Difference between revisions of "User:Andrej/TIGGER WARNING quotes"

Latest revision as of 04:19, 8 December 2014

• "I agree, fuck those square states." (2012)

• "I think the glorification of sophistry in non-science fields is specifically a cause for a lot of the overly dry, blunt writing that many perfectly verbal scientists put out. English majors even compete to come up with the most outlandish textual analyses, boasting in person and online of how they can shoehorn pop culture, harry potter, the beatles, whatever you can imagine into an essay on emerson or shakespeare. Others aren't as specific in their boasting, but a hefty majority of students will eagerly jump into discussions about bullshitting essays.

What I think they fail to realize is that sophistry was never hard for a serious thinker. It's not a challenge for a verbally intelligent person to come up with purple prose or some grandiloquent essay that will please the teacher. In fact, it's trivially easy in comparison to the development of a strong, thoughtful argument that hasn't simply been recycled from someone else. That realization is part of what I believe drives many scientific types toward plain, unadorned writing. They want not only to convey the idea as straightfowardly as possible, but also to convey that they care about ideas more than how loftily they're packaged. So, straightforwardness becomes something to strive toward for many scientists. This is necessary for effective communication in science, but a certain amount of artistry is lost. However, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing most of the time, because I believe that verbal intelligence is underdeveloped (relatively speaking) in most people. Scientists like Carl Sagan and certain philosophers of science known for their way with words are extremely rare, and those who possess such verbal intelligence often lack education in the humanities and the arts. For scientific purposes, it's generally better to be clear and maybe somewhat boring than run the risk of weakening your writing with foolish attempts at sounding literary." (2012)

• "Enough. I could spend 2000 bucks on bubble wrap or toothpaste and the purchase would be equally valid. Neither your consent nor approval are necessary.

Keep your rosaries off my ovaries, man." (2012, but the comment's deleted.)

• "You're clearly trolling. You're talking about being high in a Paganism, Wicca, and Nature Spiritualities class. You picked one of the only possible academic scenarios in which being high would be par for the course.

You made no argument. What you gave was an anecdote. Nobody but you has any reason to care what grade you got on your religious studies papers. I wasn't bashing pot smoking, as you suggested, nor am I knew to the concept, as you also suggested. I'm just not an r/trees going pagan who assumes that I alone am enlightened about marijuana. Bumping your score down to 0.5/10." (2012)

• "The militarization of U.S. police forces is a persistent problem that extends far beyond any one department or county. By the mid 2000's there were already articles being published in major papers on the stupidly large amount of police resources going into SWAT equipment and training and the various disastrous responses to no knock raids that had been seen. Old man kills a SWAT team member crawling into the house, thinking he's an intruder, and it turns out they're at the wrong house anyway. There are lots and lots of news stories like that, where escalation of force by the police resulted in death and accomplished nothing whatsoever.

That's the thing -- most of the time, no knock SWAT raids amount to nothing more than macho kick-down-the-door-guns-blazing movie bullshit. The vast majority of these raids are conducted to capture non-violent offenders. Where does the funding come from? War on drugs money, baby. Shoot up those non-violent marijuana offenders or die trying. So it is very much a problem for "the government," because without high level funding for prosecution of marijuana-related offenses, most of this stuff wouldn't be possible. " (2012)

• "Sometimes one derps when one should rather herp. Here's the link I intended: Young Chimps Top Adult Humans in Numerical Memory" (2012)

• "Don't think so, that opens up too many loopholes for the genie him/herself.

Remember that genies are themselves bound to genie form and obligated to fulfill the wishes of the wisher. They don't just hang out in lamps because that's their idea of fun; they'd rather be set free and will use whatever edge they can to have that happen." (2012)

• "Son, never pass up such a low-hanging diss.

Even a redundant one. Redundant, like your left hand on Saturday night." (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/z78tb/the_trouble_with_steam_games/c6269bt?context=3 2012])

• "But then you have wish partitioning. This is what leads to questions about locking down what you actually intended for a wish -- how many clauses can a wish really include?

One could argue that a highly specific wish explicitly detailing the exact manner in which the wish is intended (since genies are known for their trickery) is in fact a multi-part or multi-tiered wish, wherein multiple requests relating to the exact details of the main wish constitute wishes themselves. How does this, then, differ from a wish containing unrelated wishes? It would seem, based on documented evidence pertaining to genie trickery, that the exact mechanics of how a wish may be fulfilled are loosely regulated. However, genies are themselves subject to strict conditions, so the whole thing is very unclear from a legal perspective." (http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/z798d/i_wish_i_could/c6278nq?context=3 2012])

• "We must presume that lawful termination of employment/enslavement via legitimate wishing -- if it's a legitimate wish, the genie body has ways to try to shut that whole trapped-in-a-lamp thing down -- automatically revokes all user account privileges, including wish-granting status and access to the company intranet." (2012)

• "Perhaps the genie's superiors must directly approve and sign off on all wishes. Perhaps individual genies have more or less flexibility to execute wish-granting without oversight based on employee ratings.

