More Religious Nutters

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Blake
Oh, and sadism is not hatred or anger.

Sadism is simply inversed empathy - feeling pleasure at another's pain.

Hatred is a negative emotion (it depresses the state of mind), Sadism is a perverse positive emotion (it elates the state of mind).

Suffice to say, Sadism should be avoided also! But it shouldn't be confused with hatred. The sadistic are not motivated by hatred.

I don't think I derive any sadistic pleasure from the games because I don't seek the make the enemy suffer I seek to stop them as efficiently as possible. In passive fiction the sadism charge makes even less sense.

[Perfection]

Originally posted by Blake
Oh, and sadism is not hatred or anger.

That's why I said without hatred or anger, young chap.

Originally posted by Blake
Hatred is a negative emotion (it depresses the state of mind)

It seems to excite it if you ask me.

[Geronimo]

what does it mean to depress the state of mind anyway? and what makes that an undesirable thing?

[Perfection]

Originally posted by Geronimo
I don't think I derive any sadistic pleasure from the games because I don't seek the make the enemy suffer I seek to stop them as efficiently as possible.

You play differently then me, Perf seeks to crush thier tiny fictional bones!

[Blake]

I have to question feeling hatred and anger. In my experience of observing gamers, the emotions of hatred and anger arise when LOSING. They start screaming and hammering the keyboard or monitor. That is the emotion of anger and hatred making itself felt.

When they are WINNING, they tend to be elated. They are killing gleefully. Suffice to say, this glee is not anger or hatred. It's feeding the primal desire to kill and dominate, and that desire, is not anger or hatred, it's one designed to motivate people to hunt animals and stuff - which is not done out of anger or hatred, it's done for sustenance and satisfaction.

[Perfection]

Originally posted by Blake
I have to question feeling hatred and anger. In my experience of observing gamers, the emotions of hatred and anger arise when LOSING. They start screaming and hammering the keyboard or monitor. That is the emotion of anger and hatred making itself felt.

That seems excited rather then depressed.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Blake
I have to question feeling hatred and anger. In my experience of observing gamers, the emotions of hatred and anger arise when LOSING. They start screaming and hammering the keyboard or monitor. That is the emotion of anger and hatred making itself felt.

When they are WINNING, they tend to be elated. They are killing gleefully. Suffice to say, this glee is not anger or hatred. It's feeding the primal desire to kill and dominate, and that desire, is not anger or hatred, it's one designed to motivate people to hunt animals and stuff - which is not done out of anger or hatred, it's done for sustenance and satisfaction.

you've never seen a player indulging a sense of revenge when they turn a game around?

[Blake]

It's excitement too. Take the dictionary definition:

hatred

noun
the emotion of intense dislike; a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action

When a gamer jumps up and starts screaming, or hammers the keyboard or shakes the monitor, that is "hatred demanding action". Sure the action does sweet diddly swat to actually solve anything, but the action is done because the hatred demanded action. And that is how hatred works.

[Perfection]

sometimes the action is productive.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Geronimo


you've never seen a player indulging a sense of revenge when they turn a game around?

Certainly.

And a degree of anger can make the kill sweeter. Games leverage that to a degree, like an elusive boss who keeps getting away.

But if the whole game is built around making the player angry, it wont be played for very long, because people don't like being angry for long periods of time.

The trick in making a gamer angry, is to not make them angry for too long or too often.

[Perfection]

Blake, you're teetering on the edge of saying you hate here

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Blake
You wake up and think "Grrrr! I hate poverty so much! I'm just so angry about that poverty! I feel as if I could explode!!!!"

Or you think that people should think that way?

I don't know about that.

I think it would be more positive, to forget about hating a condition, and instead feel compassion towards those who suffer due to impoverishment, compassion will surely motivate beneficial positive action better than hate.

Even hating hate itself is pretty dumb. Just don't hate at all.

I hate this post.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

Sure it does. You're afraid of something, so your adrenaline gland kicks in and you run the fcuk away from it.

That's a causal relation, not a logical relation.

