Putin planning to glue together the most powerful superpower coalition in the world

[gregorio]

Originally Posted by albed

International human rights laws are already in existance so Russia's veto wouldn't matter and it's the people committing the crimes that are prosecuted not a whole country. Slobodan Milosevic has found out about international laws, why haven't you?

Slobodan Milosevic picked the wrong people to fuck with. And Russia never gave much for human rights. Chechnia is only one example for that.

The truth can't contradict itself. You can claim lies are true but your credibility drops each time you go on record and soon you'll be ignored as just another slimeball.

There are two mistakes in your reasoning:
First, you seem to assume that you can identify any lie. You cannot. Most information you receive, can not be verified by yourself. If it appears likely enough, you will just believe it. And if you wait just long enough, most of the information won't even be physically verifiable. For all we know, the ancient cultures of Rome, Egypt or Greece may have been made up by someone else. Since that does not appear likely, we believe what historical documents and artifacts tell us about Rome, Egypt and Greece.
Second, you seem to believe that people prefer the truth over a good lie. They don't. Lies can often be much easier to understand and to accept as the truth. Why do you think people believe in God? Do we have any proof that he exists? No. Does it seem even likely that he exists, according to science? No. So - logically - God is most probably a lie. Yet so many people firmly believe that there is a God. They do so for many reasons but basically it is just convenient for them if there is a God, a form of higher justice, a legitimation for their own actions and a deeper meaning of life.
People choose a reality that appears likely they call it truth and call anyone who refuses it a liar.

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by Sinner

Propagandists use a variety of propaganda techniques to influence opinions and to avoid the truth.

Thanks you for describing, in much better words than I can, the Bush adm

Sure War could be one of a thousand ideas they have. But War with who? OH MY GOD!!! Canada is the largest exporter of oil to the USA.....They are going to invade CANADA EH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RUN

It is easy for you and others sitting in their nice warm chair drinking coffee to call a Young American soldier whos life is at risk every second of the day a War Criminal.

Oh please, spare me the bleeding heart crap. It's war. What I saw is no different than an IDF shooting an unarmed palestinian. The guy shot and killed a man and it was taped for the whole world to see on how, some coalition members, deals with insurgents.

It is a War, and it seems the terrorist there are doing most of the killing when it comes to the innocents. Grow up hating Americans? Just like in Japan you mean? Nope that never happened, or maybe Germany...hhhmmm nope, How about South Korea.....no again. Well I am sure some did but it never started another War.

There is a BIG difference between being at war with another country and being the invading force. Kinda like Israel and Palestine. A lot of palestinian kids grow up to hate the 'occupying force' aka the jewish state and the IDF soldiers. Same thing will happen in Iraq, it's no different.

Nope, I never forgot to mention it. I left it out.

Wonder why? Does it have to do with the "use a variety of propaganda techniques to influence opinions and to avoid the truth."?

Kerry did concede for a reason. I doubt he conceded because he thought he was going to win.

Are you opposed to a recount?

and some people have seen UFO's land in their backyard and some people have seen BigFoot walking around in the woods.....Their have been many news articles on these events....doesn't make it true.

Doesn't make it false either.

[albed]

Originally Posted by albed

The truth can't contradict itself. You can claim lies are true but your credibility drops each time you go on record and soon you'll be ignored as just another slimeball.

Originally Posted by gregorio

There are two mistakes in your reasoning:
First, you seem to assume that you can identify any lie. You cannot. Most information you receive, can not be verified by yourself.

I can identify nutcases and disreputable media organizations easily enough through their lack of ethical standards and compare them to people and organizations who value their reputation and adhere to high standards as well as simple logic and my own experience of what lying lowlifes are like and do quite well in identifying lies.

Originally Posted by gregorio

If it appears likely enough, you will just believe it. And if you wait just long enough, most of the information won't even be physically verifiable. For all we know, the ancient cultures of Rome, Egypt or Greece may have been made up by someone else.

