Friday,
February 27, 2009 at 4:12pm
I
got bored and tore apart his letter.
Last year I went to some "arbitrary title for god" presentations over a five day period. I got caught up talking to this guy named Tim who shows up at this years rehashing of the same thing. I spent the next few months "debating" this guy and frankly refuse to keep going. He goes nowhere, he doesn't study what he's talking about, and he likes to think that presenting his position with someone else's title above his makes a valid argument. Both he and the main presenter hold these notions about violence and death and this being "the bloodiest century ever" somehow supported by the bible as well. Here's his last email to me after I sent him this video:http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
If you want to find a time waster, please watch the video, read his response, and then ask me why I spent months of my life in correspondence with him.
Hey Nick,
First of all, thanks again for coming to the meetings and speaking with us.
I finally got a chance to look at the Pinker video on Wednesday (recall my slow connection and the fact that I have to view these at the public library).
It was interesting. I agree with him that technology has brought the world together to some extent and that it can (when used wisely) be used for peaceful and cooperative purposes. However, it is not always used wisely. [This statement has no bearing on the point of what this discussion; referring to "20th Century being the "bloodiest"] Both technology and education in and of themselves have not demonstrably solved the core problems of human existence, but have in fact in many instances added to them, i.e. nuclear weapons, technological warfare, computer viruses and internet abuses including pornagraphy and exploitation, etc. Thus the continued need to address the issues of morality . . .[Someone tell me the relevance of porn]
Regarding the issue of the history of violence: Actually very little of his presentation was devoted to provding evidence for his thesis that violence is decreasing.[His entire presentation was predicated on this question.] Most of it was about providing the reasons for why he thinks it is so. [Statistics, graphs, historical figures, all sound like opinions to me.] Where his evidence was lacking was in the extrapolation from a isolated population of a group who was particularly violent and drawing conclusions based upon percentages. [Please tell me what "isolated population" who was "particularly violent" that was used to skew the data] What would be needed would be a more representative cross section of the world population of all cultures and all previous centuries and a shown marked decrease. This was not done.[One, you can't get recorded data in areas of the world and time periods where they don't/didn't record things. Two, the purpose of the percentages is to level the playing field when making comparrisons as well as get a general idea of how and why people were dying in those more remote populations. Three, Pinker does a deliberate job starting from a millenium scale and extrapolating down to show indeed that violence/death do go down. To say this was not done is simply a lie.]
Another problem was isolating windows of time and place, i.e. Europe and the Middle Ages. [Please reference this point in the talk to discern for yourself how this was "misleading." One would think that detailing just how misleading it was and how would lend credence to the statement.] Also misleading were the statistics from "deaths from armed conflict" as if this is how all violent deaths occur, and that this provides evidence for general improvement. This is not so. Deaths in concentration camps are not in "armed conflict". Deaths in Siberia and Gestapo or KGB raids, or terrorism are not "armed conflict." [One, "armed conflict" is not what Pinker particularly addresses over death due to violence in general. Two, to isolate "armed conflict" (which after watching the video four times I can't seem to see where he spends a significant amount of time espossing) is to again misrepresent and lie about the presentation. Three, Pinker made very direct points about including the deaths from the World Wars and genocides both past and current in his analysis. Is this man deaf, retarded, or clinically admissable for denial?]
