Bad Mood

I'm in a bad mood today. To cheer me up, I am inviting one of my critics to a one-on-one debate, to be posted in this blog.

If you think my views on any particular topic are stupid, make yourself known in the comments and I will debate you in this forum. For maximum entertainment value, I plan to pick the person I think is the biggest idiot and doesn't realize it. Spectators should feel free to weigh in on who you think I should pick.

The rules of the debate are that both sides are free to insult the intelligence of the other. I will print your arguments unless they run on too long. There might be other reasons to censor your end of it, but I can't think of any.

Feel free to weigh in on any topic from evolution to copyrights to science to God to foreign policy. You can start by stating your hallucination of my opinion, and then arguing with your hallucination. I'll join in when it seems right.

Any takers?

[Update: I skimmed the comments and didn't see any legitimate takers. Just one offer to debate free will based on physics, and that would only take about a minute to come to agreement once we sorted out definitions. No fun there.  -- Scott]

Comments

[Listo Cómics]

loser!

(no, just joking)

[tim]

i m a cinese boy . even though i don't know what article your blog is but i have read your agurement , i am so crazy in the english learning . most time i am not satisfy with the life . something is wrong with me . i think i just do my best . do what should i do . learn what should i learn .that is what make me happy

[Grayskull]

Please educate yourself and learn to say stupid things.

[纤维]

good sites

[Christine]

Sorry, just catchin up on your posts today, 11/20. So...all of the smart people read someone else's blog?

[Sajjid Manuel]

I am not going to be a part of this. But since you insist, I'll do you a favour.
We'll I'll definitely pick christianity as the topic. As many would benefit from my foolishness.

First of all God created lucifer to work for him. Unfortunately lucifer got a little greedy and due to the pride of life he fell to the earth. He only became Satan when he fell. God is certainly good, in fact, he is the only good that ever existed.

It is we who do not understand God's ways thus blaming him and questioning him due to our own idiocy. Many people expect God to think like them and do things like them.

Fortunately we survived because of something called 'love'. People don't complain when they make love, they usually complain when it's all over and never could understand it in the first place.

So that's a little bit about human beings and their judgmental ignorance. Remember this, we need God and he really doesn't need us...So with that in mind sleep well.

You guys need more??? BUzz me!! You'll find me at the website below this so-called comment that I know would have impressed the living daylights out of you..lol

Sajjid Manuel
Founder/Ceo
www.blogworkx.com

[Johnny Ouais]

After long waited days hoping that Scott would have chosen me or an other big idiots, I just realize today that this will never happens for any of us.

Better luck next time everybody.

What we don't know, it's how Scott sorted out the comments. What kind of implicit rules where used to filter idiots writings for others? Don't assume here that "others" means not an idiot. From a Scott Adams point of you, we all are one.

But Scott were looking for the biggest one who never showed up according to its standards.

Or, he doesn't want to fight an idiot anymore.

Doesn't feel bad at all now Scott? Doesn't want anymore a little fool to argue with? Doesn't want anymore to have fun mocking him? That's a shame that you taunted us this way and left us hungry with no fresh blood splashed on our face.

Pick me up big ass hole. I'm pissed off. It'll be fun.

Evolution exists as the current scientifics community described it. The basic formula is:

Lack of free will + limited ressources = evolution.

Having sex acts as a catalyst.

[John]

You argue that we are haluccinations programmed by our long dead selves from a parallel universe in some sort of matrix like virtual world. You clearly believe that this life is worthless, and the pretext invalidates any useful faith or motivation for action. Quite to the contrary, our lives are full of usefulness and meaning and we are a part of the spiritual dance of Life in the Universe, each of our actions is a new twist on the karmic spiral towards the Actuation, where all things will be revealed in their True Meaning. I don't even need to debate you about this, but feel I must at least offer you the Hope of this great feeling of being amongst the Beings of the Earth that you are so clearly lacking.

[Don]

Scott,
How do you program a robot to oil its joints?

The robot could be programmeed to know that oiling its joints will allow it to last longer. The robot could be programmed to know how to oil itself. The robot could know that it would only have to stop drinking beer for a half hour or so, to oil its joints.

