Internet Forums and Social Dynamics: Part I: Everybody is someone else’s weirdo

One of the things that is fun about forums such as Free Republic is the sheer volume and scale of topics discussed. Everything from discussions of GOP primary races (come BACK, Sarah!) to speculations on the Middle East, from Kim Jong-un to fitness resolutions for the New Year, from Naughty Teacher threads to black helicopter speculations. If the Internet is a microcosm of the real world, then Free Republic is a microcosm of the internet. And all helpfully sorted by keyword, date, and author in order to make drinking from the fire hose easier.

But of course, not is all fun and games. Free Republic bills itself as “the world’s premier conservative internet forum.” And as such, it is a welcome place to hang out and talk with like-minded people, away from the  “rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, sh*t-kickers and Methodists”

found on the rest of the internet. Unfortunately, that means that all kinds of people, from Paultards to Mitt-bots, from DU infiltrators to atheist crusaders (a little ironic, that), *all* consider it their dishonor-bound duty to try to worm into FR unnoticed or at least post here, to “set the record straight”. Free Republic has developed its own defense against such, the famed Viking Kitties and their famous ZOT!

And why is there the necessity for the ZOT? Are we not broad-minded enough, intelligent enough, magnanimous enough, tolerant enough to allow the existence of contrary or dissenting viewpoints? Sure. But that’s what the rest of the Internet is for. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, the purpose of an open mind, like that of an open mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. Or, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say, “I am balance.” Conservatives need a place to go to recharge without constantly being ridiculed, calumnied, mocked, and shouted down by main force.

So what happens? The voices of “tolerance” are so offended by the existence of an oasis for conservatives (and, what’s worse, most of them are Christianists as well -- of all the nerve!) that they seek to plant a flag for reason (as they proclaim it) right here on FR. Which leads to noteworthy fireworks when they try to do so, as many of the ideas which they hold to be axiomatic, are marked as heresies here on this site. As Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) wrote, “everybody is someone else’s weirdo.”

But how is that that people identify someone else as a weirdo? After all, with so many different subjects around, and different opinions available on each subject, conservatism is not nearly as monolithic as liberals and atheists assume (indeed, there are some conservative atheist, some of them even have remained unzotted on FR for years). May I suggest, for the purposes of insight, that we borrow a page from statistics, and in particular, from analytical chemistry? This is not meant to be a rigorous discussion, only a semi-humorous one to get the creative juices flowing. Say hello to my little friend, Student’s t-test.

Despite the name, and its use in classes, “Student’s T-test” was originally developed by W.S. Gosset, who went by the fictitious name “Student” and worked for the Guinness brewery. Come to think of it, maybe that had something to do with the name he chose :-) Student’s t-test is used when comparing two small sets of data, to decide whether differences in the data sets are due to chance, or are “significant” (that is, whether or not, the data sets “really are” different -- meaning, that is, 95% of the time, or 99% of the time, or whatever -- the differences in the data sets cannot have come about due to random differences). The idea is conceptually simple. Everyone has heard of a “bell curve” to describe data. The t-test is used to compare, not theoretical bell curves, but sets of experimental data, which have ranges of values instead of infinitely long tails. By looking at the mean of each data set, as well as the range of values of each data set, one can determine whether the two data sets are ‘most likely’ measurements of the same thing or not.

 That’s fine, you ask, and how exactly does this relate to websites or social interactions therein? Consider someone’s political views as a set of data points, with the extent of “liberalness” or “conservativeness” for each topic being spread along the X-axis, and the *count* of topics of which a person is liberal or conservative to that extent as the height above the axis. If you plot out a person’s political views in this fashion, you will trace out a curve. It might be a symmetric bell curve, it might be somewhat asymmetric, it might even exhibit kurtosis. But in general, you will be able to get a feel for how a person “stacks up,” left or right, by talking to them.