You seem to assume I know as little as you. I know more than enough than to even consider they could be made up.

Originally Posted by gregorio

Second, you seem to believe that people prefer the truth over a good lie. They don't. Lies can often be much easier to understand and to accept as the truth. Why do you think people believe in God? Do we have any proof that he exists? No. Does it seem even likely that he exists, according to science? No. So - logically - God is most probably a lie. Yet so many people firmly believe that there is a God. They do so for many reasons but basically it is just convenient for them if there is a God, a form of higher justice, a legitimation for their own actions and a deeper meaning of life.
People choose a reality that appears likely they call it truth and call anyone who refuses it a liar.

What people claim to believe and what they actually do believe are often two different things. Compare their behaviour in supposed privacy to their public rhetoric to find out their true beliefs or offer a reward and see if they change their professed beliefs or even consider that they might be like you and lie to others for their own benefit.

Truth and reality aren't matters of opinion, they have established defintions and standards of proof. You can claim otherwise but you've already begun demonstrating what your opinion is worth.

[gregorio]

Originally Posted by gregorio

There are two mistakes in your reasoning:
First, you seem to assume that you can identify any lie. You cannot. Most information you receive, can not be verified by yourself.

Originally Posted by albed

I can identify nutcases and disreputable media organizations easily enough through their lack of ethical standards and compare them to people and organizations who value their reputation and adhere to high standards as well as simple logic and my own experience of what lying lowlifes are like and do quite well in identifying lies.

Let's analyze that: You define ethical standards (ethical standards are not absolute!), everybody who suffices these arbitrary standards tells the truth.
You use your personal experience (something highly subjective, also far from absolute), to identify liars - you have some profile and if somebody fits that profile (the way he talks, the way he looks, you will most likely be unable to identify what exactly is so suspicious about him), he has to be a liar.
You claim to use logic, I doubt that. I will give you an example: Your neighbour says an flying saucer landed in his backyard last night. You look outside and you see the backyard the way you remember it from yesterday without any kind of UFO. And nobody else saw or heard anything either. What does logic tell you here? Logic tells you that either your neighbour doesn't tell the truth or that the UFO simply landed while nobody else was looking. The second possibility may seem less probable than the first according to your experience but logic itself will not prefer one possibility over another. In order to use logic to identify truth, you would at least need some other truth (and not just any truth - 'cogito ergo sum' is not sufficient) to start with, but you are judging based on your own experience - and your experience has nothing to do with the absolute truth, it is based on what you see and on what you remember and on what you WANT to remember.

Originally Posted by gregorio

If it appears likely enough, you will just believe it. And if you wait just long enough, most of the information won't even be physically verifiable. For all we know, the ancient cultures of Rome, Egypt or Greece may have been made up by someone else.

Originally Posted by albed

You seem to assume I know as little as you. I know more than enough than to even consider they could be made up.

And the fact that you do not even consider the possibility just proves that you blindly rely on information you received from sources that you could not verify, like "It's on the internet, so it must be true!" which is - and you can actually use logic to prove that - not true.

Originally Posted by albed

What people claim to believe and what they actually do believe are often two different things. Compare their behaviour in supposed privacy to their public rhetoric to find out their true beliefs or offer a reward and see if they change their professed beliefs or even consider that they might be like you and lie to others for their own benefit.

You don't seem to understand what I was aiming at. What people believe has nothing to do with the truth. Given the choice people will believe the sound lie, if the alternative was the unlikely and uncomfortable truth. In the UFO example from above, let us consider the following as the truth: Last night, there was an UFO in your neighbours backyard, and nobody noticed it, except for him. You won't believe the truth, it doesn't fit in your own reality, you will believe that your neighbour lied and you will call him a liar. And you will add elements of your neighbour to the profile of a liar that is based on your experience. You will be unable to reliably identify any further truth just because your liar-profile has been corrupted by your inability to see this one truth.