Now, there seems to be no reason the robot wouldn't oil itself every day.
And in a moist robot, exercising is damn close to joint-oiling.

Now, besides any humor that i already laughed at while i was typing this... In the complete lack of free will, why don't moist robots exercise?

[le Big MAC]

Mr Adams,
your ego has inflamed to a horrible mass, so in order to bring attention on yourself, you started a little passive-aggressive flame war on your own blog. Feel better now, you little prima donna? If your kids did this you'd yell at them and send them to their room without dessert.

Support your local writers,
Big MAC

[Dave]

Scott,

The only thing I can think of to argue with you about would be your personal choice of being a vegetarian. Vegetarians are morally and ethically wrong, and the people that are most cruel to animals. The reason it is morally wrong is that vegetables can’t defend themselves, nor are they able to escape the clutches of those that would pick them and eat them. Vegetables have feelings too (which you can’t prove they don’t).
If I release a head of lettuce and a deer into the wood, give you a gun and tell you to shoot the first one you come to, you will be forced to shoot the lettuce, since it can’t run away. The deer would be long gone as soon as you made a sound

[Ace]

"I skimmed the comments and didn't see any legitimate takers."

Now I'm guessing you're REALLY in a bad mood!

[Jonathan Faia]

SCOTT,
Are you really not going to engage "John"?! (Comment posted by John | November 13, 2007 at 07:17 PM) who said:
"My hallucination of your opinion is that you think 'irrationality' is 'bad'. You consider yourself 'logical', or 'reasonable'; you laugh off irrationality, and excuse yourself as being cynical. You've been trying your whole life to rationalise your existence, and though you haven't given up you suspect you're defeated (but you don't know why), thus 'philosotainment'" and "Perhaps you hadn't realised that you held this view that irrationality is bad. It's likely that you hadn't realised that your 'thinking' always tends to 'reasoning' because you think that thinking *is* reasoning. If you attempt to defend your position (or my hallucination thereof), then I will proceed to crush your world-view. Are you brave enough to fight me over this? Beware, I may destroy your faith in reason."

Wow John, well said. It makes total sense and I think you hit the nail on the head on how Scott "ticks" and works and his supposed superiority.

Always searching and reasoning, but never really seeming to arrive to what is right and true.

[Justin]

Adrian wrote:
""If someone told you that enlightenment lay at the end of a harsh regime of walking around for a week with stinky cheese strapped to your back and hot coals (continually renewed by church elders, duh) in your shoes, I’m sure very few people would seek enlightenment."

Well, I, for one, would probably decide that what he was offering was madness and not enlightenment. The question is not whether I believe truth to be worth hardship. It is whether I believe your "path to truth" really leads to truth. So, I give you your challenge again (it's the same one you broadcast.) What if you are wrong? The "most people think it's too hard" tactic was only diversionary.

Please note: If you attempt another diversionary tactic, I will call you on it again; and it will show that you are actively deceptive, instead of potentially mistaken. Remember, the question is not "Why should I seek truth?" It is "How do I know the path you suggest won't trap me in a web of lies?""

Ok, I don't think I'm communicating myself to you correctly. The point I'm making is the same as yours, well loosely. There is no way of knowing if something will work or not until it is tried, however the likelihood of something being tried declines when it will cost the tryee something.

If you said that eating marshmallows would make me smarter, I wouldn't know if you were telling the truth. However I may try it anyway as eating marshmallows isn't too bad. On the other hand, if it were baby marrow, the small chance of you being right would not be enough to motivate me.

What do you think?

[Adrian D.]

"If someone told you that enlightenment lay at the end of a harsh regime of walking around for a week with stinky cheese strapped to your back and hot coals (continually renewed by church elders, duh) in your shoes, I’m sure very few people would seek enlightenment."

Well, I, for one, would probably decide that what he was offering was madness and not enlightenment. The question is not whether I believe truth to be worth hardship. It is whether I believe your "path to truth" really leads to truth. So, I give you your challenge again (it's the same one you broadcast.) What if you are wrong? The "most people think it's too hard" tactic was only diversionary.

