Changing positions

[bill from lachine]

Crispin,

Well said.....sometimes just better to agree to disagree and move on.......

If you or anyone else wants a few chuckles to lighten things up....go to my brain farts post under everything else....it's a hoot because I've been there and done that....lol.

Regards + HH

Bill

 

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[Dave44]

I know I have been away awhile. Dano was the master side changer, did he have an opinion on something?! And we had some great discussions. So, where is he? Did I miss it? Dang,, I really do miss him, even though I have Spart here!

Thanks for being there buddy!

 

[bbcamay]

I love to debate and am always opened minded to others opinions. If I find myself backed into a corner though I am known to shout 'BANANA' and run away!

 

[Dave44]

Banana!! WHERE? Hey Where did bb go?

 

[bill from lachine]

bbcamay,

Heck if you get backed into a corner you don't have to shout BANANA and run away.....you can just dig your way out of it.....oops wrong thread....lol....

Regards + HH

Bill

I love to debate and am always opened minded to others opinions. If I find myself backed into a corner though I am known to shout 'BANANA' and run away!

 

[Crispin]

I love to debate and am always opened minded to others opinions. If I find myself backed into a corner though I am known to shout 'BANANA' and run away!

Well then...a new challenger emerges, My day was long and my nights are longer. I am spent this evening. However, I accept your challenge. Start a new thread, pick whatever topic you like, and let us have a debate/discussion on it.

Three Rules from my end, you can create your own if you wish.
1. All questions must have an attempt to be answered.
2. No statistics.
3. Facts can be challenged, but not vigorously.

Let the games begin!

Best regards,
Crisp


Ps. Spart, sorry I hijacked your thread. You can have it back now.

 

[bill from lachine]

Dave,

Dano went on a well earned rest......something about trying to find his sanity or something probably to do with the everything else forum....he's a tough dude so he'll back in fighting form in a couple of weeks.

Regards + HH

Bill

I know I have been away awhile. Dano was the master side changer, did he have an opinion on something?! And we had some great discussions. So, where is he? Did I miss it? Dang,, I really do miss him, even though I have Spart here!

Thanks for being there buddy!

 

[Dave44]

Thanks Bill! What does he need sanity for? I heard he is surrounded by scantily clad chicks that hate signs of cognizant thought. I always admired him for his climatic choices.

Wait a minute!! He never did show me those pictures he said he had!!!! oooh when I get my hands on him...

 

[GrizLeeBear]

I agree with you on stats. That is why I suggested we leave them out. (Stats always have their place. They are factual. That is why some people do not like them.)

Your statements of not engaging in discussions to change anyone's opinions, trying to help others when I can, and then not expecting anyone to change their mind are contradictory. How do you expect to help somebody if you have little to no hope of opening their mind to your side? (What sides? Why must there be sides? If I help someone become better at finding treasure, who is on who's side?)

Everybody always has a right to their opinion, agreed. Anybody seen Dano recently? (Don't know Dano.)

I have never lost a friend during a discussion. (I have. That's how I learned not to debate with friends.) Treasure Hunter and I have different views on the 2nd...last week I invited him to go hunting with me. (Your views on the Second are all wrong. Okay now...is there any way I can ever make you believe that?)

What is the point? The point is to learn more about the other person's opinion so you can constantly reevaluate your own for faults. (I do not care what anyone's opinion is. What faults? There are no faults in my opinions. That's the whole point. I have the courage of my convictions.) When I started on this forum I had several opinions that have been changed by me being openminded. (Good for you, but who cares?) I could have refused to change. (You entirely miss the point. There is no need to change, it is not about a refusal.) I have the facts to back up that side. DieselRam, Treasure Hunter, Onfire, RelevantChair, Chadeaux and others have helped bring me back towards the middle. (The middle of what? I do not live in the middle. People who stand in the middle of the road get run over.) I have learned from them and I hope they have learned from me. That is the point, my friend, that is the point. (A bit condesending, don't you think?)

You do not have to respond. I respect Onfire and do not wish to look like a bully and I have no desire to compare my intelligence to anybody else's. (On my worst day you could not bully me on your best day.) Perhaps I jumped the gun on my first response. Youth has a tendancy to do that. Of course, youth beat back the British and forged our constitution. (I seem to remember a few old codgers were involved back in 1776. People like Ben Franklin for example.)

Your mistake is in assuming you have a debate with a person who has no need to debate. That's the point I am trying to make. I don't need to change my mind and I have no desire to change yours. I just don't care what you believe. Many years ago there were Greek Philosophers who believed all the problems of the world could be solved through talk, debate and discussion. They became known as Sophists. It is the root for the word Sophisticated. Yet, all the time they sat and talked, somebody had to plant the grain, tend it, thresh it, grind it and bake it into bread. While they talked, wars raged around them. Talk is just talk. It solves nothing. The only good use of talk is to teach someone something they can use.

