The OL "tribe" and the Tribal Mindset

[Brant Gaede]

For a good example of Perigonian infantility, see his "review" of Sibelius's Symphony #2, which Jonathan recently reminded the SOLOPpers about:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/1673#comment-21054

I've listened now for the zillionth time to the Sibelius 2nd Symphony, since that was the one that came highly recommended. It's rubbish. Discrete (as opposed to discreet) passages that would make good movie accompaniments (& that's not a put-down), & that's it. The rest is gratuitous padding, utterly devoid of musical merit. What crap gets talked here that suggests this is romantic music's apogee. It's portentous, pretentious dribble redeemed by a few bars of authentic, but disconnected, romanticism every once in a while. Poseurism Writ Large.

Unlike the Perigonian blasts at Frank Zappa's music, this "review" was apparently done after listening to the entire work—on more than occasion.

There is absolutely no point in trying to conduct a serious discussion of music with someone who writes like this.

Robert Campbell

Apparently he did not like the Sibelius 2nd symphony.

Ba'al Chatzaf

That's why he listened to it so many times? Must be a masochist. But wouldn't a masochist like what he disliked?

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There is absolutely no point in trying to conduct a serious discussion of music with someone who writes like this.

Robert,

I agree with this in spades. Still, some people take Perigo's whims on music seriously, and even get upset over them.

I don't know why people ignore the bad, irrational and infantile side of Periogo (not to mention his poor quality side), but they do. It's a total blank-out—and a total mystery to me, especially given the large number of good productive people with notable achievements he has tried to damage. I have seen several people turn the other cheek to Perigo so many times they remind me of trained dogs.

That's what Objectivism teaches these people, I suppose...

Arf, arf...

(I love dogs, though. You can kick them, beat them, cuss them, starve them and do all kinds of bad things to them, but if you are their master, they will wag their tails in happy excitement when they see you after an absence. They have unconditional love for their master.)

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I don't think you worded that dog exposition of yours too well, Michael. For one thing, it's just not true. The tail-wagging will stop; there is no infinite capacity for abuse. My brother and sister-in-law once rescued a dog that had been so badly abused my brother became the only person the dog would tolerate. They couldn't even take the dog to the vet. More importantly, it reads as if you like dogs for the wrong reasons which I seriously doubt is true.

--Brant

Edited March 8, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Newberry]

Michael,

I notice that many people respond to polemical statements, sometimes the more stupid the comment the more the reaction!!!

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

No living being has an infinite capacity for abuse. After all, to be alive means to die at some point. Abuse can kill, not just maim. Abuse can kill the whole organism or only part of it. Dogs are no exception despite an enormous tolerance for abuse.

Why do you think I like dogs for the wrong reason? A dog can't help itself. I happen to like how nature did that one. I think a living being with a capacity for such unconditional love after being adopted by a master, and such ability to be trained to do tricks by its master, is charming. Notice that a dog loves its master and will learn tricks irrespective of whether its master is a hero or villain. What's important is that the master adopt the dog and dole out some crumbs of attention.

I don't care for people who act like dogs, but that's another issue.

Dogs sure learn quickly who their master is, don't they?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I notice that many people respond to polemical statements, sometimes the more stupid the comment the more the reaction!!!

Michael,

I fear there might be an artistic principle in that statement somewhere...

(Don't worry. I'm just funning. I haven't really gone to the Dark Side.)

Michael

[Newberry]

Oh, I wasn't trying to be clever, I just noticed in myself and others the attraction to polemics.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

On a serious note, you did touch on something important. There is an inherent tendency in our short-range perceptions and reactions to be drawn toward negative things.

On the highway, there is a term radio commentators call "rubber-necking." I first heard this term with a duo called Harden and Weaver in the DC area (WMAL) at the end of the 60's. Their main audience was automobile drivers. They would give their traffic report during rush hour and say something like, "There's a driver changing a tire on the Beltway between Exit XXX and YYY. Come on folks. Stop rubber-necking. You're slowing down traffic. We've all seen a person change a tire..."

People rubber-neck at the sign of any disaster.

Some of the scenery around the Beltway is gorgeous (at least it was back then). This makes no impact on drivers. Regardless of whether there is a beautiful sunset, a really well-done advertisement on a billboard, a large family a ways off having a picnic and exhibiting great happiness, a building complex with stunning architecture, or any number of things someone can admire, people drive right past without a second thought.

That holds true for everything. Now if there is an accident on the side of the road with blood available for the viewing pleasure of drivers, traffic totally grinds to a halt. I think we are prewired to be more fascinated with gruesome icky stuff at first blush than with uplifting stuff. It almost seems like we have to consciously choose to react to uplifting stuff, but we react automatically to the gruesome and the icky.