And so it is on discussion groups, or in forums such as FR. Typically most of the posters in a self-identified, semi-autonomous site such as FR would, if their “political bell curves” were plotted, would be somewhat similar: a significant difference between two people could come about if either the overall shape of their bell curve were different, or if they had a particular outlier on a important topic, on which they differed *greatly* from someone otherwise similar. In either case, other people talking to the person would begin to feel that “something is amiss here”: something which bears an analogy to statistical sampling and comparison. And if the difference is significant enough, the person is outed as a TROLL.

...the words of Obama do nothing for us. We can only try to imagine the sort of psyche in whom his hollow platitudes "ring true." It would have to be a "false person" on some level — either spiritually false, emotionally false, or metaphysically and intellectually false. In Obama's case, he is all of those things. Deeply, deeply false, perhaps all the way to his empty core.

We can also try to imagine the sort of "real world" with which such an emasculated "psyche" is engaged. At best, it would be an organized "garbage dump," which we are expected to view as a garden of flowers....

I dunno. I try to "analyze" our Gangsta President, and all I can come up with is this: There is nothing but a yawning abyss to support his "thought." He rests on NOTHING. He thinks he can make up this fatal deficit by claiming that the Truth of Reality is so fragile that it can be replaced, at will, by self-serving rhetoric....

Which is just to say: He doesn't make any sense at all.

Again, I really think personality type plays into this a lot. For instance: I'm simply not prone to depression or lethargy. I'm one of these who always has projects they are interested in, ideas to put into action, something to research, something to collect, a list of things to accomplish, and I buzz around like a quiet, busy, introverted little squirrel whose only real issues are "don't-get-hit-by-car" and "where'd-I-put-those-nuts."

I think you are right, again. Although I had friends much like you, I grew up in what is now called a very dysfunctional family. I was the illegitimate child of a mother who became a born-again Christian while pregnant with me. We still lived in her parents house along with her other siblings. Her parents and siblings were drinkers, smokers, and general hell raisers and she was trying to "raise me right" in that environment. In addition she was raising her older sisters child, a boy a year older than I and she seemed to favor him more than me. He tormented me until we were in our teens. I even obtained some boxing gloves and although he was bigger than me he refused to box me unless I promised I wouldn't hit him, only let him try to hit me. If, on occasion, I reflexively hit him he would run to my mother and complain.

I carried the guilt of an illegitimate child although I had nothing to do with it, and the confusion of conflicting values, with my mother and I in the minority, and the others seeming to be having all the fun. In addition, my grandfather worked nights so I had to be very quit during the day while he slept. Throw in WWII from three years old until seven, the years when our characters and personailites are basically form and set, and it was an "interesting time."

My friends who lived a more structured life did not wrestle with the emotions I did and they had better work and study habits. I can easily see how the differences in our, mine and yours, backgrounds could lead to different perspectives.

BB, I also think the birds and frogs reference is apt here.

A-G, the first part of your post #99 speaks to earlier comments I made, somewhere, about God being in everything and that He was either energy or that He made His energy available for our use. As I said then, I base that on Jesus saying that if we had the Faith of a grain of mustard we could do all that He had done. He said we could even move a mountain. (You guys know those scripture better than I.

I know that God made all and is the larger picture but isn't he also all there is? Isn't that the Truth we are talking about?

I was the illegitimate child of a mother who became a born-again Christian while pregnant with me. We still lived in her parents house along with her other siblings.

WOW! You have my unconditional sympathy on that scenario. That sounds incredibly miserable. What's weird is that I too was born to a teenage mother who -- well, she married my father long enough to make me legitimate, but he beat her badly several times. When I was only 2 months old, she finally left him and she also moved back in with her parents.

But the difference between your childhood and mine was that mine was peaceful. My mother was the baby of the family, so there were only the four of us in the household: her, me, Grandma, Grandpa. My grandparents were very quiet old farmers, rather like the couple with the pitchfork in the painting American Gothic. The house was quiet and clean, there was no drinking, no smoking except Grandpa's pipe (I still love that smell), no yelling or screaming or chaos or cruelty... It was pretty idyllic.

