Skepticism and The Normal

Professor Yaffle said:
I think his reference for this is that some guy he knows who supposedly knows about neuroscience told him so.

More likely scenario?

Bubba: I think our brain circuitry is ternary in nature
Neuroscience guy: Yeh, Rome, I'm sure you are right, now stop bugging me.

Notice he keeps coming out with this nugget as if it is established scientific fact, when in fact he doesn't even know what "brain circuitry being ternary in nature" means, what it would look like, what it would imply, simply because he knows nothing about brain circuitry. He heard something once that sounds like it boosts the status of his theory, so he automatically treats it as true and uses it is "evidence" that he is right. It doesn't occur to him to learn more about it and find out if it is really true, and if true what implications it might have on his theory, because he doesn't care about truth, just about bostering his own pet theory. Thats why he has a huge breadth of knowledge (he knows the names of all sorts of theories even though he can't spell them), but no depth of knowledge at all (he doesn't really understand any of them). Because to dig deeper would be to let in the possibility that he might be wrong and that none of his "evidence" supports his theory in any way at all.
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I assume that when a distinguished professor of neuroscience informs me that brain research supports much of my argument, and sponsors two meetings, both of which lasted longer than 10 hours apiece regarding OS 012, he knows what ternary circuits mean in relationship to all of this, and for right now, that's all I need to know.

Believe what you will. i dont state this to brag nor enlighten, merely to honestly state my point of view and where I place my certainty and how I come to say what I do.
 
Bubblefish said:
Try to keep some consistancy or try to view the presuppositions of your rebuttals, they dont seem very thought through. You can also have a piece of music with F#, that doesnt mean F# isnt a part of the musical spectrum and is available too you once any note is played.
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I just wanted to point out that F# is only valid in Western music. Most Eastern modalities do not contain the 12-tone scale. F# is not a part of the musical spectrum and is not available as far as many composers outside the western world are concerned. Carry on.
 
flimflam_machine said:
Yup, "Rome-tinted spectacles" as someone put it earlier. It's very hard not to get derailed (more than we already) are onto the question of whether he actually believes all this, whether he will ever realise that it's not actually supported by everything that has ever happened and what the possible psychological ramifications will be for our Californian friend.
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At worst, OS 012 is simply incomplete.Where I am mistaken, or appear to be mistaken, is merely a confusion with my communication, as academic presentations are new to me and I am still refining my explainations. If nothing supports what I am saying, how come after 5 months all of you are still here arguing with me trying to prove where it is wrong and keep coming back out of frustration?

Consider, my friend, your own psychological ramifications you may face as well. I am here to the end, how about you?
 
Belz... said:
Absolutely sure about your existence ? That's weird. Pray tell. How are you so absolutely sure that you're not, yourself, a figment of someone ELSE's imagination ?
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I may exist in someone's else imagination, but then, so do all of you with me, and then our objective reality is still shared amongst us, it's the part of the imagination that is mutually viewable, as opposed to the element of the imagination that is uniquely our own experience.
 
Bubblefish said:
The onus is one you to show how there is no harmony in music,
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You demonstrate your lack of understanding again. No one is arguing that harmony does not exist in music in general.
or harmony is not an essential feature of music.
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This is what you claimed, and it the counterexample has been given.
A single voice singing a nursery rhyme in strict time. No harmony, no syncopation.

Go ahead, argue how harmony is not an essential feature of music.
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Done.
 
Bubblefish said:
Where I am mistaken, or appear to be mistaken, is merely a confusion with my communication, as academic presentations are new to me and I am still refining my explainations.
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Or perhaps you simply refuse to acknowledge when you are wrong, despite the evidence being in front of you in black and white?

If you are not prepared to concede any mistake, and thereby learn and improve OS012, what do you hope to gain by these marathon posts?
 
Mojo said:
That shouldn't be necessary. According to him he can treat the note as a single beat and pick up the tempo and time signature from that.
.
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If one person PLAYS A NOTE, (psst, einstein, that doesnt mean PLAYING A CD) another musician can come along and complete the phrase relative to his point of view. Happens all the friggin' time. Ever hear of call and response?
 
Bubblefish said:
Mojo said:
OK then, Bubblefish: here's one for you to try:

The first note of the tune is a D natural. Can you identify the tune and tell me what tempo it is being played at?
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depends upon which song and arrangment your listening to, wiz.
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But you should at least be able to tell me the time signature and tempo:
Bubblefish said:
Bubblefish said:
When I hit one 'note', I made a tone and a 'beat' at the same time.
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One note cannot set a tempo since without a pre-determined rhythm you cannot say whether it is a crotchet, a minim, a quaver or whatever
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Yes you can, musicians do it all the time. If I hit one single note on the piano, even accidently, a musician can immediatly answer that back with a complimentary note and continue a rythym. A drummer can hear one simple down beat and jump right in.
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Your claim was that a beat can be set by a single note:
Bubblefish said:
When I hit one 'note', I made a tone and a 'beat' at the same time.
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You further claimed that musicians (and drummers ;)) do this all the time. I have described a single note: go right ahead and identify the time signature and tempo.