Originally Posted by albed

Truth and reality aren't matters of opinion, they have established defintions and standards of proof. You can claim otherwise but you've already begun demonstrating what your opinion is worth.

There is an absolute truth, there is an absolute reality. You will never be able to see it, - unless there is a god and you are dead.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Gregorio, since you're new here, allow me to help you out and save you some time.

Your epistemological arguments, as applied to the P2P Zone's poster-child for homeland insecurity, are entirely futile. Below are a few excerpts from The Book of Albedisms:

Logic: The science of constantly explaining to other people why I am right and they wrong, based on the fact that they are not me and never will be.

Ethics: The discipline of determining what is good and bad by checking it against whatever the established party line agenda is at the time.

Truth: The quality or state of things and events as they exist in my head, as opposed to the world of things and events which somehow get into other people's heads and are therefore false.

Proof: 1: What the majority believes.

2: The process or instance of establishing the validity of a statement by determining that A: it was derived from a non-liberal news source or any old blog created by self-avowed rabid 'conservatives' or, B: that it sounds vaguely like something that would infuriate liberals.

Reality: the sum of things accepted by me, (a small place, about the size of the average mobile home kitchen).

Also, you should realize that since most of albed's responses have the approximate form and content of the average Lichtenstein canvas or daily Peanuts comic strip, they tend to draw the lazy eye and attention span past denser and more difficult or complex material which may require creative thought, or, indeed, thought. Compare this tendency with the definitions above and you'll quickly realize that albed has an unbeatable, built-in appeal to his own audience... himself.

Therefore, if you're really into providing stimulus for other people's masturbation, I know of some much better looking guys than albed who have webcams and will drop the tiresome quasi-intellectual pretense altogether. Barring that, you might just want to stick to communication with the adults here.

[gregorio]

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Therefore, if you're really into providing stimulus for other people's masturbation, I know of some much better looking guys than albed who have webcams and will drop the tiresome quasi-intellectual pretense altogether. Barring that, you might just want to stick to communication with the adults here.

What if it was him who provided the stimulus and me who had no interest in communicating with adults? Discussions with people who basically share the same opinion can be quite boring, discussions with somebody whose opinion has a solid base on a completely different set of values are really tiresome, especially if you have to translate everything that you want to say. And most of all, it feels good to talk to someone who does not pick on all the little errors in your argumentation. After all, I came here because I thought it was a P2P forum.

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by gregorio

I thought it was a P2P forum.

It is

Try the underground, if you dare

Welcome gregorio!

[albed]

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Therefore, if you're really into providing stimulus for other people's masturbation, I know of some much better looking guys than albed who have webcams and will drop the tiresome quasi-intellectual pretense altogether. Barring that, you might just want to stick to communication with the adults here.

Ramona you dirty old fart, aren't there enough gay chatrooms on the internet for you to do that on? At least post a recent pic for the guy; from your repeated jabs at Ann Coulter's thinness I suspect you've become rather chubby as well as aged.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by albed

Ramona you dirty old fart, aren't there enough gay chatrooms on the internet for you to do that on? At least post a recent pic for the guy; from your repeated jabs at Ann Coulter's thinness I suspect you've become rather chubby as well as aged.

Ann Coulter has to be thin - whoever heard of a fat dominatrix?

[albed]

You don't get around much do you knife?

[albed]

Originally Posted by gregorio

Let's analyze that: You define ethical standards (ethical standards are not absolute!), everybody who suffices these arbitrary standards tells the truth.

I don't define ethical standards anywhere in this thread. Oops! Forgot that your reality is what you choose to believe.

Originally Posted by gregorio

You use your personal experience (something highly subjective, also far from absolute), to identify liars -

In combination with the other things I've mentioned.

Originally Posted by gregorio

you have some profile and if somebody fits that profile (the way he talks, the way he looks, you will most likely be unable to identify what exactly is so suspicious about him), he has to be a liar.

