:eek:
Well, I don’t believe that I can possibly improve on Mrfoi’s own assassination of his opening post, so… 
Your condolences are much appreciated, Spiritus. I would like to point out that the inner struggle which can be inferred from the OP could be construed as a sign there is still hope that a mind will find its way to open.
[Moderator Hat: ON]
mrfoi said:
Insults like this are NOT allowed in Great Debates. You want to flame, take it to the Pit. Or better yet, try to make your points without insults altogether.
David B, SDMB Great Debates Moderator
[Moderator Hat: OFF]
My apologies for providing the most hyperbolic summary of Sidis’s life ever observed. You have utterly crushed my credibility.
Intellectual capacity does help facilitate the processing of experience. One human being can literally live longer ‘upstairs’ than another human being when sheer processing of data is used as the criteria. Not everyone abides by the same clock; time is generally ticked internally as the production of profundities during the course of an existence. You have no doubt had an epihphany in your life Spiritus. How about individuals who have also had that epiphany and even one more ephiphany than you have had? How about individuals who processed all of your epihphanies, even the most subtle ones before their teenage years… who continue to exist and continue to process still more and more and more epiphanies above and beyond your own?
You’re accusing me of being close minded and judgemental with regards to the acceptance of other truths. Do you allow no capacity for an individuals to simply have all of your process mastered… and yet to have not been stuck in the area where you see motion and they see the lack of just this and that epiphany?
Does it ever occur to you that you may be nothing more than a ‘lack of’ to another human being? Does this pressure on dissolution of your ego make you nervous or tenative? Defensive and denying? Do you truly believe that everything is just relative - holding no sense of respect for that which is your personality with greater stress testing exposure? Do you deny that a single personality can absorb more epiphanies in one life than exist on this earth, or have existed on this earth prior?
Do you fundamentally treat them with contempt?
Is there a situation where you would consider it untowards for another to treat you with contempt?
I mean… if it doesn’t seem possible or even matter to you that others may possess more of you than you could ever dream of wanting for yourself, why should people respect your experience and your supposed enlightened veiw?
Do you believe in something which you owe allegiance to? Truth, consistency, transparency? Is there any defining principle along this line which may be evidenced to have a scale… and that this scale could leave you down at the bottom rung once you admit to its existence? Would that feel too overwhelming for you?
-Justhink
So the answer is no?
[bolding mine]
This doesn’t seem to address the question as I asked it. It seems to avoid it. In any case, would you say that a more accurate way of saying this would be: some people who claim, or are perceived to be religious have been found to violate trust and consent while hoping their position would shield them from accountability or detection? Are there any people who don’t claim or are not perceived to be religious who have been found to violate trust and consent, etc?
How is this an answer to a question about the difference between maturity and intellectual maturity?
If you’re saying that treating other people with respect, examining one’s own self in an effort to be aware of motivations and one’s ethical state, and doing what you truly think is right and ethical despite opposition, then I agree.
I don’t agree that physical, emotional or mental self-defense is illogical. In fact, as a living, conscious, and emotionally aware being, I think it would be logically inconsistent to refuse, as a matter of principle, to ever defend any part of my being.
The question was: Can you give an example of intellectual immaturity not involving religion? How about I ask it this way … an example of intellectual immaturity that is not related to religion?
This is an evasion of the question I actually asked. So here’s another: how’s that “wiggle room” doing, shrinking according to schedule?
No. Only religious folks violate consent. It’s unnervingly simple.
By defending any of these parts of my being, I am destroying the one part of my being which provides purpose of being. I believe that individuals have practiced the art of proving the value of something in a circular means to boredom. “I defend my body because my body is meaningful, my body is meaningful because I have defended my body.” This is a religious pattern of proof.
Maturity works with more than that which simply suits their short-term needs at the expense of themselves and/or others long-term purpose.
I understood the question. Aparently my answer to the one above it didn’t satisfy this requirement?
-Justhink
Accepted in the spirit given.
Where does “defensive sarcasm when caught in an error” rank on your scale of intellectual maturity?
You have more than 1000 posts on the SDMB. I think that they provide more than sufficient data for each of us to lend or withhold credence to your assertions. How interesting that you would respond so stridently to a simple observation that your recounting of William Sidis’ circumstances was exagerated beyond necessity.