Wisdom is all you have learned and not forgotten. Those of us with age always have some wisdom. It is our hope that as a final useful act we can pass some of that on. There is no better college than the school of hard knocks. Our great sadness is that it is not often that those we try to help will listen.

 

[onfire]

I think Dano was set up with a trap.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Dano is on a timeout..............

 

[Crispin]

I agree with you on stats. That is why I suggested we leave them out. (Stats always have their place. They are factual. That is why some people do not like them.)

Your statements of not engaging in discussions to change anyone's opinions, trying to help others when I can, and then not expecting anyone to change their mind are contradictory. How do you expect to help somebody if you have little to no hope of opening their mind to your side? (What sides? Why must there be sides? If I help someone become better at finding treasure, who is on who's side?)

Everybody always has a right to their opinion, agreed. Anybody seen Dano recently? (Don't know Dano.)

I have never lost a friend during a discussion. (I have. That's how I learned not to debate with friends.) Treasure Hunter and I have different views on the 2nd...last week I invited him to go hunting with me. (Your views on the Second are all wrong. Okay now...is there any way I can ever make you believe that?)

What is the point? The point is to learn more about the other person's opinion so you can constantly reevaluate your own for faults. (I do not care what anyone's opinion is. What faults? There are no faults in my opinions. That's the whole point. I have the courage of my convictions.) When I started on this forum I had several opinions that have been changed by me being openminded. (Good for you, but who cares?) I could have refused to change. (You entirely miss the point. There is no need to change, it is not about a refusal.) I have the facts to back up that side. DieselRam, Treasure Hunter, Onfire, RelevantChair, Chadeaux and others have helped bring me back towards the middle. (The middle of what? I do not live in the middle. People who stand in the middle of the road get run over.) I have learned from them and I hope they have learned from me. That is the point, my friend, that is the point. (A bit condesending, don't you think?)

You do not have to respond. I respect Onfire and do not wish to look like a bully and I have no desire to compare my intelligence to anybody else's. (On my worst day you could not bully me on your best day.) Perhaps I jumped the gun on my first response. Youth has a tendancy to do that. Of course, youth beat back the British and forged our constitution. (I seem to remember a few old codgers were involved back in 1776. People like Ben Franklin for example.)

Your mistake is in assuming you have a debate with a person who has no need to debate. That's the point I am trying to make. I don't need to change my mind and I have no desire to change yours. I just don't care what you believe. Many years ago there were Greek Philosophers who believed all the problems of the world could be solved through talk, debate and discussion. They became known as Sophists. It is the root for the word Sophisticated. Yet, all the time they sat and talked, somebody had to plant the grain, tend it, thresh it, grind it and bake it into bread. While they talked, wars raged around them. Talk is just talk. It solves nothing. The only good use of talk is to teach someone something they can use.

Wisdom is all you have learned and not forgotten. Those of us with age always have some wisdom. It is our hope that as a final useful act we can pass some of that on. There is no better college than the school of hard knocks. Our great sadness is that it is not often that those we try to help will listen.

I'll leave it at this: Are you familiar with Planck's Law?

 

[GrizLeeBear]

I'll leave it at this: Are you familiar with Planck's Law?

Yep, but I am not a physicist, so I can't claim to understand it. I am more into Occum's Razor at one end and Entropy at the other. Those concepts have a lot to do with ruling our daily lives.

 

[Crispin]

Yep, but I am not a physicist, so I can't claim to understand it. I am more into Occum's Razor at one end and Entropy at the other. Those concepts have a lot to do with ruling our daily lives.

Right Planck, wrong law. My fault, I was referring to Planck's Law of Generations. There is an article on it in this month's psychiatric times. Here is a link:

Planck's Law of Generations - Psychiatric Times

To sum up: It states that scientific and social laws do not change by changing minds...they change by changing generations.

I am not referencing this as ageism. I am referencing it to explain the differences between you and I. My younger mind looks for change, solutions, and open discussions. Older minds have a tendancy to look to validate previous beliefs and discount new information that is incongruent with them.

I like Occum's Razor and Entropy as well. Agree with you on that point.

 

[arnofarrell]

Right Planck, wrong law. My fault, I was referring to Planck's Law of Generations. There is an article on it in this month's psychiatric times. Here is a link:

Planck's Law of Generations - Psychiatric Times

To sum up: It states that scientific and social laws do not change by changing minds...they change by changing generations.

I am not referencing this as ageism. I am referencing it to explain the differences between you and I. My younger mind looks for change, solutions, and open discussions. Older minds have a tendancy to look to validate previous beliefs and discount new information that is incongruent with them.

I like Occum's Razor and Entropy as well. Agree with you on that point.

