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No Worries (Free verse) by Dovina (by Asaph, circa 950BC, Psalm 73 NIV with changes and omissions by
Dovina)
My feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
For I envied them
In their prosperity,
Having no struggles,
their bodies healthy and strong,
Free from common burdens,
not plagued by human ills.
Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
From their callous hearts comes evil;
their conceits are limitless.
They scoff, and speak malice;
in their arrogance they threaten.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.
Therefore people turn to them
and drink their waters in abundance,
And say, "How can God know?
Does the Most High have knowledge?
Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.â
Up the ladder:
Bagni di Lucca
Down the ladder:
Peeping Sun
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 5.2
Posted: March 19, 2005 9:21 PM PST; Last modified: March 19, 2005 9:21 PM PSTWeighted score: 5.0238404 Overall Rank: 7425 Comments:
May I suggest that this page has become tangled with long threads entwining of comments. If anyone wishes to continue any of these discussions, perhaps they should do so on one my other poems.
I have been accused, elsewhere on Poemranker, of plagiarizing this poem. I ask you, has plagiarism occurred when I cite the source and describe how I use it?
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You disagree? cf. http://www.poemranker.com/poem-details.j
http://www.poemranker.com/poem-details.j
http://www.poemranker.com/poem-details.j
etc etc etc.
2) Maybe I'm wrong. I know! I'll ask. Would you consider yourself more in the lines of Asaph, God, the wicked (ie, also ironic quoter of Asaph), or the pure-hearted?
Now, I know you're going to say: none of them, I'm to openminded. That's crap. If you weren't sympathetic to at least one (and probably only one) of them, you wouldn't have any reason to have posted/plagiarized this.
Now I know you're going to say, I don't operate by the principles of reason, so there. That's crap, too.
Sorry for acting so presumptuous about the whole thing, but I'm going to the beach tomorrow and don't want to drag out the process of you giving a real answer over, who knows, weeks. Please, give it some thought.
You retard. Of all the people involved in this poem, would you consider yourself MORE in the lines of
a) the wicked (ie, also ironic quoter of Asaph), or
b) the pure-hearted?
YOU CAN'T ANSWER "NONE". THAT IS AN ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE ANSWER EXCEPT AS "EXTREME RETARD AEROBATICS". And have you noticed that every time I ask you to take a position on something, you answer that you have no position. Do you consider yourself "wily" and "Socratic"?
And besides, you gave me crap for... something about having an opinion on this poem. I don't remember what now, and can't be bothered to check. So, if your not a total retard, respond in some intelligible fashion to the following prompt:
PROMPT: A crack addict pops out of a dark alley, puts a gun to your head, and says, "Choose which you are the most in favor of: the evildoers in Psalm 73 or the virtuous pureheart. As long as you choose one - any one, it doesn't matter - you will not be shot. If you fail to choose, you'll be shot until you're long past dead. I'm a crack addict, see. I'm crazy."
1) What if one happens by chance to believe only true propositions and reject false ones? Surely you'd agree that's as possible as anything else.
2) Would you say "to determine the truth of a proposition requires it to be considered"? Of course you would. So basically you're saying anyone who believes any proposition is true or false is openminded. Doesn't that strike you as obviously crap? Oh, you mean "to determine the REAL truth/falsity of a proposition..." Then you're doubly full of crap.
3) Would you consider yourself openminded regarding the proposition that you're a total wackjob?
2)Determining the truth of a proposition requires it to be considered. That is not the same as saying anyone who believes any proposition is true or false is openminded. You can believe a proposition is true without even considering it. To consider it requires enough acceptance (openmindedness) to consider it. And example of closed mindedness is to say a person is full of crap without first considering what she has said.
3)Yes
It's obvious we should avoid rejecting true propositions, and embrace rejecting false ones. Closed mindedness is neither here nor there, unless all you mean by 'closed minded' is 'a mind that makes assertions based on insufficient evidence.' It's almost a tautology that you shouldn't do that, unless you live on Planet Gay, where making an assertion based on SUFFICIENT evidence is punishable by bumming.
A closed mind does not necessarily make assertions based on insufficient evidence. There may be good evidence in a personâs thinking that Negroes are an unreliable source of information, for example. He is closed minded if he rejects information from that source. It is important to recognize closed mindedness because through it good information is rejected.
