(urth) Pike's ghost

[António Pedro Marques]

James Wynn wrote (29-11-2011 16:37):
>
>> James Wynn wrote:
>>> It is a logical error that people fall into.
>>
>> António Pedro Marques wrote:
>> Why do you believe enlightenment came to Patera Silk in the ball court?
>
> Because the text says so.

If the text says so and everyone can go look and everyone is supposed to 
have read it once, isn't it a bit tiresome to have to repeat at each turn 
what the text says?

> But --guess what?-- that's NOT the only theory.
> Marc has posited that the whole event and Silk's communication with the
> Outsider was engineered by Pas and Kypris. I can bring up technical
> refutations ("Pas is dead.") but I fully know that I would like the story
> less if the enlightenment were a ruse. That's also the primary reason I
> don't believe Lee's "Grand Unified Theory" of aliens=gods or that the
> ultimate goals of the Hierodules is evil. Nietzsche said that the mind is
> the slave of the body. Well, often intricately conceived refutations are
> actually diplomats for our /preferences/. And that potential is always
> lurking in each of our discourses on both sides.

If everything everyone does has unspeakable motivations, why point out that 
this or that action have unspeakable motivations?

>>> They argue from authority based
>>> on what they consider is "most likely true" or "the consensus". This
>>> liberates them from having to explain WHY what they believe is "most likely
>>> true". They have generously yielded to THEMSELVES the default position.
>>>
>>> [...]What I'm
>>> really annoyed by is /smugness/. It makes me want to take the opposite
>>> position just to see how it plays out. I think the smug aren't really
>>> thinking because they have afforded themselves the right not to.
>>
>> And what in your view constitutes smugness?
>
> I think I just described it.

If so, one could argue that smugness is in the eye of the beholder.