, and the life of Franz Liszt. But if someone else doesn't love that stuff, should I pay for them to learn and subsequently forget about it, with society not benefiting in the slightest from the hours that they'd wasted? Furthermore, how does knowing about Napoleon make you a more efficient contributor to society, which is in a resource debt, not to mention a dire need to prevent an awful lot of suffering around the world?

"I loved the bitching about trig then the fucker goes on how physics will be taught if he was the Principal of the Known Universe. Kinda need one in order to full understand the other. Oh, what's that? "Parabolas"? Don't need them.

Also, the comment about "metacognition"? I had to look that up but all it is just making memorization even more rote."

And I love your equating physics with physics as it's currently taught to older people. The entire world is physics; yes, the equations are useful to those who will be doing work in that field, but everyone should at least have a rudimentary understanding of gravity, the presence of molecules versus vacuums, forces, momentum, and maybe some of the simpler laws of thermodynamics. Does any of that require trig? I can and probably should teach it to fourth graders.

Speaking of which, that's another thing: I couldn't possibly consider myself far smarter than the average person if I view most of what I'm promoting as being understandable to small children. It's the memes inside your brains that are the problem -- not the raw hardware.

"He didn't say it, but he plans on changing the curriculum to replace Shakespeare with Animorphs."

Shakespeare is more Lit than English. If I were to teach Shakespeare to an elementary school class learning about gerunds and adverbs, I'd make a huge mess. Early modern English is as useful to us as proto-Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic.

"I would wager on Cs/Ds. His comment about junking the "arbitrary base 10" grading system and doing everything pass/fail suggests a guy who's seen "70" on a lot of papers, thought it was good enough, and then gotten pissed off at his parents when they told him to apply himself more.

It's also odd how he sometimes seems to be talking about college, and other times about public K-12. Unless there are universities teaching sex ed or making students recite the pledge of allegiance."

More personal attacks! Love it. I'm sure Bigfoot enthusiasts think you're an absolutely vapid moron when it comes to traipsing around a forest and searching for footprints. Guess that means Bigfoot exists, eh?

I talk about all levels of education in the post because no one should ever stop learning as long as they live, and age should not arbitrarily define what you learn about. Is that a problem?

"Where did you find that ultranerd manifesto anyway? I seriously want to see more of this guys posts. Education reform ideas by total idiots is by far my favorite dumb internet comment thing. It's the easiest way to see a person's entire thought process. Also, that dude's school would be beyond loving boring.

BEEP BOOP WE MUST ONLY LEARN GRAMMAR, MATH, SCIENCE AND COMPUTER SKILLS BEEP BOOP CREATIVITY IS FOR LESSER PEOPLE BEEP BOOP PLEASE EAT YOUR PROVIDED HOT POCKETS AND THROW AWAY ALL OF YOUR GYM CLOTHES"

Those would be required skills. What you personally want to do to contribute to society is obviously an entirely separate matter. Are you sure you're adept at reading comprehension?

Most schools are already beyond boring. My goal would be to reform the entire system so that the teacher/student dichotomy is eradicated, friendships with "teachers" are built over years rather than months or "quarters," only first names are used, multiple choice tests are kept to a minimum, practice and implementation are encouraged, correlation with economic success is done away with, stress is reduced overall, extrinsic motivators are eradicated, multiple "teachers" are assigned to one class, classes have far fewer "students" (as few as five, in some cases), and one-on-one time is a must. In this environment, not only would creativity not be discouraged, it would be the entire point.

"Honestly, ultra-nerd's hatred of things like higher maths and rant about proper formatting structure in academic papers lead me to believe he's a pissed off highs schooler with a chip on his shoulder

"Give my paper an F? I'll show you Ms Zukowski!"

Yep, and Richard Dawkins failed Sunday school too many times, so he's nerding out and getting his revenge on those evil Catholics for not being nice to him. The Buddha was terrible at asceticism and was constantly mocked by the other ascetics for failing to properly starve himself, so he gave Hinduism the finger and started his own group. Einstein was always at the bottom of the class when Newtonian classical physics was at the fore, so he got his revenge by coming up with E=mc^2.

See how easy that was?

I would never pretend to be more important than anyone else and am not equating myself with these famous people, but you get the point. Or you probably don't, but oh well.

"I couldn't make it through.

I got to this footnote; "* This is the place where I'm supposed to link you to articles proving that I'm right, but I don't feel like Googling for the obvious."



'I'm correct, just accept that as fact. Accept that I know what's best for everyone and everything. Accept that I should make all decisions for everyone everywhere. And you shall know my name is the LORD when I strike down upon you!

KNEEL! KNEEL BEFORE THE ULTIMATE INTELLIGENCE IN THE UNIVERSE!'


gently caress you. You small minded, myopic, misguided, twatty little tyrant. I bend no knee to your cause.

He's said his opinion. I don't give a Tinker's dam to read anymore of it."

Really? You're going to call me arrogant for stating that it's obvious that the music industry is in decline? Really? You must be the type to require citations and references to the sky being blue, then.

Of course, I don't really think that this is the case, and will instead chalk up your stupid exaggeration to your wanting to fit in online by making fun of any chunk of text you can find that will fit into the pre-agreed upon objective.


Well, there you have it, folks. SomethingAwful somehow manages to live up to its name constantly, while taking irony to heights never previously fathomed by mankind. Goofy Internet memes, Family Guy, and "random" (see: foundationless) humor not only are par for the course, but infest every crevice of signature and avatar space. Internet nerds lambaste those who disagree with them on the sole grounds that the counter-points damage their individual identity as an interesting, unique, and important human being, all the while never proposing substantive counterarguments. They then proceed to proclaim the originator of the ideas to be a nerd (like it really matters who's behind the ideas at all to begin with), even though they're the ones entrenched in banal pop culture references, anonymous socialization, and ego inflation -- all staples of nerddom.

