Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Idiotic and lamentable behaviour

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  • andrew llewellyn,

    Thanks. That was nasty and I've deleted it

    Phew... I read Craig's post which is now last, several times trying to understand what was so bad about it :)

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    Feh... everyone's a bloody critic. :)

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Neil Morrison,

    These had a wide range of miraculous properties, from preventing cancer to increasing intelligence and boosting your sexual potency.

    I here that Apple has come up with the answer to all our hopes and dreams. It's called the iWish.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report Reply

  • Michael Fitzgerald,

    Quick kish me I'm iWish
    (I normally give up the drink for lent - bloody St Paddys in the middle of lent).

    Poor old Mayor Garry Moore in CHCH is shadow boxing like a tormented drunk everyone taps on the shoulder he comes out with a wildly inaccurate right hook.

    Bob Parker ran for Mayor a term earlier than they had agreed. So now it's Bob Parker v Dr Megan Wood. Personality v Substance.

    Since May 2007 • 631 posts Report Reply

  • Michael Fitzgerald,

    Quick kish me I'm iWish
    (I normally give up the drink for lent - bloody St Paddys in the middle of lent).

    Poor old Mayor Garry Moore in CHCH is shadow boxing like a tormented drunk everyone taps on the shoulder he comes out with a wildly inaccurate right hook.

    Bob Parker ran for Mayor a term earlier than they had agreed. So now it's Bob Parker v Dr Megan Wood. Personality v Substance.

    Since May 2007 • 631 posts Report Reply

  • Michael Fitzgerald,

    am I seeing double?

    Since May 2007 • 631 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    I've had a lot of conversations over the last three plus years about how Wellington is a geat sucking leech squatting on the head of Auckland, and giving little in return. :)

    Amusingly, that's how much of the rest of the country sees Auckland, sucking on the rest of us :)

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Craig

    Not for the first time, I think we agree on more than might be apparent at first sight. :)

    Yes. It's not even strange. What is strange is that it's difficult to see the level of similarity. That requires a lot of training and conditioning, to create difference where there really is very little. Like Pepsi and Coke, which most people who had tasted neither would find indistinguishable.

    I had this point made to me by a Japanese professor once, who said I was very religious. I told him I didn't believe in God, but he said to even have an opinion on the matter meant I'd spent quite some time thinking about it, and that made me very similar to those who do believe. I thought it was a huge difference, but it was kind of enlightening to see it from afar, from the perspective of a culture that doesn't concern itself with the same questions, that all he saw was a different kind of religious person.

    Makes you wonder - I'd spent years training in philosophy, but of course that training is so heavily influenced by the christian backdrop that to a foreigner unfamiliar with the subtle differences, a philosopher is just a different kind of priest. Quite a humbling revelation I must say.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • InternationalObserver,

    I've had a lot of conversations over the last three plus years about how Wellington is a geat sucking leech squatting on the head of Auckland, and giving little in return. :)

    You mean like this? :)

    Moderator's note: took out a non-worksafe and somewhat gratuitous link to a tacky forum post. Sorry I/O, but jeez ...

    Amusingly, that's how much of the rest of the country sees Auckland, sucking on the rest of us :)

    Y'know, sometimes these comments really piss me off. To the point that I fantasize about annexing Auckland, sealing the borders, and declaring ourselves a sovereign state. You guys can sell us your produce and your power and then hopefully everyone will be happy. And in 10 years time we'll come over and buy your houses for $30,000 to store our crap in. :|

    Since Jun 2007 • 909 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    InternationalObserver:

    Oh sweet baby Jeebus - NSFW tag, please! :) But yes, I do find all this 'I hate Auckland - and the disrespect is entirely mutual' crapola rather tiresome. Hell, my default setting is that everyone irritates me, on way or another, and have seen little reason to change.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle,

    I find the whole 'Auckland vs the rest of the country' thing in NZ kind of pointless myself, from both angles. I think it's dumb when Aucklanders characterise other New Zealanders as hicks; I think it's dumb when the rest of New Zealand acts like Auckland sucks. It's stupid. We're so small, and so alone, down here in the middle of nowhere! Can't we all just, erm, get along?