No I don't have some profile and never said I did. That 'reality is what you choose' crap is already getting annoying. Try choosing one that doesn't falsify what I've said.

Originally Posted by gregorio

You claim to use logic, I doubt that. I will give you an example: Your neighbour says an flying saucer landed in his backyard last night. You look outside and you see the backyard the way you remember it from yesterday without any kind of UFO. And nobody else saw or heard anything either. What does logic tell you here? Logic tells you that either your neighbour doesn't tell the truth or that the UFO simply landed while nobody else was looking. The second possibility may seem less probable than the first according to your experience but logic itself will not prefer one possibility over another. In order to use logic to identify truth, you would at least need some other truth (and not just any truth - 'cogito ergo sum' is not sufficient) to start with, but you are judging based on your own experience - and your experience has nothing to do with the absolute truth, it is based on what you see and on what you remember and on what you WANT to remember.

Your reality sure has me doing a lot of things here. Do I need to participate in this thread at all?

Originally Posted by gregorio

And the fact that you do not even consider the possibility just proves that you blindly rely on information you received from sources that you could not verify, like "It's on the internet, so it must be true!" which is - and you can actually use logic to prove that - not true.

If that were true I'd believe space aliens built the pyramids and other ridiculous information I've received. I've discarded plenty of information so I hope you'll acknowledge that I don't blindly rely on it.

Originally Posted by gregorio

You don't seem to understand what I was aiming at. What people believe has nothing to do with the truth. Given the choice people will believe the sound lie, if the alternative was the unlikely and uncomfortable truth. In the UFO example from above, let us consider the following as the truth: Last night, there was an UFO in your neighbours backyard, and nobody noticed it, except for him. You won't believe the truth, it doesn't fit in your own reality, you will believe that your neighbour lied and you will call him a liar. And you will add elements of your neighbour to the profile of a liar that is based on your experience. You will be unable to reliably identify any further truth just because your liar-profile has been corrupted by your inability to see this one truth.

Like I said before, you're assuming what people say about their beliefs is the truth. If you study psychology you'll find scientific studies showing that on certain subjects, particularly religion, many people lie about their true beliefs. So they're likely not as weak minded and irrational as you assume. You're also once again deciding what I would do in your hypothetical circumstances. You just can't help yourself can you?

Originally Posted by gregorio

There is an absolute truth, there is an absolute reality. You will never be able to see it, - unless there is a god and you are dead.

No need to get all pompous here. I'd challenge you to produce a proof but there's no telling what bullshit you'll make up. Reality is the universe we exist in, truth is the mental model of reality. There is only one of each.

[floydian slip]

Originally Posted by albed

You don't get around much do you knife?

tell us all about it albed

are flour jokes frowned upon? just say the safe word at any time

and hi gregorio, welcome to the asylum, where views seldom change and logic means little. but we have alot of fun with it. right albed?

[gregorio]

Originally Posted by albed

I don't define ethical standards anywhere in this thread. Oops! Forgot that your reality is what you choose to believe.

But you do have ethical standards, don't you?

Originally Posted by albed

No I don't have some profile and never said I did.

It's a subconscious type of thing really.

Originally Posted by albed

If that were true I'd believe space aliens built the pyramids and other ridiculous information I've received. I've discarded plenty of information so I hope you'll acknowledge that I don't blindly rely on it.

It's not about discarding some information. It's about questioning all information and being ready to accept that most of the information you previously believed may turn out to be false or at least very unreliable at some point. Once you have seen that, you can either continue questioning what you believe to be true right now - or you can choose to continue believing.

Originally Posted by albed

Like I said before, you're assuming what people say about their beliefs is the truth. If you study psychology you'll find scientific studies showing that on certain subjects, particularly religion, many people lie about their true beliefs. So they're likely not as weak minded and irrational as you assume.