Yeah, yeah, a person's character is irrelevant to their arguments, so I shouldn't bother with attacking the character of the average Internet forums-goer. That aside, though:

1. These people have no arguments to critique, so what else am I supposed to say? They outright refuse to even make the attempt to prove my ideas wrong.

2. This is a lot of fun.

"Hey, that guy claimed that his view is probably more accurate than mine, and my view defines me as a person -- a charming, witty, hive-minded keyboard warrior making important contributions to society through my college courses and affirmations of cultural integration among my peers! I know all the latest, trendy memes and absurdist jokes, I'm really good at lumping people into bullshit categories, and I make money, sometimes. The fact that all of this is utterly meaningless and often detrimental to society in the face of repugnant social ostracization, cutthroat capitalism, and valueless mass hysteria aside, my being called out on it means that the accuser is a failure at all of the above!"

Oh, if only logic were always reducible to convenient if-then red herrings and assassinations of character.

Let's suppose, for a minute, that I'm maintaining this blog just to feel superior to others and look cool. So what? I'm sure a lot of great thinkers were douchebags, but that doesn't make them wrong.

So prove me wrong.

On a final note, I will state that having a whole thread on your forum dedicated to slander, harassment, and aimless trolling just goes to show how little we've progressed as a species. I would sooner praise cowardly Roman denizens for cheering while gladiators get mauled to death by lions than praise the modern, emasculated Internetter who'd be too afraid to watch his objects of scorn get the same treatment, all the while being just as invested in using other people for his own solipsistic entertainment.

I guess failing to make the cute girl at the office laugh after reciting some ultra-obscure Internet joke laced with layers of references would lead one to retreat to a world where acceptance is garnered by ostracizing even bigger losers, like My Little Pony fans. Keep your religion if you want, but I'll have no part in it. How sickening it is that people in this day and age still abide by the "I don't like what you're saying, so you do all of the following unrelated things in your personal life, which makes you a bad person worthy of mockery" mentality. Grow up.

139 comments:

  1. By the way, I love having sex with children.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Whee! It's like SA v. TvT all over again! Pass the popcorn!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, you two sure replied fast for something that's too long to be bothered to read. Are you guys okay?

    I didn't know that about you, though, Ultranerd Hunter. Pedophilia is more common than most people realize, but still.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Wow, you two sure replied fast for something that's too long to be bothered to read."

      Because they didn't read it. Hence the meme, "too long, didn't read". Duh.

      Delete
    2. Yes, but they wanted to make sure that I knew they didn't read it. That's fine in itself, but informing me within mere minutes of my posting this doesn't exactly support their facade of elite Internet troll apathy.

      Delete
    3. I did actually read it. Still working on translating from the neckbeard dialect of butthurt to english.

      Delete
    4. What are you, a rap battler? Can't wait to hear your next dis track.

      Delete
    5. Actually, that metaphor makes perfect sense. You guys like to hide behind whatever particular gang you belong to, after all. Strength in numbers, right?!

      Delete
    6. "there's more of you with this opinions, therefore you must be a hivemind and are automatically wrong, whereas I am a lone dissenter and am therefore correct."

      Delete
    7. ^that's you btw. you said that.

      Delete
  4. Cry some moar, pedophile.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Special announcement: All future commenters to intentionally misspell words using unfunny, ten-year-old shut-in jargon will be beheaded.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh no, some loser on the internet who totally doesn't care what other people think but will take time out of his day to write a long post saying why he doesn't care is making vague empty threats. *Rolls eyes*

      Delete
    2. Yeah you probably should have just shrugged the thread off and moved on.

      Writing this lengthy blogpost didn't really accomplish anything other than providing entertainment to some internet people.

      Delete
    3. "Oh no, some loser on the internet who totally doesn't care what other people think but will take time out of his day to write a long post saying why he doesn't care is making vague empty threats. *Rolls eyes*"

      I care quite a bit and never professed otherwise. Terrible ideas and behavioral patterns need to be outed wherever possible.

      Anyone who doesn't care what other people think is an out-of-touch brat.

      Delete
    4. There's nothing wrong with providing entertainment. But you wrote this post to show goons what's what, because you thought they'd care enough to get upset. And now you're backpedaling and rolling with the punches.

      Delete
    5. Don't get me wrong, this is hilarious.

      Delete
    6. There are ten thousand replies to it within a half hour of it being posted, so I'd say that proves they care -- at least enough to respond at all.

      I'm not backpedaling. I'm standing by the post completely, but you're not rebutting it, so there's nothing to reply to.

      Delete
    7. I poop on your post

      Delete
    8. "Terrible ideas and behavioral patterns need to be outed wherever possible."

      You're not really outing them for the benefit of anyone but yourself, and a few antinatalists.

      Maybe I'm wrong and you actually have a lot of loyal readers, but they never seem to comment soooooo

      Delete
    9. Eating a single potato chip isn't going to fill me up, but if it's tasty and I don't have to do a hundred sit-ups to eat it, then the reward outweighs the cost.

      Delete
  6. "Well, there you have it, folks. SomethingAwful somehow manages to live up to its name constantly, while taking irony to heights never previously fathomed by mankind. Goofy Internet memes, Family Guy, and "random" (see: foundationless) humor not only are par for the course, but infest every crevice of signature and avatar space. Internet nerds lambaste those who disagree with them on the sole grounds that the counter-points damage their individual identity as an interesting, unique, and important human being, all the while never proposing substantive counterarguments. They then proceed to proclaim the originator of the ideas to be a nerd (like it really matters who's behind the ideas at all to begin with), even though they're the ones entrenched in banal pop culture references, anonymous socialization, and ego inflation -- all staples of nerddom."

    You have Asperger's syndrome.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What gave his Asperger's away to me was the BEEP BOOP PICTURES ARE INEFFICIENT BEEP bit.

      Seriously, what the fuck makes anyone say that.

      Delete
    2. I actually have AS, and even I don't think that way. Congratulations ultra-nerd: have more social ineptitude and inability to understand human communication than a full-fledged, bona fide aspie.