The statement at issue by Justin (and many others) is that the 20th century has been the bloodiest in history (this is not just about war). I didn't find evidence that contradicted this in the video. [Neither Justin or Tim provide evidence of thier claim. They barely "site" examples like the holocaust, the wars, the genocides, etc. to which when directly addressed by Pinker's video, they seem to pretend doesn't work.] Also misdleading was his quoting of Bible passages out of context and mentioning torturous practices of the past. [Tell me jury, when eras of people use the bible to justify they're violence, and a presentation on violence alludes to the same passages used then as are sometimes even used today, is this "out of context?" Also, please grant to Tim that they were used out of context and ask him what the "appropriate" or "right" context therefore is, because he won't tell you anymore than he told me.] As if people don't torture animals for entertainment today! [Torturing animals today because of sick pleasure or mental instability is not the same as making a show in the middle of a French square, laughing and applauding, but this difference is wasted on Tim.] As if the Nazis didn't torture sadistically! As if torture is not common today in certain societies![There is no point in bringing up torture. I never made a claim about torture, the video is not on torture. The only thing that could be said about torture is that the amount of it is assuredly going down, not that it doesn't still exist or should somehow be non-existent if we were getting better as a society. This is what Tim implies, and in case you havn't talked to him whole heartedly believes]
David Fraser noticed some of the same things I did:[Who the hell is David Fraser? I'm not refuting David Fraser]
"This presentation proves that selective use of readily available data can create anything but a history. The pattern of violence (too narrowly defined by Pinker) is more on the order of an inverted U curve: low among hunters-gatherers, much more common among horticulturalists (which are the groups from which his examples came--and even then from the most violent examples among those), peaks in agrarian societies and then begins a gradual, though extraordinarily bloody decline in modern industrial orders. What is missed in his presentation is that the 20th century is the bloodiest century of human history on the scale of killings (the major and minor wars; the civil conflicts; the revolutions; the terrorists). Even norming it by the percentage of population does a disservice to the state-induced killings. One wonders whether 20th century genocides, the deaths from conflicts in the lake region of East Africa, southern Sudan, the "honor" killings in Islamic societies, the violence of the drug trade or the trafficking in human flesh, the forced labor of children, the deaths from toxic pollution by major industrial concerns, the death of women at the hands of abusive husbands -- and whole spectrum of violence was included in his reckoning.
What to say of then of his ethnocentric treatment of biblical material? As though legal statements were enacted practice. Taking texts and even practices out of their socio-cultural context and time and ridiculing them does not amount to proof of levels of violence. How many instances are recorded of any of the provisions of the Mosaic legislation he mentions? What were the customs of the surrounding ancient middle East?
I do not find this presentation to be credible in its argument. It should be titled a brief modern "myth" about violence. Its Euro-centric and ethnocentric presentation of selective data minimizes the extraordinary violence of the present and maximizes the past, unfairly."
Regarding empathy: Granted we have impulses of empathy. We also have impulses for self-preservation. What is the third impulse which tells us we should empathize and do the right thing even at our personal peril? [Still empathy, as well as group selection]
Examples: Save the drowning man even though you are endangering yourself.[No one ever qualifies the people that don't in fact try to save this drowing man when they themselves can't swim or will obviously go down with him. Throw somone into Niagra Falls, place Tim on the edge, tell me if this analogy is still workable.]
Wistle blow on the corrupt company though you lose your job and even your family in the process.[Because we knows this happens all the time]
Why have all societies (regardless of religion) recognized adultery and sex before marriage as wrong[STOP. Such an unbearably ridiculous statement shouldn't have to be tolerated in an intelligent discussion/"debate." Most societies, including ones alluded to in the bible through god's will fucked everything that moved as often as they could as early as the girl had a hole to put it in. If anything our modern understanding of sex shows that it is both normal and healthier to have sex when your horny, safely, and often, if your both consenting] when according to evolution [get ready for it] the idea for men was to "spread his seed around" to as many women as possible?[Evolution is the change in species over time. It doesn't say a damn thing about males spreading their seeds in as many women as possible. What mythical air he pulled this from is beyond me. If anything haveing hundreds of bastard children you couldn't take care of would lead to many of them being unprovided for and therefore unfit to carry on your genes.]
Many acts are known to be wrong though they have no bearing [They may and do] on the survival of the individual or the supposed benefit of the race as a whole: To murder [Murder the people who are going to murder you. Methinks this will make you live longer], commit adultery [How this is violent, leads to death, is relevant, or is viewed as wrong in more ways than meager infidelity is still beyond me], steal [If stealing food means you get to eat, your going to live longer], lie,[When you like to the SS about where your hiding your Jews, they get to live longer] or cheat[This word implies you are working within a sustainbale and just system] are all known to be wrong regardless of the ostensible survival benefit for the individual or society as whole.
But why should someone even care about society as a whole if it conflicts with his personal survival or interests? [As a social non-retarded animal, we understand our survival is intertwined with how well our enviornment(society) runs. Who really needs this fucking explained to them?] Where did we get this idea that we should put others before ourselves and not be selfish? [Probably from people who understood the mutual benefit of cooperation, another grotesquely complicated idea I know.]
