It occurred to me that I should offer you an explanation for some of combative style that I am now learning how to jettison, in favor of normal conversation. You and most of the active posters here probably know nothing of how it happened that I started posting in 2002.
Combativewas the name of the game at that early date here. GreaseSpot calmed down a lot by 2007 or so when I left. But in 2002 I was literally dragged onto the board fights by 2 posters against my will, and without my consent.It was an immense fight, and lasted years.
But I’m not kidding or exaggerating: I was literally dragged here, and people were punching and kicking at my personal letters and phone calls several weeks BEFORE my first post. Long story. Posted text of details somewhere.
In respect to those who were hurt in the TWI machine, and still being hurt, I want no fights at all here.
I’m learning how to offer what I’ve learned about the whole TWI machine without fighting and provoking bad memories. I noticed on another thread the other day an old friend (somewhat proPFAL) posting, and mingling pretty well with other posters. He offered his opinion and there seemed to be no fight. In his wisdom he’s completely avoided the threads I’m on for all these months I’ve been here.
I want to learn from his wisdom. I think he’s still somewhat pro-pfal. Lower case intended.
I was also humbled by the kind, soft words of socks a few days ago. That’s how I want to interact here, if at all.
But in 2002 I was literally dragged onto the board fights by 2 posters against my will, and without my consent.It was an immense fight, and lasted years.
But I’m not kidding or exaggerating: I was literally dragged here, and people were punching and kicking at my personal letters and phone calls several weeks BEFORE my first post
Literally dragged here?
That's like saying you were mugged by mail.
It takes two to tango. Don't you think the honest thing to do would be to take responsibility for your part of it?
It takes two to tango. Don't you think the honest thing to do would be to take responsibility for your part of it?
You are right. I had a small part, but was still totally broadsided.
I had some friendly phone conversations and some e-mail with a former member of TWI’s research department. As it turned out he was also a poster here.He was surprised by my thesis. I can understand that. We never fought over it, just civil disagreement. So far I'm totally innocent.
Meanwhile I was contacting others by e-mail whom I knew in order to discuss my thesis. It was new to me then. One was an old Corps Rev buddy. We exchanged many letters. One of his letters to me was also a mass mailing to his mostly Corps friends. I made the mistake of cold calling on a few of them, sending them by e-mail a few of my introductions to my thesis. That was where I went a little into the territory of “asking for it.” One of them was a poster here.
But I had no idea how much I had asked for. I was a non-posting reader here from GS’s beginning. Suddenly two threads were started about me by those two posters. I watched the threads come and go and pondered for weeks what to do about it.
I came in under cover, but my disguise didn’t last long, and the fist fights started. I guess my second mistake is I knew it was going to be that way.
I’m very purposely not naming names in the interests of peace.
The original intent was small IMO compared to some of the immediate demands.
My intent with that post was precisely as stated, and as Rocky understands. To bring this thread back to its stated purpose. To reset, a little, this thread. Which once again you have purposely misunderstood, or deliberately taken off topic. Can't you see that the post actually expects the thread to continue for many more pages? Quite the opposite of being locked!
5 hours ago, Mike said:
I had some friendly phone conversations and some e-mail with a former member of TWI’s research department. As it turned out he was also a poster here.He was surprised by my thesis. I can understand that. We never fought over it, just civil disagreement. So far I'm totally innocent.
Meanwhile I was contacting others by e-mail whom I knew in order to discuss my thesis. It was new to me then. One was an old Corps Rev buddy. We exchanged many letters. One of his letters to me was also a mass mailing to his mostly Corps friends. I made the mistake of cold calling on a few of them, sending them by e-mail a few of my introductions to my thesis. That was where I went a little into the territory of “asking for it.”
Sounds to me like you were looking for a fight. Whatever was said to you then, you probably gave the same sort of evasive answers that you give here.
Can't you see that if you offer straight answers to straight questions, you would have far more respect? There are many ways to disagree, but if you duck and dive, you can hardly blame others for hunting you out to try to find out what you really think. I have asked you many straight questions to try to help you. But getting a straight answer is like trying to catch smoke.