I was lucky, and I know it. I know it every single day.

Thank you so much for bringing Tegmark's Level IV physical cosmology to the table, dearest sister in Christ!

Here's an excerpt from his Scientific American article to help visualize the difference in worldview between the bird and the frog:

A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time. If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape.

Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime — the bird perspective — these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta — a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds.

The Platonic paradigm raises the question of why the universe is the way it is. To an Aristotelian, this is a meaningless question: The universe just is. But a Platonist cannot help but wonder why it could not have been different. If the universe is inherently mathematical, then why was only one of the many mathematical structures singled out to describe a universe? A fundamental asymmetry appears to be built into the very heart of reality

Why this instead of nothing at all?

Thank you so much for sharing your personal testimony with us, dear Mind-numbed Robot! May God ever bless you.

I know that God made all and is the larger picture but isn't he also all there is? Isn't that the Truth we are talking about?

Truly, by Creation ex nihilo there is nothing of which anything can be made but God's will - either His creative will or His permissive will (which suggests the creature has freedom of movement to do things which are abominable to God.)

The Jewish mystics use the Name Ayn Sof for God the Creator ex nihilo (out of nothing.) The term literally means "no thing" and suggests that there are no words we could use to describe Him that would not falsely limit Him to whatever word we used.

Therefore I use different, limiting terms, when speaking of the Creation than I use when speaking of the Creator of it.

For instance, the Creator abides in us (Romans 8:9, John 3, John 15, I Cor 2) but He is not subject to space and time by doing so even though we are while yet in the flesh. Nor does the Holy Spirit break into separate pieces by the indwelling (Rev 5.)

In sum, the Creator is not the Creation but that does not mean a part of the Creation cannot therefore logically abide in Him or vice versa.

Our concept of "identity" does not apply to God:

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. – Colossians 3:3

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20

Another example, the Trinity:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9:6

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:9

God's Name is I AM.

LOLOL!!!

I try to be "typo-free"; but that hardly ever seems to happen. Maybe I should fire my copy editor (me)? LOL! :<))

Referring back to an earlier post from you: Seriously dear MNR, I really do take your meaning, that Truth is an "abstract." From the standpoint of mind, I think this is so. The point I was trying to make earlier was that any abstraction the mind subjectively makes rests for its validity on something REAL of which it is the reflection. (Otherwise we may be dealing with psychosis.) An abstraction from or mental image of Reality is tested for its Truth in the degree it corresponds with the objectiveTruth already in-built into the world.

So this makes Truth at once both (abstractly) "ideal" and (substantially) "real." I believe this is the fundamental presupposition of Natural Law Theory:

I've put up this image — heavily influenced by the great mathematician and theoretical biologist Robert Rosen — before. A picture speaks a thousand words....

It really all comes down to my belief that the LOGOS is "in" the world, and is what "structures" (but does not fully "determine!") the world — from Alpha to Omega and everything in-between.

In short, that is a "'worldview" — which is at once both classical Greek and Christian (Christianity has integrated much of Greek thought into its theology).

Needless to say, I am NOT a materialist who believes that:

"Nothing x 4.7 billion years —> Everything"
(via "undirected" or "random" processes)

If the materialists are right, then the natural world is senseless and, that being the case, would be inaccessible to the human mind. (Not to mention that science itself would then have no ground to stand on.)

Well, them be my musings, FWIW.

I do so enjoy speaking with you dear sister! Thank you so much for writing!

"Nothing x 4.7 billion years —> Everything" (via "undirected" or "random" processes)

If nothing x 4 billion years achieves an intelligible result by random processes, it tells you that there is an underlying logic that biases the results.

If the result is intelligible, it tells you that your mind is formed based on the same underlying logic.