I have to agree with you on this. I am in my late 20's and I am a conservative, I am always looking to expand my mind with others views. This is to either learn new sides or to reafirm my belief. As a "youth" we do tend to think we know it all. I tend to not debate because I am not a great speaker and things always seem to sound better in my head then they do when I say them. Another reason I tend not to debate is because I am still young and I don't know everthing. I don't enter a discussion unless I know something about it or I can help. By listening I learn alot and I can shape my own point of view. This is why Griz has a point, he said something about not debating to change minds, in my opinion debating is to sway people to your ideas and your opinion. Thats why we have debates isn't it? It isn't to change your opponents mind it is to change your audiences mind. Just my opinion.

 

[GrizLeeBear]

"I am referencing it to explain the differences between you and I."

Lordy. If you don't know one whit about me, how can you even know what the differences are? Your perception of such differences as they may be are a meaningless concept to me, as is the law you mentioned. Why is it a law? Because some "intellectuals" buy into it? Is there any disagreement from other intellectuals?

The really big problem here is that as you sit and read this you are trying to look at my picture while you read my words and come to some conclusions about what I write. Any such assumptions must be wrong because you do not know the tone in which I write. Am I banging the table with my fist? Am I laughing out loud? Am I half lit up on some good fifteen year old single malt? Do I farm your missives out to one of my friends to answer? The truth here is that I sit and sort of shake my head in a bemused and dismissive way.

The same goes both ways. I know very little of you. My first impressions was from your dog's picture. I think you are some kind of psychologist or psychiatrist. I have preconseptions about those fields that may or may not be valid. You seem to be a talker, or, as said eariler, a sophist. I, on the other hand, am a doer. Talk is easy and cheap, but it does not put beans on the table. After my last post I went out and chopped some wood for a fire tonight. Good exercise. You said statistics can be twisted. This tells me you are not much at math. You don't trust numbers. I would respond that words too can be twisted.

My measure of a person is what they do, what they accomplish. Not knowing exactly what you do I can only guess that you use words to try and help people who have some sort of mental problem. Me, I help people in a different way. I was never a professor. I am a teacher, or like to think I am. But I learned what I teach the hard way. Yes, I am college educated. College taught me some new words and concepts, few of which turned out to be relevant in the real world. Yes, I have taught in college. But always in an adjunct role. I have run businesses, hired, fired, promoted and taught many people a craft. I am by nature a numbers person, but I do love words. My best fights were always with lawyers. I loved to beat them down. For example, so few people really understand the difference between "I'm sorry," and "I apologize". "I am sorry your cat is dead. I apologize for running over it." So yes, while I am a numbers person, I can use words too. They can be fun to play with.

"More: I am so much more for knowing you, but less, by far, for not knowing you, more." Words can be fun. I wrote that to a girl I was sweet on many years ago. She wanted to know how much I earned. Smart girl!

I have people ask me sometimes, "Why don't you like me?" They never understand the answer. Respect is far more important to me. You can only lie to me once. You can only steal once. You can only be a bully once.

So, I don't need any intellectual word game explanations from you or anyone else. I've heard all the psycho-babble. I know Maslowe and most of the others. I've read Kant, Durant, Stiglitz, Laffer and a few others. I've also read Heinlein, a truly great philospher.

So the final question is, do I like or dislike you? As I don't know you, except through this site, I have no idea. I doubt we will ever find out. Could you ever like me? Who knows? Who cares?

Remember this, "It is what it is." Deal with it and move on. Next?

 

[spartacus53]

This is why Griz has a point, he said something about not debating to change minds, in my opinion debating is to sway people to your ideas and your opinion. Thats why we have debates isn't it? It isn't to change your opponents mind it is to change your audiences mind. Just my opinion.

Oh, you were so close and yet so far

You have part of it right, but I'll spell it out for ya. When I debate, I'll not only sway the audience, but my opponent as well, and once everyone sees my point of view, I'll change it and sway them again. Why? Because I can

 

[packerbacker]

Griz, the psych folks like to pigeonhole everyone into little categories. Over the years this "category" list goes through constant changing so everyone in the field can have a say in what the lists should consist of. Then they have their list written and accepted by their peers and declare it so-and-so's law. Thing is, in the end it is all theory and 1000 people will require 1000 pigeon holes. That is known in the psych journal circle as "packerbacker's law of we are all nuts in one way or another".

 

[spartacus53]

Packer, why just stop at the medical field, when every group, or even person for that matter pigeonholes

And yes, we're all nuts and some nuts are more valuable than others

Yours truly,
Macadamia Nut

 

[bill from lachine]

Spart,

And don't forget your ability to confuse everyone is 2nd to none....lol.

Regards + HH

Bill

Oh, you were so close and yet so far

You have part of it right, but I'll spell it out for ya. When I debate, I'll not only sway the audience, but my opponent as well, and once everyone sees my point of view, I'll change it and sway them again. Why? Because I can