By mentally negating every proposition they receive from a fellow Liar.
"You say we should âembrace accepting false propositions.â"
No, I said we should embrace REJECTING false propositions. Read it again.
"A closed mind does not necessarily make assertions based on insufficient evidence. There may be good evidence in a personâs thinking that Negroes are an unreliable source of information, for example. He is closed minded if he rejects information from that source."
Think about what we mean by 'reject' in this case. By rejecting a proposition P, do we assert that P is false, or merely that we do not know that it is true? Consider a computer program that inputs a proposition then randomly returns true or false. It is clearly an unreliable source of information. But that's not to say it is always wrong when it asserts a given proposition to be true. Clearly our assessment of whether or not the proposition is true is independent of any answer the computer gives us. And so it is with Negroes. Suppose there is sufficient evidence to conclude that Negroes are unreliable sources of information. Therefore in interpreting a Negro's remarks, we must rely on external knowledge before drawing any conclusions.
Your definition of a closed mind seems to be: any mind that asserts that all propositions uttered by an unreliable source are false. This is clearly an example of making assertions based on insufficient evidence. It's obvious that one shouldn't do it. Unless you live on Planet Gay.
Truth sometimes comes from unreliable sources of information. I think we agree on that. I hope so, because if your overcomplicated analogy means otherwise, then we have again reached an impasse.
Your defense of a race of Liars fails because for every truth there is not necessarily an opposite, but often many untruths the liar could use to create utter confusion.
You oversimplify my definition of closed minded. If I had said that âall propositions uttered by an unreliable source are falseâ then I would have to say that if an unreliable source said to a closed minded person that 1+1=2, that person would call it false. No, a closed mind rejects information it determines false or unimportant based on criteria such as the race, sex, or religion. It rejects information because of the source or the manner of presentation rather than content. It does not necessarily reject obviously true information from the unreliable source, but rejects most offerings out of hand. Such people are racist, sexist, etc.
This conversation is beyond dull. Pointless, too.
About the hypothetical race of Liars. I think it is possible to establish truth from someone who always lies. The test is to see if we could find the answer to any question. As an example, suppose we want to know what the Liar had for breakfast. If we just ask him "What did you have for breakfast?" that wouldn't help because he could just say "I had Ely Cathedral for breakfast" and we've learnt next to nothing useful, because, as you say, there are unlimited possible untruths he could spout. But we can be more cunning than that: suppose I said to him "Consider the shortest possible description of what you had for breakfast. Is the first letter of that description an 'A'?" If he says "No" we know it begins with 'A', and we move on to the second letter of the description. If he says "Yes" we know it must begin with B...Z so we ask him "Is the first letter a B?" and so on. Do you agree I could establish what he had for breakfast by adopting that approach? Clearly it is applicable to other questions.
At least we agree that truth can come from an unreliable source. I have not confused 0 correlation and negative correlation. I donât agree that correlation is the issue. The perception of unlikeliness of truth coming from the âunreliableâ source is the basis of closed mindedness. Any real correlation is difficult if not impossible to determine.
Your hypothetical race of Liars could not communicate with each other in the practicalities of ordinary life because of the cumbersome nature of the process. By the time you extract from your man what he had for breakfast, it would be lunch time or dinner time and purpose for asking would have passed.
Liars: Read this carefully, because even though it's absurdly simple, you will have the greatest of difficulty absorbing it.
LIARS TELL FALSEHOODS. NOT MISLEADINGHOODS, NOT CONFUSIONHOODS. FALSEHOODS. APART FROM THAT, THEY ARE THE SAME AS TRUTH-TELLERS. THEY ARE JUST AS HELPFUL. THEY ARE JUST AS FORTHCOMING. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT THEY ONLY EVER SAY FALSE THINGS.
IN OTHER WORDS, THEY WILL ALWAYS SAY THE NEGATION OF WHAT THEY WANT TO COMMUNICATE.
Do you understand what a negation is? Do you understand how a race of liars could easily communicate, by simply saying the negation of whatever they wanted to say?
"I'm not going to the shops now."
"My favourite colour isn't blue."
"You're not thick."
Trying to explain anything to you is like trying to force a broom head-first into a cat's anus.