Indeed, the "benefit of society as a whole" can become very subjective and problematic when moral absolutes are ignored and disregarded.[Or maybe when you impose moral absolutes where none have ever existed.] This is in fact what has precipitated many of this century's bloodbaths.[Of course.] With the disregarding of moral absolutes, power fills the vacuum. Communism, Nazism, and other genocides have all been precipitated upon the idea of "what is good for society as a whole", or the "survival" of the nation or the individual.[Would anyone with even a meager understanding of a social contract or any other "ism" explain that they are not genocides. Also, tied in with any "ism" is a consordium of social factors, psychology questions, extenuating circumstances, misunderstood phenomena, etc that play into the "simple" words of Communism or Nazism] Without an absolute law defining what is evil, it's up to anyone's whim. But many societies still accept the idea of certain moral absolutes and have believed that the nations and individuals who perpetrate attrocites are in fact actually doing evil, regardless of their own excuses for doing so: thus there are war crimes tribunals, international law, etc.[Because we have no other reason to say they are wrong than "because they are wrong" obviously.]
Without moral absolutes, morality is subjective.[Tell me what about our history and individual liveds doesn't tell you this is true to at least some extent especially when considering different circumstances.] When it is subjective, anyone can define it for their own selfish and evil purposes. [As selfish and evil are synonomous] Why should we not be selfish and evil? We've come full circle. Our consciences[Tim's abstract voice in his head that tells him more or less how he thinks is reasonably reasonable to act in certain situations depending on his beliefs about those situations and the people involved not to mention imbued with the "knowledge" that if he is more disposed to certain behaviors an infinate reward is in order] tell us that morality should NOT be subjective, that the Nazis and Communists and Pol Pot and all the rest should have known better[And a wag of my finger to them], that they too know what is right and wrong but chose to do what is wrong.[Again, understanding what is "wrong or right" and doing otherwise doesn't say a thing about moral absolutes the second one and only one person comes to a different conclusion based on the same evidence or situation your theory is refuted. We like to believe we have good reasons to call things like murder right or wrong given the situation. As if we could predict the future...]
Blessings,
Tim
Last year I went to some "arbitrary title for god" presentations over a five day period. I got caught up talking to this guy named Tim who shows up at this years rehashing of the same thing. I spent the next few months "debating" this guy and frankly refuse to keep going. He goes nowhere, he doesn't study what he's talking about, and he likes to think that presenting his position with someone else's title above his makes a valid argument. Both he and the main presenter hold these notions about violence and death and this being "the bloodiest century ever" somehow supported by the bible as well. Here's his last email to me after I sent him this video:http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
If you want to find a time waster, please watch the video, read his response, and then ask me why I spent months of my life in correspondence with him.
Hey Nick,
First of all, thanks again for coming to the meetings and speaking with us.
I finally got a chance to look at the Pinker video on Wednesday (recall my slow connection and the fact that I have to view these at the public library).
It was interesting. I agree with him that technology has brought the world together to some extent and that it can (when used wisely) be used for peaceful and cooperative purposes. However, it is not always used wisely. [This statement has no bearing on the point of what this discussion; referring to "20th Century being the "bloodiest"] Both technology and education in and of themselves have not demonstrably solved the core problems of human existence, but have in fact in many instances added to them, i.e. nuclear weapons, technological warfare, computer viruses and internet abuses including pornagraphy and exploitation, etc. Thus the continued need to address the issues of morality . . .[Someone tell me the relevance of porn]
Regarding the issue of the history of violence: Actually very little of his presentation was devoted to provding evidence for his thesis that violence is decreasing.[His entire presentation was predicated on this question.] Most of it was about providing the reasons for why he thinks it is so. [Statistics, graphs, historical figures, all sound like opinions to me.] Where his evidence was lacking was in the extrapolation from a isolated population of a group who was particularly violent and drawing conclusions based upon percentages. [Please tell me what "isolated population" who was "particularly violent" that was used to skew the data] What would be needed would be a more representative cross section of the world population of all cultures and all previous centuries and a shown marked decrease. This was not done.[One, you can't get recorded data in areas of the world and time periods where they don't/didn't record things. Two, the purpose of the percentages is to level the playing field when making comparrisons as well as get a general idea of how and why people were dying in those more remote populations. Three, Pinker does a deliberate job starting from a millenium scale and extrapolating down to show indeed that violence/death do go down. To say this was not done is simply a lie.]
