Comments on: Problem solved!

By: matt c

matt c — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:23:10 +0000

just one retort, there are no insults here,
where to begin and when to end, (I am having too much fun)
yes, I am an intellectual dilettante. To assume
otherwise would be the height of arrogance.
The lengthy posturing and prose by
some suggests that they have no such qualms.
To be accused of being an amateur, you
see derision I can only see praise.
To be an amateur (a sporting analogy comes to mind)
suggests exuberance, potentialality, (such a word?)
hope, the willingness to learn, listen and question.
‘Certainty’ gives me no comfort. Perhaps you can
find solace in certainty, given, the misanthropic,
nihilistic and somewhat rabid blog entries I can
see no evidence of it.
What can I bring to the table. Except for the
aforementioned slow descent, as a landscape architect
I can bring compost, at the right carbon nitrogen mix
I might add. I dearly hope you compost Stan, you
dont want to be seen to be letting the ‘home team’ down.
I would like to bring some hope to the discussion,
I almost feel apologetic saying this. Unfortunately,
this says a lot about the tone of this site. And
suggests/implies some responsibility on your part Guy.
‘Intellectuals’ can be wrong and ideology can be blinding.
One of Chomsky’s (‘greatest living intellectual’)
linguistic theories relating to the evolution of language
has recently been proven to be incorrect. He is showing
some resistance on this however.
perhaps this blog is your avatar, a place where you
can exist, sing and find a voice
I hope you find a real bird Stan
kindest regards to you
Matt

By: Frank Mezek

Frank Mezek — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:56:43 +0000

Memo to all:
INTROSPECTION
That is the key to the stupid blow-up between Our Stan and Matt of Oz,and Everyone else on this blog site.Or more correctly–the lack of it.
Let’s face the fact:We are all egomaniacal narcissists on this blog site.And I mean ALL,including me.At my age the only thing that matters is truth and reality–especially
about myself.Please look up the meaning of introspection.Please consider that word before you start to type.That applies to Matt of Oz and Our Stan especially but not exclusively.
If there is anyone that doesn’t understands this ,please let me know.
KNOW THYSELF–ABOVE ALL ELSE.

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:13:32 +0000

Matt says this is “just a blog”; in other words, don’t take the subject matter seriously. Clearly he doesn’t.
I consider it to be a subject matter literally of life and death. I DO take it seriously and take offense at Matt’s relentless refusal to do so. I think it is time for Guy to vet this blog and determine if it is worth carrying people who find its subject matter of no consequence.
If there is a soft landing to be had, if there is no cause for alarm, then professors perhaps should not be carrying dire warning messages to the unappreciative.
Matt insults our intelligence by using the word “dogma” which my dictionary defines as “a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative wihout adequate grounds.” In other words, he is calling the Professor a quack and saying I am full of “poetry” that has less value than shit.
Yet, Matt has not insulted me and wants to be my friend. Friends like Matt are worse than enemies and I certainly do not need such people to be my friends, nor want them.
Stan Moore

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:58:48 +0000

Matt is like a blind bomb thrower engaged in warfare and wondering why the people he tosses his grenades don’t like it. There are and have been no “lazy assumptions” by me and not by Guy McPherson. Matt is the lazy one who says “I disagree” and cannot offer a rational explanation that has not already been accounted for. He just wants to disagree for the sake of disagreeing, and then call the counterarguments “less valuable than shit” and refer to unmarried debate opponents as “great (in effect) masturbators” who have no debate skills in real life. Matt makes one weaek, even stupid argument after another, and when the latest is shot down, he completely abandons that argument for the time being and skips over to some other nonsense.
I thought thas was Guy McPherson’s blog on a subject of his choosing, and Matt’s arguments are even more focused against Guy than against myself because I am fundamentally echoing what Guy believes because I believe basically the same thing.
Matt is the one who should part company since he has no grounding in the subject matter here and is mentally incapable of understanding cause and effect or even his own language.
Matt casts a wary eye at me for merely mentioning the Bible and God, but he considers Guy and myself to be “prophesying”, which is defined as making predictions based on mystic knowledge or diving guidance. He completely discounts the enormous effort I have made to research the subject matter so as to have an opinion and to justify it. And his analysis of my arguments are as lame as his own arguments, if not more so. Matt says there is no error in not predicing the future, but he turns around and states he has a vision of the future (a prediction) that is more benign than Guy’s or mine. But he refuses to describe, explain, or define his own vision other than to say that there is no error in not speaking it. Brilliant Matt! And so he tosses his little bombs of disbelief and accuses others of having spurious arguments.
Matt has nothing of value to offer here. Why does he not take his own advice and part company? Maybe he could get a gig as a blind bicyclist — physically fit and unable to see where he is going, or not even to make a plausible prediction.
Stan Moore