      Delete
  7. So, guys, about those counterarguments...

    I mean, are they late, or...?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think anyone can refute things like "calling me an ultranerd? That's JUST LIKE calling someone a racial slur."

      Delete
    2. No, you're just not worth it. :D But keep rolling with the punches though. *Pats you on the head*

      Delete
    3. "I don't think anyone can refute things like 'calling me an ultranerd? That's JUST LIKE calling someone a racial slur."'"

      I agree completely!

      Delete
    4. "ONOES!!! SOMEONE IS MAKING FUN OF THE FACT THAT I'M AN ASSHOLE!!! THEY ARE LITERALLY HITLER!!!"

      Delete
    5. Actually, it's more like, "Wow, not just someone, but an entire group of anonymous people are making fun of me for my opinions on things by lumping me in with failed engineering majors, socially unsuccessful people, and 'STEM nerds' -- not because there's any kind of absolute correlation, but because they're lazy and dumb. Yeah, sounds like Hitler to me."

      But let's backtrack for a second. Give me a direct quote of me being an asshole.

      Delete
    6. The stupidity of your position lies in you writing that, looking it over and deciding it's good enough to publish for the world to see.

      And then demanding people refute it when you are rightfully called out.

      Delete
    7. "Give me a direct quote of me being an asshole."

      Here:

      "Ultranerds, niggers, Jews, fatties -- yeah, let's keep perpetuating what makes humankind absolutely abhorrent by generalizing people into predefined categories for the sole purpose of objectification and, ironically, obliteration of empathy."

      In which you compare institutionalized racism to some people on the internet mocking you.

      Delete
    8. So I'm wrong to compare an institutionalized form of mockery to a lazier form of mockery? Can I compare a big apple to a small apple to make the point that they're apples, or is that not allowed because they're different sizes?

      I don't care what you call me, but as soon as that term comes with connotations of what "other" people under that umbrella term do, think, and believe, you're not only obfuscating, you're being a gigantic prick.

      Delete
    9. RACISM IS JUST A FORM OF MOCKERY GUYS

      Delete
    10. "Can I compare a big apple to a small apple to make the point that they're apples, or is that not allowed because they're different sizes?"
      You idiot. Similarities in logical structure is not an automatic basis for comparison.

      Delete
    11. So you're saying that the only difference between Hitler and the guys who laughed at you for reading hentai in class is scale?

      Delete
    12. Minstrel shows with blackface are totally not racism, guys! Racism has nothing to do with mockery, nope!

      I already noted that the degree -- or quantity -- of the quality is irrelevant to the presence of the quality -- that is, mockery. And again, this isn't about mockery, anyway; it's about conflation of individuals with different perspectives under a single umbrella term for the sake of making generalizations about their character and lives. That is never okay, no matter how tame the actual execution is.

      So you come from SomethingAwful, and you're something of a prick. I would never, ever subsequently refer to you as a "SomethingAwfuler" and assert that "SomethingAwfulers all dwell in their mother's basements." I'm not exactly lighting you on fire, but most racism is discreet and passive-aggressive, anyway. I'm sure your grandmothers do more harm in their racism than the average lynch mob ever did. Ideas are powerful stuff; they govern ever facet of our lives, and the sooner you realize this, the better.

      See where I'm going with this?

      Delete
    13. Leaving Society, you are a racist. You actively make the world a worse place.

      Delete
  8. So you're doing this because you know this is going to get you pageviews or do you just like being laughed at?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm doing it for public posterity. It's a beautiful vignette of how incapable most people are of civilly proposing an opposing view, or any opposing view whatsoever, for that matter.

      Delete
    2. I think it's a beautiful vignette displaying the incompetence of one man in convincing a bunch of well-adjusted, intelligent people that his ridiculous beliefs have merit.

      Delete
    3. That it is. However, not for the reason you think.

      Delete
    4. Ah, "well-adjusted." There's one of those argument-killing terms lathered in snark. What does that term mean, exactly, and what does it have to do with a philosophical system? Can I get a copy of the "How to know that you're well-adjusted (see: cool)" checklist?

      I'm not here to convince you; I'm here to put the information out there. I'd love for a lot of people to read it, but if they don't, it was worth the effort, anyway.

      Delete
    5. "What does that term mean, exactly"
      "Mentally and emotionally stable."

      Delete
    6. Ah, so then it doesn't apply to me at all. Thanks for the clarification.

      Good thing it didn't, though, or I'd have to remind you that it would be your social responsibility to provide me with links that would allow me to seek help -- that, or you'd have to explain how an unstable person exists in a vacuum without negative environmental causes that need to be addressed.

      Delete
    7. I called you incompetent. I said the SA goons are well-adjusted and intelligent.

      Delete
    8. Grasping at straws fallacy/desperate use of semantics to "win," because, as we all know, this is just a game, and none of these ideas are important.

      You did call me incompetent. However, you didn't demonstrate my incompetence; instead, you attempted to justify generalization and association of people with other people for the sake of defaming their character on the sole grounds that, you know, it's not as bad as racism.

      Logic!

      Delete
    9. You demonstrate your own incompetence in everything you write. That you don't see it makes no difference.

      Delete
    10. If I actually gave you an example, you would either deny it or find some way to rationalize it. There is no point.

      Delete
    11. Try me. Take five hundred words to copy and paste some things I've written, then cite logical fallacies applicable to the statements. You can do this on another blog if you wish, but I always take the time to thoroughly read and consider every counter point.

      Delete
    12. Also, again, this has nothing to do with me. Your choice of words really shows what your modus operandi is. Instead of telling me that I continually demonstrate my incompetence -- and potentially creating preventable conflict in the process -- why not state that I have "ideas that don't appear to be in line with the reality"?

      Delete
    13. "cite logical fallacies"
      You must have mistaken me for one of the idiot nerds in your debate club. Logical fallacies aren't fucking Yu-Gi-Oh trap cards and pointing them out isn't going to earn anyone points for adhering to protocol.