If you can't do it, ask a musician: they "do it all the time", according to you.
 
Bubblefish said:
You mean I'm using the word in a way which you FAILED TO UNDERSTAND. Fine, I explain then my meaning and YOU STILL FAIL TO UNDERSTAND.
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I failed to understand nothing. You used the word 'syncopation' which has a pretty limited definition, and said it was essential to music (to be precise, you said 'what is music but harmony and syncopation'). Syncopation is a variation in the expected rhythm. From my non-musical standpoint, I could work with melody and rhythm being essentials of music, but syncopation is not rhythm, and harmony is not melody.

If you want to communicate, the onus is on you. If you use the wrong words, people will not understand you. If someone points out you have used the wrong words, the correct response is to admit it, and move on, not vainly try to claim you were somehow right when you plainly weren't.


So, would you like to try again, and define what makes up music, and therefore what must be analysed to detect the objective beauty of music?

I need to put your tired arguments away for right now, catch up to this argument, I'm not here to repeat myself over and over
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You're not?

I already explained my usage. I can deconstruct music down to tones and notes, then rythyms and chords, then chords and harmonies, then syncopation and orchestrations, it's irrelevant. All of them are possible due to the simple beauty of tone in a natural voice with a rythme which gives it melody.
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Looks like you are assimilating what we are saying.

I have demonstrated it with so many examples, including exterior links, so the onus is one you to make an actual refutation of my central argument, not nitpick on my usage of syncopation which went over your head.
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Please explain how you using the wrong word 'went over my head'? And as already pointed out, most of the links you posted actually disagreed with you.

Objective beauty is harmony, balance, symmetry. Subjective beauty is some internal subjective balance of thinking and feeling.
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If something is objective, it needs to be clearly identifiable to all. Symmetry, balance, etc. are all terms used to express what it is about a beautiful (i.e. something which the speaker finds beautiful) object, person, song, etc, which the observer finds beautiful. They are not, as far as I know, quantifiable, and another person may find the same aspects ugly. That is the nature of subjective attributes.

Unless you can quantify beauty (look up 'quantify' if necessary), in a way that is agreed by all, it's not objective. You might get a beauty rating of Angelina Jolie by asking people to rate her on a scale of 0-10, and get an average. But that's just an average of subjective ratings. (And of course you would claim that anyone who rated her less than a certain value would be lying.)
 
flimflam_machine said:
Ok, let's refresh Z's model by taking 4 statements:

Flimflam is wearing blue trousers
Flimflam is not wearing blue trousers
Bubb is wearing a green shirt
Bubb is not wearing a green shirt

Now all those statements are either true or false.
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In princaple they are either true or false. what's the argument?

If we introduce a point of view into it you can simply add the known/unknown factor.
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Is that the argument? That's not an argument, that's a choice you make. You can choose to model that in some nonworking bivalent excercise, yes, so? What is the argument against ternary dialectic, modal logic, ternary logic? That hasnt been made clear.

The 2 x2 model is NOT USEFUL. What is the logic of 'she may come, she may not come'? Where is your 2x 2 now? There is only unknown. Where is the known in the phrase 'Tommorow I shall buy an ice coffee'? Where is the known in the statement 'Humans who are 65 or younger today may live to be 1000 years'.

And niether you nor Zaay were able to address the ternary structure in the known/unknown coupling. what is known is known in terms of true and false. That is how 'known' is distinguishable INSIDE of Bivalency. How do you account for the fact that ternary logic is IMPLICIT inside of known/unknown?

If you can't answer that question, it's because you have no rational answer. You have to b e able to account for ALL STATEMENTS and IDEAS for your 2x 2 statement to hold more rational consideration than ternary. If your 2x2 logic doesnt do that, then it's simply your choice to continue to use it, but that doesnt mean it's rational.

Not all ternary values in statements are reducible into boolean. I already posted a link to a propositional logic that is ternary and can handle statements that BOOLEAN CANT. If Boolean can't handle them, do you actually believe Z, a wiccan priest who claims to not even believe that reality can be modeled in terms of true and false found a more effecient engine than Boolean?

Think, flim, don't react. Z's arguments were his sophmoric attempt to refute the existence of the third value, putting him in square disagreement not just with me, but with FORMAL LOGIC. You have to argue how the third value doesnt exist if you want to argue for Z's model. SImply saying you can break all statements into known/unknown gives you NOTHING that ternary doesnt give you, and limits your model to TWO values which will FAIL to account for a third. Right now, your model fails to account for either true, or false, without distinguishing which, and simply couples the known with the unkown. Hardly illuminating, and hardly refuting.

I'm not trying to convince you to use ternary, if you want to use bivalency, that is your choice. I am only interested in your anti-thesis, and you still have not supplied a rational one.