Either way, even with collusion of the genie's superiors, somebody will have to account for some serious wish-juice shrinkage at the warehouse." (2012)

• "Nope, there's no good reason why an enterprising spirit shouldn't be able to find multiple genie-containing lamps in one lifetime, especially if the wishes granted by the first genie allow for the building of a large desert-combing army of slaves interns and/or peasants.

Socialist redistribution of wishes in unamerican, pal." (2012)

• "But I, as your hypothetical legal opponent, understand only that which is explicitly stated in writing by your side of the table.

Under your unmodified statement, the second lamp isn't really fair game. There always has to be some notion ofdirect consequence to contrast with extended consequence. But if I wish to go to Atlantis and arrive there only to find another lamp at my feet, is the discovery of that lamp not a direct consequence of the wish? Clearly what we're talking about here is intent. Wishmaker intent really shouldn't play into wishing terms, though, because the onus of determining intent falls upon the genie. But we already know that the genie is bound to fulfill any wish that he/she is not contractually obligated to refuse (e.g. more wishes), so there really cannot be any gray area. Like I said, I don't believe a fully workable rule or set of rules like what you're trying to outline could exist." (2012)

• "Sounds like your friend's shame about having been a bit experimental talking.

"So he just shows up to my house, right? And he just whips it out and starts jerking it! I'm like, dude, what the fuck? And then I invited him back for him to do it again and again, bro. Shit was so fucking weird."" (2012)

• "Interesting though how the desire to deny even exposure to sexually deviant material is so strong in otherwise open people. I can find people who'll talk about some pretty out there and bizarre stuff, but as soon as the conversation veers into sexual deviancy, they completely shut down.

There is a very small minority of try-hard countercultural types who'll go completely the other way, ridiculously exaggerating how much sexually deviant stuff they've done or seen, but virtually nobody who'll simply discuss weird fetishes and the types of things one might find in the bowels of the internet from an anthropological perspective, at least outside of the safety of internet (pseudo)anonymity. Even professional academics who write about sex, deviancy, taboo, and all that seem hilariously oblivious to what's really out there for consumption. They'll write about vanilla stuff like BDSM and various other topics that are near the cusp of pop culture recognition, but they never seem to go deeper into the really niche stuff. The truth is that they most likely aren't oblivious at all, but avoid displaying the full extent of their knowledge for some reason or another. Curious stuff, sex." (2012)

• "Admittedly, there is a certain special skillset required of a hack writer who is actually capable of selling lots of their bullshit copy." (2012)

• "Seriously, though, do lock your bike up when you leave it somewhere?

Encrypting a harddrive is stupidly simple yet a stupid majority of users have never done it. If you don't protect your property, you shouldn't be surprised when it's taken from you, whatever it may be." (2012)

• "The saga must continue. Regale me, o' minstrels." (2012)

• "It's truly shocking how many many psych majors seem to think their bachelor's is impressive." (2012)

• "You're not getting the complaint. "You're a bleeding heart idiot" is just one way of conveying, "be pragmatic, life isn't sacred." Trying to maintain some sense of the universal sanctity of human lives is unproductive and really won't get anyone anywhere. It's a kind of stubborn idealism that is utterly arbitrary in its nature (why human life, but not animal life? Why animal life but not plant life? Why plant life but not insect life? Why insect life but not microbial life?) and almost entirely unworkable in practice. It sounds good, but is ultimately facile.

