MatthewB

Karma: 421

MatthewB Apr 25, 2010, 5:17 AM
1 point
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: The Fundamental Question
Well, they both (according to Christian Myth) are truly bad characters.

It is unfortunate for God that Satan (Lucifer) had such a reasonable request “Gee, Jehovah, It would certainly be nice if you let us try out that chair every once in a while.” Basically, Lucifer’s crime was one that is only a crime in a state where the King is seen as having divine authority to rule, and all else is seen as beneath such things (thus reflecting the Divine Order)

It was this act upon which Modern Satanists seized to create a new mythology for Satanism, where it was reason rebelling again an order that was corrupt and tyrannical.

MatthewB Apr 25, 2010, 5:11 AM
4 points
in reply to: Blueberry’s comment on: The Fundamental Question
Yes, they are “Christian” in the sense that all of the mythology and practices for their worship of Satan are derived from Christianity, and they still believe in a Christian God.

It is just that these people believe that they are defying and opposing the Christian God (Fighting for the other team). They still believe in this God, just no longer have it as the object of their worship and devotion.

This is also the more traditional form of Satanist in our society, and one which the more modern Satanist tends to oppose. The Modern Satanist is a self-worshiping atheist, and as has been pointed out, tend to place everything in the context of self-interest. It is a highly utilitarian philosophy, but often marred in actual practice by ignorant fools who don’t seem to understand the difference between just acting like a selfish dick and acting out of self-interest (doing things which improve one’s condition in life, not things which worsen one’s condition)

MatthewB Apr 24, 2010, 2:16 AM
4 points
in reply to: AdeleneDawner’s comment on: The Fundamental Question
Depending upon the Type of Satanist, yes, they are often just people looking for a high “Boo-Factor” (A term made-up by many of the early followers of a musical Genre called “Deathrock” (it’s more public name is now Goth, although that is like comparing a chain saw to a kitchen pealing knife—the “Goths” are the kitchen knife).

Many Satanists, especially those who hadn’t really read much of the published Satanic literature would just make something up themselves and it was almost always based in Christian motifs and archetypes. The two institutions who have publicly claimed the title of “Satanist” (The Church of Satan and The Temple of Set) both reject any and all of Christian Theology, Motifs, Archetypes, Symbolism and Characters as being ingenuous and twisted archetypes of older more healthy god archetypes (If you read Jung and Joseph Campbell, this is not uncommon for a rising religious paradigm to hijack an older competing paradigm as its bad-guys)

As Phil has suggested, maybe a front page post will come in handy. It should be recognized that some Satanists happen to be very rational people. They are just using the symbolism to manipulate their environment (although most of the more mature ones have found more mature symbols with which to manipulate the environment and their peers and subordinates).

The types to which I was referring in my post were the Christian Satanists (people who are worshiping the Christian version of Satan), which is just as bad as worshiping the Christian God. Both the Christian God and the Christian Satan are required for that mythology to be complete.

MatthewB Apr 24, 2010, 2:07 AM
0 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: The Fundamental Question
You mean, like a main page post? I’d love to.

You would be surprised about how rational the real Satanists (and their various offshoots and schisms) are (as the non-Christian based Satanist is an athiest).

In fact, the very first Schism of the Church of Satan gave birth to the Temple of Set (Founded by the then head of the Army’s Psychological Warfare Division), which was described as a “Hyper-Rational Belief System” (Although in reality it still had some rather unfortunately insane beliefs among its constituents). The Founder was very rational though. He even had quite a bit of science behind his position… It’s just that his job caused him to be a rather creepy and scary guy.

MatthewB Apr 23, 2010, 9:30 AM
5 points
in reply to: PeerInfinity’s comment on: The Fundamental Question
A couple of points:

I could not tell from your post if you understood that Pascal’s Wager is a flawed argument for believing in ANY belief system. You do understand this don’t you (That Pascal’s Wager is horribly flawed as an argument for believing in anything)?

Also, as Counsin it seems to be implying (And I would suspect as well), you seem to be exhibiting signs of the True Believer complex.

This is what I alluded to when I discussed friends of mine who would swing back and forth between Born-Again Christian and Satanists. Don’t make the same mistake with a belief in the Singularity. One needn’t have “Faith” in the Singularity as one would God in a religious setting, as there are clear and predictable signs that a Singularity is possible (highly possible), yet there exists NO SUCH EVIDENCE for any supernatural God figure.