Sorry

BF
 
zooterkin said:
I failed to understand nothing.
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You have consistantly failed to understand ANYTHING.


Your arguments are BORING ME TO TEARS.

YOU have NOT addressed this:

Go ahead, argue how harmony is not an essential feature of music. Argue how harmonies and chords are not IMPLICIT in musical structure, regardless of the arrangment. Argue how you cant hit a tone without hitting a beat (my meaning of 'syncopation' that went over your head).

If you cant argue for the above, THEN YOU HAVE NO FREAKIN' ARGUMENT and your wasting my time.

I am going to continue to ignore your boring, unconsidered, poorly thought through knee jerk reactions until you SPECIFICALLY address my query. If you cant address my query, THEN YOU HAVE NO FREAKIN' ARGUMENT and your wasting my time.
 
By the way, Rome, I see that (in posts 2569 and 2587, for example) you have once more felt it necessary to resort to unprovoked insults and namecalling, thus once more revealing your claim that you only do so as a "tit for tat" response to others doing the same to be a lie, and yourself to be a hypocrite.
 
Z said:
Nah, he'll claim that it's perfectly symmetrical and harmonious on a metaphysical level.

And he accuses ME of magical thinking! :)
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Apparently, according to Z's presuppositions of his statements, he equates 'metaphysics' with both magic and spirituality.

Will someone please point him to wikipedia? He could use some rational study, Witchschool.com doesnt cover it.
 
zooterkin said:
This is really one for someone who knows music, but I think you betray a very Westernised view of music if you are limiting yourself to the 12 notes of the chromatic scale.
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hey einsten, musical theory is a WESTERNIZED view of music. Please go read about Bach and try to find some interesting arguments that dont inspire me to stick needles in my eyeballs like the rest of yours do.
 
Bubblefish said:
I assume that when a distinguished professor of neuroscience informs me that brain research supports much of my argument, and sponsors two meetings, both of which lasted longer than 10 hours apiece regarding OS 012, he knows what ternary circuits mean in relationship to all of this, and for right now, that's all I need to know.
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Names and dates, please. Would he stand as a referee for you? Did his opinion change after 20 hours of OS012?
Believe what you will. i dont state this to brag nor enlighten, merely to honestly state my point of view and where I place my certainty and how I come to say what I do.
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Or perhaps it's an appeal to authority. (I think my bingo card is nearly full)
 
zooterkin said:
You were the one who introduced 'attraction' into the equation, perhaps you would care to define it?


Again, you've done no such thing. You've posted links to the results of some google searches you've done.

You are making the claim, you need to substantiate it.
Did you read any of these? Some are quite interesting, perhaps you should.
The idea of objective beauty seems to be an idea that was imposed in both the Communist USSR, and in China. The third link is an interesting account of the individual resisting the state's imposition of objective beauty.
The fourth piece has the conclusion "Musical beauty evades definition", after summarising some previous attempts to quantify musical beauty.
So, three of the first four of the links you quote are actually in opposition to your thesis. The first is by the well known philosopher "Rufus Wallaby", and has links to pictures of some pretty girls.
Please show the equation that measures the symmetry of Angelina Jolie and deduces her beauty from it.
Very pretty, but I'm sure you know that is not an answer to the question. How is that an example of 'beauty being observed objectively'?

Where in number theory does it say "The number 3 includes all other natural numbers in existence for it to have that relevance of 3."
Ah, so perfect pitch is required for music to be beautiful?
No, you don't.
What do you mean, 'so what'? Getting the distinction between objective and subjective is absolutely crucial to this discussion. Yes, the process by which a composer arrives at an arrangement may well have a subjective component (he may feel that trumpets sound better at a particular point than a violin would, for example), but the arrangement that is produced is an objective thing. The 'musical mandala', which you've just stumbled across, I would guess, is irrelevant to this.
We are not talking about the process of creating it, we are talking about the arrangement itself.
A very interesting statement; if I didn't know better, I'd suggest you were actually on the brink of understanding. In what way does that mean the beauty is objective? That's the essence of subjectivity, surely, that one person experiences something as beautiful and another does not? At the risk of muddying the waters still further, there is certain food that I do not enjoy eating. I realise other people find it delicious. Does that make the food objectively delicious?
It would be nice if you could participate by introducing some arguments, too.
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I am not going to bore myself any longer with your redundant misunderstandings.

YOU have NOT addressed this:

Go ahead, argue how harmony is not an essential feature of music. Argue how harmonies and chords are not IMPLICIT in musical structure, regardless of the arrangment. Argue how you cant hit a tone without hitting a beat (my meaning of 'syncopation' that went over your head).

If you cant argue for the above, THEN YOU HAVE NO FREAKIN' ARGUMENT and your wasting my time.

I am going to continue to ignore your boring, unconsidered, poorly thought through knee jerk reactions until you SPECIFICALLY address my query. If you cant address my query, THEN YOU HAVE NO FREAKIN' ARGUMENT and your wasting my time.
 
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