Shameless self-promotion

"Master of Precision" sounds like the sort of thing an anal retentive magician puts on their business card.

...Is it a fancy business card?

Well, of course. It's part of the Magician's Code.

You should read these two when they get onto tracks about how everyone needs tight conformity in a word, or no useful discourse will happen. ;-)

I think they've been reading too much LessWrong.

shudders. I'm not "rational" enough to fight it out, but god that site makes me go nutty.

Oh, do tell. I do love hearing rationalvangelists rag on each other.

You should head over to Tetronian's talk page -- I have been ripping on LW over there.

mabye it's cause i'm old and cantankerous, but it just feels like this stuff you all argue about there, is just a bunch of boys having a circle jerk. It's very self indulgent (to me), and relies on people thinking about things in a very narrow sense of "rationality" or of logic or reason or just ideas.

The very frame that anyone thinks he or she could define a word in such a way that it is precise is (to me) laughable. No matter how much you think you are enclosing language, no one will see what you see, or think how you think, and they will not understand what you mean on this precise of a level.

but it is always fun to watch you all argue. ;-)

I agree with you about it being self-indulgent.

Part of my personal philosophy is "never trust anyone who's completely enamored with their personal philosophy."

But academia is all about self-indulgent circle jerks. Can god microwave a burrito so hot that even he can't eat it? Inquiring minds want to know.

I never understood that. I would read things like Simularcum and say "well, yeah, so what?" (kinda my reaction to Lakoff. I want to find answers. I want to explore history, and learn about other cultures, and read things that people who are not from my world have said, thought, or done.

But I don't get spending hours debating the effects of teh difference between "this is an illusion" "we only think this is an illusion" and "we can *only act/react* as if this is an illusion". Ok... what do those add to our lives?

shrugs... I'm a paralegal now. :-)

Well, it makes a huge difference in philosophy and science in general. Are our definitions even useful? Many of the most insidious pseudosciences rely on poor definitions for their existence. What is "intelligence"? Is there a "general intelligence" ("g")? Do IQ tests measure this g? This abstract, high-falutin' debate definitely had an effect (a very negative one) on ethnic minorities in Western nations. Much time and intellectual energy is wasted on Wittgensteinian pseudo-debates, such as "nature vs. nurture" (see, e.g., Evelyn Fox-Keller's semantic takedown of this). Asking the right question is often more important than finding the "right" answer. That was the whole point of the "42" joke in Hitchhiker's Guide -- a nonsensical question gets a nonsensical answer.

Speaking of definitional wankery, rationality, and IQ, watch what I posted in the SB. So much social science lives and dies by construct validity.

I love IQ issues. I'm firmly on the idea that they are there to make rich educated white people feel better about themselves. ;-)

So like most things in life, you say there is a "thing" you want to measure. (INtelligence, verbal skills, emotional health, etc), and having defined this "thing", you create a "scale" that "measures" it, and then a test to see where each person is on that scale. The problem is likely circular, as your tests are designed in such a way that you see them measuring your X, when in reality they could be measuring Y, effect by Y, or X could simply not even exist except in your mind?

I need an hour and a half to watch this.

The last 1/3 or so is Q&A. Re: Rich educated white people, see also Gould's takedown of The Bell Curve. This should also explain why Mensa is a hotbed of crank ideas like parapsychology.

The thing about that sort of measurement is invariably it's going to be valid at the population level, not for individuals.

Yeah, that's why I say it should be used like BMI. But IQ is big business. There's the same problem with "personality" tests.

Oh bollocks to personality tests. I'm not even convinced most of those can give you statistically useful info, never mind individually useful info.

But don't you see that as a Libra Type 5, you are best suited for career paths in engineering, finance, and poodle-washing?

But my blood type says I'm...

I thought only Asian people believed in Blood type personalities?

Ok, what the heck is up with that? I've seen my hubby's translation Resume, and honest to god, it includes a photo and his blood type. huh?

Hahaha. Well, he's Vietnamese, right? Most Asians put blood type on their resume, because according to most Asian ideals, blood type usually gives their employers/peers a better 'insight' on their certain personalities.

He's veit, but his job was professional translation in japanese. :-)

Oooh. COOL~

The blood type diet is the manifestation in the US and Europe. It seems that if you don't attach a personality test to it, you attach a diet to it.

Blood type isn't ancient or mysterious, so we can't blame mystical ancient knowledge for it; something else has to have generated the woo around it. The simple act of creating categories seems to be what unites them, from blood type, to star signs, to "I have Type XX personality".

I've taken myers-brigs, and i'm convinced intelligent people just over think these things. Neither my husband and I can ever answer them, cause we are always asking things like "well, it's not really A or B, but someone in betwee, and further, teh question is loaded, because it requires an awareness of our thought process that only comes after teh fact" or some such. Also, I answer the way I want to answer in any given mood.

I am not "introverted", i have introverted moments. I am not a thinking vs. felling, I approach things trying my best to use both - but some situations are more feelings and some are more thinking.

Have you all taken an officall (vs. some site on the internet) IQ test? I never have. Maybe too scared to know. hehehe

I think someone wrote on my talk page once that MBTI is the thinking man's astrology. I-E is the only scale with any sort of validity. But I've always found this profile kind of spookily accurate. Never took an IQ test, though.

I get bored with IQ tests. But I see what you mean with "thinking man's astrology", but in the end it's just trying to put neat little rings around complicated clusters and saying "ABRACADABRA!! This is now a Real Thing!!" Hence why you're stuck unable to answer "yes" or "no" to all these questions because you're kinda both. I always feel wrong answering "I feel introverted and uncomfortable around strangers" AND "I feel like being the centre of the party" to these things, because they're blatantly contradictory, but it's true.

The Mill quote in Gould's review is timely: "The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own, and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something particularly abstruse and mysterious."

Okay, so that pretty much describes everything ever.