Of course, you are the person who just asserted that defending ones self when being attacked has zero logical value. Since you also seem fond of decrying intellectual hypocrisy, I am interested to see wha the next response of your mature intellect shall be.
That is not my experience of time. Do you have any basis for declaring it to be the general experience of time?
I haven’t met one. I should like to, though.
No, though I shall now accuse you of reading carelessly.
What I have done is express my distaste for the combination of arrogance and pettiness which lead some folks to describe those who disagree with them on a point of unproveable metaphysics as necessarily immature, cowardly, delusional, etc.
For the record, I do find you to be judgmental, but I do not consider “judgmental” to be a bad thing. In this case, it is the specifics of your judgment that I question, not the fact that you exercise it.
No. Why would it?
My ego is not predicated upon the presumption that I am intellectually superior to every other human being.
“that which is your personality with greater stress testing exposure?”
I think it statistically so unlikely as to be unworthy of effort or consideration, but I suspect that I understand “epiphany” in a manner distinct from your usage.
Treat whom with contempt? I can find no clear antecedant for your pronoun.
Many.
I do not think it is possible for another human being to possess “more of me” than I “could ever dream of wanting for myself”. Regardless of that, should such a hypothetical person exist he should have respect for my experience because he would possess all of my ethical understandings, and my ethics are not based upon a presumption that intellect grants license to treat other with contempt.
Many things, each enjoying precedence in the contexts I judge appropriate. Truth and consistency are among them, as are empathy, integrity, duty, and continual exploration. I am certain that you place intent in the symbol “transparency” which I do not
receive, so I will pass on that one.
Bottom rung? Well, I have my moments of self-criticism but I lack the hubris to think I am the ultimate example of either good or evil. I certainly have no trouble with the understanding that I am not a paragon of any particular virtue to which I aspire.
Now, is there some point to this litany of projected failings and insecurities, or can we just get back to positions and attitudes which people have actually put forth in this thread. I am usually quite happy to explain my intellectual and ethical positions to those who express an honest interest. I find myself less inclined to answer more of these “are you too weak to face up to my view of reality” masturbations.
This is where I believe our divergence is occurring. You seem to be under the impression that making a factual statement about the brains development with regard to thinking process is inherently contemptuous; while i see it like the height of a human being with regards to their jumping process. Is a human being to be held in contempt for not being able to grab a 10-foot rim? Is it fundamentally unsavory on my part to bring such an observation into a thread dealing with whether people can touch 10-foot rims or not?
The thread is about maturity and religion. Without even touching religion yet, you have still managed to avoid my question regarding the existentence of cognitive stages and thus cognitive ages. I asked you directly if you held that associating this phenomenon with maturity (since it correlates directly to maturity as an observation of phenomenon). Instead of answering, you took it upon yourself to bait my immaturity from error filled post about facts related to the existence of a human being. I provided the link to disprove me and you and Lib did a wonderful job of it.
Do you want me to commit suicide now?
Do you want me to tell you that I was wrong?
Would it bother you if I set you up?
I’ll return to the question at hand:
Do you believe that such a thing as cognitive stages and cognitive ages can be proven as phenomenon which occurs amongst human beings?
Do you conceed that these are directly correlated to the observation of something called ‘maturity’ and that a person who has traversed a cognitive stage is a more mature human being than one who has not?
I’m not much for authority, but I do believe that a “no” to these two questions does fly in the face of all human psychology which has been rendered through control studies. With that in mind, I would be interested in your reasoning for disagreeing with this basic principle.
Having established that one way or the other; if that is indeed the case, do you equally accept that a child can have these stages mapped long before their peers will have them mapped and to this degree is cognitively older than the peers in their presence? Even more, if a child possesses states of cognitive growth which an adult has yet to achieve, would it be true that this child is more mature mentally and emotionally than their adult counterpart? You as an adult might feel entitled to adulthood because of your hairy body and your ability to beat the kid up… does that make you correct or more mature than that human being though?
