...whether I am a magical unicorn?

Many public discussions reveal a significant (outspoken?) number of people who have low standards for their 'evidence' and their 'proofs'.

I think that the quality of a our collective reasoning ability is very important in life, especially in democracies where public opinion can shape policies.

This is a matter of life and death, when someone wants to convince you 'we oughtta kill them people thats different from us' - do we exercise reason and intelligence in evaluating their propaganda? Its also a matter of life and death when someone wants to convince us to reject one medical treatment for another so-called treatment.



Yesterday a rational-leaning friend of mine (lets call him Rat) was debating a political issue with an often-irrational friend of mine (lets call him Ira). Ira was pissed because he felt that Rat took a narrow view of reality, and was dictating 'facts of reality' as if they should apply to everyone, defining other people's experiences.

In no way were we discussing unicorns, but Rat brought unicorns into the convo to establish a foundation of 'factual reality' to build upon:

"Well, you could also say that you are magical unicorn. Would that make it true?"


And Ira said: "You can't tell me I'm not a unicorn! If I want to be a unicorn, I can be a unicorn. If I say that I'm a unicorn, how do you know that I'm not???"


At the time, I was just glad I could be a spectator while someone else carried the torch of reason. But now I'm deeply concerned. Ira is college educated, and in some ways is extremely intelligent. Yet, his denies a reality based approach to truth.

How many Iras are out there in the world? Do you know anyone like Ira? Do you consider them a threat to quality discourse, and to us (as a society) making intelligent decisions?

Better yet - does anyone agree with him?

I agree with you that irrational people are a problem in large numbers with what they can do to a society.. i know a few people like that, but none who are to any extreme luckily. People like this potentially carry the seeds of destruction for society.

"This is a matter of life and death, when someone wants to convince you 'we oughtta kill them people thats different from us' - do we exercise reason and intelligence in evaluating their propaganda?"
That line of yours is a very good point, people dont stop to think about the individuals in question and just want to annihilate all differences! Im trans, so i know that side of humanity all to well. People need to learn, life is life, people are people, no delusional mindset can change that haha

But this is all just my view and opinion, lets hear some others =P

Emily, thank you for your comments, and welcome to mingle2!

Thank you for the welcome, and anytime. Debates over society and mindsets is always interesting ^.^

Massage,

It seems to be a matter of certainty, or conviction perhaps, in one's beliefs. Ultimately I think the underlying issue is had in one's own confidence in what they think they can know, and why.

If one truly believes that we can know nothing, then they could justify doubting everything, what a miserable way to think though. WE as humans, are necessarily rational creatures. We must be in order to effectively function as humans. Can I know that the sun will rise tommorrow? Of course not, however due to the enormous amount of empirical evidence which suggests that it will, I am confident in my asserting that it will, just as it has done as long as I have been alive and noticed. We do not choose to think like that, we must. We make those connections automatically.

Applying that to "How do I know that you are not a magical unicorn?" requires my leaning on that which I have already accepted as true.

For starters, I do not believe that magical unicorns exist outside of the imagination, therefore you could not be something which does not exist.

How did I arrive at that conclusion about magical unicorns?

I have yet to have seen any empirical evidence which would necessitate a belief that they exist. You, however, do exist. Therefore, you cannot be a magical unicorn.

First: Yes, I agree that people like Ira ARE a threat to logical discourse (a/k/a 'debate', 'conversation', etc). Yes, I know people like Ira. The kindest way I can describe them (and him) is to say they're volitionally delusional. Ira's 'wanting' to be a 'unicorn' does not, in and of itself, MAKE him a 'unicorn'. If he carries this to its logical conclusion and begins to BELIEVE he's a unicorn, he crosses the line from 'play' to 'threat', because that crossing indicates loss of contact with objective reality. The truly scary part of that scenario is NOT that he becomes a threat to others directly, because 'unicorns' are 'peaceful', right? The threat he poses is at the ballot box when he VOTES. He'll vote for OTHER 'unicorns'. He thus becomes an INDIRECT threat by exercising HIS 'reality' through an 'elected representative' to bring about 'justice' or some other fictional 'benefit' for ALL 'unicorns'. Can anyone say 'Entitlement Society' or 'I Wants MINEZ!' ... ? The world has enough 'Ira's - and 'college educated' doesn't carry the weight it once did - he's living proof.

I agree all the way up to the bolded part. I do not think the dividing line between rational and irrational crosses political systems of governance as directly as socialism vs capitalism. I happen to not agree with most entitlement programs as a fiscal conservative myself, however am not want to claim those that do are particularly irrational, just wrong. Communism need not be irrational to be bad for the governing game.

I would say the example of reliocrat vs secular would be a better example. A leader proclaiming they have received orders from god, or god helped them settle a particular bit of governance would fall under the category of non-demonstrability of said unicorn of wisdom's existance.

"How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg?

Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg"

-President Abraham Lincoln

Excellent post. What makes something what it is?

Characteristics and commonality.

Ira: Why isn't a tail a leg if I say it is!?
Rati: Because you do not walk with tails ... you walk with legs.
Ira: What if I walked with my tail and grabbed things with my legs?
Rati: well that would be silly. I guess then that would make you a Tigger!

i knew it!

Hi Massage, KK, Emily, Creative - interesting topic.

Discussion today with a classmate, actually discussing duscussions that poeple have.