This low-level focus on negative stuff in our awareness also works in sales persuasion. Any ad copywriter worth his salt will tell you that people are more motivated by not losing something they have (or think they have) than they are by the prospect of gaining something. In general, you can easily induce people to jump through many hoops to keep from losing junk, but it is much harder to get them to jump through similar hoops to gain diamonds at bargain-basement prices.

For instance:

We have a huge stock of engagement rings, 0.25 carat diamond set in a 14K gold band, for only $90.00 each

will not sell nearly as much as

Art Deco Clear Crystal Rhinestone Silvertone Vintage Bridal Necklace. Regular price: $165.00. Special low "we're nuts to do this" price: $90.00, valid only until Sunday.

The price of the diamond ring is a great price. The second "discounted" price for the glass and plastic jewelry is the average price for that merchandise (and even then, I think it is greatly overvalued since you can get this stuff really cheap). People have nothing in the first case except a really good value they must act to gain. In the second case, they have a discount, whether they want the junk or not. But this discount will be taken from them once Sunday comes around. So they will act to keep "their" discount for junk much more often than they will act to gain the bargain for the diamond.

This has been proven time and time again. Sales persuasion instruction materials even teach you to split test if you don't believe it. It is one of the components in the huge difference between actual value and perceived value. (Obviously the audience profiled also impacts results. But I am speaking here in general terms for the general public.)

People who know what they are doing take advantage of this, both in an ethical and not so ethical manner. It is a tool. How it is used depends on the character of the one using it.

I believe this "immediate focus on negative" principle of perception is at work with Perigo's bluff at being a moral crusader and intellectual. He is a master at getting people to rubberneck over nothing of substance just by creating a stink with whoever is at hand. What's funny is that people stay engaged civilly with Perigo—and go to great lengths to explain themselves—after being called some of the worst names possible by him. I think this is because they imagine they will "lose" a part of their reputation in his mind if they do not challenge it in rational terms.

That only makes sense in terms of perceived value. In actual value, there is nothing to lose. Their real reputation to themselves and to the public in general (the diamond) does not involve Perigo at all. The reputation they think they hold in Perigo's mind (the junk) is what they seek to not lose.

It's a great intellectual con game for someone who knows how to pull it off. You float a little insider jargon, strike a pose, and start bashing folks at random to get some audience. This is one thing I admit Perigo is competent at.

Michael

[tjohnson]

That holds true for everything. Now if there is an accident on the side of the road with blood available for the viewing pleasure of drivers, traffic totally grinds to a halt. I think we are prewired to be more fascinated with gruesome icky stuff at first blush than with uplifting stuff. It almost seems like we have to consciously choose to react to uplifting stuff, but we react automatically to the gruesome and the icky.

Well, if you drive the same road 100's of tmes a year you are bound to get a little bored with the scenery but how many times to you get to see an accident. It's quite a bit more interesting don't you think?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

That could be a factor, but not too much. We see accidents all the time. We also see them on TV all the time. So they are not really new.

Take a look at TV ratings and see which programs are the most popular. Take a look at news programs and see if they cover negative stuff or positive stuff more.

Etc...

btw - Why don't people rubberneck when something new and beautiful appears?

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

You might as well rubber-neck; the guy ahead is doing it; if you don't you'll probably rear-end him.

--Brant

[Selene]

Lol

Us smart ones do Michael. I actually drive some business folks a little nutsy when I stop and admire beauty or and sit on the ground with a child or bend down to pet a dog.

I think people are crazy to pass it by. I can never see my bridge as I pass by and not stop and be awed. Brooklyn Bridge I mean.

http://andrewprokos.com/photos/new-york/la...es-black-white/

Adam

[Newberry]

MSK:

It is a tool. How it is used depends on the character of the one using it.

Yes, I think that is exactly it.

A couple of years ago, I read the complete works of Wilde. I loved the play The Importance of Being Earnest. But De Profundis was a freakin scary expression of the degeneration of a human spirit. It was as if he ended as nothing more than a polemical shell. It's amazing how one person can do great things yet also, at another time, completely fall apart. I am reminded of Rand's saying about gaining and keeping one's values.

[Brant Gaede]

GS,

That could be a factor, but not too much. We see accidents all the time. We also see them on TV all the time. So they are not really new.

Take a look at TV ratings and see which programs are the most popular. Take a look at news programs and see if they cover negative stuff or positive stuff more.

Etc...

btw - Why don't people rubberneck when something new and beautiful appears?

Michael

Such as?

