User talk:NamfFohyr

Choronzon POV: this character is partially real...

The article says that the character, Choronzon, is real 'in a sense.' It's difficult to explain well without a lot of lengthy exposition, but it's also inadequate to say that this character is wholly unreal. It's not quite like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

It has a similar sort of reality to concepts such as the 'personality,' the 'superego,' etc. It's a reflection of internal events and processes. But also, because of the techiques people use in doing these workings, it's experienced as a thing outside of, and apart from, the self. It appears through trained visualization as a separate physical entity with its own will and agenda.

The line dividing 'real' and 'unreal' gets rather tenuous in that kind of circumstance, and it's not fair to say either that 'Choronzon' is an unreal thing whose importance you can dismiss as if it were a character in a dream, or that it's an actual being. It's really somewhere between the two.

Is that what you were asking? Auto movil 21:26, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll reply to this on the Chronzon talk page. rmbh 23:50, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

You're beginning with a sensible definition of 'real' that denotes things like bricks, then granting special cases to abstract concepts you're familiar with. I can't follow your argument.

'Choronzon' is not a real thing like a doorknob is real. It's a descriptive abstraction.

What makes it a difficult case is that there's a technique of visualization -- what you might call a "not-real dream" without having done it (it's quite more vivid than REM) -- in which a thing might appear to you that seems to be a specific hostile, separate entity. Strangely enough, many, many people experience the same thing spontaneously. So a sensible thing to do is to put a name to it, and for at least 1500 years, people have. One of those names is Samael, while another more recent one is Choronzon.

Psychological terms simply don't do it justice. However, it's a psychological manifestation. As an abstract construct of a psychological reality, it's quite 'real.' The consequences are real, because one is battling with oneself in a way that can cause real trauma.

'Real' appears in quotes in the article, with the qualifier, 'in a sense.' If there's something ambiguous about that, I can't see it. Auto movil 02:42, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, you're arguing against a whole component of human experience by comparing it to drug trips and D&D. Included in the argument would have to be Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, et al. It's quite a wide swath, and I think also ultimately a POV issue.

I understand your argument. We're essentially talking about a black-magic sort of demon, and there are a lot of superstitious wackos out there who believe weird things. The D&D and 'alien abduction' cognates aren't hard to reach for.

I'm coming from a rationalist background, though. It's possible to approach consciousness not through a biochemical or sociobiological model, but through an empirical one. While 'dimethyltryptamine-mode' can be seen as explanatory via some standpoints, in another sense it's merely a causal factor -- a descriptor. If one focuses on effects, it's necessary to have a very different set of categories and tools.

Hence religion, etc. But the 'Choronzon' character comes from a different tradition. There's a dovetailing of science and the so-called mystical in the Western hermetic tradition, comprising the alchemists and others. You end up with guys like Isaac Newton (who spent maybe 10% of his time on physics and mathematics, and the other 90% on alchemy and theophilic topics), and guys like Jack Parsons of the Jet Propulsion Lab (who should have a Wiki article if he doesn't already). It's a very longstanding, very real route of human inquiry.

I'm sorry you think the article is hackish. But 'pseudoscience' implies that there should properly be lab experiments, peer review, et al., when the very nature of a subjective experience is that it can be described and analyzed (as in psychology), but not neutrally observed.

Apples, oranges. But it's possible to be good at both, and to do both intelligently. And that, in a roundabout way, is how one gets to hypothetical entities like 'Choronzon.' It's a tool for a different job than you do, but one with uses of its own. Auto movil 05:43, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Adventures with de-goatse-ing

the big goatse ordeal:

If you vandalize the featured article template again, I'm going to ban you. →Raul654 21:00, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

I didn't do it! I'm trying to get rid of that. The template should be locked, and THE MAIN PAGE STILL LOOKS DISGUSTING. rmbh 23:04, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers

Apology

Nam - On the 16th, I threatened to ban you for vandalizing the featured article template. In retrospect, I misunderstood your intentions - I made a snap judgement that you were vandalizing the article (which is very common on new accounts) when in fact you were fixing what you thought was vandalism (by the time you removed the picture, the vandalism had already been cleaned up, so to me, it looked like vandalism). I apologize for this. We both made mistakes, and I'd like to bury the hatchet. →Raul654 09:17, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Raul. No hard feelings, and thanks for your substantial contributions to the project. I'm confused though: if you realized I was deleting the image, how could this have been construed as vandalism? Obviously, the image itself was the vandalism! I was also documenting my moves on talk pages...was I really acting inappropriately? I ask this partially because I'm argumentative, but mostly beacause you know 'the ropes' better than myself, and as I understood it, the offensive picture was much worse than no image at all. rmbh 20:47, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

Ok, let me lay out the order of events so as to make it more clear:

Vandal uploads goatse image, and overwrites the felix the cat image
Someone notices and reverts to the old version the image
You, seeing a cached copy of the picture (the goatse picture), remove it from the featured template.
I see you remove the good image (which you think is vandalism because you are seeing a cached copy) from the template and I think you are the one who is vandalizing it. →Raul654 22:27, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

I think I understand. Wasn't the whole problem that the good image had the same filename as the goatse? I think I was clicking on a link to reset the cache, for the main page template.

If you upload an image named abcdef.jpg, and we already have a file by that name, the new one automatically replaces the old one. We have an image for Felix the cat named felix.jpg, and the vandal uploaded the goatse picture with the name felix.jpg (thus replacing the old one). Also, I think what you are describing ( clicking a link to clear the cache) is that you went to talk:main page and clicked the 'clear cache' link, which clears the *text* cache but not the image cache. To clear both, you have to click on the link, then load the main page, then hard-refresh the main page (control+R in Firefox and IE). →Raul654 20:21, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

It's really true: sometimes I am not as fresh as I'd like to be! Thanks for explaining the technical details. rmbh 20:28, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Ben Best's cryonics page revert

I have reverted your edit to the cryonics page: "however, this can be attributed to their predominant disbelief in an afterlife rather than to the field's manifest scientific plausibility". This is unsupported speculation and I don't even understand you reasoning. If you want to justify such a change you should explain yourself on the Talk:Cryonics. --Ben Best 01:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I suppose your speculation is well-supported (as if faithful Christians or Hindus would see the need for cryonics.) Your selective invocation of Wikipedia etiquette is irrelevant since you'll break the rules as soon as they are inconvenient. As in, your masturbatory autobiographical article (see below). rmbh 23:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ben Best's masturbatory autobiographical article

Of course, I did not appreciate your edits to the Ben Best page. If you want substantiation, try typing "causes of death" or "neurotransmitters" or "cryonics FAQ" into Google. The evidence is there for anyone to see and it isn't POV. I have a "hands-off" policy to the Ben Best page so I can't do much more than complain, but perhaps I can find someone who will listen to my complaints. --Ben Best 01:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you didn't appreciate them. You're self-serving and disinterested in objectivity. This reminds me of our first encounter on the Alcohol/Health page. I'm a REAL scientist and I do not substantiate anything with Google. You know what that means? Until you publish in REAL, PEER-REVIEWED literature, you're only as immortalized as your pagerank. And please do complain, loudly and frequently, because you certainly have earned the scrutiny. I have nothing to hide from the friends of rationality.rmbh 23:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above certainly was mean. Actually, the whole thing's a mean-hearted (and somewhat egotistical) flame. Still, I think Ben was beeing a weiner and so I lost it. I don't condone my flame though.rmbh 01:07, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, typing "neurotransmitters" into Scroogle gave a pretty good page that Ben ... prepared. Hey, Ben, how much of that "self-published" material scanned material from undergrad? Scanned material that's...unacknowledged? I'm sure you have copyright releases on all of it. Actually, maybe you're a hell of an anatomical artist. Oh. Searching with "neurotransmitter" doesn't do the trick. Tricky Google! rmbh 02:43, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Allegations of sock puppetry on the Ben Best page

As someone who has edited the Ben Best page recently, you may have been aware of the allegations of sock puppetry. As this has continued for six weeks now, I have started the appropriate Wikipedia handling process. If you wish to make a contribution, please go to Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/CRANdieter and add your views to the Comments section. Nunquam Dormio 13:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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