      Delete
    14. Oh, so nothing that you could try would work?

      Wait, why are you still here again?

      Delete
    15. BLEEP BLORP INPUT NOT ACCEPTED ABORT/RETRY/FAIL

      Delete
    16. That's another big part of the problem of labeling people: As soon as the label sticks, your followers will never bother to question its accuracy. Generalizations are never good, but they're especially egregious when no one knows anything about their targets.

      Yeah, someone calling me an ultranerd is not the same as a Jewish person being gassed in an extermination camp. No shit. The point is that if I witness you get into a fight with someone else to defend yourself and I don't like you, it doesn't take much for me to come up with some dull name and begin spreading it around so that people who have no idea who you are can begin to use it to describe you and "people like you" -- you no-good, violent types. That DID happen to the Jews, and it doesn't matter how it starts, where it starts, or on what scale it starts; at the end of the day, there is no fundamental, qualitative difference, and you're perpetuating, in the abstract, the kind of cognitive lapses in reasoning necessary for Holocausts to happen in the first place.

      Plus, in the absence of any mentions of pop culture, video games, being depressed, sitting in my room all day, being bad with women, etc., it's incredibly crass to take a few posts stressing that we should not be ruled by our emotions -- you know, something MADD, anger management, addiction centers, and your parents have told you repeatedly throughout your lives -- and somehow spin them so that I'm subhuman. I'm sure that you're all politicians, or are at least aspiring to become such. Spin away!

      Delete
    17. Short version: You are the reason the Holocaust happened. This was never about me or defending myself.

      Delete
    18. By the way, you can accuse me of not willing to listen to counterarguments, but you don't have anything with which to back that up. A few commenters here have provided suggestions for alterations in my worldview, the blog layout, and new features; Tim Cooijmans in particular has been someone who has managed to change my mind quite a few times.

      Here's an example of me changing my mind:

      http://nobadmemes.blogspot.com/2011/07/concession-to-antinatalist-community.html

      It's really not hard to do this to me, and I do it a few times a year. You just have to present a logical argument. Why can't you do that instead of curse and act like every other random statistic on the Internet? I hope you take a good, hard look at those three hundred pages on your forum and realize how similar it is to a Roman stadium.

      You are the problem.

      Delete
  9. Guys, I'm sorry. You're right. Everyone should know Calculus. Everyone. Staring at paintings will definitely change the world. Cryptic messages prove that you're smarter than everyone else. Internet memes are funny after all.

    Did I miss anything?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well you missed the point of all their criticisms...

      Delete
    2. Oh, you mean the accusations of my being an arrogant asshole?

      Yeah, not relevant to the arguments that I present here.

      Delete
  10. You sure showed SA, man! You sure showed them!!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, they sure showed me first by calling me a spergin' STEM nerd. I was politely minding my business, and then a bunch of people decided to semi-privately get all upset about it together in a circle.

      So I countered their every claim, and now they can't leave me alone. Yay!

      Look, we're both replying, so we both care. You're the only one pretending that you don't. Did I "show" anyone anything? Maybe not, but it was fun to write, and although I don't have many readers, I do get non-SA readers as well who I'm sure will appreciate this, including a few friends of mine.

      Delete
    2. The risk dissenters take is the possibility of lynching.

      Delete
  11. Realtalk:

    As someone who actually does some anti-racist work, I found your equivalence between ultranerd and n----- very offensive.

    The n-word isn't a simple insult. It is one part of a whole institutional apparatus that oppresses black people and other people of color. It isn't a spur-of-the-moment thing.

    Ultranerd, by comparison, is some people on the internet making fun of you. You aren't denied rights, you aren't randomly searched by police, you aren't shot down in the street because of your nerdiness, nothing. There is absolutely no danger of that ever happening to you on an institutional scale.

    They aren't equivalent.

    Please refrain from doing that again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Never underestimate the persecution complexes of people like this. They view stubbing their toes as more persecutive toward them than the holocaust was to the jews.

      Delete
    2. Ah, got it. Silly me for thinking that news stories about people committing suicide over MySpace bullying have any veracity to them! Guys, it's okay to treat someone like they're lesser than you, as long as it isn't done in an institutionalized way.

      Yeah, just because two things cannot be equated does not mean they cannot be qualitatively compared and unified.

      Cue trite crap about how unemotionally pointing out that lumping people into groups so that it's easier to dehumanize them in the general sense automatically means that I'm slitting my wrists over this.

      Delete
    3. Okay see, doing things like that is why no one bothers to talk seriously with you.

      Delete
    4. Leaving Society, you are a racist.

      Delete
    5. And a Holocaust denier, apparently.

      Delete
    6. So by having intellectual discourse over disagreements, you actually meant that you'll use straw man arguments and a lot of sarcasm to make your argument look better? Just trying to figure out what page we're on here.

      Delete
    7. "The Holocaust" was not some top-down, thoroughly planned, efficient event in history during which Jews were systematically exterminated. Hitler was anti-top-down, for the most part (there are of course exceptions), because he was a Social Darwinist, and saw merit in giving rulers of different parts of Germany autonomy for the sake of "experimenting" and determining which methodologies worked the best.

      This resulted in a few people getting together and having scare speeches where they reinforced the German people's hatred of Jews, because using the Jews as a scapegoat for their economic failures was simple and convenient. A few empty threats to "exterminate" them were made under the "Final Solution," but there are no surviving photographs or physical gas chambers, and only a total buffoon would attempt genocide by making people work their asses off for months after spending hours shipping them from one side of the country to the other. The simple fact of the matter is that the crematories, et al. were established as a means of "disposing" of the Jewish workers when they became too famished to get any work done.

      Wouldn't it make much more sense to just line them up and get a firing squad than to waste your resources on moving them all over the place and working them to death? The Germans worked the Jews to death because they were too stupid to keep them alive.

      Delete
    8. You just hit a new low.

      Delete
    9. I have no words.

