GENIUS FORUMS

http://mytalktoday.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 1756#p1756

well, you guys flunked the IQ test.
Assuming nobody floats a really very intelligent email in my mailbox,
my assumption is that this will be the last post i make to this forum.
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A friend of mine recently pointed me to a forum which he thought very amusing and which he thought somebody ought to have pity on.
The forum is one of those exotic wretched examples of victorian era false dualisms, drudged up and sold out as an insane form of intellectualism.

I made an effort to talk with them, but, they aren't ameniable to critical thinking, which is ironic, because the name of the forum is
"Genius forums."

nothing could be more orwellian, or further from the truth. Every now and then I happen upon something which is truly depressing, in terms
of giving a window into just how dumb and shortsighted people can be. In retrospect, it was probably silly of me to even try to communicate with them,
they don't have the capacity for critical introspection, and their egos are based on those aged and disgusting victorian false dualisms.

In a way, its shocking to find a modern version of the same old tired evil sexism, still being plied on the internet. Maybe I am just that far ahead on the bell curve, but then, maybe its not me, its them. It feels like stepping through a doorway into paradigms of the past, as if, visited by the ghost of sexism past;
but worse, this undead zombie of sexism past is still alive and kicking.

One would have thought that this sort of thing had long since been consigned to the incinerator section of the garbage lot of history. But no, There it is,
still being passed off as intellectualism. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.

Perhaps, I should start with a short history of sexist dualisms, and work my into the present. 3000 years ago, assorted religious paradigms sought to gain
social and civil control by subjugating women to men. The ancient Jews and other near by cultures, as well as several greek and roman societies, came up
with rigid descriptions of maleness and femaleness, based utterly on the presumption to start with that men are superior to women inferior, and organizing
and building a series of trait descriptions which evolve forward from that root assumption.

http://web.mit.edu/wgs/prize/as03.html
http://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csa/art ... ancing.htm

The dualisms are as old as these religious paradigms, and provably wrong via modern neuroscience. For example,
These dualisms hold that;
"Men are intellectual and women are emotional." This is false. In fact, women and men reason differently, and emote differently, but men are just as tied to
their emotions as women are, and, in terms of overcoming bias, men are MORE tied to their emotions because of ego identifications and testosterone,
and how compeition instincts drive men to react out of reptile driven knee jerk reactions. Whereas women, who are more driven by the instincts of the mammalian brain are more compassionate, more empathic, and less ego attached to their ideas.
"Men are strong and women are weak" In fact men and women are different and have different strengths. Women tend to have more endurance for longer
periods of time, have a higher pain tolerance, and are more likely to think tactically and thus rationally in a conflict situation.
"Men are Spiritual and Women are Materialistic". Again false, both genders have slightly different advantages and disadvantages in terms of connecting
to spirituality. Again, these differences hinge on how males are more driven by the reptile brain and women more driven by the mammalian brain.
"Men are thinkers, women are feelers" False. Women do have a heightened propensity for empathy and compassion, but they are no less inclined towards
being intellectual.

Gender Hierarchy is a mental cage. Not only does it do a dis-service to women, but it allows irrational men to escape taking responsibility for their own psychology, and allows them to maintain irrational thought patterns by virtue of creating a straw man version of femininity as inherently inferior. This old psychological gimmick as as old as the hills, and it has no merit. Self value based on superiority ideals based on false dualities is simply gender fascism,
and both genders suffer whenever gender fascism is employed. Being "okay" because one is "better" than "women" divorces one from the real challenges
of becoming "okay" on stand alone merit. In other words, false gender daulisms replace real critical introspection and offer an escape from real personal
growth.

Lets take some examples of this gender fascism thought and give them some close analysis.

ME; " Masculinity? I'm all for it. But as a member of that set of values?"
(Truth, Courage, Honesty, Logic, Masculinity, Wisdom, Perfection -)

Gender Fascist;

"Certainly; effeminate philosophizing does not lead to wisdom, only to touchy-feely bullshit."

Clearly, this guy has a thing against women. It is later revealed that not only is he sexist, but he is proud of being a racist.
("Since it's been established I'm sexist because I don't want to be effeminate, I have another shocking revelation.
I don't want to be a nigger. Even if my skin was dark, I wouldn't want to be one. I find it offensive.")

In fact, it has been well demonstrated that clear thinking is based on having the tao balanced internally.
"Effeminate philosophizing" is something he fears, because his mental framework and capacity is based on argument,
not compassion, not empathy, not diplomacy, and certainly not truth or knowledge. Over yang philosphizing leads only to egotism
and pack psychology, and, this person quickly demonstrates an inability to make an argument or to reason without resorting to ad hominems,
personal attacks, and straw man arguments.