You are right. I had a small part, but was still totally broadsided.
I had some friendly phone conversations and some e-mail with a former member of TWI’s research department. As it turned out he was also a poster here.He was surprised by my thesis. I can understand that. We never fought over it, just civil disagreement. So far I'm totally innocent.
Meanwhile I was contacting others by e-mail whom I knew in order to discuss my thesis. It was new to me then. One was an old Corps Rev buddy. We exchanged many letters. One of his letters to me was also a mass mailing to his mostly Corps friends. I made the mistake of cold calling on a few of them, sending them by e-mail a few of my introductions to my thesis. That was where I went a little into the territory of “asking for it.” One of them was a poster here.
But I had no idea how much I had asked for. I was a non-posting reader here from GS’s beginning. Suddenly two threads were started about me by those two posters. I watched the threads come and go and pondered for weeks what to do about it.
I came in under cover, but my disguise didn’t last long, and the fist fights started. I guess my second mistake is I knew it was going to be that way.
I’m very purposely not naming names in the interests of peace.
The boldface is your part in it.
So your denying you have freedom of will.
Saying you had a small part us like saying a nuclear bomb does a little damage.
Nobody can drag you into anything you don't want to be involved in. Nobody can make you do anything you don't choose to do,
More so over the internet where nobody knows who you are,
Like I said, the honest thing to do is to admit your part in the whole thing.
You didn't have to answer the threads started by the two posters. But you did.
You didn't have to escalate it to a fist fight. But you did.
My intent with that post was precisely as stated, and as Rocky understands. To bring this thread back to its stated purpose. To reset, a little, this thread. Which once again you have purposely misunderstood, or deliberately taken off topic. Can't you see that the post actually expects the thread to continue for many more pages? Quite the opposite of being locked!
Sounds to me like you were looking for a fight. Whatever was said to you then, you probably gave the same sort of evasive answers that you give here.
Can't you see that if you offer straight answers to straight questions, you would have far more respect? There are many ways to disagree, but if you duck and dive, you can hardly blame others for hunting you out to try to find out what you really think. I have asked you many straight questions to try to help you. But getting a straight answer is like trying to catch smoke.
A note on evasion.
If youever conduct a campaign trying to transmit a large body of complex data, you will understand this more intimately.
Resistance to such a campaign often comes in the form of questions, loaded questions, and pointed questions. These kinds of questions can (and should be) regarded by a campaigner as “evasions” in themselves. They help the “listeners” evade and undermine themessage. They are designed to kill the campaign. Evading such questions should be regarded as a noble necessity by the campaigner who wants to make progress.
To pretend that most of the questions to me are not in this mode of total rejection is laughable.
There are other good reasons to evade.
There are a few areas where questions to me start to get a little more personal than I care to get in public.Things like the application of doctrine to my personal life, along with my history of successes and failures all require a lot of private context to reveal cogently. Several times I indicated to you and others that I was available in PMs for some of the more delicate issues.I think those hints were totally lost in the shuffle. You might look at yourself for some of our miscommunications.
You didn't have to answer the threads started by the two posters. But you did.
You didn't have to escalate it to a fist fight. But you did.
They posted my words verbatim. One posted large passages of my text. Other posters were jeering and misrepresenting my words. I was being "debated" without me posting a single word here. It went on for weeks. In that sense I was dragged into the fight. I'm doing my best to end it now.
If youever conduct a campaign trying to transmit a large body of complex data, you will understand this more intimately.
Resistance to such a campaign often comes in the form of questions, loaded questions, and pointed questions. These kinds of questions can (and should be) regarded by a campaigner as “evasions” in themselves.
Now you pouring tons of manure on the whole thing hoping something beautiful will grow.
An honest person has nothing to fear by answering questions--pointed or otherwise. All that will result is the honest truth.
A person trying to pull something, however, has everything to fear because questions will reveal what they're actually up to.