By: matt c

matt c — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:53:31 +0000

more with the insults?
There is no error in not predicting the future.
That is all I am saying.
Perhaps we should part company.
Maybe you should start your own blog
and vet anything you find disagreeable.
Perhaps burn some books while you are at it as well.
Unfortunatley for you and your spurious attack,
I do not have any of the impairments you state,
other than constantly questioning lazy assumptions.
(and having a sense of humour).
I cannot confirm any of your afflictions
other than the aforementioned indulgence we are all
guilty of.
Language is often imperfect and my obvious intellectual
impairments aside, this is just a blog, take it easy.
thanks for ‘clarity’ and the dogma
best wishes to you this christmas
ciao
Matt

By: Mr. Roboto

Mr. Roboto — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:41:53 +0000

Stan: Why the name-calling? That’s weak

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:17:27 +0000

Dear Matt –
Obviously you are either an idiot, or a drug addict, or have some sort of attention deficit disorder. I have repeatedly commented on situations as they emerge, including the election of Barack Obama and its significance in light of his own rhetoric. And I took a contrarian view when every outspoken person on this list, including the owner, were saying something opposite. I have commented on emerging realities of all sorts that were not discussed by others, although commonly the analyses I produce are arrived at by others. I have commented very recently that the financial crisis is not the ultimate, terminal crisis of society, but will interact with peak energy and other resource crises.
Either you have not paid attention, have not understood, or were too stoned to follow these discussions.
On the other hand, you have sat around and said: “No — I disagree” with no intelligent discussion, no accounting for facts of a contradictory nature, and an obvious lack of understanding of the issues you pretend to confront. You are an intellectual dilletante with signs of intellectual impairment, perhaps from a chemical source.
You obviously have never understood the ramifications and the mechanics of Peak Oil, social impacts of crises, and the patterns of history and of human behavior that allow us to conditionally predict what lies ahead. And you continue to conflate prediction and probability with prophecy, indicating your own strange perceptions that are routinely lame to the point of intellectual poverty.
The real question is: What are you doing here? You have nothing to offer but cynicism and error. Is that what you are here for?
Stan Moore

By: Frank Mezek

Frank Mezek — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:45:54 +0000

TRUCE
Please chill everyone.Maybe you got bored preaching to the choir,so have to turn canabalistic.Internecine bull shit–that’s all it is.Hurt feelings–get mature.You
are arguing about minutiae.
Now stop it–I want to switch gears all,to argue about something much more important:
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
SO STOP IT NOW !!!
Frank

By: matt c

matt c — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:41:27 +0000

now that I have come up for air…
contrary to what was said above I have not insulted you,
although you do find it necessary to do so.
To suggest that you are a ‘wanker’ is not an insult,
we all do it Stan, some are better at it than others.
No doubt we have all read the same ‘deep’ stuff ie heinberg, wiesman, tainter,
simmons, diamond, hanson, suzuki, chomsky, derrida, lacan, virilio,
homer-dixon, kunstler and bit of Zen etc blah blah.
Whats new in your message young Stanley? Your vision is an amalgam
of the above authors. There is no point in regurgitating thoughts
belonging to others. Proverbial pavlovs dogs.
What are you bringing to the discussion besides the forlock
tugging?
you doth protest too loudly,
smells like dogma to me
warm regards
Matt
I am sure we would be great friends in ‘real’ life