What he proves without realizing it is that because of his negative polarizations against what he considers feminine traits, he is incapable
of rational thinking, or critical introspection. Not only does he feel the need to make the masculine inferior, he outright insults the feminine,
invalidates it, and, proves that his conceptualization of it is based on a propagandistic characterization, which is inherently flawed.
My response
"Quite the opposite. masculinized philosophizing leads fools to use ad hominems, straw man arguments, polarizations,
and every manner of ego driven logical fallacy. Genius is not gender polarity specific, and in fact,
Genius derives from balancing the TAO within, not turning the Tao into a false gender hierarchy."

Perhaps i could have said more, but theres always a strange balance in such situations with the simple problem that these people don't read
more than the first two lines you type anyways. Cognitive dissonance kicks in, they reject the idea, block it from their minds, hit the reply button,
and offer another attack.

"Ironically, this is a strawman argument. Hasty, reactive, or clumsy thinking leads to these."
"This is not a hierarchy of sex: anyone, biologically male or female, who is unable to remove their emotions from their philosophy is effeminate,
and thus incapable of depth of thought. Soft, pussy-footed, and emotion-laden philosophizing does not lead to genius, plain and simple.
Whether or not those character traits commonly considered "effeminate" actually reflect on females is not really the problem:
these character traits suck when it comes to thinking."

What the gender fascist misses, is that he has already demonstrated that he is incapable of removing or even identifying emotions from his
"philosophy" which are more frequently encountered and associated with men; Competitiveness, egotism, cognicentrism, angst, anger, hate,
and so forth, and, comedically, he also demonstrates that these failures prevent him from having deep thoughts, including understanding basic systems theory, or cause and effect.

"This is not a forum about intelligence, but about genius. Genius is solitary: people in here more often grate against each other than work together."
"Again: group genius does not exist."

Mindblindness made apparent. His entire idea of genius is founded in the principle of argument. He can no more understand or see what true
genius is than he can give up his ego attachment to "masculinity" aka, psychological combat.
His definition of Genius is thus itself moronic, and neither he nor those who participate in communicating with him will manifest intelligence, only
two dimensional argument. Later on, I point out that Genius is itself defined by its capacity to solve problems. This is lost on him. The point of collaboration
is also lost on him. Genius in the real world is defined by what it creates, what it resolves, what it builds, what it solves. Not by whos on top, bickering,
arguing, or ego and shadow dramas.

Despite the obvious evidence that I'm talking to a person who is by definition pathologically ego caged, I keep going, not for his benefit really, because
the real test is whether or not anybody on the forum is intelligent enough to understand the truth. Sadly, nobody there gets it.

"Actually, modern psychology shows that males have a much harder time removing their emotions from their thinking
than women. The duality that is real is that women have predominant emotional tendencies rooted in the mammalian
brain and thus compassion, nurturing, and understanding, whereas males tend to have emotions rooted in the reptilian
brain, ie, the drives for competition, control, dominance, sadism, and so forth.

Both genders have similar but different problems with emotions unbalancing their rational thought potentiate,
all you are doing is diabolizing and genderfying a problem which transcends gender, as a doublethink method to avoid
having to resolve these issues within your own, or the groups collective shadow. This is sad, because it leads the group
into explorations of its shadow process, not Genius."

His response;
"Whether or not those character traits commonly considered "effeminate" actually reflect on females is not really the problem:
these character traits suck when it comes to thinking."

Mine;

"I agree that those traits are bad for thinking. The problem is that defining them in this manner is itself lazy thinking
which is based on other traits which are bad for good thinking. These traits are well defined by formal conversational
logic. False Dilemma, and false Hierarchy."

And then this veiled threat, and attempt to one up me by claiming the alpha dominant high ground,
proving that hes not interested in intelligence, and his only claim to the word genius is as a tool utilitarian to his egostim.
" For all you know, I could be a world-reknowned writer under a pseudonym, a famous politician, or a serial killer,
but none of these accomplishments have anything to do with the goals of this forum, so I don't talk about how many people I've killed. Only genius."

"The characteristics traditionally considered masculine, such as rationality, logic, depth of thought, single-mindedness,
and courage are all advantageous. If biological females are capable of having these characteristics, all the better!
Masculinity is not bad for thought: believing women are incapable of masculinity is a bigger problem."

Here, he admits unknowingly that his ideas are based on sexist traditions, and then goes on to make an obvious second and much more serious
fallacy. Hyper masculinized, or, combative false dualism based thinking is the epitome of one form of mental cage. And why would we want women
to be more masculine? thats insane, unless you think that femininity is inherently inferior. In fact, since rational thinking has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH GENDER, all he does is again prove that hes sexist, and crazy.