Contrary to your excuse, sometimes questions--pointed, loaded, or otherwise--are attempts to show you holes in your reasoning a Saturn V could fly through. All you prove by refusing to answer these questions is that you don't believe what your claiming, as the assertation your making will not stand up to scrutiny.
Quote
They help the “listeners” evade and undermine themessage. They are designed to kill the campaign. Evading such questions should be regarded as a noble necessity by the campaigner who wants to make progress.
Again, you saying your theories will not stand up to scrutiny.
Quote
To pretend that most of the questions to me are not in this mode of total rejection is laughable.
Most of the time you think this when its not true. And many times you use this as an excuse because you obviously haven't thought beyond what your side of the communication.
Quote
There are other good reasons to evade.
There are a few areas where questions to me start to get a little more personal than I care to get in public.Things like the application of doctrine to my personal life, along with my history of successes and failures all require a lot of private context to reveal cogently. Several times I indicated to you and others that I was available in PMs for some of the more delicate issues.I think those hints were totally lost in the shuffle. You might look at yourself for some of our miscommunications.
As you recall, at the time you were trying to sell us on PLAF. Twinky asked you a reasonable question within the context, to wit, Tell me one thing PLAF has done for you. You flew off the handle and accused her of trying to trick you.
Now, if you were selling, say, dietary suppliment, would someone be trying to trick you if they asked you to name something the product has done for you?
This is just another rationaalization. In reality, there are no reasons to evade. Your evasion only proves the lack of thought on your part and puts your integrity into question.
1 hour ago, Mike said:
They posted my words verbatim. One posted large passages of my text. Other posters were jeering and misrepresenting my words. I was being "debated" without me posting a single word here. It went on for weeks. In that sense I was dragged into the fight. I'm doing my best to end it now.
Yah, I can see how you choose your battles wisely:
13 hours ago, Mike said:
I had some friendly phone conversations and some e-mail with a former member of TWI’s research department. As it turned out he was also a poster here.He was surprised by my thesis. I can understand that. We never fought over it, just civil disagreement. So far I'm totally innocent.
Meanwhile I was contacting others by e-mail whom I knew in order to discuss my thesis. It was new to me then. One was an old Corps Rev buddy. We exchanged many letters. One of his letters to me was also a mass mailing to his mostly Corps friends. I made the mistake of cold calling on a few of them, sending them by e-mail a few of my introductions to my thesis. That was where I went a little into the territory of “asking for it.” One of them was a poster here.
But I had no idea how much I had asked for. I was a non-posting reader here from GS’s beginning. Suddenly two threads were started about me by those two posters. I watched the threads come and go and pondered for weeks what to do about it.
I came in under cover, but my disguise didn’t last long, and the fist fights started. I guess my second mistake is I knew it was going to be that way.
I’m very purposely not naming names in the interests of peace.
So why didn't you evade these unwise battles?
You mean you prefer not to answer questions honestly as you would have to admit the holes in your theories.
They're only battles if you make them battles, Mike. Otherwise, they're discussions. A good way to keep a discussion from escalating into a battle is to follow the accepted conventions of discussion. By that I mean learning to argue your point without resorting to flawed logic and reason, recognizing and avoiding such things as false dilemmas, false equivalence, appeals to authority, strawman arguments, sunken cost thinking and so on. If you can develop some level of proficiency with that approach, you might just find your audience to be more receptive and less adversarial. It's definitely an evolutionary process but well worth the effort.
Yah, I can see how you choose your battles wisely:
You mean you prefer not to answer questions honestly as you would have to admit the holes in your theories.
You may have missed some of the questions I have asked here. Some of them represent the frontiers of some of my theories. When I see holes I radically revise.
One of my theories that I see proved over and over is that we older grads either missed or forgot a lot of crucial material.
I found this out in 1998, soon after I came back to the writings. I first saw lots of things I had missed or forgotten. In my excitement to tell my friends I found out that they too had missed or forgotten much also.