Please note: If you attempt another diversionary tactic, I will call you on it again; and it will show that you are actively deceptive, instead of potentially mistaken. Remember, the question is not "Why should I seek truth?" It is "How do I know the path you suggest won't trap me in a web of lies?"

[Andy Watt]

Mr Adams, if I was being particularly cynical today (which is usually an indicator _I'm_ in a bad mood) I'd say you got the entertainment you wanted from the comments on this post... your update looks suspiciously like someone pointing at everybody who commented and saying "nyer nyer"...? If so, excellent.

Besides, a one-on-one debate about something we think you have stupid ideas about? Come on, either:
1) that's far too wide open a remit for anyone to come up with one useful topic of debate, or
2) your views are so damn changeable (you tend to enjoy taknig contrary viewpoints just for the hell of it) how could we tell it was what you actually thought????

I'll debate the usefulness of this blog with you if you want... but I don't know if you think it's useful or not, or from what standpoint...

BTW, what hairspray does the PHB use?

[callender]

So are you saying that no idiot disagrees with you?

[RavenBlack]

If you're anything like me, you're mistaken that you'd come to an agreement about free will based on physics (assuming the person offering to debate is saying that there is free will, which they must be or you'd just agree already). I've had that argument, and it goes "the brain is complicated therefore we have free will." "What?" "Because we can't predict what it will do." "Okay, wait, 1. we can't generally predict a computer's random number generator and you wouldn't argue that that has free will, 2. we can't at all predict atomic decay and you wouldn't argue that that has free will, and 3. most of the time we *can* predict what a brain will do, and you are arguing that *that's* free will?" "IT IS! IS IS IS!"

[Justin]

Justin:

"Wait I have one.

"What if everything, or most of everything, you know is actually wrong? There is a way to find out the truth, however it's painfull or really uncomfortable and that is why it hasn't caught on.

"Hmmm, you're right, that's terrible."

Adrian D.:
"What if you're wrong about that "way to find out the truth"? (I find that most people claiming that turn out to be plugging their "infallible holy books.") I am actually okay with the possibility that my beliefs may be wrong. I only have my senses to serve for evidence. Even what I read must come through the sense of sight."

That is the very reasoning that has kept many people from discovering the truth :).
If someone told you that enlightenment lay at the end of a harsh regime of walking around for a week with stinky cheese strapped to your back and hot coals (continually renewed by church elders, duh) in your shoes, I’m sure very few people would seek enlightenment.

My point is that human race, as a majority, could never discover absolute enlightenment if it requires pain or discomfort.

Just an idea.

[kc]

How can you decide to fight with some poor soul just because you are 'bored' or in a 'bad mood'? If everybody did that, we would be fighting all the time and spreading our 'bad moods'. That is why it is a sin to hurt other people. All you atheistic type people are the same. I hope you see the light of reason and take up religion soon and save yourself from these miseries. There is is a reason that so many millions of people all around the world have embraced god!!! Spread some kindness and love too, you will feel good. I know you are busy but if you care to reply, I can explain clearly and methodically where you are wrong.

[Bob]

If you're still up for this, here's the topic I'd like to debate.

I think that the book "Stick to Drawing Comic Books Monkey Brain" is a horrible book. I haven't read it, nor do I regularly read this blog, but I sincerely doubt that your assertion that the book is great is valid.

[John]

Hi Scott,

My hallucination of your opinion is that you think 'irrationality' is 'bad'. You consider yourself 'logical', or 'reasonable'; you laugh off irrationality, and excuse yourself as being cynical. You've been trying your whole life to rationalise your existence, and though you haven't given up you suspect you're defeated (but you don't know why), thus 'philosotainment'.

You think your capacity to laugh off contradiction makes you as good natured as an 'intelligent' person possibly could be in this world of stupid irrational people. Perhaps you think that 'irrationality' necessarily leads to dogma, nihilism, anarchy, stupidity, or something else you consider undesirable. You think that irrational people are stupid, and that 'reason', or the ability to apply what you think of as logic, is the prime requisite of intelligence. You think that 'logic' is the correct way to 'analyse' a situation so as to arrive at a decision. You think that ones actions should be rationally justifiable, that is, that the logic of them should be demonstrable.