      Delete
    10. Sometimes the dissenters need to be silenced.

      Delete
    11. Doesn't it just ruin your day when what you thought was just a harmless but amusing ultranerd with the dream of being a robot starts spewing neo-Nazi bullshit?

      Delete
    12. And so, I have proved my thesis that Leaving Society is a racist. Thank you and goodnight.

      Delete
    13. everyone chill he has clarified below that all of this is a social experiment.

      joke's on you.

      Delete
    14. "Spewing neo-Nazi bullshit" is the funniest thing anyone has ever pinned onto me. I laughed so hard at that.

      Of course the Germans wanted to exterminate the Jews, and of course they did so in limited numbers/small pockets. They also randomly walked up to Poles (I'm a Pole, by the way -- dumb jokes incoming, lol!) and shot them for no good reason. That doesn't make it intelligent, evil super villain, institutionalized genocide.

      Most of the concentration camps involved horribly inhumane conditions and mass executions, but that is not genocide, and is nowhere near a unique historical event. I'd much rather spew vitriol at Caligula or Vlad the Impaler than Hitler.

      Delete
    15. LS, if you're curious about the Holocaust you always could, you know, read some books about the Holocaust. I've never understood why people expend so much energy painting themselves into denialist corners re: Holocaust/evolution/9-11/climate change/etc. when they could just expend that energy actually informing themselves.

      Delete
    16. Read books written by whom? Can you show me a picture of an intact gas chamber that is not a reconstruction? What makes an SS officer's testimonial after the war scientific evidence rather than anecdotal evidence?

      I would never deny what happened to the Jews, but I will certainly question the meme that it was done efficiently, entirely intentionally, and for some super evil cause.

      Delete
    17. "entirely intentionally"

      Please elaborate.

      Delete
    18. A lot of Jewish deaths were the result of incompetence, and occurred prior to the construction of the "extermination camps." They intentionally starved the Jews, and I'm sure they knew that at least some of them would die, but the end goal was initially to get them to perform hard labor, not to kill them. Over six million Jews did die during World War II, but most of them did not die in extermination camps, even if they worked in concentration camps.

      As for the extermination camps themselves, Wikipedia says:

      "According to historians at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 'The Nazis frequently used euphemistic language to disguise the true nature of their crimes. They used the term 'Final Solution' to refer to their plan to annihilate the Jewish people.'"

      "They didn't mean what they said, and were actually evil geniuses instead."

      On the first extermination camp:

      "Bełżec's three gas chambers began operating officially on March 17, 1942, the first of the Operation Reinhard camps to begin killing.[3] Its first victims were Jews deported from Lublin and Lwów. There were many technical difficulties in this first attempt at mass extermination. The gas chamber mechanisms were problematic, and usually only one or two were working at any given time, causing a backlog."

      Many people died in this camp when it was still a labor camp and not an extermination camp. A lot of them were Poles, indicating that the "Final Solution to the Jewish problem" was not the primary motivation.

      "Belzec extermination camp, the model for two others in the Aktion Reinhard murder program, started as a labor camp in April 1940, in the course of the Burggraben-project attached to the Lublin reservation in the same area: the reservation was to serve as a pool for forced labour exploited by various small camps like Belzec, to erect defensive works along the German Nazi-Soviet demarcation line such as a long anti-tank ditch.[6] While the Burggraben project was shut down by the end of the year due to its inefficiency, Belzec was re-opened in 1942 to finish part of the anti-tank ditch."

      Delete
    19. Kill the dissident

      Delete
    20. To sum up: Extermination camps existed, but there is a glaring lack of evidence for many of their most notorious devices of torture. For the most part, it was the average, dumb German citizen who hated Jews -- not the SS officers, who merely used their people's hatred as a means to the end of getting rid of a problem they had created themselves in the first place.

      Delete
    21. "I'm a Pole"

      You, sir, might be a prole:

      "While few things scream 'PROLE!' louder than not having a college degree by the age of 25 [...]"

      "Completing a college degree when you are older than the age of 24 marks you as prole and not as middle class."

      http://www.halfsigma.com/2012/09/graduate-degrees-and-class.html

      http://www.halfsigma.com/2012/09/college-and-middle-class-vs-prole.html

      Delete
    22. 1. For the record, I obtained my first of several college degrees by the time I was nineteen after maintaining a 4.0 GPA, so fuck off. I also hold several certifications.

      2. Correlation does not imply causation, and to insinuate otherwise is logically fallacious, not to mention robotically moronic.

      3. College as it presently exists is a huge waste of time and money, even if it's still ultimately a financial necessity. There is absolutely no reason for why a future engineer needs to know about rococo art, let alone be forced to memorize associated bullshit while paying a bunch of obese bankers whose careers are predicated on parasitism and exploiting loopholes in our nonsensical economic system.

      4. In spite of the present necessity of a college degree in the marketplace, the ever-rising availability of loans made possible by seedy opportunists invested in preying upon our reactionary desires has led to a fairly preposterous saturation of said marketplace with college graduates, thus causing certain economic sectors to teeter on the edge of implosion.

      5. Most important life values, ethics, and approaches to living are not obtained in college.

      6. Genetics and environmental conditioning determine a person's level of awareness and efficiency, not economic status. Economic status does impact one's conditioning, but it certainly lacks a monopoly over how competent we are as human beings. Duh.

      Delete
  12. Wait, I'm confused because you seem to be contradicting yourself a lot on this, do you or do you not care what other people think about you?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1. I care what people think in general, about everything. What people think about me is a subset of what people think in general, so I care about that.

      2. I made this post because I knew it would get like a hundred comments, and that is funny and fascinating to me.

      3. Some people actually enjoy their jobs, and their enjoyment in no way indicates that they don't care. Weird, huh?

      Delete
    2. Ah, yes, the DANCE MY PUPPETS! card. I was wondering when it would show up.