After a few years of this I came, ah... er ... I was dragged here and I found the same exact thing: crucial things were missed or forgotten.
My chosen battle was to to post the material that was missed of forgotten in spite of the opposition. I succeeded 12 years ago, and I was starting to succeed again when I noticed things were not nearly as calmed down (both here and TWI) as I had expected after a 10 year absence. I saw a hole in my strategy, and radically revised.
They're only battles if you make them battles, Mike. Otherwise, they're discussions. A good way to keep a discussion from escalating into a battle is to follow the accepted conventions of discussion. By that I mean learning to argue your point without resorting to flawed logic and reason, recognizing and avoiding such things as false dilemmas, false equivalence, appeals to authority, strawman arguments, sunken cost thinking and so on. If you can develop some level of proficiency with that approach, you might just find your audience to be more receptive and less adversarial. It's definitely an evolutionary process but well worth the effort.
I hear you and am much more on to than now.
As I mentioned immediately above (in greater detail) to So_crates, my battle was to post missed or forgotten material in the face of intense opposition. At that time logical proofs were a low priority of mine. Besides, very few profound, significant thing can ever be proved. Most proofs are of small and/or relatively insignificant things. There was never any question that I had found a vast amount of missed or forgotten data.
Here's an example of missing or forgotten data. When I found VPW's very last teaching I did informal polls on who had heard of this last teaching versus who thought "The Hope" was his last teaching. I forget the data, but posted it long ago. It was something like 90% of non-Corps grads knew nothing of his very last teaching. For Corps about 60% knew nothing or remembered nothing at first. A few remembered it after discussing it with them, but had totally forgotten it prior. In the clergy 10% were clueless on this last teaching. Nearly all these grads had exited TWI.
Like this right here. This may be your opinion... but I doubt you'll find much evidence to support its veracity.
Can you find evidence to the contrary? In other words, what great profound proofs do you know of?
I think it's pretty neat that Quantum Mechanics can be proved by how well it explains the Hydrogen atom. But the Hydrogen atom is pretty trivial.
I'm sure I could use more education on this, but so far I think most of the tight proofs out there are not involving life and love and mind. Plato and Aristotle seem to be neat until it comes to applications.
I'm open to entertain the existence of tight proofs in Philosophy. Hit me with some.
If youever conduct a campaign trying to transmit a large body of complex data, you will understand this more intimately.
Resistance to such a campaign often comes in the form of questions, loaded questions, and pointed questions. These kinds of questions can (and should be) regarded by a campaigner as “evasions” in themselves. They help the “listeners” evade and undermine themessage. They are designed to kill the campaign. Evading such questions should be regarded as a noble necessity by the campaigner who wants to make progress.
To pretend that most of the questions to me are not in this mode of total rejection is laughable.
There are other good reasons to evade.
There are a few areas where questions to me start to get a little more personal than I care to get in public.Things like the application of doctrine to my personal life, along with my history of successes and failures all require a lot of private context to reveal cogently. Several times I indicated to you and others that I was available in PMs for some of the more delicate issues.I think those hints were totally lost in the shuffle. You might look at yourself for some of our miscommunications.
There are good reasons to evade, if you fear capture and interrogation. If you are dealing with an enemy. If you believe you are dealing with such here, you have only yourself to blame. No-one sees you as an enemy - a fool, misguided, in your own little world, maybe - but enemy? no.
So you see your "thesis" as a campaign, do you? Hmph. A politician on a re-election campaign doesn't make progress by evasion; rather, he annoys the electorate so much that he isn't likely to be re-elected.
If you think there is something in your personal life that you'd like to share (with me) you can PM me. Do not require me to PM you. Generally speaking, I will say what I have to say openly. I disclosed some very personal information to you in an effort to show you that it can be done. Your response? Ignored me completely. Others' response? No comment, as it wasn't directed at them. I also showed you some ways my beliefs and doctrines impact my own life (again to encourage you). But you? You appear too unwilling to demonstrate "the application of doctrine to my personal life" - I asked you for ONE THING that had benefited you. And you cannot even demonstrate that.
