Positivity

[Nalaar]

I think we are each trying to have two completely different conversations here, so I'll leave it at that.

[Baron von Lotsov]

You don't know what your brain reasoned (there are studies available showing how we unknowingly create narratives to rationalize behavior after the fact). What you do know is that learning about Iron Age man didn't interest you, and you had no control over that.



I'm saying nothing about following orders blindly, but I am very definitely saying humans have zero free will.

Oh well, at least you make clear your position now. It's one of those points which becomes impossible to prove one way or another, but reason dictates that if you believe you just have to float on with the crowd then with a government such as our own, it will not do anyone any good.



Lets look at a simple example. Kid gets taken to school in car. Kid knows cars cost money and cars are good inventions and very useful. When teacher teaches kids about Iron Age man, what is the rational view if the teacher responds that we need to know this in order to pass exams to get jobs, but the same school does not teach the kids how cars are made. See, it goes against the natural intelligence and instincts of the child. The child essentially wants to follow the father and perhaps the father works at British Leyland, or equivalently many other places which make/made things that kids would exchange cash for. See what I'm getting at. Looking at the life of Iron age man is recreation, not education. They put this stuff on the telly. Dumb parents think jolly good, how interesting. Meanwhile BL goes bust.



Now down at the DWP's job centres, guess what? It's the same thing. Dumb teachers teach the unemployed useless activity. What is the connection? Well they are both paid by the government and the government is paid for in votes.



I am merely proposing a mental strategy to overcome such obstacles in the most efficient way. Creative thinking is the ace card here. There are infinite permutations in life. You probably only ever think of a tiny proportion of them. You need mental gymnastics to suss the others.

[Nalaar]

The way the sane mind works is it gets interested in something if it sees it is of benefit. Going back to my early education, one thing we learnt a lot about was how Iron Age man lived. We learnt what sort of hut he lived in, whether it had a fence around it and what a typical Iron Age man would wear. We would also learn than he made tools with iron and we saw primitive knives.



Now my brain reasoned that this knowledge is of absolutely  no use to me and never will be, or at best, extremely unlikely as I never wanted to be a museum curator. So there i was in many a classroom asking teacher, why do we need to know this stuff, and like robots, "So you can pass your exams and get a good job". The carrot was always "good job". You'd get more sense out of a Morrison's till robot!

You don't know what your brain reasoned (there are studies available showing how we unknowingly create narratives to rationalize behavior after the fact). What you do know is that learning about Iron Age man didn't interest you, and you had no control over that.

You speak as if one must just carry out orders blindly and the human has zero free will. Maths is fascinating, but the way it was taught was slow and tedious.

I'm saying nothing about following orders blindly, but I am very definitely saying humans have zero free will.

[Baron von Lotsov]

I don't think my point was clear, so I'll reiterate - you could not chose to find what your teachers were teaching you to be interesting, or not.

There was no choice.



If one person finds mathematics interesting, and another person finds it boring, neither of them chose those outcomes, and even when aware of that they can not force a different outcome.
 

The way the sane mind works is it gets interested in something if it sees it is of benefit. Going back to my early education, one thing we learnt a lot about was how Iron Age man lived. We learnt what sort of hut he lived in, whether it had a fence around it and what a typical Iron Age man would wear. We would also learn than he made tools with iron and we saw primitive knives.



Now my brain reasoned that this knowledge is of absolutely  no use to me and never will be, or at best, extremely unlikely as I never wanted to be a museum curator. So there i was in many a classroom asking teacher, why do we need to know this stuff, and like robots, "So you can pass your exams and get a good job". The carrot was always "good job". You'd get more sense out of a Morrison's till robot!



You speak as if one must just carry out orders blindly and the human has zero free will. Maths is fascinating, but the way it was taught was slow and tedious.

[Nalaar]

I think I understood what you meant by this. In that, particularly positive phases can be a symptom of manic/depression (now called bi-polar for some reason) whilst at the same time a negative person may be in a phase of mental illness over which he has no control.

It may, of course, be helped by drugs such as SSRIs - but not always.

Mental illness are certainly extreme cases of this, however, I believe it applies to any person regardless of their mental health.

[Barry]

There are a few different strands to this - but I think the one that really stands out is the sense that someone has agency over their positivity.