      Delete
    3. Just because human behavior is predictable doesn't mean I view you as my puppets. This, as in the case of the blog as a whole, is an experiment -- not a puppet show.

      Delete
    4. Leaving Society, why are you such a racist?

      Delete
  13. Hey just a heads up, "slander" applies mainly to defamation through speech and the word he's looking for to describe our thread is "libel" (Which applies to defamation through the written word).

    Oh, the things you learn in English class...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. English is useless. Beep boop. Commence communication in binary now. Beep boop.

      Delete
    2. Hanbei, I appreciate your facetiousness and apparent fence-sitting. Good show.

      To be serious, I guess "libel" is applicable, here, but in any case, I was referring to your entire, counterproductive, mean-spirited thread than to the portion about me.

      Delete
  14. This post made my butt feel funny and not in a good way

    ReplyDelete
  15. "Goofy Internet memes, Family Guy, and "random" (see: foundationless) humor" Speaking of Fox cartoon shows, this is kind of like the end of an episode of the Simpsons, in that everything is in flames, everyone involved is a cartoonish ass, and no one has learned anything.

    This is your ninth season Leaving Society! Quit before you turn to unfunny shit!

    ReplyDelete
  16. "Ultranerd, if you're reading this, that Einstein thing is an urban legend, started by Ripley's Believe It or Not. Also, you really need to brush up on your Buddhism. It was only after trying the most extreme forms of asceticism that Buddha achieved his enlightenment and realized that moderation was the key. He never told his teachers to go gently caress themselves.

    Also, Dawkins family were Anglicans, you tool."

    I am reading this, and just thought I'd say that I made all of those up. I know that the Buddha, if he really did exist, underwent some pretty extreme bodily experiments, and I know that Dawkins is not a Catholic. I made all of that up, just like someone from SomethingAwful made all of the preceding stuff up about me. That was kind of the entire point.

    And to the guy ranting about how I'm being inconsistent in promoting physics over math, I'm for learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division for everyone, just as I'm for being able to understand that in outer space, molecules are scant for everyone. You absolutely do not need to understand high school math to be able to understand the bare bones of physics. If you want to learn more about physics, great; by all means, go for it. But the equations aren't necessary if we want to tell young people the story of what we are, what we're made of (you know, physical stuff), and where we came from. The latter stuff is what matters, because without it, there would be no context for understanding the nature of life as a negative thing.

    That gets into antinatalism, though, so I'll stop there for now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "I was just testing you *smug*"

      Delete
    2. Huh? It was a pretty clear example of the idea that someone in favor of overturning an outdated facet of a paradigm must, logically and absolutely, be a poor performer in the field where the facet exists.

      By the logic of the poster of that original comment regarding my needing to score poorly on math tests in order to want higher math to not be forced on bored students who won't be needing it ever, everyone who gets mad at anything or rejects anything conventional must be bad at that thing. This is not only false, but stupid.

      Delete
    3. Leaving Society, please leave that poor little strawman alone. He never did nothin' to hurt nobody.

      Delete
  17. What's your theory on why you're single?

    ReplyDelete
  18. So how are these kids supposed to learn to be good at art, or whether or not they like it, or english, or any of the things you would cut if they aren't taught the basics?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They participate in those things at any other time of the day?

      Delete
  19. "Yeah, just because two things cannot be equated does not mean they cannot be qualitatively compared and unified."

    Except what you are doing IS equating two things that cannot be equated: internet mockery and institutional racism. If you actually qualitatively compare them you notice that they are DIFFERENT.

    This assertion of yours that all forms of categorisation are equally harmful is just self-evidently wrong; it's like arguing that all foods taste identical because they're all kinds of food, or that because all injuries are harmful a paper cut and a gunshot wound are equivalent.

    Also, this was never about lumping you into a category to dehumanise you. It was about pointing out that you - specifically you, the person - have shitty opinions, which you do.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Oh, really? Here's a quote from one of you:

    "In my experience yeah. The idea that art can have multiple meanings and is ultimately interpreted by the observer is anathema to them. They also hate anything that doesn't look like it involved a lot of technical skill."

    Stuff like this absolutely terrifies me, especially because it's so prevalent in our society. How do you not see the similarity? Can't you just admit that you're wrong, or would that hurt your ego?

    I am not equating Internet mockery with racism, because Internet mockery is not racism; racism is racism. They are different in target, scale, severity, and negativity; however, they are similar in cause, and are both examples of generalization. To define is a good thing, because all abstractions relevant to sentient life should have symbolic meanings, but to generalize is not a good thing, because now you're taking two things with separate definitions and claiming that they have the same definition, which they don't.

    It doesn't matter whether you're claiming that all Jews are greedy or that all people from Jersey are obnoxious or that all people who drive expensive cars are douchebags or that all blacks are dumb or that all cars made by Chevy fall apart in the first five years. You're still not analyzing things on an individual basis, which will lead to some kind of negative outcome.

    Call me arrogant without using stupid terms or associating me with "nerds"; just don't expect me to take you seriously or suddenly come to the realization that I'm arrogant on the sole grounds that I disagree with most people, because that's fallacious.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Fallacious and irrelevant character assassination, I might reiterate.

    I've already shown why I agree that art can have multiple meanings, and why I not only don't care about technical skill for the most part, but also don't think it should be forced onto the average person. This refutes the original poster's comment completely, and demonstrates why I wouldn't belong under the umbrella term proposed if that's what the definition of "ultranerd" is. The fact that he gets all of this wrong without getting to know me is a very prevalent social problem, and directly parallels things like sexism and racism.

    Do not accuse others of doing thing A on the grounds that they do thing B if thing A is not part of the definition of a person who indulges in thing B; instead observe each individual one-on-one to decide whether they incidentally do thing A.

    How are you not understanding this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. because you are terrible at conveying your terrible opinions

      Delete
    2. Wow, you're a sharp one. Waiting for the right opportunity to take advantage of an ambiguity in language sure shows character and intelligence.