As for your comment, "If youever conduct a campaign trying to transmit a large body of complex data" can I remind you that as a lawyer I am used to both assimilating a lot of complex data on specialist matters, and asking relevant questions to clarify what I don't understand; Thereafter, I'm extremely capable of presenting that to non-tech person(s). In fact, as a lawyer I considered myself a sort of interpreter for lay clients when it comes to understanding complex legal matters. Clients like my clear and cogent explanations. And they like the way I show them precisely how that applies in their own lives, cases, matters.
Now it's your turn to explain why you cannot explain even a simple matter, simply, and show how it works in practice.
Here's an example of missing or forgotten data. When I found VPW's very last teaching I did informal polls on who had heard of this last teaching versus who thought "The Hope" was his last teaching. I forget the data, but posted it long ago. It was something like 90% of non-Corps grads knew nothing of his very last teaching. For Corps about 60% knew nothing or remembered nothing at first. A few remembered it after discussing it with them, but had totally forgotten it prior. In the clergy 10% were clueless on this last teaching. Nearly all these grads had exited TWI.
This is an example of twisted data. Your informal polls on this website. You have been trying to gather this kind of data for greater than a decade. Most people ignored your polls and did not answer them. The reason why is your poll is a transparent attempt at VPW hero worship, which gathers data related to how attached to VP's last teaching people are decades later. VP gave a last sermon on "The Joy of Serving". This is something I would call an oxymoron. After a life filled with exploiting people and obtaining joy in them serving him in various ways, to include sexually outside of his marriage, now he teaches on the joy of serving God and others.
This is a logical and rational approach to VPW's written works and last teachings. There is not some "magical canonization" that occurred similar to when Joseph Smith met the angel Moroni and received the golden tablets of Mormanism, where God just ignored the man's heart and picked him randomly anyway to convey a message to a new generation. No God looked on his heart, and did not communicate with him. Then VPW used his 5 senses homiletics degree to get people to worship him like many other cult leaders do.
Can you find evidence to the contrary? In other words, what great profound proofs do you know of?
I think it's pretty neat that Quantum Mechanics can be proved by how well it explains the Hydrogen atom. But the Hydrogen atom is pretty trivial.
I'm sure I could use more education on this, but so far I think most of the tight proofs out there are not involving life and love and mind. Plato and Aristotle seem to be neat until it comes to applications.
I'm open to entertain the existence of tight proofs in Philosophy. Hit me with some.
You made the claim. The burden of proof is on you.
This is an example of twisted data. Your informal polls on this website.
I was referring just now to polls I did before coming here. These were all conducted individually on phone, in person, or e-mail. That was for one piece of data. It was an example of missed or forgotten data that I wanted to make known.
When I came here in 2002 I was not able to count the numbers, but it was obvious that VPW's last teaching and many other pieces of data were missing in many minds.
You made the claim. The burden of proof is on you.
I think it would be a burden for any of us to come up with any tight proof for anything significant. My aim is not to prove this, but to announce it as my expectation. Anyone who is able to prove my hunch wrong is invited. I like learning.
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Twinky
I do not see that this says, Love a book (not even a bible) - not love PFAL. I do see that it requires some practical application, otherwise, how else will you love your neighbour? By reading th
Twinky
Mike, please re-read the first two posts when I opened this thread. You indicated that you had been re-reading heart-rending stories on old threads and your understanding was growing. So this thread
Twinky
Well, this thread has wandered off point somewhat. This was the point: I'm seeing lots of defensiveness from Mike, but nothing about empathy or understanding about the hurt caused by TWI.
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Rocky
Why would the thread need to be locked? Just because you can't stay focused on the original intent?
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Mike
I thought that's what Twinky was asking for.
The original intent was small IMO compared to some of the immediate demands.
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Rocky
I didn't get that from Twinky's post.
You seem perfectly capable of ignoring what you don't want to respond to. You do it regularly.
No sense blaming it on others.