Did you find any of these scientific studies or do you just believe in their existence? What you actually say is that people don't really believe in God. Independent of whether there are studies trying to prove that or not, given the role religion has played in our history and still plays, I don't find that very likely.

Originally Posted by albed

You're also once again deciding what I would do in your hypothetical circumstances. You just can't help yourself can you?

Yes, that's the fun thing about hypothetical situations.

Originally Posted by albed

No need to get all pompous here. I'd challenge you to produce a proof but there's no telling what bullshit you'll make up. Reality is the universe we exist in, truth is the mental model of reality. There is only one of each.

You think, therefore you are. That is the one fundamental truth you can absolutely be sure of. What else do you know? Nothing. What you remember from your past could be fake. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe you are delusional. Maybe all your memories are the result of some sort of conditioning. What you see, what you hear, everything you perceive maybe fake too. Maybe you are under the influence of drugs.
So, what do you actually know about reality or the truth? Nothing. You can assume that what you remember was really the way you remembered it. You can assume what you see is some glimpse of reality.
But consider this, you are meeting an old friend from school, you talk about a particular event of which either of you has a slightly different memory. You have to admit that stuff like that happens occasionally, - how will you ever find out that your memory serves you right?
Given all this, do you really think, you know the truth or reality? Isn't it possible that you are wrong and I am right?

And I am going to tell you, you are wrong. I am right. And I'm not going to prove it to you, because I can't, as well as you can't prove the opposite. But I can argue that my explanation of the world is much more plausible than yours and therefore we should agree that it is true until somebody comes up with a better explanation.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

originally blown out the ass of albed
If you study psychology you'll find scientific studies showing that on certain subjects, particularly religion, many people lie about their true beliefs. So they're likely not as weak minded and irrational as you assume.

That's absolutely priceless. Actually, in my opinion, the epithet 'weak minded and irrational' pretty much applies by definition to anyone who believes there's a big invisible man in the sky who's going to judge them when they die, but aside from that, since one of the basic tenets of most religions is thou shall not bear false witness, if they further lie about their beliefs, we have at best 'many' raging hypocrites here, if not candidates for reality therapy.

Also, if they lie about their beliefs, it would be pretty obviously weak minded and irrational of these supposed 'scientific studies' to subsequently qualify the veracity of their claim that they are liars, but aren't lying about lying, as some sort of viable statistic.

If you've 'studied psychology' you probably already know all about wish fulfillment, and your belief that such 'scientific studies' even exist is exactly that.

But of course it's entirely reasonable for you to invoke phrases such as 'scientific studies' when you're really only referring to unsubstantiated opinions and half-baked speculations to support this idea that you have a greater ability to discern the truth than anyone else. After all, that basic contention couldn't possibly get any more ludicrous even if you tried.

That is called lying. That's some impressive bullshit twisting but it's not going to fool anyone with a trace of integrity, it'll just make you look the fool. You can claim lies are true but your credibility drops each time you go on record and soon you'll be ignored as just another slimeball.

[albed]

So you've decided to join my audience after all and attempt to provide masturbation stimulous along with tiresome quasi-intellectual pretense.

It sure isn't stimulating to me; try talking dirty.




If someone's lying about a professed belief that prohibits lying then it's a perfectly rational and reinforcing indication that that person doesn't really believe what they've professed. duh

Also, like I posted before, and you didn't understand, to learn the truth you study people's behaviour free from peer pressure and contrast it with their professed beliefs. If someone switches religions or privately violates basic tenents of a professed religion it's strong evidence that their true beliefs aren't what they've claimed.

I personally know plenty of people who pay lip service (not what you're thinking) to their religion, attend the functions and go through the rituals, and are no more religious than I am.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

...and since you claim that these seemingly fluffy little bits of offhand pseudo-knowledge are based on scientific studies, no doubt by reputable organizations judged by you as adhering to such high standards, you'll now have no trouble at all producing evidence of them, as I'm sure they must be lying around on your desk at this very moment, artifacts testifying to your vast, ongoing and rigorous research of human psychology.