I don’t even think it’s a matter of ‘can’ this state exist… I’m quite certain that it does, that rare children are literally older (more mature) than a majority of adults, and that adults have become accustomed to the belief that they are more mature because of the ‘sophisication’, and tend to hold such children in contempt simply because they can, the fact that they, can being proof that they are more mature (circular); which strikes me as the crux of cognitive maturity.
I can do it, so it must mean that it is correct when I do do it, because I did do it. I don’t appreciate your stance of moral and philosophical relativism with regards to a segment of the population which is the only perpetrator of violence on this earth in the human species. Pacifists and nihilists being the only other sets outside of religious.
-Justhink
Word games are petty, dare I say immature?, and no way to win an argument. Besides, you should at least be accurate when you engage in them.
Evidence is that which may be used to support an assertion. I assert that the bible is accurate and use, among other things, archeaological (spelling) findings as evidence to support that position.
When you say the New Testament was not written by the accredited authors – that’s an assertion. If you want to support that, you need evidence.
Of course, if you come up with any, I could rebut it, call it an assertion and claim to win the argument…
I have to be honest with you, I am impressed the lengths to which you’ve gone to find arguments/evidence to support your position. By now, most people would have resorted to name calling.
Let me put it to you this way Spiritus:
If push came to shove and you were going to be locked up with someone who may kill you (and not be held accountable); would you choose someone who is not a nihilst even if they are your best friend or would you choose a nihilist. Endurance of survival is the only criteria of concern. I would be shocked if a religious person was dumb enough to choose one of their own bretheren; which says quite a bit about religion in general.
-Justhink
Since this thread is about religion and maturity (or the lack thereof), I just thought I’d pop in here and point out that, last year, I started a thread in this forum titled Religion is infantile!.
I see contempt in labelling another human being as intelectually immature based upon a disagreement in metaphysics, yes.
You seem to be under the impression that the truth value of a statement bears some necessary relation to the emotional motivation with which it is uttered. I am of the impression that you are wrong. Truth is not antithetical to contempt.
What I said, was:
***Your defense of what I see as offensive generalization is that human beings do show developmental stages in cognition and perception, thus you are justified in calling those who disagree with you childish, cowardly, or delusional.
I disagree with you.***
To clarify: I disagree that the observation justifies your conclusion. I also disagree that your conclusion justifies your rudeness. I do not disagree that human beings develop through recognized stages of cognition and perception.
Is that clear enough for you?
No. Not even in jest.
Only if you feel you were wrong.
That depends on the payoff. Based upon those posts of yours which I have read, I doubt that whatever end you have in mind for me is one which I will value, but I wouldn’t mind being surprised.
Already answered. Yes, but proven is the wrong word. The labels are applied to categorize empirical observations. I do agree that those observations are repeatable and predictable.
Directly correlated? No. They are related through definition.
Speaking of them as correlated phenomenon implies a possible independence between the phenomena. That is not the case. “Cognitive age” and “cognitive maturity” are defined in terms of “cognitive stages”.
Yes. The “degree” of course, is definitional.
No.
Notice how you have tried to subtly shift the terms of your presentation from “cognitive stages” to “mental and emotional maturity”? Well, I did.
I accept the existence of cognitive stages of human development as initially outlined by Piaget, which I believe has been fairly well supported at least through the “concrete-operational” stage by both case studies and population studies. If you are asking me to accept something else under the heading of “cognitive development” then please be very explicit about what you mean.
This is where I believe our divergence is occurring. You seem incapable of separating the strawmen in your imagination from the posters you are addressing. If you imagine that I have somewhere in this thread declared that physical indications of maturity were the only relevant measures please be assured that I have not. Find a scarecrow with a brain.
Interesting, and now it seems that you are the one declaring that only one measure of maturity is relevant: cognitive maturity. It also seems likely that you are diverging from Piaget’s work, though perhaps you are here only referencing studies that indicate a low percentage of high school graduates have entered the “formal operational”. If you are sticking to Piaget’s cognitive stages, can you substantiate your claim that a majority of adults do not progress to the “formal operational” stage?
If you are diverging from Piaget’s cognitive stages, please specify the system you are using.
Which stance is that, exactly. I do not recall making any claims in this thread that were necessarily grounded in either moral or philosophical relativism.