It may not take 4 billion years, though, when the random processes are saturated by intelligence. Its my view that, as you begin to see the principles involved, at some point you begin to glimpse the intelligence behind them.

If you study the evolution of the diesel engine, you'll see that it has truly evolved from raw iron ore to what you see under the hood of a truck. All it required was the application of intelligence.

You had written:

Referring back to an earlier post from you: Seriously dear MNR, I really do take your meaning, that Truth is an "abstract." From the standpoint of mind, I think this is so. The point I was trying to make earlier was that any abstraction the mind subjectively makes rests for its validity on something REAL of which it is the reflection. (Otherwise we may be dealing with psychosis.)

Sorry to post a counter-example, but

HC SVNT DRACONES.

What becomes then of imagination -- from anticipation of future "real" events ("I can hardly wait for the Hawaiian vacation next week") to wishful thinking of unlikely, but physically possible events ("What if I got to talk to Ann Coulter on the next Free Republic Caribbean cruise and we started dating?") -- to imagination ("Lord of the Rings" including Hobbits, Dwarfs, Elves, Orcs, Nazgûl, Wizards, and, yes, I'm saying it, Dragons, but interleaved with a supposed historical past (the Rohirrim seem to have included a great deal of Old English thought and words in their history) -- on to pure imagination without any tether in reality and thence onto hallucination?)

(Note two things: C.S. Lewis referred to Christianity in his atheist days as "lies breathed through silver" and then after conversion to "myth become fact"; whereas the atheists insist (falsely) that anything not in accord with the currently understood laws of physics must be dismissed as lies, legends, wishful thinking, or madness.)

Also -- imagination need not merely be a reflection of the "real world" but also help create it; to borrow a page from Tolkien (his essay On Fantasy ascribes imagination as the greatest power in which Man is like God); God spoke the world into being from nothing (bone of contention with atheists, presumably because there's not enough math in Genesis); the Elves have to power to project the verisimilitude of reality upon mortals (not physical reality but touching the mind of the one affected in the same way -- compare and contrast the episode in C.S. Lewis's Perelandra in Chapter 16 where Ransom considers the various "appearances" of the Oyarses:

"But a flush of diverse colours began at about the shoulders and streamed up the necks and flickered over face and head and stood out around the head like plumage or a halo. He told me he could in a sense remember these colours - that is, he would know them if he saw them again - but that he cannot by any effort call up a visual image of them nor give them any name. The very few people with whom he and I can discuss these matters all give the same explanation. We think that when creatures of the hypersomatic kind choose to 'appear' to us, they are not in fact affecting our retina at all, but directly manipulating the relevant parts of our brain. If so, it is quite possible that they can produce there the sensations we should have if our eyes were capable of receiving those colours in the spectrum which are actually beyond their range."

); humans have the ability to mold reality, inspired by their imagination: the Apple iMac, the iPhone, etc., all were once gleams in the late Steve Jobs's eye.

(Sorry for the rant, you caught me on a philosophical bender as I am procrastinating on writing a couple of more essays to follow up on The Internet and Social Dynamics...)

Cheers!

” One does not move logically into faith. If you did, it wouldn’t be faith. I think believers would be much better off not trying to reason or argue atheists into anything. There’s no path from logic to faith.”

Spirited: Perfect Lady presumes both logic and reason that are only notable by their absence.

It is not reasonable to dissect a human body in expectation of ‘seeing’ its’ soul, and then on not ‘seeing’ it to declare its’ nonexistence. Nor is it reasonable to search man’s gray matter in expectation of ‘seeing’ scrolling words (thought, belief, reason, memory) and then on not ‘seeing’ them declare that mind does not exist. Such reasoning is irrational, illogical and very simply-—simpleminded.

Perfect lady chooses to reject her own soul based on this simplemindedness but not her mind and then expects us to view her as a logician. We do not.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.