The communication goes downhill from there, and the other forum participants demonstrate that their best thinker on this thread is the sexual fascist.
Thus proving once again that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. "Genius forums" Has nothing to do with Genius, and, rejects out of hand and in kneejerk fashion, an actual Genius conducting a rather reasonable reality test.
http://www.theabsolute.net/phpBB/vi...t&sd=a&start=25

I'm glad i have my own board, because whats out THERE is pretty disgusting and discouraging.

You just wasted a whole box of bandages on a bruised ego.

What's your forum URL, Prometheuspan?

I would like to discuss genius and the sexes with you. If you feel more at ease on your forum, then it will probably be easier to have a reasonable discussion of this topic there.

We could start with your definition of genius:

"Genius in the real world is defined by what it creates, what it resolves, what it builds, what it solves."


KJ

Kelly, his forum is here:
http://mytalktoday.com/forum/forum.php

It'll be a slow discussion, I think. His "Quantum Thought" forum is described as "the first key to knowing". It has a subforum "Quantum Physics", also described as "the first key to knowing", and a separate subforum "Conversational Logic" which includes truth and reason! As if reason and knowledge are not intertwined.

I'll put the discussion into Quantum Physics, because a discussion on Genius and the sexes, truth, reason and logic, all fits under "the first key to knowing". I disagree with his categories but there's not much I can do about it.

Better get my arsenal of mould-cleaner and military-grade disinfectant in shipshape order, as Carl might say.

This dickhead just really wants some attention.

Yes, but one has to start somewhere. His views are extremely common, and I'm not one for preaching to the converted. There are literally hundreds of philosophy boards out there, suffocating in low-level thinking. Why don't some of you head out and help them?

prometheuspan is correct in his assessment that men and women have different challenges when it comes to the spiritual path, but intellectual men have a greater opportunity for reason than intellectual women. However, intellectual women are far more sophisticated than your typical brute male. It is very relative. Moreover, many of the intellectual woman writers on GF are actually more tolerable than some of the immature male writers. Intellectual women have an easier time writing without ego seriously, although they have their own mental blocks as well.

However, prometheuspan's threats to leave GF is quite childish in my opinion, there are a wide spectrum of philosophers at various levels of maturity on this forum, and to generalize everyone as the same, while aggrandizing his own forum as ultimate is quite silly. It shows a lack of subtly in his judgment.

This dickhead just really wants some attention.

He isn't getting much except what we throw his way. His forum is a ghost town, with very few visitors. It's really just a personal blog. Boring.

-

Yes, it could do with some livening up. I think Prometheuspan has difficulty focussing his thinking, but as he admits, the administrator who created the fora categories was a busy female. So it's not his fault the place looks aimless and ungrounded. Something of a mad scientists' soup.

He has moved our discussion to "My Talk Today", for those interested in following the action.

KJ

For those who were following the discussions between Prometheuspan and myself, his forum has closed. It has now become a marketing website for "abundance".

I'm afraid I didn't copy our discussions on Genius, and "Sexism and false intellectualism", so they would appear to be lost. They would have been worth keeping as a psychological specimen. A type that uses lots of wadding, has contradictory definitions, quick to attack character, grovels to its group leader, and oddly, is very aware of the horrors of cultish behaviour. No disparagement intended in these criticisms, just psychological analysis of a young man in hell, who intuitively knows it, but hasn't the strength to stand on his own. If only as a study of Aspergers syndrome.

Needless to say, if Prom or the list-owners of My Talk Today are still interested, I invite him / her to continue our discussion here, or at the Philosoph-e Cafe (http://www.philosophecafe.yuku.com). I'm interested to know, firstly, what "things derived from A=A" by persons using the Genius Forum are "ludicrous". Secondly, what is the reasoning Prom has used in coming to that judgment.


KJ

Shahrazad wrote:

This dickhead just really wants some attention.

He isn't getting much except what we throw his way. His forum is a ghost town, with very few visitors. It's really just a personal blog. Boring.

-

Actually, prince, Shah, he got a couple feelers who believed his bullshit in:

1. An immature philosopher - Ryan

2. An intellectual female - Kelly

My vote goes for Kelly as the brains of the dynamic duo!


Hahahaha


Ps - The guy was a troll (aspie) from the beginning.


.

Tomas,

How mature do you believe you are on a 1-10 scale, I would put myself at around an 8 of 10, how about you? How would you rate yourself on a philosopher maturity scale?

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Tomas,

How mature do you believe you are on a 1-10 scale, I would put myself at around an 8 of 10,

*stifles a guffaw*

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Tomas,

How mature do you believe you are on a 1-10 scale, I would put myself at around an 8 of 10, how about you? How would you rate yourself on a philosopher maturity scale?

A philosopher maturity scale?

Hahahaha. What a moron.

Loki,

A philosopher maturity scale?

Hahahaha. This forum is full of whack jobs.