Also, if I understand correctly that you are here claiming that religious people are the only perpetrators of violence in the human species I am afraid that I must now add human history to that list of subjects upon which I lend your assertions no credence. In other words:
:wally
(I do wish they hadn’t made Wally wink when he says that)
Hmmm, apart from the direct contradiction of “only perpetrator” you seem now to be saying that pacifists are perpetrators of violence, which is a feat of definitional revisionism I would deerly wish to see, if it were posited by almost any other poster on this board.
I also think that it is interesting that you find self-defense illogical yet condemn pacifists as “perpetrators of violence”. I guess it’s a case of “damned if you do, damned if you’re justhinkk”
on preview
I would choose my best friend over a stranger who told me he was a nihilist.
No, it says quite a bit about your opinion of religion in general. Personally, I would choose Gandhi over Pol Pot.
“And so it goes.”
Hey, man–you riffing Vonnegut at me? 
Yep. Ha, I guess you could say I Vonnegut this thread out my head.
Latro wrote:
One evening, about 1:00 in the morning, I walked into a hotel where we [Satanists] regularly met…
No, actually, he didn’t. I wrote that.
So it was you huh?..Just thought you’d like to know all that light upset our sacrificial virgin so much she just got up and left! All we had left was Myrtle, and when we tried to sneak in the old bar fly, Beezelbub got so pissed he wouldn’t even validate our parking.
The Satanists.
I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s dead anyway.
If I used cowardly (which I don’t believe to be the case), I would be using it as shorthand judgement so that I don’t get accused of writing incomprehensibly. I found that if I use words like “good”, “bad”, “stupid” “retard” “moron” “smart”… that I don’t get as much flack for commenting on a topic. If I don’t use judgements like this, the frequency of “incoherent rambling” charges increases, and “boring” charges and “not making any point” charges increase against me. I would appreciate your advice along these lines if you have a solution to avoid this conundrum. It’s naturally difficult for me to resist commenting on how religious people demand topics of judgement (someone to stoop to their level) in order for an argument to make a point.
It’s another example of the divide which exists between the two types of being.
With regards to the other two terms: childish, delusional and I’ll throw in maturity as well (so three terms)
Justhink replied to the same exact quote earlier, and copies and pastes his reply becuase it was ignored to make most of the arguments in Spiritus’ reply
*Cowardly is not relevant.
Childish conceptually maps with immature, though it is not always the case - delusional maps with corrupt logical mapping, which maps with childish and immature… again, not always the case.*
Let’s go over this again.
Childish: like a child; new to existence; suspended animation of the state of being new to existence. (my definition)
Children are born with states of cognitive development which have not been triggered yet. (this is a truism that presumably we agree upon)
Children are born with physical/sexual reproductive developments which have not been triggered yet.
When the reproductive developments trigger we call them adolescents.
When an adolescent acts like a child, we call them childish.
This does not refer to their reproductive development, but rather their cognitive development.
Children reach adolescence (reproductive development) without undergoing cognitive development. Generally, these children are referred to as mentally handicapped, and in the most severe cases, will be unable to support themselves because they cannot comprehend the world around them while occupying a physically mature body. They may want to eat to fill their tummies to make the pain go away, but they cannot remember well enough to tell one thing from another with regards to cause and effect; just that there is a principle of cause and effect and that there is an object - the type of object doesn’t process. They may begin eating the plastic bag that the groceries are in rather than the groceries. As offensive as it might be to your glorious self-image of enlightened equality, there are real differences in cognitive age, regardless of physical age. This human being would be called IMMATURE. IMMATURE is a neutral term referring to the distinguishing of developmental stages. If a very young child asks why they cannot have sex and make babies yet, it would be factual to tell them that they are too immature for this process and will need to await this development.
This whole concept seems to send you into a furious rage Spiritus.
I find it troubling that this child cannot have a baby too… but that’s the way it is! Some humans even remain in a suspended animation of the stage right before adolescence (physically) and they never reproductively develop or undergo a voice change. They will look like a 12 year old when they are 50. PHYSICALLY this human being is immature for their age, but as far as human potential is concerned… the vast experience of physical human stages of physical maturity will always be absent in such a being.