You may also imagine another race of Truthteller-Confusers, who a) Only ever tell truthhoods, b) Try to confuse you.
Neither race has any advantage over the other in terms of the confusion they can produce. If you can't see that, you deserve to be plucked.
As disgusted as I am with the mess youâve made of this conversation, Iâll answer your most recent question by saying that Iâd listen even to your race of Liars, silly as they seem.
And another thing: Your race of Liars really cannot communicate in any practical way. Hereâs why. In the example we have used, you finally discover that the Liar had snails for breakfast rather eggs as he said. Your next question, if you are normal, will be âWhy?â since eating snails for breakfast seems irregular to you. I doubt you will ever find the reason, but should you discover that he had snails because they were the only things in his fridge, lunchtime will have passed and your reason, if you are normal, for asking â because you might invite your friend to lunch â will have become mute. At that point you would say something like, âExcellent choice,â by which the Liar would assume you mean, âEating snails is like eating a colossal mound of elephant shit,â which is what you have turned this conversation into.
Neither can an Englishman communicate easily with an Dutch, except by learning the crude grunts that form the Dutchman's natural mode of expression.
The Liars have absolutely no difficulty communicating with each other.
And you have STILL not grasped the point that it is EXTREMELY EASY to get information out of a liar. It's exactly as easy as getting information out of a truth teller. In your example:
You: "Why are you eating snails for breakfast rather than eggs?"
Liar: "It's not because they were the only things in my fridge"
You, mentally translating: "Ah, it's because they were the only things in his sodding fridge."
Reader: Sighs in exasperation, then heartily parps.
You: Why are you eating snails for breakfast?
TT: Well, it's not because the square of two is four.
(Goes on until lunch-time).
Liars and Truth-tellers have no advantages over each other in how easy it is to communicate. The only difference is that a Liar must either remove or add an odd number of negations from every proposition he wants to make.
The REAL reason why Liars or Liar-Confusers could never really exist has nothing to do with whether or not they can communicate, and everything to do with the fact that they could solve the Halting Problem, which we all know is impossible. QED.
You may say "Oh he's a confuser he doesn't have to answer your question" but that's silly, because then he could just say "wibble", or keep silent the whole time, which is OBVIOUSLY not what we mean by a Liar-Confuser.
Someone who is a liar answering your question could give two sorts of answer. The first is of the form "I didn't have baked beans". This is an informative lie, because you instantly know the liar had baked beans. In our formulation, this is what a Liar would say. The other possible answer is of the form "I had Ely Cathedral for breakfast." This lie is an answer to the question, but it is completely uninformative, because we don't get any closer to finding out what the liar actually had for breakfast. That is the sort of thing a Liar-Confuser would say.
I have not added any new rules that weren't already obvious. If you insist that Liar-Confusers don't have to answer the question, then they could just lock themselves in a cupboard and parp the national anthem. That's not answering the question. It's also academically an utterly useless example.
You have introduced another rule! Will it never end. Now he must not lie in his mental description, nor can he change his mental description. Why can't he have many mental descriptions, switch among them at any time for the purpose of confusion. And why should he hold the true description in his mind while you ask for its spelling? Surely a liar can lie about that. Is he no longer a Confuser?
Go to a Liar-Confuser and say "Consider the word that describes the colour of most peas. Does it begin with with G?" If he answers anything other than "No" then he has broken rule number 2: Thou shalt lie. Using the alphabetical method, you can extract from him the spelling of the word 'green'. It's exactly the same with the "Why did you do X?" example. Suppose X is "hit Father Christmas". And the Liar-Confuser's reason for hitting Father Christmas is "Because he's gay."
We say to the Liar-Confuser "Consider THE description of why you hit Father Christmas. Does it begin with A?"
THE description of why he hit Father Christmas is "Because he's gay". If the Liar-Confuser answers anything other than "Yes" to the first question, then he has not told a lie, because the description begins with B, not A. Do you get it now?
Imagine you're a liar-confuser. Suppose you wore a hat because you were cold. The shortest description of why you wore a hat is "Because I'm cold." If I say to you "Consider the description of your reason for wearing a hat. Does it begin with A?" What would you answer, bearing in mind that YOU MUST ANSWER THE QUESTION and you MUST LIE?