If you can't produce them on the other hand, and let us judge for ourselves whether they are reputable and scientific, I'm afraid you'll have to be labeled just another low-life liar by your own criteria.

recently posted by albed, in a moment of extreme irony
Maybe you should study psychology to figure out why you need to make up lies all the time to try to impress people.

[albed]

Wow! You're even more of a fan than I thought. I've actually got 2 dozen minimized pages on my desktop along with a couple locked up ones from chasing psychology links. Still interesting and still plenty to learn. I'll keep an eye out for studies.

Actually I noticed I've branched out into social sciences too. I get this way.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

If you study psychology you'll find scientific studies showing that on certain subjects, particularly religion, many people lie about their true beliefs.

Wow, you're going to 'keep an eye out' for studies? Curious that you would have to spend all day 'chasing psychology links' to support something you stated as fact. I guess the above was merely 'hypothetical'--or maybe a 'guess'--or maybe some sort of precognitive prophecy! Maybe you're just one of those people who thinks if such studies don't exist then someone ought to create them to help their argument appear valid.

Don't feel bad, a lot of novices mistake scientism for true science like that, especially if they're not particularly bright or have some kind of impulsive agenda obliterating their objectivity.

But I have little doubt that if you google it hard enough you can find something to support any lying burst of gas that was designed to create the illusion that you were actually in possession of some superior form of knowledge. As quite possibly your biggest fan, I can't wait to see what you might come up with, but my money is actually on you making a few more snide and beside the point comments and then slinking off like you never really got your ass handed to you at your own petty game.

[albed]

Nag, nag, nag....you are the worst masturbation stimulus on the internet.

http://www.objectivethought.com/atheism/wherefaith.html

Barna Research study conducted in November and December 2003, and released January 12th,...
Based on interviews with 601 Senior Pastors nationwide, representing a random cross-section of Protestant churches, Barna reports that only half of the country’s Protestant pastors - 51% - have a biblical worldview. Defining such a worldview as believing that absolute moral truth exists, that it is based upon the Bible, and having a biblical view on six core beliefs (the accuracy of biblical teaching, the sinless nature of Jesus, the literal existence of Satan, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by grace alone, and the personal responsibility to evangelize)

http://www.liberator.net/articles/Tr...is/Gallup.html
Gallup International Millenium Survey
We also learn that half of religious people consider "God" as a personal being, and half do not ! This throws a huge wrench in the idea that religion is still powerful, since virtually all religions preach a personal, active divine being.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Yeah, a search for "religion, lying and statistics" would certainly turn up those pages, unfortunately the words lie or lying are only mentioned three times in a very oblique way that neither has anything to do with your argument that 'many people lie about their beliefs', nor is anything but purely speculatory rhetoric appraising the meaning of statistics with a preconceived distinction that the nature of a person's god concept plays a role in the meaning of religion, qualifications that are nowhere to be found in the data being approached, and hardly represent 'scientific studies.'

How weak and embarassing for you.

Thus we find that the superiority of religion in demographics is little more than a sham, a semantics word-game, a Big Lie (a grievous lie repeated long enough so that it becomes accepted and widespread).

Opinion.

A vast amount of people worship, as the maxim goes, not the God of Abraham and Jacob, but rather the god of the poets and dreamers. Is this perhaps the progress done against religious influence ? And what does this indicate of the honesty of religious believers, when half of them are supposed to lie about their very beliefs ? One possibility is that they are simply not intelligent enough to be aware that they are lying. While this certainly cannot explain all cases, I will discuss a bit below about the correlation with intelligence. Whatever explanation we attribute to this datum, if all these people seriously do not believe in a personal god, lack of belief in gods must be majoritary : and it seems a distinct possibility that atheism can expand in a tremendous way by tapping this vein.

I don't even know wtf that is.

If this is what you consider science, it's no wonder your view of the world is so damned comical.