Re: Many worlds theory of immortality

From: Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 18:36:51 -0400

"aet.radal ssg" wrote:

>>From: "Jesse Mazer" 
>>To: aet.radal.ssg.domain.name.hidden, everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com 
>>Subject: Re: Many worlds theory of immortality 
>>Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 14:48:17 -0400 
>> 
>>Generally, unasked-for attempts at armchair psychology to explain 
>>the motivations of another poster on an internet forum, like the 
>>comment that someone "just wants to hear themself talk", are 
>>justly considered flames and tend to have the effect of derailing 
>>productive discussion.
>
>I indicated that it wasn't a flame and just an observation. You later prove
>me right.

My point was that the *type* of comment you made is generally considered a
flame merely because of its form, regardless of whether your intent was to
provoke insult or whether you just saw it as making an observation. It just
isn't very respectful to speculate about people's hidden motives for making
a particular argument, however flawed, nor does doing so tend to further
productive debate about the actual content of the argument, which is why ad
hominems are usually frowned upon.

>> but hey, this list is all about 
>>rambling speculations about half-formed ideas that probably won't 
>>pan out to anything, you could just as easily level the same 
>>accusation against anyone here. 
>
> > 
>>Jesse 
>
>
>And so you reinforce my "flame". "Rambling speculations about half-formed
>ideas that probably won't >pan out to anything" is a good description of
>talking to hear ones-self talk.

Sometimes, but it's also a good description of brainstorming ideas that
aren't fully developed yet. If I had speculated in 1910 that perhaps the
force of gravity could be explained in terms of objects taking the shortest
path in curved space, but didn't have a full mathematical theory that
fleshed out this germ of an idea (and also didn't yet see that the longest
path through curved spacetime would be better than the shortest path through
curved space), then this would be a "halfed-formed idea that probably
wouldn't pan out to anything", but it might still be useful to discuss it
with others who found this germ of an idea promising and wanted to develop
it further. That's how I see the purpose of this list, a combination of
brainstorming ideas about the "everything exists" idea and then criticizing,
fleshing out or disposing of these ideas. So certainly criticism of specific
ideas that don't make sense is valuable, but I don't think it's helpful to
accuse anyone who comes up with an idea that doesn't work out of just
wanting to hear themselves talk.

>If it's not going to pan out anyway, then it's pretty meaningless. If it's
>"rambling" it's fairly incoherent, >and if the ideas are half-formed then
>what's the point to begin with?

99% of brainstorms don't pan out to anything, and brainstorms by definition
are usually half-formed, but all interesting new ideas were at one point
just half-formed brainstorms too. Perhaps I should have left out "rambling",
I only meant a sort of informal, conversational way of presenting a new
speculation.

Jesse
Received on Tue May 24 2005 - 18:40:13 PDT