    (Besides, I can't think of one place in New Zealand I don't like. I love it all. I am, clearly, a stupid hippy.)

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • merc,

    It is in the nature of small isles to divide themselves least we become too close...in this way Maori meets Pakeha was foretold.

    Since Dec 2006 • 2471 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Danielle, amen. Building on my previous post, the differences between NZ provinces is one of those subtleties that we've trained ourselves to magnify out of all proportion. No foreigner would be able to pick the difference between an Aucklander and someone from the west coast of the South Island. Nor would they care to. Even ozzies can't do it, just as we'd struggle to differentiate a Victorian from a NSW accent.

    It's one of the best things about travel, that it throws the idiocy of local obsessions into the laughable context they deserve. The difference between the NZ Labour Party and the NZ National Party is less marked than the difference between NZ Labour and Australian Labour, despite being supposedly politically aligned.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Lyndon Hood,

    Sorry folks, won't be a moment...

    "Suppose you had an irrational belief that all your beliefs were irrational and false?"

    I think I was after "Person x has an irrational (and false) belief that any one or more of their beliefs were irrational and false." I was indeed trying to construct something that is a parseable sentence but isn't a proposition.

    I'll have to tip my hat to you and continue to differ.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1115 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    Y'know, sometimes these comments really piss me off. To the point that I fantasize about annexing Auckland, sealing the borders, and declaring ourselves a sovereign state.

    But yes, I do find all this 'I hate Auckland - and the disrespect is entirely mutual' crapola rather tiresome.

    There's some psychoanalysis work in figuring out why a comment about Wellington draws nothing, a comment about Auckland draws a piss off and a crapola. Still touchy up there?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Lyndon,

    "Person x has an irrational (and false) belief that any one or more of their beliefs were irrational and false."

    That formulation can be rejected immediately as false since it leads immediately to contradiction. You simply can't have an irrational and false belief that any one or more of your beliefs is irrational and false. Because if you have that irrational false belief, then you are having at least one such belief, which makes your belief- that any one or more of your beliefs is irrational and false - true. It can't be false and true at the same time. So you can't have such a belief (although you could believe you did, but that's a different story).

    My hat tip is to Raymond Smullyan - "Satan, Cantor, and Infinity" finally enabled me to get how to work these antinomies out, something 2nd and 3rd year logic never managed to do.

    It's one of those little known facts about modern philosophy that a great deal of the problems that plagued middle ages philosophers to do with logic and numbers have been conclusively solved. Even most philosophers don't know, because, as with all philosophy, once it was solved it moved out of philosophy and into science and/or maths. So this stuff is mostly taught in mathematics departments and your average philosopher finds it incomprehensible and extremely boring. But being logic choppers themselves they still love to raise these old puzzles, and are extremely difficult to convince that they just don't have the background required to actually find the answers, and should head over to the maths department where some autistic guy will tell them the answer.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Neil Morrison,

    Again, it comes to what is meant by delusional. If it means 'always wrong', then you simply can't have a true belief that you are delusional. If delusional simply means 'believes without justification', then you can believe whatever, there are no bounds. You could well be delusional and believe it. But on your strict definition, you couldn't know it.

    It depends a bit on whether one is talking Philosophy or Psychology. It's perfectly possible, altough seemingly counter-intuitive, to have a delusional thought system and to recognise that it is delusional (called having "insight"). That's a product of the mind not being a unity but of being composed of a cluster of bit and bobs.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Yup, I thought I kind of said that with "then you can believe whatever, there are no bounds. You could be delusional and believe it".

    The philosophy/logic stuff is just word games on Russell's original question. Like I said, there are no 'always wrong' people - that would be a superpower, and they would be an incredibly valuable resource. Such delusionality is only a thought experiment.

    Delusional in psychology has a clearer meaning, and I wouldn't want to make too much fun of people who suffered from it. And there's nothing illogical about such people knowing they have the condition. It must suck, although I have to say that there are a great many people who are borderline delusional and yet still highly functional. No-one knows all the truth, after all - maybe we're really all delusional.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

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