      Do you make such incendiary comments after months of lying dormant when someone says "Those balls are too small"? Haha, pee-pee and poo-poo is funny.

      Delete
  22. Show me why my opinions are shitty, please. Also, note your use of "shitty" in the place of "unfounded" or "illogical," clearly betraying that, in your Internet culture hive-mind world, defamation and mockery take precedence over persuasion and dialogue.

    All that you have to do is take a quick look at your cute thread to realize that it was never about constructing valid arguments; all three hundred pages of it are devoted to subhuman derision and social division as a form of entertainment.

    Care to, I don't know, make a single, constructive reply about our education system and what we can do to make it better? You haven't even mentioned ways to improve it to counter mine, so either you think our education system is already perfect, or you're another apathetic, twenty-something, modern solipsist.

    ReplyDelete
  23. racist sniffing dogAugust 25, 2012 at 9:39 PM

    WOOF WOOF WOOF

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Assuming a character has great potential for elucidating a point or capitalizing on a refrain, but you're not really an exemplar of that, here, now are you? You might as well have just typed "I am implying that you are a racist with this sentence. LOL!!!"

      Delete
  24. All I wanna know is with ants eating a lizard?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All I wanna know is what does any of this have to do with ants eating a lizard?

      Skipped some words there.

      Delete
  25. You should dislodge your head from your sphincter before posting.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Your opinions are shitty.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Somebody calls you a dumbass on the Internet. You make a long ass rebuttal where a more intelligent person would be finding something more productive to do. How does it feel to be insecure?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How does it feel to spend your entire life speaking in clichés supporting the obviously idiotic notion that being thorough purely for the sake of it is symptomatic of insecurity?

      I'm sure that were you in my situation, you would have thought to yourself, "Doing what I always do with my blog, only this time knowing that it's going to piss off a bunch of Internet culture aficionados who had no idea that I'd found their thread? Nah, every second of my waking life needs to be spent being 'productive' according to some effete standard, so I'm going to go do Calc problems instead like a real man!"

      Delete
    2. Also note my dismantling the barbs aimed at me while examining them as pervasive, fundamental cultural problems instead of addressing them as they had manifested as "personal attacks" toward me in particular. I'm sure that if I were to have made this exact same post in response to another person being lampooned in your thread, you'd have never even thought to play the cheap insecurity card.

      Trite is as trite does, I guess.

      Delete
    3. Well, you sure showed me. I'm going to get off the internet and rethink my life. Thanks Ultranerd!

      Delete
    4. There are two activities to comment on, here:

      1. My points regarding why not every second of our lives needs to be spent being productive, why you're a hypocrite, etc.

      2. How I subjectively decided to convey this information

      You chose to comment on 2. -- and in a way that will not stand the test of time to boot. No Norman monk from the twelfth century or future space colonist is going to understand "why" that slab of Internet sarcasm somehow means that I "try too hard to win arguments."

      I wrote a few sentences demonstrating why I think you're incorrect after you made an assertion, and you decided it would be more manly to not defend your assertion and instead use quickly-aging rhetoric that your Internet pals will appreciate.

      Obviously, my typing this is not going to change your mind, but we're both here to have fun, right?

      Delete
    5. "You want us to stop raping these girls, huh? Ooh, you sure showed us with your 'empathy' for them! Ooh, we're so scared, ultra-empath! You gonna keep talking to yourself and pretending that you're doing good for the world?"

      People don't seem to understand that not every assertion that you make has to be made expecting the best-case reaction. It really is about the amount of energy that it takes me to type these replies -- not whether anyone is going to care. I'm certainly not wearing myself out doing this.

      Delete
  28. "Look, if you're interested in history, no one should stop you from learning about history. I love reading about Canaanite polytheism, the Migration Period, Paul the Deacon's Lombards, Saami shamanism, Genghis Khan, the history of the Sikhs, the Napoleonic wars, and the life of Franz Liszt. But if someone else doesn't love that stuff, should I pay for them to learn and subsequently forget about it, with society not benefiting in the slightest from the hours that they'd wasted?"

    So if I don't love math, are you cool with paying for me to learn and subsequently forget about it, with society not benefiting in the slightest from the hours that I'd wasted?

    ReplyDelete
  29. I really feel sorry for you, that you'll never be able to look at a painting (not ALL paintings, because art is pretty subjective) and actually FEEL something (other than "ew art what a waste of PRECIOUS HUMAN EFFORT"). I have some art on my wall because I looked at it and it drove an emotional response. And it's pretty.

    I think the biggest problem that people have with you/your commentary (besides your terrible opinions re: education) is that you definitely DO come off as a smug "look at me I know best" person. You can't in good faith claim that when you write a thousand words on how to (terribly, in my opinion) rearrange the country's educational system you're not somebody who thinks he's better than everybody else. It's sort of inherent in the argument.

    Also I have an aerospace engineering degree from a worldwide top-five university and I think that history, philosophy (I almost got a minor in it!), English, etc, are totally important to understanding humanity and society, if not exactly the most lucrative career choices. But the great thing about modern Western society is that we can support people who choose to make that their life path by funding universities, etc, where they can further their studies in those areas and improve our society by doing so.

    If you disagree with that, I posit that it's YOU who are wrong and not society, because societal/cultural norms are defined by the society/culture in question, not some guy on the internet who has bad ideas about things.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Spare the feigned, condescending "pity," please. No one wants to read that.

    Quite frankly, I have no idea what you're talking about, and the fact that what you're saying is in no way applicable to me indicates a lack of reading comprehension skill on your part -- as it does with the other commenters here, to whom I have had to iterate simplistic abstract scenarios at different scales and with different degrees of complexity, over and over again.

    I love art, and like to think that I know quite a bit about it (not that knowledge in any way presupposes genuineness in any situation). I love subjective beauty, and am very much personally motivated by such things; I enjoy sensual pleasures, the "atmosphere" of a piece of music or room, and analyzing all of the above in depth. What I don't love, however, is attributing objective value to these things; there is no more reason to conclude that my appreciation of an Inness painting is good for the world than there is to conclude that some bizarre sexual fetish is. Being psychologically attracted to something does not make the thing inherently valuable or "good" for sentient beings; this should be obvious in this age, where weight loss programs, marriage counselors, and anti-smoking groups are ubiquitous.