He enjoys discussing mysticism because he believes there are mystical forces and miraculous events that take place within ‘reality’. Remember I said he’s a classmate in a science program.

I explained that I have always taken an interest in all forms of theology and mysticism but my skepticism has kept me from placing any belief in these things. He said he had very little skepticism because he really “wanted” to believe.

I imagine his age is between 22 and 25, but as he was telling me how he felt, I saw my son at 10 years old sitting on the roof of the garage, having removed the screen from his bedroom window. It was several years before he confessed to me, he really believed that X-Men existed and he just knew he has some special power yet to be discovered, he figured he could fly. Fortunately, as much as he tried and as hard as he believed, he said he could never take that leap off the garage.

Problem is – my son was 10, but how many college educated adults, like my classmate, deny critical thought simply because they “want” to believe?

On the other hand, there are a great many people who think gays are gay and trans challenged community memebers are simply products of their own poor “choices” in life.

So who are truly dangerous, the educated who use what people believe in, to manipulate the masses, or those who want to believe they are small and insignificant in comparison to the great mystical forces of the unknown?

Sometimes we can play the game and sometimes we can remove our self from the game and enter our own reality – but which is game and which is reality to those outside my idealism?

I love discussions of rationality and reasoning. I am having tremendous trouble following this one. I can't make out what "ira" was trying to say, because I don't know what "foundation" he was trying to lay in.
In general, I have found far more people in the world who THINK that they are logical and rational, that who actually are so. I reached the point some while back where I decided that many people think that all that is needed to be logical, is to use the word "if" at the beginning of a sentence, and put the word "then" or "therefore" in the middle. Almost any clauses may thus be joined, and any conclusion supported.
When it comes to a USEFUL debate (to me, useful means it leads to a decision on actions to take to solve a problem), definitions of what is and is not real must be agreed upon by those debating. Without such, there can be no actual debate. This is why there are no useful debates that can take place between someone who DOES believe in God, and someone who does NOT believe, when the subject discussed is whether or not God exists.
It appears that the debate you are hedging about between "ira" and "rat" was made impossible by this sort of conundrum. One of the two people refused to agree to limit the debate to independently recognized reality. I used to hear college-age people (usually inebriated ones) make up arguments like that, with their REAL goal being simply to worship their own cleverness. Often, their strategy was to annoy the person they were speaking with by themselves simply being contrary, until that person became angry. Then they would declare "victory".
It causes me great dismay that such people are allowed to vote.

KK, I share your point of view, as expressed here.




I agree, R. Whether a belief is political or otherwise, we can't always measure a person's rationality by their beliefs, especially since they may have access to completely different sets of information and experiences then we do.

In general, if a person declares themselves a unicorn, I'm first going to be curious about their reasons for making the declaration before I dismiss them as having an anti-reality perspective.

IF wrote:



My impression was that Rat was the one seeking to lay a foundation - specifically: "There is such a thing as objective reality."

Ira seemed to be reacting. I think he was afraid he was about to be boxed in and forced to admit his beliefs were delusional, and he was trying to escape into 'there is no such thing as objective reality'.

I love it!!!! Especially in these forums! People use the word "thus", "therefore" etc. in ways that leave me scratching my head. I think some people treat these words like exclamation points - they use them for emphasis, without concern for whether there is logic involved.




I'm a contrarian. There is precious little of which we can be highly confident; I think that most of what people believe, collectively, is likely to be wrong.

Well said Redonkulous! And thanks Massagetrade for explaining what I missed about the conversation. I have seen people do just as you say, denying reality NOT because they actually believed the nonsense, but just to avoid what they saw as a logic trap being laid by their debate opponent.
I wish schools still taught old-style Rhetoric and Debate. Training people HOW to think, HOW to reason is uncommon. More common to try to teach them WHAT to think.

O, and just an aside about Communism? It fails the logic test, because it requires people to behave entirely altruistically, as well as being spontaneously coordinated with each other. It IGNORES human nature. That's why it fails, and requires Totalitarianism in order to APPEAR to function. Capitalism is slightly better, because it is BASED on Human nature, though in it's purest form, it TOO requires all people to behave logically, honestly, and more than anything else, JUSTLY in order to work well without lots of modifications.

Ah, the "Devil's Advocate" role. I've played this many times (though never to avoid logic traps) yet I never prefer to play this role and usually leave it to a friend of mine who has a degree in philosophy.



I'd say those that are both ... because then they feel no matter what they do, it won't matter in the long run, so they could practically get away with anything. =)



Every system has its faults and loopholes that can be exploited. Communism is not inherently bad, just as Capitalism is not. I think the problem lies with the population, not necessarily in being required to behave one way or another, but in not acting against the injustice of those who do the exploiting. Most consider it is not their concern, so long as they themselves are not affected (or seem not to be affected).

I know this has nothing to do with either system, but let's take for example the war in Iraq. The moment we knew the WMDs were a farce and it was obvious that the American population had been swindled (for whatever reason, but I'll keep my own conclusions out of this particular discussion), there should have been a far bigger commotion about someone exploiting the system for their own benefit. After all, the previous president had gotten impeached for far less of an infringement.

My informal statistical analysis of mingle2 threads indicate approximately fifty percent compliance with your unicorn model. It would appear unicorns abound.

Facts are created, linked, twisted, and massaged to the point where unicorns abound and dance profusely.