Forming beliefs is about evidence, not about blindly following something due to a feel good that one gets from a belief.
What links here?
- cupholder's comment on Open Thread: April 2010, Part 2 by Unnamed (Apr 23, 2010, 7:44 PM; 1 point)

MatthewB Apr 22, 2010, 7:17 AM
1 point
in reply to: PeerInfinity’s comment on: The Fundamental Question
That puts it into an understandable context… I can’t quite understand about the having to shake off Christian Beliefs. I was raised with a tremendously religious mother, but about the age of 6 I began to question her beliefs and by 14 was sure that she was stark raving mad to believe what she did. So, I managed to keep from being brainwashed to begin with.

I’ve seen the results of people who have been brainwashed and who have not managed to break completely free from their old beliefs. Most of them swung back and forth between the extremes of bad belief systems (From born-again Christian to Satanist, and back, many times)… So, what you are doing is probably best for the time being, until you learn the tools needed to step off into the wilderness by yourself.

MatthewB Apr 21, 2010, 2:22 AM
8 points
in reply to: PeerInfinity’s comment on: The Fundamental Question
It may just be me, but why do you need to find someone to follow?

I have always found that forging my own path through the wilderness to be far more enjoyable and yield far greater rewards that following a path, no matter how small or large that path may be.

MatthewB Apr 5, 2010, 3:21 AM
2 points
in reply to: RobinZ’s comment on: Open Thread: April 2010
Either that or painting (The latter is harder to do because the cats tend to want to help me paint, yet don’t get the necessity of oppose-able thumbs … umm...Opposeable? Opposable??? anyway....)

Since I have had sleep disorders since I was 14, I’ve got lots of practice at not sleeping (pity there was no internet then)… So, I either read, draw, paint, sculpt, or harass people on the opposite side of the earth who are all wide awake.

MatthewB Apr 3, 2010, 10:48 AM
−9 points
on: Open Thread: April 2010
Are rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck (with their sidekick O’Reily, who does’t really factor much) foolishly April enough?

MatthewB Mar 27, 2010, 8:23 AM
2 points
in reply to: Dee’s comment on: “Life Experience” as a Conversation-Halter
Sports… That requires a form of Life Experience in order to gain an informed set of opinions on the subject.

When playing something like Soccer/Football, the basic skills may be imparted through training, yet the ability to successfully play with others on a field is going to take experience in learning how the whole of a team interacts both with you and against you (speaking in third person).

Another area where I understand that Life-Experience is not to be communicated is in the field of certain types of military, paramilitary or intelligence gathering activities. Like Art, there are basic skills which must be learned through your typical learning patterns, yet the application of those skills is something that I learned (in VERY hard and dangerous situations) only through life experience. My would be peers tried to tell me, and warn me as best they could. Told me that there were various situations that would come up for which there was no fixed answer, no set play, and that only having a set of basic skills that were honed as well as could be would save my pitiful ass once I found myself in those situations (fortunately for me, I recalled the words of my art teacher “You won’t know why you are doing these things until after you have done them.”)… And, since I had paid attention to the basic skill set needed, I was able to put it to good use to save my skin and that of others when the time came. It was only by life experience that I learned about the communities and personalities involved. Those are things that cannot be learned from a book.

Just like on a sports field, there are personalities and the character of the moment that arises in a play that cannot be taught, and must be learned through doing.

Even doing those tracings that I mentioned. We got something out of that that the other students who didn’t put in their time would spend years to learn, and it was something that even a full explanation by our instructor wouldn’t have taught us (as we all realized after having done what we were told). We learned that we needed to have a reflexive ability to react in order to be able to take in a situation, rather than having to concentrate upon things that should be instinctive, and thus miss out on an opportunity to learn something we would miss otherwise.

MatthewB Mar 21, 2010, 12:13 PM
2 points
in reply to: RobinHanson’s comment on: “Life Experience” as a Conversation-Halter
This was the basic gist of the earlier response that I made… Only, ironically, I could only recount it as an anecdote.

I have to give it to my art instructor though, because his lesson on gaining personal experience has really carried over into other fields well. His comments ended, temporarily, the conversation until we had gathered the requisite skills and experience to understand both his position and what we were doing. After we finished the assignment (and consequently the semester), those of us who did the work then could understand his reasoning far better than those of the class who had not done the work.