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Mike
Twinky,
It occurred to me that I should offer you an explanation for some of combative style that I am now learning how to jettison, in favor of normal conversation. You and most of the active posters here probably know nothing of how it happened that I started posting in 2002.
Combative was the name of the game at that early date here. GreaseSpot calmed down a lot by 2007 or so when I left. But in 2002 I was literally dragged onto the board fights by 2 posters against my will, and without my consent. It was an immense fight, and lasted years.
But I’m not kidding or exaggerating: I was literally dragged here, and people were punching and kicking at my personal letters and phone calls several weeks BEFORE my first post. Long story. Posted text of details somewhere.
In respect to those who were hurt in the TWI machine, and still being hurt, I want no fights at all here.
I’m learning how to offer what I’ve learned about the whole TWI machine without fighting and provoking bad memories. I noticed on another thread the other day an old friend (somewhat proPFAL) posting, and mingling pretty well with other posters. He offered his opinion and there seemed to be no fight. In his wisdom he’s completely avoided the threads I’m on for all these months I’ve been here.I want to learn from his wisdom. I think he’s still somewhat pro-pfal. Lower case intended.
I was also humbled by the kind, soft words of socks a few days ago. That’s how I want to interact here, if at all.Link to comment
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So_crates
Literally dragged here?
That's like saying you were mugged by mail.
It takes two to tango. Don't you think the honest thing to do would be to take responsibility for your part of it?
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Mike
You are right. I had a small part, but was still totally broadsided.
I had some friendly phone conversations and some e-mail with a former member of TWI’s research department. As it turned out he was also a poster here. He was surprised by my thesis. I can understand that. We never fought over it, just civil disagreement. So far I'm totally innocent.
Meanwhile I was contacting others by e-mail whom I knew in order to discuss my thesis. It was new to me then. One was an old Corps Rev buddy. We exchanged many letters. One of his letters to me was also a mass mailing to his mostly Corps friends. I made the mistake of cold calling on a few of them, sending them by e-mail a few of my introductions to my thesis. That was where I went a little into the territory of “asking for it.” One of them was a poster here.
But I had no idea how much I had asked for. I was a non-posting reader here from GS’s beginning. Suddenly two threads were started about me by those two posters. I watched the threads come and go and pondered for weeks what to do about it.
I came in under cover, but my disguise didn’t last long, and the fist fights started. I guess my second mistake is I knew it was going to be that way.
I’m very purposely not naming names in the interests of peace.
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Twinky
My intent with that post was precisely as stated, and as Rocky understands. To bring this thread back to its stated purpose. To reset, a little, this thread. Which once again you have purposely misunderstood, or deliberately taken off topic. Can't you see that the post actually expects the thread to continue for many more pages? Quite the opposite of being locked!
Sounds to me like you were looking for a fight. Whatever was said to you then, you probably gave the same sort of evasive answers that you give here.
Can't you see that if you offer straight answers to straight questions, you would have far more respect? There are many ways to disagree, but if you duck and dive, you can hardly blame others for hunting you out to try to find out what you really think. I have asked you many straight questions to try to help you. But getting a straight answer is like trying to catch smoke.
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So_crates
The boldface is your part in it.
So your denying you have freedom of will.
Saying you had a small part us like saying a nuclear bomb does a little damage.
Nobody can drag you into anything you don't want to be involved in. Nobody can make you do anything you don't choose to do,
More so over the internet where nobody knows who you are,
Like I said, the honest thing to do is to admit your part in the whole thing.
You didn't have to answer the threads started by the two posters. But you did.
You didn't have to escalate it to a fist fight. But you did.
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Mike
A note on evasion.
If you ever conduct a campaign trying to transmit a large body of complex data, you will understand this more intimately.
Resistance to such a campaign often comes in the form of questions, loaded questions, and pointed questions. These kinds of questions can (and should be) regarded by a campaigner as “evasions” in themselves. They help the “listeners” evade and undermine the message. They are designed to kill the campaign. Evading such questions should be regarded as a noble necessity by the campaigner who wants to make progress.
