Sports writer kills himself, leaves behind website describing how and why

You can suppress your outward reaction to emotions, but you can't just exert mental conditioning to make them disappear. The mental conditioning allows you to ignore them, but that doesn't mean they went away, it just meant you built up a tolerance to their effect. Over use will dull any sensation.

Its a bit like pain. If you concentrate, you can move past it. But its still there, that shit still hurts. You're just not showing it, you're moving on despite it.

khalid_sl said:

Yes, that is why I posted it. Dumar has consistently in this thread quoted Marx as if he was citing a research paper. That is the exactly wrong way to use his work, at least in my limited understanding.

Click to expand...

Yup. Nailed it on the head. Marx is not a valid source material.

You can quote something Marx said, say its his opinion and say you agree with it, but when you then go on to declare that Marx said it, you believe it, that settles the issue, that's where the problem comes in. Because ultimately he's one opinionated dude that wrote a book. Muslims like to quote one opinionated man who wrote a book too. His name was Muhammed.

Well, with that beard, you can rest assured Marx was diddling something.

Just look at that thing. It just screams pederasty.

Dumar_sl said:

The tone deafness is because I'm tired of listening to the same terrible song. This is the last time I will address this, as it's going in circles: it isqualitativeanalyses, notquantitativedata. Almost the whole of sociology deals primarily with qualitative analyses,analyses of social processes, mostly sociopsychological and sociopolitical. How many times has this been said in this thread? Again, how many times have I addressed this? I linked the ISA and their entire pamphlet on research of alienation and its effects. To sit here and stupidly ask for 'hard evidence' is ignoring pretty much the entire discipline. Much of science isnotobservationalist/inductivist.

Click to expand...

You linked the ISA document, which if anyone read, said simply that Marxist views on isolationism were still a useful operating paradigm. That's literally it. I mean you construe it as if the ISA said "Marxist views on isolationism are quantifiable facts we've determined through research" not "Its a useful operating paradigm within which to frame research in order to test hypothesis." Its the difference between claiming that your null hypothesis is truth out of the mouth of God versus your null hypothesis is an operating theoretical which you use as a foil off which to test your findings.

I never said that. You have a very poor habit of taking someone's words and construing them differently.

Click to expand...

No, I have a habit of taking your convoluted mess, and breaking it down so common people can see the fallacy in it

When I think of that bitch, there was no stimulibut the thought itself

Click to expand...

There is no such thing as thought and it cannot be a stimuli for a physical reaction. There is your stress causing a reaction in your autonomic system.

You're a total fucking moron. Tell that to any anthropologist or social scientist.

Click to expand...

So what you're saying is you don't know what a null hypothesis and operating paradigms are, or how they don't imply agreement or disagreement, but rather are used as ways to frame a research project in order to provide structure and thus ground that research in quantifiable effects.

Anthropologists and sociologists do not do this:

My premise that humans are socially ostracized by their relation to material wealth is supported by Marx's conclusions in his treatise on the subject in Das Kapital page blah blah blah and therefore my conclusions are true because I said so.

Anthropologists and sociologists do this:

Marx provides a framework for debate in his discussion of the merits of isolation in relation to material wealth. From this framework we have devised a study to test whether or not ostracization occurs in relation to ownership of material goods. This test will involve a control and a study group consisting of 500 people split into two equal groups in a double blind test study blah blah blah.

Your failure to grasp this simple fact is why your belief system is a religion, and not science.

Karl Popper has argued that both the concept of Marx's historical method as well as its application are unfalsifiable, and thus it cannot be proven true or false:

The Marxist theory of history, in spite of the serious efforts of some of its founders and followers, ultimately adopted this soothsaying practice. In some of its earlier formulations (for example in Marx's analysis of the character of the 'coming social revolution') their predictions were testable, and in fact falsified. Yet instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. In this way they rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made it irrefutable. They thus gave a 'conventionalist twist' to the theory; and by this stratagemthey destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status

Click to expand...

I love that I found an exerpt of that Karl Popper piece on Stephen Jay Gould's website.

Gould was probably one of the premiere biologists in the world until his demise early last decade.

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/...ification.html

And here's an interesting quote from that piece just prior to what you quoted that applies to Dumar

Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence - so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophesies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophesies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.

Click to expand...

And let me make clear, Stephen Jay Gould was accused of being a Marxist, which is ironic since Marxists traditionally eschewed Darwin because of the implicit capitalist slant in his theories in terms of the competitive nature of existence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould

Dumar, let me know when you've taken the time to read Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Then I'll think you're half the intellectual you try to pretend to be.

Dumar_sl said:

This body of work is cited throughout sociology, all throughout. For you to ignore all of it for some absolute empiricial requirement is ignorance.

Click to expand...

You know what else was cited by scientists/philosphers for a good thousand+ years as an absolute truism? god. just citing something doesn't make it true.

Dumar_sl said:

Did you read the whole thing? It's a focused, continued salient area of research.

Click to expand...

I read the entire quoted chapter and at no point did it confirm or support your assertion that isolation is a real thing, and that feeling it justifies suicide, or that it is proven to be caused by ownership of material wealth or commodities or manufactured goods. It stated, as I said, that Marx's conception was still a valid one. It also said that fucking Hegel's definition of isolation in terms of spirituality was also useful as an operating paradigm, are you going to argue that because the ISA says that, thus a transcendental spirit exists?