    Furthermore, I have no interest in respecting those who create beautiful art, because their art does not define them, was deterministically inevitable, and should not be used as an excuse to commit or attach ourselves to the person as some kind of absolute idol worthy of treatment beyond what everyone on Earth should be given to avoid making them suffer. According special treatment to artists, scientists, or literally any "type" of person leads to a cessation of critical thinking as we stumble down the path of faith and groupthink -- especially if the "contributions" to mankind have to do with things which we have no control over, like our emotional predilections. I can help what kind of art that I enjoy no more than I can help what kind of food that I enjoy, and when you realize that a lot of food is bad for you, it shouldn't take much brain power to consequently surmise that a lot of art is, too.

    The difference, of course, is that we don't need art in order to survive, and if art comes coupled with notions outside of its definition -- e.g. social change -- then we have to critically examine, without bias, whether art is the most efficient means to those ends. Does writing a satirical novel adorned with allegory and emotional drama gain more "converts" to a cause than an essay on the same topic? Sometimes, but keep in mind the potential for manipulation in the former case, where rhetoric is completely subsumed by literary devices. For the [not-so] last time, it doesn't matter THAT someone agrees with you; it only matters HOW they came to the same conclusions -- what cognitive tools they employed, which lines of questioning were followed, which methodologies were implemented during the parameterization process.

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  31. [continued]

    Sorry, but you're going to have to do better than sneering at my proposals and spewing emotionally charged words like "terrible" to describe their collective efficacy. Until you can explain why my ideas on education form -- a term that I wasn't really on board with to begin with, because I don't really want to "reform" academia so much as I want to abolish it completely and change how we view the world so that we don't arbitrarily compartmentalize* ideas in the first place -- are invalid, I have no interest in your irrelevant accusations of personal smugness. Who cares if I am a smug asshole? You can't refute a scientific paper by asserting that its author is smug.

    You also can't use any of the following rhetorical tactics: Accuse the author of having a superiority complex for associating his work with "science" while himself lacking credentials; accuse the author of being wrong on the sole grounds that he wants to challenge a long-established tradition, which somehow proves that he is naive and lacking personal experience.

    None of this shit is relevant to the argument itself, which you have yet to even attempt to rebut. Claiming that my feeling superior to everyone is "inherent in the argument" is akin to Fox News, for example, claiming that liberals feel superior to everyone because they champion multiculturalism and academia. You seriously have to do better than this, or you are literally Fox News.

    Plus, none of it is relevant to the substance of the premises themselves.

    History is no more important to understanding society than collecting terrible personal experiences is. Sure, you can learn from history in the same way that you can learn not to drink and drive after killing someone while doing so, but that's a messy, unnecessary way to learn things; additional perspective, while interesting and occasionally edifying, is in no way a requirement, and the vast majority of what passes for "history" in schools today is rubbish that has nothing to do with our current situation.

    I am completely for English and philosophy; I just don't like how they're taught. Let's kill all synonyms, superfluous punctuation marks, and contradictory rules for English; let's rid philosophy of name-dropping and very narrow, rigidly defined sets of ideas so that we can assign people logic problems the way we do math problems and actually have them go at it using logical tools and methods -- like the scientific method for example, and certainly not like using knowledge of history.

    "Some guy on the Internet" is pure rhetoric, so I guess I'm done. That's a reverse appeal to authority fallacy, plain and simple.

    * By this, I mean that we're a stubbornly traditional society. We need to stop thinking of the world as "Okay, it's time for learning, because the clock says so, and my physical location says so," and start thinking of the world as "Okay, new information is available and I'm not doing anything of objectively higher value than absorbing it, so let's go absorb it." We have way too many walls and other impediments in the way of our progress as a species.

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  32. Let's get straight to the point and cut you off before you try to employ any more rhetoric:

    Do you think that knowing the name of a person who had a philosophical idea at some point in history is something that we should pay for?

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  33. Haha, did you seriously compare calling someone a nerd to nazism

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    1. Show's over dude, we've all packed up and gone home.

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    2. If someone is a nerd, then call them a nerd. If someone is destroying your economy and hoarding your country's money, then call them a destructive, covetous hoarder.

      Calling anyone anything only because they share some irrelevant quality with someone else who IS that thing is really foolish, no matter at what scale you're doing it. False correlations lead to generalizations, rumors, and, ultimately, changes in the cultural Zeitgeist -- which can certainly lead to "us versus them" corroding your social system to the point where you're cutting off people's genitals in front of your own children.

      A few slanderous, unfounded remarks made anonymously over the Internet -- without empathy, understanding, or evidence -- are qualitatively equivalent to what happened in Waco, Texas; they absolutely differ in scale, but if we allow for one, then the other will ALWAYS remain present in our culture.

      Please stop promoting the emasculation and torching of impoverished African Americans. Thanks!

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    3. In case you're too dumb to understand the above:

      1. Billy is a nerd because he is really into electronics and has no social life.

      2. Bobby is a nerd because he has the same hair color as Billy.

      3. Nerds are lesser people than everyone else, so it's okay if we say mean things about them. Bobby has the same hair color as Billy, so not only is Bobby a nerd, but it's okay to treat Bobby differently from the norm -- either by calling him a name, celebrating your own normality at the expense of his weirdness, or brutally murdering him; it doesn't matter how it's done, really.

      This is what happened, here, and if you don't see it, then we're finished, because this is the simplest way to explain the phenomenon in which you participated.

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    4. ...And, for the second time in this comments chain, I will end with a question which you will fail to answer:

      If you should not call someone a murderer for being black, should you call him a social failure for proclaiming emotions to be subordinate to logical contemplation?

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