To pretend that most of the questions to me are not in this mode of total rejection is laughable.
There are other good reasons to evade.
There are a few areas where questions to me start to get a little more personal than I care to get in public. Things like the application of doctrine to my personal life, along with my history of successes and failures all require a lot of private context to reveal cogently. Several times I indicated to you and others that I was available in PMs for some of the more delicate issues. I think those hints were totally lost in the shuffle. You might look at yourself for some of our miscommunications.
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Mike
They posted my words verbatim. One posted large passages of my text. Other posters were jeering and misrepresenting my words. I was being "debated" without me posting a single word here. It went on for weeks. In that sense I was dragged into the fight. I'm doing my best to end it now.
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So_crates
Now you pouring tons of manure on the whole thing hoping something beautiful will grow.
An honest person has nothing to fear by answering questions--pointed or otherwise. All that will result is the honest truth.
A person trying to pull something, however, has everything to fear because questions will reveal what they're actually up to.
Contrary to your excuse, sometimes questions--pointed, loaded, or otherwise--are attempts to show you holes in your reasoning a Saturn V could fly through. All you prove by refusing to answer these questions is that you don't believe what your claiming, as the assertation your making will not stand up to scrutiny.
Again, you saying your theories will not stand up to scrutiny.
Most of the time you think this when its not true. And many times you use this as an excuse because you obviously haven't thought beyond what your side of the communication.
As you recall, at the time you were trying to sell us on PLAF. Twinky asked you a reasonable question within the context, to wit, Tell me one thing PLAF has done for you. You flew off the handle and accused her of trying to trick you.
Now, if you were selling, say, dietary suppliment, would someone be trying to trick you if they asked you to name something the product has done for you?
This is just another rationaalization. In reality, there are no reasons to evade. Your evasion only proves the lack of thought on your part and puts your integrity into question.
So what?
Again, do you have free will or don't you?
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Mike
I try to choose my battles wisely.
That implies evading unwise battles.
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So_crates
Yah, I can see how you choose your battles wisely:
So why didn't you evade these unwise battles?
You mean you prefer not to answer questions honestly as you would have to admit the holes in your theories.
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waysider
They're only battles if you make them battles, Mike. Otherwise, they're discussions. A good way to keep a discussion from escalating into a battle is to follow the accepted conventions of discussion. By that I mean learning to argue your point without resorting to flawed logic and reason, recognizing and avoiding such things as false dilemmas, false equivalence, appeals to authority, strawman arguments, sunken cost thinking and so on. If you can develop some level of proficiency with that approach, you might just find your audience to be more receptive and less adversarial. It's definitely an evolutionary process but well worth the effort.
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Mike
You may have missed some of the questions I have asked here. Some of them represent the frontiers of some of my theories. When I see holes I radically revise.
One of my theories that I see proved over and over is that we older grads either missed or forgot a lot of crucial material.
I found this out in 1998, soon after I came back to the writings. I first saw lots of things I had missed or forgotten. In my excitement to tell my friends I found out that they too had missed or forgotten much also.
After a few years of this I came, ah... er ... I was dragged here and I found the same exact thing: crucial things were missed or forgotten.
My chosen battle was to to post the material that was missed of forgotten in spite of the opposition. I succeeded 12 years ago, and I was starting to succeed again when I noticed things were not nearly as calmed down (both here and TWI) as I had expected after a 10 year absence. I saw a hole in my strategy, and radically revised.
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Mike
I hear you and am much more on to than now.
As I mentioned immediately above (in greater detail) to So_crates, my battle was to post missed or forgotten material in the face of intense opposition. At that time logical proofs were a low priority of mine. Besides, very few profound, significant thing can ever be proved. Most proofs are of small and/or relatively insignificant things. There was never any question that I had found a vast amount of missed or forgotten data.