I think its a rather sane idea actually, as one can simply quantity emotional maturity based on the relative quality of the reasoning presented on the forum, and the more emotionally rooted mental blocks that are present in a thinker's cognition, then the lower they would be on the scale.

It is a similar measurement to quantifying the degree of rationality among thinkers.

Go play some Golden Tee, bastard!

My point in questioning Tomas on maturity was to illustrate how Tomas is quite the hypocrite as he accuses me of the very thing that he himself is, which is very immature. His posts consist of regular jokey antics, and gossipy personal attacks, rooted in sadism. He rarely criticizes human nature in an impersonal universal manner using all the powers of deductive reasoning, which is what I hold as supreme on this forum...

In affect, he doesn't behave like much of a philosopher. He's more of an entertainer or comedian.

Er, his rep is free masonery.

I thought it was an interesting study, Tomas. On the one hand, I genuinely did wish to find out more about Prom's views; on the other, to explore the psychology underlying those views. Notice that his views centred on the three objections that most people raise about wisdom:

[*] the ramifications of understanding A=A.
[*] what genius means.
[*] the purpose of promoting masculinity as opposed to femininity

What people say, to support objections, is probably not what they're thinking. So, exploring their psychology, in their general behaviour and what they seem to value, is helpful. I'm just trying to find better ways of explaining things, and not treating everyone as an identical fool.



A few days ago, before Prom's forum closed, I wrote a short essay about Prom.
---------------------------------------------------
Prom

I think I'm on the verge of being banned on Prometheuspan's forum. It's been an interesting discussion. I think the worst part of it, is how volatile Prom's temperament is. The slightest insinuation that his reasoning is not all it should be, causes him to explode. He doesn't ask for clarification, like a truth-lover would. He doesn't seem to see that definitions need to be made very clear, and that it takes time in discussion to sort out definitions.

One could safely conclude that his view of rational discussions is a matter of bashing others over the head with accusations, rather than thinking and presenting clear rational explanations.

I think Bryan McGilly's assessment of Prometheuspan is right. It's not Prom's fault. He is attached to a group that behaves in the same way, feeding an ugly addiction of attacking others to feel safe. I think Prom is very aware of this problem, because he is very quick to accuse others of exactly this addiction. It seems he has found an uncomfortable but empowering home on his forum, where the members show slightly above-average intelligence, and hypersensitivity, where they are quick to feel concerned about their slight difference to the status quo, and to how average folk treat them. It's a mildly schizotypal behaviour, where people feel humiliated by being different to others.

Instead of being capable of calm, thoughtful discussion, this person's mind is flooded by anxiety. They feel compelled to express huge wads of information, to ward off an imagined threat. They do not read carefully. They jump to conclusions. They have an obsession with demonising things, because once they have an enemy, they feel greater solidarity within their group. It is very similar to dysfunctional families, where each member is insecure, and desperately needs to bond with others in the family. They find it very hard to cope with a family member who doesn't bond, and sees the world differently.

------

prometheuspan is correct in his assessment that men and women have different challenges when it comes to the spiritual path, but intellectual men have a greater opportunity for reason than intellectual women. However, intellectual women are far more sophisticated than your typical brute male. It is very relative. Moreover, many of the intellectual woman writers on GF are actually more tolerable than some of the immature male writers. Intellectual women have an easier time writing without ego seriously, although they have their own mental blocks as well.

However, prometheuspan's threats to leave GF is quite childish in my opinion, there are a wide spectrum of philosophers at various levels of maturity on this forum, and to generalize everyone as the same, while aggrandizing his own forum as ultimate is quite silly. It shows a lack of subtly in his judgment.

Actually, this is a pretty decent post. It does show some maturity.

Go play some Golden Tee, bastard!

You mean Prince?

I've no idea about Prom - I never made it through a tenth of one of his posts.

Iolaus,

Nah, though it does sort of abstractly juxtapose [to Prince's post]. Sort of both being self-referential, in a non-linear fashion.

But, it was directed at Ryan's post. Sort of a little fool's gold jab.

(feelin' kinda devilish)

Ryan Rudolph wrote:Loki,

A philosopher maturity scale?

Hahahaha. This forum is full of whack jobs.

I think its a rather sane idea actually, as one can simply quantity emotional maturity based on the relative quality of the reasoning presented on the forum, and the more emotionally rooted mental blocks that are present in a thinker's cognition, then the lower they would be on the scale.

It is a similar measurement to quantifying the degree of rationality among thinkers.

Ryan, I apologize for calling you a moron. I was irritated that you bailed out of our anarchy debate.

I'm also sorry that I implied that a chunk of people here are 'whack jobs'. I was having a bad day, and apparently needed to indulge in a feeling of superiority.

I've been reading the discussions here closely, are there are a lot of interesting people here. I look forward to future discussions.

- loki