MatthewB Mar 20, 2010, 3:06 PM
11 points
on: “Life Experience” as a Conversation-Halter
I am not sure what to make of this, because I do think that many times the “When you get to be my age...” argument is often used to shut down an opponent. But… I also think that at times it has merit.

For instance, I don’t know of a single one of the fellow art students who could understand the argument for needing to do 500 tracings a week when the instructor told us “At the end of the semester, you will understand why you needed to do them. At least, those of you who do them will understand why”

And, he was right, yet most of us were angry that he could have communicated this more effectively had he tried. However, if he had done a better job of telling us why we needed to do 500 tracings a week, it is likely that fewer of us would have done the 500 tracings a week (also supported by past evidence of when he used to give a fuller explanation to his classes. We could see in both the grades and the classes’ work that they had not put in their time)… So, in that case, there was a motivational factor to have us gain the experience on our own, instead of trying to gain it through proxy.

BTW, the reason that we did 500 tracings a week was much like the whole Karate Kid “Wax On”, “Wax Off” thing… So that our bodies would learn the motions of drawing, leaving our brains free to think about composition or morphology of the image on which we were working. Except that it was long before the movie ever came out.

MatthewB Mar 20, 2010, 2:59 PM
0 points
in reply to: Morendil’s comment on: “Life Experience” as a Conversation-Halter
I’d also like to point out that many Homosexuals wish to have children (in one form of reproduction or another)… At least today this is the case. I cannot say if it has always been the case though.

However, you are correct. It wouldn’t matter, as most people’s objections to homosexuality are based upon fear and disgust. Pity that...

MatthewB Mar 20, 2010, 2:47 PM
1 point
in reply to: CaImmrts’s comment on: Coffee: When it helps, when it hurts
I haven’t noticed that Provigil is too terribly hard to get, once Doctors know that it isn’t an Amphetamine, they will usually prescribe it… Remember though, it is usually prescribed in dosages for narcoleptics, so only half a tablet is needed… Ritalin, well, I guess that you really need to either be ADD to get that, or be willing to enter into a black market arrangement.

MatthewB Mar 11, 2010, 8:58 AM
1 point
on: Coffee: When it helps, when it hurts
What about Spiking that coffee with Provigil or Ritalin?

MatthewB Feb 27, 2010, 7:43 AM
6 points
on: What is Bayesianism?
Thanks Kaj,

As I stated in my last post, reading LW often gives me the feeling that I have read something very important, yet I often don’t immediately know why what I just read should be important until I have some later context in which to place the prior content.

Your post just gave me the context in which to make better sense of all of the prior content on Bayes here on LW.

It doesn’t hurt that I have finally dipped my toes in the Bayesian Waters of Academia in an official capacity with a Probability and Stats class (which seems to be a prerequisite for so many other classes). The combined information from school and the content here have helped me to get a leg up on the other students in the usage of Bayesian Probability at school.

I am just lacking one bit in order to fully integrate Bayes into my life: How to use it to test my beliefs against reality. I am sure that this will come with experience.

MatthewB Feb 26, 2010, 9:27 AM
1 point
on: “Outside View!” as Conversation-Halter
I always love reading Less Wrong. I am just sometimes confused, for many days, about what exactly I have read. Until, something pertinent comes along and reveals the salience of what I had read, and then I say “OH! Now I get it!”

At present, I am between those two states… Waiting for the Now I get it moment.

MatthewB Feb 23, 2010, 11:03 AM
3 points
on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
I have a very adverse reaction to human babies… I want to pop them. Or something similar. They look like you could just stick a big pin in them and they’d go POP.

Bunnies are way cuter than human babies (at least to humans I think).

MatthewB Feb 19, 2010, 12:53 AM
−3 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: You’re Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof
You still can’t know that they taped themselves every time they had sex. Now can you know that either of them might have had sex with someone else that wasn’t taped.

MatthewB Feb 18, 2010, 10:23 AM
1 point
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
I’ve noticed that many people miss Kurzweil’s claims. Such as I keep encountering the misconception that Kurzweil claims that technical advances will become infinite, which is just silly, and he never claims this. I have talked briefly with him about it and he says that the exponential climb will probably give way to a new paradigm that changes the way things are done rather than continue to infinity (or approach an asymptote).