In 1967 I came back from Vietnam and was discharged from active service in Oakland, CA. After getting a hotel and sleeping for 12 hours, I went to Hertz and got a big Ford to drive to Tucson. As I approached Yuma, AZ, I beheld the most beautiful, awesome and huge rainbow that I have ever seen and I rubbernecked it all the way down to the Colorado River and then over the bridge and I was home in Arizona.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

The exception is not the rule.

I, too, stop to look at beautiful things. My family thinks I'm a bit nuts because I love to look at the sky in wonder and mull over the different colors and formations, especially how the sun interacts with clouds during sunset. Some of that stuff is simply gorgeous—like the orange and blue gradients, or the thin lines of one color piercing through another—I don't care what anyone thinks. Sean (my young teen stepson, Kat's son, who has a rare form of Asperger syndrome), used to think it was boring. But I kept insisting on pointing it out to him. He used to say to me (very seriously), "The sky is not a painting!"

Now he points the sky out to me. I think I connected when I explained to him that if you learn to get pleasure from looking at the sky, it's always there for you and it's always free. And it's always the same thing, but it's always different. And that's as cool as it gets. It just doesn't get any cooler than that. Not for me. I think he also likes looking at the smile and seriousness on my face as I look upwards and all around up there.

(I know this sounds horribly sappy, but it's totally sincere and that's just what I do...)

Back to your rainbow and the imbalance in immediate perception in our species. Did you cause a traffic jam because you slowed down to look at the rainbow and the people behind you decided to rubber-neck, too? Have you ever heard of a traffic jam happening because people were looking at the rainbow? I can hardly get people inside my car to look at the sky, much less get people to slow down in traffic to look at it. When I have slowed down to get a better look at the sky, they usually pass me cussing.

But how many flat tires being changed cause traffic jams? How many accidents? That's an unpleasant reality of our species, but it is testable behavior with consistent results.

There is one way you can get strangers to look at rainbows. Get into a crowd of people on the street, shade your eyes by extending your hand from your forehead like a baseball cap bill, look upward and point with the other hand. Stay that way for a few seconds. People will stop and look, too. They will do that in droves.

But that's a different psychological trigger. That one is called social proof. They are not looking at anything beautiful or gruesome. They are looking because you are looking.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

btw - Someone should explain to Perigo that, in Objectivism, ostensive definitions are used only when no other concepts are available. This is why they are mostly used for abstractions like fundamental axiomatic concepts.

They are always used for metaphysical existents as opposed to man-made existents. By the very nature of calling something man-made, a conceptual level is already present that is way beyond the cognitive confines of pointing.

So ostensive definitions don't work for defining "objectively superior" music. When accompanied with an evaluation (a normative abstraction that is not ostensive), all the pointing does is show someone's subjective taste regarding the particular work that he is pointing to. The pointing doesn't define anything. An example is not a definition. It especially does not define a man-made product like art.

This person has been repeatedly asked by Jonathan and Robert C and others to define his terms to back up his pompous claims, what I call his bluff (or con). It's clear that he doesn't define his terms because he can't. He always tries to get off by snarling his standard name-calling crap and butchering the concept of ostensive definition. But the fact that he can't define his terms is starting to honk loudly to anyone interested.

Setting the hostility aside for a moment, such a level of evasion and misunderstanding of Objectivist epistemology is embarrassing in an aspirant to "Objectivist leader."

But not to a dog trainer...

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

btw - Someone should explain to Perigo that, in Objectivism, ostensive definitions are used only when no other concepts are available. This is why they are mostly used for abstractions like fundamental axiomatic concepts.

They are always used for metaphysical existents as opposed to man-made existents. By the very nature of calling something man-made, a conceptual level is already present that is way beyond the cognitive confines of pointing.

Infinite regress is impossible. That is why we must begin with pointing. Pointing is the beginning of meaning, not its final development.

Without index fingers our species would be dumb and beastly.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Developmentally for a child, I agree.

For an adult with a fully developed conceptual faculty, you can't do that with validity anymore. Even Rand observed (in ITOE) that the fundamental axioms as abstractions are arrived at later in a child's development.

As an adult, you especially cannot do that to avoid defining your terms and then slap a fancy word on it to pretend you are being intellectual (and make up an idiotic-sounding jargon term like "value-swoon" to hide lack of cognitive substance). Especially when you are an obnoxious jerk like Perigo who goes around selling the bill of goods that he is going to correct Ayn Rand, "the musical ignoramus," on music. You need a little more than pointing and an invented term for that to be anything but posturing.

You can point and say, "This is an example of the concept I am discussing." You cannot say, "This is the definition of the concept."