That's what you're doing with Marx's ideas on isolationism.

Again, I never said they were quantifiable facts - I neverquantifiedthem to beginw ith, but qualitatively used them to show how a process works.

Click to expand...

If its not quantifiable, why are you talking about it? We asked you for QUANTIFIABLE EVIDENCE that ownership of commodities led to a loss in humanity. Aka we asked you to support your claim with evidence, not theoretical masturbation.

I have no idea what this means, so I will ignore.

Click to expand...

It means what it says it means. Thought is not a real thing. Its an abstract attempt to label a complex interaction of physiology with environment and culture. Its not real in physical terms. You don't "have thoughts" your perceive yourself to have thoughts, but they are not real, substantive things.

I never cited Marx and said it's true.

Click to expand...

Your entire argument is that Marx's framework should be accepted outright because you said so as a justification for why someone can commit suicide in our society.

I cited examplesofMarx and others, especially Fromm. And I can continue to cite even more others.

Click to expand...

Thus far every single thing you've cited has amounted to a distraction fallacy or an ad naseum one, basically posting things you don't expect people to read

It's a body of knowledge built upon qualitative analyses of social processes,

Click to expand...

No, its a political treatise based upon someone's subjective opinion

and some of those analysesmay or may notinclude quantitative data.

Click to expand...

Marx's Kapital does not quantify any of its conclusions in any way. Its entirely conjecture based on his worldview.

Debord's premise, for example, that society lives in and gets its concepts from a spectaclecannot be proven empirically.

Click to expand...

Sure it can. We do it every day with advertising. Hell facebook exists as a quantification of that exact concept.

This body of work is cited throughout sociology, all throughout. For you to ignore all of it for some absolute empiricial requirement is ignorance.

Click to expand...

It is not cited as proof or evidence. Its not a valid source material. It is used to frame research. Marx is an operating paradigm, not an explanation.

Dumar_sl said:

Well, if that's your view, then much of science and philosophy has no meaning for you.

Click to expand...

Nor does it to many scientists, most theories proposed throughout history have been discarded, like phlogistan or Lysenkoism, nobody purports that those theories are correct now even though they where very popular and cited at one time.

Dumar_sl said:

Marxism is not simply an operating paradigm, but it's also the collective works of authors, critical social theorists, political theorists, psychiatrists, psychologists, anthropologists, and many other -ists that have provided us abody of knowledge based onthat operating paradigm.

Click to expand...

That's Neo Marxism, not Marxism.

I am using their work doneoperating underthat paradigm to analyze an aspect of modern society, which was originally commodification of human experience and how it relates to certain mental illness: depression, hyper anxiety, and eventually, to suicide.

Click to expand...

If you were citing their work done, you'd be citing peer reviewed research papers.

There islittle to no quantification in terms of numerical datawith regards to their theories.

Click to expand...

Then all you have are very well described hypotheses. Your job, as an avowed Marxist, should be to be out there conducting quantifiable research to test the validity of these assumptions of Marx's and others, instead of constantly trying to reinterpret and explain why Marx's predictions failed to pan out historically.

Dumar_sl said:

Around and around we go. I told you in the beginning I amnotan Orthodox Marxist, but of the Frankfurt School of thought, which was were I was starting my analysis. Pay attention and read, remember my words more carefully.

Click to expand...

I know its hilarious because

The Frankfurt School (German: Frankfurter Schule) was a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory,[1] associated in part with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main. The school initially consisted of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx's followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist parties.

Click to expand...

The school initially consisted of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx's followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas,

Click to expand...

Is what you do.

And

Although sometimes only loosely affiliated, Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind, thus sharing the same assumptions and being preoccupied with similar questions.

Click to expand...

Is a big part of the problem. You can't conduct science by entering the laboratory with your conclusions already reached. Your entire train of thought is, by this definition, absolute pseudo science. Operating paradigms are not meant to be deeply held beliefs for a reason: You're goal as a researcher is to do your best to disprove those paradigms, but if you agree with those conclusions before the evidence is even in, your conclusions will be biased, that's just a simple fact. A researchers goal is to limit bias, but injecting enormous amounts of predetermined bias is par for the course with your worldview. Pretty sad really. What you should say is you're a student of an ideologically homogenous group of people who all share a similar world view and similar assumptions and every statement you make will come predicated on those world views. Some of them may or may not be right, but I know for a fact not all of them can be, because no one has all the answers all the time, and that's why I am the open minded researcher in this debate, and you're the narrow minded ideologue.

Anyway, that's what makes Anthropology so special: Our goal isn't to verify our biases, our goal is to come to understand the world through the eyes of others, see it as they see it, and then to find the common ground between all peoples through that process.

As Popper said of the Astrologers

Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence - so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophesies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophesies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.

Click to expand...

Oh and the entire check your privilege movement is a direct end result of the Frankfurt school, so I wouldn't go around bragging about that too much.

At least, not without having checked your privilege first.

Have you checked your privileges lately, Dumar?

Here's one of your Frankfurt school buddies reminding us all to check our privilege over Trayvon Martin



Its not enough to feel bad, not enough to not be a bigot. If you don't check your privilege every single day, George Zimmerman will shoot Trayvon and Karl Marx again.