Furthermore, it's perfectly acceptable for someone to be glad someone else is dead. The person who expresses that notion isn't going to win any prizes for magnanimity, but is vital to the everyday functioning of society. We need those people, just like we need the deviants they often come to despise (what the optimal percentages of these groups in the population might be, who knows). In opposing each other, such groups keep each other in check, and the social system trends toward a productive equilibrium state. Maybe I shouldn't be trying to convince you of anything, maybe you're one of those individuals who we need to believe in a kind of humanitarian idealism, but I really don't see much utility in failing to call out self-righteousness (regardless of the belief system), and it seems pretty clear that you've climbed up on a rather high horse here. I don't know the motives of those who downvoted you, but I can give a couple. One: "if you've ever been around children, you'd understand that they simply determine their identity from their surroundings." Sounds like Skinner-style behaviorism to me (i.e. false as stated). Everyone knows it's more complicated than that, and none of us know GG Allin's whole story. Furthermore, his influences are irrelevant; MrSacTickler opposed GG's actions and would likely still oppose them regardless of the backstory. The underlying causes of behaviors don't negate their effect or whether others will be disgusted with them. Two: the psych major puffery. You seem to think your opinion here is more valid than others. It appears that you believe this because of your academic training in psych, which suggests that you believe your opinion is rooted in objectivity while others are rooted in frivolous or subjective concerns. MrSacTickler's complaint was of personal revulsion, so whatever objective measures you think are relevant are most certainly not. Strict reading: MrSacTickler is grossed out by GG Allin's behavior. Not in the realm of objective reasoning. Loose reading: MrSacTickler thinks GG Allin was immoral. Not in the realm of objective reasoning. In neither case are your psych credentials needed, desired, or in any way useful. Posting them comes across as pure puffery, and your failure to understand the appropriate context in which to draw evidence from psychology (note: NOT when challenging a highly subjective opinion) further provokes annoyance and ire. Finally, this: "And nice job being mature about this and calling me an idiot. That makes your opinion a million times more valid." Opinions are subjective responses. They are always trivially valid. _it_was_me called you an idiot because he/she disagrees with your mindset. You're the only person in this exchange who suggested that anyone else's opinion was invalid. You seem to derive the perceived authority to make this judgment from your psych major. In short, you were dismissed because your post was preachy and completely off the mark. I pointed out the psych major bit because it reflected the most glaring problem with your post. Most would rather downvote than type out a long response like this one, and so would I most of the time." (2012)

• "I am the eggman." (2012)

• "Pretending to be an idiot: the lowest form of trolling." (2012)

• "One obvious problem is that the types things that disrupt linguistics discussion are rather multifarious. However, I think it's fairly easy to boil down the groups of people who provoke such disruptions into a handful of types:

The Clueless: These are the people who simply cannot understand what linguistics is or how its methods work. However well-intentioned they might be, they can't really understand thoughtful answers to their questions and will never contribute much to the conversation beyond, "wow, languages are so complicated." Trying to educate them might make a linguist feel warm and fuzzy inside, but intellectually the endeavor is rather pointless. The Precious: These are the polyglot-style narcissists, and more generally the people (mostly students) who are desperately seeking expertise in something, anything really as long as it's technical-sounding, and so latch onto linguistics because it impresses the scientifically uninitiated while remaining obscure enough within both the humanities and the sciences as to remain foreign to well-educated people who might challenge woo and junk science in other academic areas. These people very often fail to understand basic premises of scientific thought and inundate discussions with precious anecdotes about how they speak a certain way, or how they find some construction the professor (or redditor) has starred to be grammatical in language x, and so on. Their primary purpose is not to learn or contribute intellectually honest interest, but to feel special. Moreover, these people often fail to realize how transparent they are, and can be fairly aggressive. The Chauvinists: These are the people who want to claim language for their "side" of the science|humanities line, so to speak, and tend to dismiss linguistics as a field altogether (or to a very large extent). There are the scientific chauvinists as well as the humanities chauvinists, and both are equally irritating in their own ways. The scientific chauvinist might goad you into arguments about animal communication and primates, while the humanities chauvinist might decide to wage a war on gendered grammar. Sometimes, they even use their naive understanding of areas that aren't their specialties (e.g. scientific type arguing from a humanities standpoint and vice versa) to argue about a field they didn't properly understand from the perspective of their own specialty. Little can be done with them. The Misguided: These are by far the most hopeful group. Scientists, artistic types, and laymen who've simply been told things that aren't quite right about language (or who've bought into some form of romanticized linguistic woo) and will modify their stance in a reasonable fashion if shown why what they believe doesn't make sense. A lot of nat sci and cog sci people fall under this header. The big problem is classifying a person based on very little data. Sometimes a pushy person who seems to fit the bill of an anti-linguistics chauvinist will turn out to be open to corrections. Sometimes a person who seems genuinely engaged will turn out to be an intellectually dishonest little snowflake. I can't speak from much experience myself, but I think it's reasonable to say that linguistics professors have to be some of the most harried academic scientists out there. Seeing them swallow their contempt while listening to some bullshitting student ramble on about how he forms his r's like Spanish speakers do, then just sort of smile and say that there's a lot of individual variation and that linguists work with what they see in most speakers is grating even in a second-hand way. Online, we have the opportunity to cut out the perpetually undesirable elements of the crowd and hopefully cut to the chase a bit. There are some false positives, but do those really outweigh the gains made in scientific integrity? I'm not all that convinced myself." (2012)