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Please refrain from copy and pasting messages over and over and over, or you will be removed from the forum. We all have input to make so let's keep this at a discussion and not a text block of commercials. Here are some helpful guidelines for good discussion and debate recommended by one of our members:

  • * Stay on topic
  • * Be clear
  • * Build upon your points and address those of other people
  • * Refrain from making assumptions about others' unstated views
  • * If you disagree with somebody, do so politely
  • * Clarify your terms and seek to understand others' (but avoid semantic derails)
Note: The opinions expressed by the moderators and members of this discussion board do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Occupy Together or Occupy Wall St. In the spirit of free information, open discussion, and the freedom of expression, members are able to speak about issues relating and directly pertaining to the Occupy movement. You will be banned for hate speech or intentional misinformation and please refrain from any violent rhetoric; this is a peaceful movement. Thank you.
How to Disagree (or How to carry on a worthwhile debate)
  • marchelomarchelo December 2011 +1 -1 (+2 / -0 )
    "If we're all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy:"

    Full text: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

    Strive to be at the top of THIS pyramid: http://i.imgur.com/oHibv.jpg
  • SeaSea January 2012 +1 -1
    The big narrative we need to deconstruct came from our GRA, Greco-Roman-Abrahamic heritage, that was based on heaven or on ideas that Aristotle eventually declared to be secondarily substantial. It wasn't based on Earth. Our physics and our economics did not start with the thing that is primarly substantial and physical and economic, our bodies and the food we need.

    The GRA narrative which is still the widely held one today, has ideas of physicality or substance — setting aside for now the mental/emotional and spiritual dimensions of physical Earth — that do not accord with today's ideas of mass, motion/charge/acceleration, space, and time. Such big changes in thinking are seen in the stories of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. The GRA narrative is idealistic patriarchal and abstract, with Earth not being central except as an extension of heaven or of deity. That was the approach of Adam Smith and Enlightenment thinkers in general. As far as the common man is concerned, the GRA narrative is just a story anyway, just as he thinks the Middle East wars are just about oil. But to church-state-corporate politicians and others who seek and hold power, it is an article of faith. The GRA western takers, the invading people of the book, produced WMS. The Oriental eastern leavers, the indigenous sojourning food developers produced TEK. The United Nations is captive to whichever narrative is dominant. Occupyers, our army of scribes, is trying to produce a different narrative.

    "Deconstructing" may just be a "postmodern" term for careful analysis and its arguable that WMS (western modern science) though theory laden is data poor. It may be that our bitter divisions are simply arguing about what we don't know about, so it could be that in the past people fought about what they knew about. Below I will introduce TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) using Marx's two variables s and v. I use s to mean food, and it has variously been called: production, movement, substance, labor, movement, surplus labor, and constant capital. I use v to mean hoarding and it has variously been called: consumption, rest, magnitude, value, surplus value, and variable capital. s and v, like corresponding TEK variables (4dq) and (amr), are simultaneously objective and subjective, and simultaneously more accurate and more interpretive, than we are used to in positvistic WMS. I end by trying to show that because of Aristotle, we never consider when 1 plus 1 does not equal 2.

    Take economics and physics. Why not agree that eco refers to home and house, and so economics and ecology is how to do home and house, and that since we are limited to Earth — I suppose people will disagree on that :) — we should fashion a physics that only involves numbers that refer to things that patently exist, within and about homes and houses, on Earth! I say physics, because I think Marx was a physicist. I claim that his s ÷ v is as provable as Newton's m × a. :( I call s and v the "fair feeding variables".

    I've been accused of making "loose associations". I admit, I've said this rather off-handedly. It was the only way I could say what I think is a really big thing in a few words. The point of mentioning eco home house and Earth, is because the "Feeding Physics" that I am trying to spin, uses numbers differently than general mathematics. For instance in my conception, 1 + 1 does not equal 2, if there aren't two actual things. For example: (1 Earth) + (1 Earth) does not equal (2 Earths). Why? Because there is in fact only one Earth!

    *p 87 III, p 24 comp I

    The implication here limits how numbers can be used so that incommensurables and the idea of unity within multiplicity — both ideas mathematically speaking — instead of being a way to accurately use numbers to arrive at useful truth, are in fact descriptions of how numbers — if used this way — can mislead us. The "celebrated" idea from Aristotle of "unity within multiplicity" is a result of him having determined what a primary substance was and what a secondary substance was, and then proceed to expand his philosophy using secondary substances. This has led to the prevalent habit amongst archeologists to discover the remains of females and then write their research about "Man".

    @Slave. @Marchelo. Regarding commensurable vs incommensurable in regard to logical mathematical physics (containing simultaneously physical, mental/emotional, and spritual dimensions) and in particular in regard to how our ideas of econmics and value are set up, see "Das Kapital" (Capital), P 68 in the Modern Library ed and P 59 in the Intl Publishers ed. In regard to "unity within multiplicity" see P 18 of Henri Poincare's "Science and Hypothesis", Dover 1952 NY, and http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/black.htm.

    I think Occupy's teach-ins will teach us how to really think differently. The physics and economics I'm discussing involves getting over math phobia so that simple numbers can be used by people to control their lives. The "square-root of pi" :) or figuring out what happens in outer-space, doesn't help us catch the crooks. Whereas if a number refers to a really tangible thing, then figuring out who is hoarding and how everybody can be fed, becomes easier. We must teach our children well, the way Native Americans do.
  • SeaSea January 2012 +1 -1
    "The mathematical basis of perspective" — referring to the math and physics of Newton that I am building in to a feeding physics-Sea — "is called Projective Geometry. This term says it all. One no longer engages directly with an object in its natural, essential form, as something that can be explored and touched, instead it becomes a surface that must be distorted to fit the global logic of mathematical perspective. The rich individualistic inscape of the natural world had given way to a uniform perspectival grid of logic and reason."

    The above is a quote from F David Peat in "Blackfoot Physics". It expresses what's behind the need to balance Newton's force physics with Occupy's feeding physics. My concern with incommensurables, unity within multiplicity, and numbers that refer to things that don't exist. Its like Aristotle's big "shooting himself in the foot act". After he did a good job of distinguishing primary substance from secondary substance, he then proceeded to develop his philosophy using secondary subtances. That's how women were left out! See the discussions, "The Uses of Feminist and Womanist Theory for Occupy", and "Wanting to Be Indian".