Another problem was isolating windows of time and place, i.e. Europe and the Middle Ages. [Please reference this point in the talk to discern for yourself how this was "misleading." One would think that detailing just how misleading it was and how would lend credence to the statement.] Also misleading were the statistics from "deaths from armed conflict" as if this is how all violent deaths occur, and that this provides evidence for general improvement. This is not so. Deaths in concentration camps are not in "armed conflict". Deaths in Siberia and Gestapo or KGB raids, or terrorism are not "armed conflict." [One, "armed conflict" is not what Pinker particularly addresses over death due to violence in general. Two, to isolate "armed conflict" (which after watching the video four times I can't seem to see where he spends a significant amount of time espossing) is to again misrepresent and lie about the presentation. Three, Pinker made very direct points about including the deaths from the World Wars and genocides both past and current in his analysis. Is this man deaf, retarded, or clinically admissable for denial?]
The statement at issue by Justin (and many others) is that the 20th century has been the bloodiest in history (this is not just about war). I didn't find evidence that contradicted this in the video. [Neither Justin or Tim provide evidence of thier claim. They barely "site" examples like the holocaust, the wars, the genocides, etc. to which when directly addressed by Pinker's video, they seem to pretend doesn't work.] Also misdleading was his quoting of Bible passages out of context and mentioning torturous practices of the past. [Tell me jury, when eras of people use the bible to justify they're violence, and a presentation on violence alludes to the same passages used then as are sometimes even used today, is this "out of context?" Also, please grant to Tim that they were used out of context and ask him what the "appropriate" or "right" context therefore is, because he won't tell you anymore than he told me.] As if people don't torture animals for entertainment today! [Torturing animals today because of sick pleasure or mental instability is not the same as making a show in the middle of a French square, laughing and applauding, but this difference is wasted on Tim.] As if the Nazis didn't torture sadistically! As if torture is not common today in certain societies![There is no point in bringing up torture. I never made a claim about torture, the video is not on torture. The only thing that could be said about torture is that the amount of it is assuredly going down, not that it doesn't still exist or should somehow be non-existent if we were getting better as a society. This is what Tim implies, and in case you havn't talked to him whole heartedly believes]
David Fraser noticed some of the same things I did:[Who the hell is David Fraser? I'm not refuting David Fraser]
"This presentation proves that selective use of readily available data can create anything but a history. The pattern of violence (too narrowly defined by Pinker) is more on the order of an inverted U curve: low among hunters-gatherers, much more common among horticulturalists (which are the groups from which his examples came--and even then from the most violent examples among those), peaks in agrarian societies and then begins a gradual, though extraordinarily bloody decline in modern industrial orders. What is missed in his presentation is that the 20th century is the bloodiest century of human history on the scale of killings (the major and minor wars; the civil conflicts; the revolutions; the terrorists). Even norming it by the percentage of population does a disservice to the state-induced killings. One wonders whether 20th century genocides, the deaths from conflicts in the lake region of East Africa, southern Sudan, the "honor" killings in Islamic societies, the violence of the drug trade or the trafficking in human flesh, the forced labor of children, the deaths from toxic pollution by major industrial concerns, the death of women at the hands of abusive husbands -- and whole spectrum of violence was included in his reckoning.
What to say of then of his ethnocentric treatment of biblical material? As though legal statements were enacted practice. Taking texts and even practices out of their socio-cultural context and time and ridiculing them does not amount to proof of levels of violence. How many instances are recorded of any of the provisions of the Mosaic legislation he mentions? What were the customs of the surrounding ancient middle East?
I do not find this presentation to be credible in its argument. It should be titled a brief modern "myth" about violence. Its Euro-centric and ethnocentric presentation of selective data minimizes the extraordinary violence of the present and maximizes the past, unfairly."