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:51:21 +0000

Matt continues to reveal his intellectual poverty, which is NOT a byproduct of contrarianism, but which makes his contrarianism unproductive, irrelevant and non-beneficial. I am without a doubt a contrarian, as is Guy McPherson. Our contrarianism is not based on shallow examination leading to half-baked considerations, but on deep research. So, contrarianism can be good if it is defensible, or it can be valueless when it is empty opinion expressed for the sake of being different or for the sake of unjustifiable arrogance.
A good and recent example of Matt’s shallow contrarian thinking is the fact that he assumed that my mention of contrarianism implied intellectual povery. To the contrary, if Matt had read with understanding he would have taken note of the fact that I linked his contrarianism with “information of a sort, but a paucity of relevance and realism”. Indeed, Matt made a very weak argument that “humans have lived sustainably for 99% of our existence”. This is a very shallow argument for several reasons. First, if you look at a graph of human population since the Stone Age, you will find that 99% of the existence of humans the population levels were very low and thus it would be virtually impossible for humans NOT to live sustainably in such conditions. The relevant fact has to do with the period of time in which 99% of humans have lived on this planet, which is within no more than the past two hundred and fifty years, or even less. In fact, a graph of human population over human history shows a near-vertical ascent of human numbers even in the last century, during which time humanity veered completely, wantonly, and purposefully away from sustainability. This is the relevant aspect of human history as relates to sustainability and even to future sustainability. Today’s humans by and large are programmed by evolution AND by culture, both nature and nurture, to live unsustainably, which bodes poorly for a systemic transition towards sustainability in the future at anything approaching current population densities. In fact, the number of humans living right now in 2008 no doubt represent a significant percentage (possibly somewhere between 20 and 30 per cent of all humans who ever lived). The peak of oil and other non-renewables coincides with the peak of human population, with no place to go but down. Somehow Matt thinks that a bell-shaped energy curve can coexist with a human population curve that descends slowly, but he offers no explantion for his thesis, which is illogical, unrealistic, and essentially impossible. That is EXACTLY why doom is confronting us!
But Matt admits under questioning that almost all humans have no desire to return to a pre-industrial, pre-agricultural existence. In short, his argument about human sustainability over long periods of human history is not only irrelevant, but lacking in realism because real humans at this point in time are not going to willingly make a transition towardsd sustainability in the same sense as was true for the time period he seems to celebrate.
Thus, while Matt had information, he seems to have little intellectual capacity to understand how things relate, what causes and effects are in play in the current and forthcoming environment. So, Matt can tell us he has a vision, but he cannot describe it, cannot discuss it, cannot explain it and cannot defend it. He just asserts that he disagrees and expects that his contrarian nature will win him credit of some sort. Matt has has no plausible arguments, just opposition for the sake of being different. He does not even try to account for the illogical nature of his arguments, and seems to feel that all opinions are of equal value.
If Matt had a contrarian argument that he could base on logic, explain, and defend, then his views would hold some weight. Without doubt, I would welcome arguments that held weight, that looked at relevant facts and evidence I may have missed, and which have something to teach me. Instead, he makes absurd statements and then attacks his critics with sexual innuendo, with personal attacks unrelated to the subject under discussion and proves that even Australians cannot always get along with others when something (like pride) is at stake.
So, there is at least one lesson Matt has taught us, but his lesson as revealed by his actions is opposite the teaching that he asserted by words. He says he can get along, but instead he attacks with nasty, vicious rhetoric in defense of his weak, indefensible positions. If that is how Australians “get along”, then I don’t think I want to see how they act when they are not getting along.
And while I cannot determine why this blog exists because I did not found it, I doubt seriously that it was founded for the purpose of baseless dissent of the owner’s arguments. My guess is that Guy formed the blog to share his thoughts and arguments and probably welcomed informed dissent. The problem has been that those who seriously disagree with Guy seem to have no arguments that Guy has not already considered and accounted for. But the dissenters seem to have never understood the basis for Guy’s arguments or put in the effort from background research to fully understand why Guy believes what he does. I have noticed that Jay Hanson, the founder of the blog at http://www.dieoff.org and some followup blogs, actually refuses to admit people to join his discussions if they are not up to speed and familiar with his background data. The reason is that uninformed people tend to impede serious discussion because of their lack of background in the subject matter.
Certainly this is Guy’s blog and he can manage it as he wishes and work with people at any level of understanding that he chooses. I can understand why most people don’t get involved in the discussions at all, and Matt’s personal attacks will tend to make timid people afraid of speaking up at all. This is unfortunate.