With regards to being a human being, living a full lifecycle and dying, they can be declared as being physically immature without comparing it to age… they were just a physically immature BEING.
As a being they never matured physically EVER. It was stasis before reproductive maturation. This person could not continue the species… if everyone was born like this we would all be dead, extinct, wiped out, gone. Maturity is linked to the bare necessitiy of what allows a species to perpetuate itself when regarded in the expanse of a life-time. A few human beings can slip through the cracks with this quality and NOT DO ANY DAMAGE TO THE SPECIES. If everyone was like this, the species would stop cold.
We then juedge that this being is immature with regards to the species and the perpetuation of the lifecycle for that species.
If all life-forms stopped before sexual development, there would be NO LIFE AT ALL. Soooo… maturity is linked to the ability for life to continue. We can certainly be kind to immature individuals, but to declare empathatic compassion for them, you really need to mutilate your reproductive system if you feel that strongly about the necessity of this person’s physical clock.
This dynamic of species continuation does not only exist regarding the body, it also exists regarding the cognition itself.
There are states of reproductive cognition which do not develop in human beings… they remain in stasis before the cognition has the capacity to purpetuate the species. When this occurs, they require a fully functional cognition to drag them around as a mental appendage and force them to breed in order to continue that line of ancestry. It necessarily requires TWO people to perpetuate a being who is cognitively immature. It only requires the one person to perpetuate when it is simply physical immaturity (I’m simply talking about their own life-span).
Physically immature people cannot reproduce, but they do not cost the life of another human being - the slavery. Cognition allows them to survive themselves.
Cognitively immature individuals can reproduce, but the REQUIRE a slave to do it for them, to do EVERYTHING for them which allows them to live so that the species can purpetuate.
It is my general opinion that the cost is equal… one cannot reproduce and the other cannibalizes an existent life-forms brain as an appendage in order to allow another generation. These are marginal on the extremes anyways because these beings are so rare in the extremes. The most extreme versions of these beings do not survive much past birth as the brain cannot support the neurological system.
Like anything else which is meaningful to human beings which actually DO WORK, each of these observations possesses a scale of variation: Cognitive stasis exists on a continuum.
Before moving futher along; I’m going to check in with you again Spiritus.
Do you aknowledge that a human being can have a mind which is not capable of the minimal process of perpetuating the species and that such a being is immature with regards to the perpetuation of the species. (if you define maturity outside of this, it’s my opinion that it becomes meaningless because it proves that your suicide is more logical than responding, but that’s my wacky opinon)?
Do you generally aknowledge that there is a very strong truth here, that these things exist?
-Justhink
P.S.
Pol Pot couldn’t possibly be a Nihilist or Pacifist. Just because you say God exists, doesn’t mean he does. Just because you say that your good, doesn’t mean that you are. Just because you say that Pol Pot is a nihilist or even he says he’s a nihilist doesn’t make him one. There’s this thing called evidence; there are things called DECEPTION, propoganda, lying for profit; which is what religious people do. Besides, you totally misread to think that I was defining pacifism as violent.
There are three possibilities with regards to human logic and ethic IMO. Religion, Pacifism, Nihilism. Religion is the only one of the three that kills people.
-Justhink
You read carelessly.
You use terms in a manner which contradicts general usage, but you do not deign to specify what definitions you are using.
You seem to enjoy casting aspersions that I am ignoring direct quesitons or statements, yet you fail to answer questions directed at yourself.
I have already said that I lack much patience for your public displays of masturbation.
The only reason I excluded pacifism was because it was redundant… a pacifist is defined as someone who does not use coersion. People don’t generally think of nihilism as the absolute form of pacifism; stasis. It wasn’t so obvious or redundant, so I asked you about a nihilist as opposed to a pacifist. Sure, anybody can lie. I need to set too many conditions, which may taint the value of the observation… let’s see.
We know they’re telling the truth.
You need to not be murdered.
The person who lives last will be released.
Do you choose a nihilist, a pcifist or someone of any religious persuasion even if it is your most trusted mother or best friend or whatever?
Statistics states that you can only be murdered by the religion choice. Not that they will necessarily murder you, but I’d bet with their cognitive dementia that you might discover them more than capable of suprising your trust as time ticks.
-Justhink