Regarding empathy: Granted we have impulses of empathy. We also have impulses for self-preservation. What is the third impulse which tells us we should empathize and do the right thing even at our personal peril? [Still empathy, as well as group selection]
Examples: Save the drowning man even though you are endangering yourself.[No one ever qualifies the people that don't in fact try to save this drowing man when they themselves can't swim or will obviously go down with him. Throw somone into Niagra Falls, place Tim on the edge, tell me if this analogy is still workable.]
Wistle blow on the corrupt company though you lose your job and even your family in the process.[Because we knows this happens all the time]
Why have all societies (regardless of religion) recognized adultery and sex before marriage as wrong[STOP. Such an unbearably ridiculous statement shouldn't have to be tolerated in an intelligent discussion/"debate." Most societies, including ones alluded to in the bible through god's will fucked everything that moved as often as they could as early as the girl had a hole to put it in. If anything our modern understanding of sex shows that it is both normal and healthier to have sex when your horny, safely, and often, if your both consenting] when according to evolution [get ready for it] the idea for men was to "spread his seed around" to as many women as possible?[Evolution is the change in species over time. It doesn't say a damn thing about males spreading their seeds in as many women as possible. What mythical air he pulled this from is beyond me. If anything haveing hundreds of bastard children you couldn't take care of would lead to many of them being unprovided for and therefore unfit to carry on your genes.]
Many acts are known to be wrong though they have no bearing [They may and do] on the survival of the individual or the supposed benefit of the race as a whole: To murder [Murder the people who are going to murder you. Methinks this will make you live longer], commit adultery [How this is violent, leads to death, is relevant, or is viewed as wrong in more ways than meager infidelity is still beyond me], steal [If stealing food means you get to eat, your going to live longer], lie,[When you like to the SS about where your hiding your Jews, they get to live longer] or cheat[This word implies you are working within a sustainbale and just system] are all known to be wrong regardless of the ostensible survival benefit for the individual or society as whole.
But why should someone even care about society as a whole if it conflicts with his personal survival or interests? [As a social non-retarded animal, we understand our survival is intertwined with how well our enviornment(society) runs. Who really needs this fucking explained to them?] Where did we get this idea that we should put others before ourselves and not be selfish? [Probably from people who understood the mutual benefit of cooperation, another grotesquely complicated idea I know.]
Indeed, the "benefit of society as a whole" can become very subjective and problematic when moral absolutes are ignored and disregarded.[Or maybe when you impose moral absolutes where none have ever existed.] This is in fact what has precipitated many of this century's bloodbaths.[Of course.] With the disregarding of moral absolutes, power fills the vacuum. Communism, Nazism, and other genocides have all been precipitated upon the idea of "what is good for society as a whole", or the "survival" of the nation or the individual.[Would anyone with even a meager understanding of a social contract or any other "ism" explain that they are not genocides. Also, tied in with any "ism" is a consordium of social factors, psychology questions, extenuating circumstances, misunderstood phenomena, etc that play into the "simple" words of Communism or Nazism] Without an absolute law defining what is evil, it's up to anyone's whim. But many societies still accept the idea of certain moral absolutes and have believed that the nations and individuals who perpetrate attrocites are in fact actually doing evil, regardless of their own excuses for doing so: thus there are war crimes tribunals, international law, etc.[Because we have no other reason to say they are wrong than "because they are wrong" obviously.]
Without moral absolutes, morality is subjective.[Tell me what about our history and individual liveds doesn't tell you this is true to at least some extent especially when considering different circumstances.] When it is subjective, anyone can define it for their own selfish and evil purposes. [As selfish and evil are synonomous] Why should we not be selfish and evil? We've come full circle. Our consciences[Tim's abstract voice in his head that tells him more or less how he thinks is reasonably reasonable to act in certain situations depending on his beliefs about those situations and the people involved not to mention imbued with the "knowledge" that if he is more disposed to certain behaviors an infinate reward is in order] tell us that morality should NOT be subjective, that the Nazis and Communists and Pol Pot and all the rest should have known better[And a wag of my finger to them], that they too know what is right and wrong but chose to do what is wrong.[Again, understanding what is "wrong or right" and doing otherwise doesn't say a thing about moral absolutes the second one and only one person comes to a different conclusion based on the same evidence or situation your theory is refuted. We like to believe we have good reasons to call things like murder right or wrong given the situation. As if we could predict the future...]
Blessings,
Tim