And if you are using a concept, you have to define it, especially if you are bragging to everyone that you are better than Ayn Rand on this.

Michael

EDIT: There is one case where an adult can use pointing as the start of forming a new concept: when pointing goes with an identification question like, "What is that?" But that is not what is at issue here. That's rational.

What's essentially happening here is that the irrational person is pointing to two things and saying, "This is objectively superior to that. You wanna know how objective? Well, for those who understand, no explanation is necessary. For those who don't, none is possible. My examples and opinions are enough to prove this."

Just look at post after post. That is the message time after time.

Hmmmm... That message seems familiar...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just when I think Perigo can go no lower or show his ignorance more, he manages to outdo himself.

He wrote his standard boilerplate preaching and demonizing about the resurgence of sales in Atlas Shrugged (see here). Not great, but not bad. Like I said, standard rhetoric for him.

But then he ended his article by taking his mask off and showing what is truly underneath. (1) He starts channeling Ayn Rand and telling us what she would think and feel. (2) He even channels today's politicians and and tells us what they think and feel as they tremble in fear of Ayn Rand's righteous wrath. Now for the killer. (3) He makes a call for producer collectivism using a spin on a communist slogan!

You have to see this crap to believe it:

How Ayn Rand would savour the delicious irony that the renewed pandering of powerlusters to parasites has sent her magnum opus back to the top of the pops!

How the politicians must be trembling at the command that is heard from every page: "Producers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win!"

Producers of the world, unite?!!!

This is the message—"the command that is heard from every page"—of Atlas Shrugged?!!!

Good f&*%#ng Christ!!!

The idea is for producers not to obey those "of the world" who do unite! Not make another tribe! The strike in AS was not a political movement. There were no rallies. It was a rejection made individual by individual in one-on-one discussions behind closed doors.

But have no fear. If we can get the world's producers united under one banner, all the world-united producers would need is a leader—and a strong leader at that!

Hmmmmm...

I wonder who Perigo has in mind to lead the Witch Doctor intellectual part...

Hell, I wonder if this guy even understood Atlas Shrugged. This stuff makes me want to spit. With cosmetic changes to replace the parties, these last two paragraphs of his sound like Islamist propaganda against Jews.

Michael

[Ruth]

Producers of the world, unite?!!!

I would like 'producer' to be defined. Certainly Wall St 'businessmen' do not produce anything.

I mentioned on a 'economic armageddon' or some such thread that the rhetoric resembles that of Soviet Russia.

As for the 'going Galt' nonsense - it's nice to see some people feel so threatened by Obama that they have to retreat into this fantasy of taking their ball and going home. Where the John Galt metaphor falls flat is that Galt actually had something useful that he was going to withhold from society.

I thought Perigo's essay was rather good overall.

[merjet]

Certainly Wall St 'businessmen' do not produce anything.

I recommend Defending Shylock: Productive Work in Financial Markets by Stephen Hicks,

which you can get at The Objectivist Center bookstore cheap.

http://www.objectivismstore.com/index.asp

Type Hicks in the textbox next to Go.

[Brant Gaede]

Producers of the world, unite?!!!

I would like 'producer' to be defined. Certainly Wall St 'businessmen' do not produce anything.

I mentioned on a 'economic armageddon' or some such thread that the rhetoric resembles that of Soviet Russia.

As for the 'going Galt' nonsense - it's nice to see some people feel so threatened by Obama that they have to retreat into this fantasy of taking their ball and going home. Where the John Galt metaphor falls flat is that Galt actually had something useful that he was going to withhold from society.

If you are Ruth123 on SOLOP then I outed you as a Marxist over there and I'll do it here too if you stick around. You never replied to me but disappeared, save, it seems for here. You are a denigrator and I'll consequentially denigrate you here or there or wherever I find you, you son-of-a-fifth-column bitch!

--Brant

Edited March 17, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Selene]

Thank you Brant.

My semantic "instincts" kicked in big time to label that creature as something more malignant than a rabid female dog.

However, it was the first time I had seen it appear. so I decided to wait in a poised position.

Good job.

Adam

[Ruth]

I think you are very disappointed we are not seeing DJI3000 Brant. Facts are very irritating things.

No doubt you would think differently if Bush was still president.

Anyway I'm sick of misogynistic, abusive Objectivist views which are not grounded in reality.

[Brant Gaede]

I think you are very disappointed we are not seeing DJI3000 Brant. Facts are very irritating things.

No doubt you would think differently if Bush was still president.

Anyway I'm sick of misogynistic, abusive Objectivist views which are not grounded in reality.

Good. I assume you're leaving. Please, please do.

--Brant