This is the original -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. who posted the comment in question. I asked you to "Read it again" because I thought you had either overlooked it, or merely read the original version. It was not an attempt at trumping you.
"Your hypothetical race of Liars could not communicate with each other in the practicalities of ordinary life because of the cumbersome nature of the process. By the time you extract from your man what he had for breakfast, it would be lunch time or dinner time and purpose for asking would have passed."
Where in Sodomy do you get the idea that I thought adopting a stance of deliberately deceptive lying was a convenient way to communicate? You asked me how Liars would communicate, so I thought of a way. The method works not only for friendly Liars, but also for Liars who actively do not want you to know the truth.
A race of truth-tellers could also easily create confusion, by saying true but irrelevant things.
A race of liars simply needs to say the negation of whatever they want to communicate.
Dim.
You've never understood anything properly in your entire life, have you?
Can you think of a question someday that does not follow the unanserable pattern of "You've never understood anything properly in your entire life, have you?"? Then after the person grudgingly complies and gives some kind of an answer, you say they did not properly answer your question.
"It rejects information because of the source or the manner of presentation rather than content."
Tell me truthfully, have you been at the Royal Jelly again? Answer in the form of a parp.
1. Closed-minded people reject propositions solely for reasons other than their content.
2. Closed-minded people reject propositions because of their content.
Doublethink is an admirable talent, but I don't think it's helping.
is the exact opposite of
"[closed-minded] refuse to consider CONTENT that conflicts with what they already believe."
Can you not see that the closed-minded under the first definition only consider the source [i.e., I won't consider his proposition that my odor is offensive, because he's Negro, or because he's zodiac], while the closed-minded under the second definition only consider the content [i.e., I won't consider his proposition that Negroes are inferior, because it goes against my pre-existing ideas about Negroes.]
You're going to say "-=Dark_Angel=-,P.I. already said that, and better, and besides they think you're dim." Whatever. You could not have more clearly not gotten it the first time.
Let's try a test: I'll explain how I get it, and you explain how you get it. If I can't explain or my answer's gibberish, I lose. Same for you. To make it easy for you, I'll go first. To make it slightly harder for you, after you're finished explaining you have to justify or apologize for contradicting yourself 4-Apr-05/8:21 AM, 4-Apr-05/1:40 PM, and 4-Apr-05/4:29 PM, to say the least.
ZODIAC: Can you not see that the closed-minded under the first definition ONLY consider the source [i.e., I won't consider his proposition that my odor is offensive because he's Negro, or because he's zodiac], while the closed-minded under the second definition ONLY consider the content [i.e., I won't consider his proposition that my odor is offensive, because it goes against my pre-existing ideas about my odor]?
ADDENDUM: As of 4-Apr-05/8:21 AM, Dovina had never said anything like the second definition, only the first. Since then, she's said the two are the same like ten times. (They're not.)
"Closed-minded people refuse to consider a proposition for reasons other than its content OR for reasons related to its content"?
Hey, thanks a lot.
Vague platitude: "a use of counter-example to prove"
Vague platitude: "queen of vague platitudes"
Vague platitude: "how ridiculous your claim"
One, no one here hates open minds, least of all me. I hate people who say they have open minds and are actually addlebrained bigots and hypocrites.
Two, no one's claiming to have a more open mind than you.
Three, if someone says "I'm probably not 100% openminded" and you say "I'm 100% openminded", you think that means you're more openminded than they are. It doesn't. For one thing, it means they're openminded about the possibility of having a closed mind, while you're not. If that were the only criterion for openmindedness, they'd be more openminded than you. (Incidentally, this is most of the reason why you think you're less racist, sexist, ageist and gayist than everybody here, too.)
Four, openmindedness has nothing to do with accepting or knowing anything, truth or not. I thought that was demonstrated about a week ago. Would you like diagrams?
Five, your above comment doesn't make any sense.
Six, all those things you say are vague platitudes (see below) you say all the time. And they're not platitudes. So shut up.
It will take more than false claims and straw men to make me shut up.
I'll hazard a guess you're not openminded regarding the proposition that some races, sexes, and religions ARE in fact inferior to others.
Q: What evidence would you require to convince you that a race, sex, etc is inferior?
Q2: Could such evidence conceivably exist?