And therefore...? Of course emotions are not observed in "reality." I can't pick up a happiness (beer joke goes here), or see anger in and of itself. But that's because those things are the way our minds react to reality itself. Are you saying that God's an emotion? I'm sure some branch of theology has gone there...

All that I am saying is that some mental events will have contents that have no objective correlates. If you admit that possibility, then you admit that we may have mental states that do not represent external entities. An experience of "God" could fall into this class.

...which typically center around existing entities, or combinations of existing entities such as David Icke's lizardmen, conspiring against them. The human mind can't make anything out of nothing.

It already makes fear out of nothing. You are simply assuming that all thought is representational, when there are many obvious counterexamples. For example, I believe that numbers exist, yet the number 3 is not out there in the world like a horse or an elephant.

I base my belief on a number of things (I confess I don't understand all of those things myself). But I'm playing a purely defensive game in this thread. I.E., I fight until everyone gets sick of arguing and goes away. If I trot out new arguments now this'll never be finished. And like I said, the word "probability" is a no-no in this sort of discussion. You can't determine the probability of a unique event that you aren't even sure has happened at all. How would you determine the "probability" of God's existence? I'm talking hard numbers here, like "one in twelve million," etc., not just your personal inclination to belief or disbelief.

I'm not discussing the likelihood of an event, but of a theory being true. Say for example, that apples started floating in mid air. What would be the likelihood that the theory of gravity was false?

I am confident that science can come up with an explanation it is satisfied with for pretty much any situation. But that doesn't mean much to me. Supposing they found a potential trigger for the experience (which sounds extremely difficult given the rarity of naturally occurring religious experiences), it would be unclear to me whether that trigger was the actual cause or simply a material side effect just like the portions of the brain that light up under a God Helmet. God is the ultimate confounding variable. So it seems pointless to try.

You haven't answered my questions. I've done my best to answer your points, and I've even been polite. Can you answer my questions, please.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris

Bull****. Plenty of empiricists believe that reason is formed by induction from sensation.

And they all make the same mistake of confusing "sensing a red sense content" with "sensing that a red sense content is red". Only one of these events has a truth value, and so only one of these events can count as the foundation for further beliefs.

The problem for empiricists is that the connection between them, if any, is causal, not logical. It's also possible to deny that one necessitates the other. It is perfectly possible for me to be experiencing the sensation of seeing an elephant without believing I see one (since I may believe I am hallucinating).

Plato's point was simply that sensation is not cognition. Wilfrid Sellars famously made the same argument last century.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Agathon
That's a causal relation, not a logical relation.

A causal relation which makes fear useful and therefore logical.

All that I am saying is that some mental events will have contents that have no objective correlates. If you admit that possibility, then you admit that we may have mental states that do not represent external entities. An experience of "God" could fall into this class.

I do not admit that possibility.

It already makes fear out of nothing. You are simply assuming that all thought is representational, when there are many obvious counterexamples. For example, I believe that numbers exist, yet the number 3 is not out there in the world like a horse or an elephant.

...yes it is. If there are two horses and another comes along to join them, that's your number three right there. "Three wonderful horses, hahaha I love it," as The Count says.

I'm not discussing the likelihood of an event, but of a theory being true. Say for example, that apples started floating in mid air. What would be the likelihood that the theory of gravity was false?

I'm pretty sure that, too, is a nonsensical question. You couldn't get a meaningful probability unless you had a number X of documented cases of apples or other things floating in midair and knew that Y number of cases were of gravity being false, in which case you could say that there was a Y in X likelihood...but that sounds idiotic for so many reasons: because theories are not supposed to change truth values from case to case; because you'd need to know the "truth" of gravity in each documented case, which is under contest here, to determine the odds in the first place...

You haven't answered my questions. I've done my best to answer your points, and I've even been polite. Can you answer my questions, please.

I thought I did: they could come up with an explanation that satisfied a scientist, but it would probably not impress me. It's just that these questions are too complex for straightforward yes-or-no answers, and we think very differently, it seems.