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Mike
Here's an example of missing or forgotten data. When I found VPW's very last teaching I did informal polls on who had heard of this last teaching versus who thought "The Hope" was his last teaching. I forget the data, but posted it long ago. It was something like 90% of non-Corps grads knew nothing of his very last teaching. For Corps about 60% knew nothing or remembered nothing at first. A few remembered it after discussing it with them, but had totally forgotten it prior. In the clergy 10% were clueless on this last teaching. Nearly all these grads had exited TWI.
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waysider
Like this right here. This may be your opinion... but I doubt you'll find much evidence to support its veracity.
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Mike
Can you find evidence to the contrary? In other words, what great profound proofs do you know of?
I think it's pretty neat that Quantum Mechanics can be proved by how well it explains the Hydrogen atom. But the Hydrogen atom is pretty trivial.
I'm sure I could use more education on this, but so far I think most of the tight proofs out there are not involving life and love and mind. Plato and Aristotle seem to be neat until it comes to applications.
I'm open to entertain the existence of tight proofs in Philosophy. Hit me with some.
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Twinky
There are good reasons to evade, if you fear capture and interrogation. If you are dealing with an enemy. If you believe you are dealing with such here, you have only yourself to blame. No-one sees you as an enemy - a fool, misguided, in your own little world, maybe - but enemy? no.
So you see your "thesis" as a campaign, do you? Hmph. A politician on a re-election campaign doesn't make progress by evasion; rather, he annoys the electorate so much that he isn't likely to be re-elected.
If you think there is something in your personal life that you'd like to share (with me) you can PM me. Do not require me to PM you. Generally speaking, I will say what I have to say openly. I disclosed some very personal information to you in an effort to show you that it can be done. Your response? Ignored me completely. Others' response? No comment, as it wasn't directed at them. I also showed you some ways my beliefs and doctrines impact my own life (again to encourage you). But you? You appear too unwilling to demonstrate "the application of doctrine to my personal life" - I asked you for ONE THING that had benefited you. And you cannot even demonstrate that.
As for your comment, "If you ever conduct a campaign trying to transmit a large body of complex data" can I remind you that as a lawyer I am used to both assimilating a lot of complex data on specialist matters, and asking relevant questions to clarify what I don't understand; Thereafter, I'm extremely capable of presenting that to non-tech person(s). In fact, as a lawyer I considered myself a sort of interpreter for lay clients when it comes to understanding complex legal matters. Clients like my clear and cogent explanations. And they like the way I show them precisely how that applies in their own lives, cases, matters.
Now it's your turn to explain why you cannot explain even a simple matter, simply, and show how it works in practice.
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chockfull
This is an example of twisted data. Your informal polls on this website. You have been trying to gather this kind of data for greater than a decade. Most people ignored your polls and did not answer them. The reason why is your poll is a transparent attempt at VPW hero worship, which gathers data related to how attached to VP's last teaching people are decades later. VP gave a last sermon on "The Joy of Serving". This is something I would call an oxymoron. After a life filled with exploiting people and obtaining joy in them serving him in various ways, to include sexually outside of his marriage, now he teaches on the joy of serving God and others.
This is a logical and rational approach to VPW's written works and last teachings. There is not some "magical canonization" that occurred similar to when Joseph Smith met the angel Moroni and received the golden tablets of Mormanism, where God just ignored the man's heart and picked him randomly anyway to convey a message to a new generation. No God looked on his heart, and did not communicate with him. Then VPW used his 5 senses homiletics degree to get people to worship him like many other cult leaders do.
You are looking for an audience of one. Yourself.
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waysider
You made the claim. The burden of proof is on you.
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Mike
I was referring just now to polls I did before coming here. These were all conducted individually on phone, in person, or e-mail. That was for one piece of data. It was an example of missed or forgotten data that I wanted to make known.
When I came here in 2002 I was not able to count the numbers, but it was obvious that VPW's last teaching and many other pieces of data were missing in many minds.
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Mike
I think it would be a burden for any of us to come up with any tight proof for anything significant. My aim is not to prove this, but to announce it as my expectation. Anyone who is able to prove my hunch wrong is invited. I like learning.
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