You like to weigh the 'logic' of contrasted options and consider their 'rational' consequences -- but when you do this you don't have a firm understanding of what it is that you're undertaking. You think it's valid to give 'logic' preference over 'values'. You think 'illogical' things are 'stupid'. To the extent that you recognise 'values', you're disillusioned because you can't find a way to rationalise them, or to logically derive them from a naked premise such as "life is about survival". You don't understand why values, as distinct from reason, are important in the decision making process.

Irony is your chief mechanism for eliciting humour in your comics and blog posts. The concept of irony includes the concept of paradox. Irony is always based on some form of contradiction. In my experience I've observed several forms of response to paradox, or irony. When faced with a contradiction humans tend to one of three modes of behaviour: laughter, depression, or denial.

You think you have a great sense of humour, but what you really have is a keen ability to apply your notion of logic and find contradictions. Laughter is your preferred mechanism for coping with contradiction, but it still upsets you sometimes.

Another coping mechanism is 'denial'. I imagine you'd say 'cognitive dissonance'. This is what you're seeing from 'conservatives' who don't laugh when you show them a contradiction.

The mode of behaviour that's not really 'coping' is depression. Some people get quite upset when they see a patent contradiction. They may feel 'challenged' for a while, but often end up feeling helpless, or defeated.

Your view that irrationality is 'bad' is mistaken, and you don't know why because you don't know what 'reason' is. Consequently you don't give proper treatment to the notion of 'values'.

My opinion is that a level of 'irrationality' is not only always present in everyone, but more than that it's a necessary thing, and a *good* thing. In fact, most things that are 'good' are irrational, in the sense that they are axiomatic and beyond logical derivation. Values are discovered by intuition, not rationalism; they are intuitive knowledge. My opinion is that you don't know what 'reason' *actually* is, and this is why you confuse 'irrational' with 'bad'. You don't have a firm or clear conception of what it is that you're doing when you use language, think, or apply logic. I think you should give your intuition and your values more weight, and that you shouldn't try so hard to rationalise a decision taken as a consequence of your values. Your justification can then be "I am doing X, because I value Y." Simple, huh?

Perhaps you hadn't realised that you held this view that irrationality is bad. It's likely that you hadn't realised that your 'thinking' always tends to 'reasoning' because you think that thinking *is* reasoning. If you attempt to defend your position (or my hallucination thereof), then I will proceed to crush your world-view.

Are you brave enough to fight me over this? Beware, I may destroy your faith in reason.

John.

[Desmond]

Well, why do people suddenly change the topic and don't even realize it? I mean, some conversations are long and boring, and then the subject changes to something that has nothing to do with whatever the previous few lines were about! Take Carpoolers for example. When the guys are sneaking around, they say it was like they were in the Supranos.
Then the same guy asks if they saw the season finale.
What's up with that?
I think you should just punch them on the spot, and let their mind wander on what it was for.
What type of shows do you watch? Just wondering. I watch stuff like Journeyman (or trying to catch up, they're all backed up on my DVR), Lost (trying to finish off last season, I just started watching over the summer and I've been downloading the third season and watching the episodes from there. Speaking of which, I have five episodes on my laptop, so I should cut this short), and Heroes.
I hope you view my previously mentioned point and get back to me on that.

[Derek]

So do you except?

The war is an obvious topic of debate.

How shall we set it up?

Would like to start your opening argument or shall I?

Don't chicken out now Scott.

[whoami]

You seem to be assuming that agreeing on definitions would be sorted quickly. I've seen some definitions you've used in previous blogs. Some so ridiculous that I would refuse to agree with even for a hypothetical debate. They would render the following discussion pointless as they are clearly twisted to exactly match your viewpoint. You give the impression of being a stubborn sort who wouldn't budge so we would likely not get beyond the discussion of definitions. Not saying that would make a particularly interesting argument, just that it wouldn't be resolved quickly.