If you are a particularly positive person, that is no more under your control that any number of other biochemical processes.

I think I understood what you meant by this. In that, particularly positive phases can be a symptom of manic/depression (now called bi-polar for some reason) whilst at the same time a negative person may be in a phase of mental illness over which he has no control.

It may, of course, be helped by drugs such as SSRIs - but not always.

[Nalaar]

I don't think my point was clear, so I'll reiterate - you could not chose to find what your teachers were teaching you to be interesting, or not.

There was no choice.



If one person finds mathematics interesting, and another person finds it boring, neither of them chose those outcomes, and even when aware of that they can not force a different outcome.

[Baron von Lotsov]

I'd prefer the term Determinism over Predestination .



If only your teachers were laplacian demons they may of served you better.



There was nothing you could of done to of found the 'crud' your teachers were trying to force upon you interesting, in that you had no freedom.

Yes I knew what I was looking at, when I was there. These memories stick in one's mind. I thought I did not have any official freedom, but I was going to do it my way, come what may. I would pursue the path I had decided and that i did. It was not easy. I had to do gardening jobs to earn money to buy books and stuff. I would try and get help from adults around me, but few had the knowledge to help, but one or two did and indeed even one of my teachers did a bit later on, although it was not the subject he taught as the school never taught anything like it. I was hated by most teachers but highly respected by one or two. Can you imagine what conversation would have been like in the staff room? It was as funny as it was sad, but I did have an influence. Many years later one school I was at bucked up its ideas and became academic. I changed them! Towards the end the teachers were pretty much in agreement that dumbing down was not the way to go. You've just got to prove it.

[Nalaar]

Is that a subscription to the philosophy of predestination?

I'd prefer the term Determinism over Predestination .



If only your teachers were laplacian demons they may of served you better.



There was nothing you could of done to of found the 'crud' your teachers were trying to force upon you interesting, in that you had no freedom.

[papasmurf]

Politicians are useless parasites. You feed them, but their output is useless. The positive person is a results person.

I long for the day the last politician is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

[Baron von Lotsov]

Sorry but that is not defining creativity.

What you have shown here is the opposite. This is the negative approach. It is the approach of politicians and it has entrained your psyche. Let me just say, it is far easier to say what something isn't than what it is, especially when just stating it in the way you do without reason.



No one can really argue because you have not actually said anything. You have not cast your punt. You play safe.



Politicians are useless parasites. You feed them, but their output is useless. The positive person is a results person.

[Baron von Lotsov]

There are a few different strands to this - but I think the one that really stands out is the sense that someone has agency over their positivity.



If you are a particularly positive person, that is no more under your control that any number of other biochemical processes.

Is that a subscription to the philosophy of predestination?



I see it as one of the tools of slavery. Very early on in school, when I was only a few years into it, the teachers had already made an assessment on me and decided I would only be fit of a mundane manual job. They based this on test results, but had not thought that the reason my results were so crap was I had about zero interest in the crud they were teaching. So while they were marking me down as this, my natural intelligence senses that this was what they were doing, and from that i reasoned that if this is the kind of treatment I'm going to get at a state school then I will have to do it myself, and teach myself, and if i teach myself well i can rise above this slavery and the predestination path they had put me on. I was head on going to test their psychological theory that they can judge my entire future capabilities on their pathetic tests, which often included writing silly stories. This is free will in action. Some system is trying to fit you in, but really it is your choice what you do, and only if you forget it is, will you be a slave.



We get our cause and effect mixed up sometimes. If you take a positive approach you will get better results and feel more confident. I'm not talking about unrealistic confidence. This is confidence brought about by having a solution which was brought about by a  positive approach. Step one needs to be to decide to look for solutions.

[papasmurf]

The trouble is though, as a country we are not in a good place. We have unemployment, we have zero hours contracts, we have a welfare system which does not work, we have huge use of food banks and we have rogue landlords and people who hit the worst off hard (Wonga type loans etc). While I have been able to 'think positive' I can see why many can't, and for that reason we need to have empathy and understanding to those who cannot.

Precisely, there are a significant number of people in Britain, who to use an Americanism can't chew bubble gum and walk at the same time.

The basic unskilled jobs they did in the past are gone.

[papasmurf]

Yes indeed.



We were talking about the unemployed a while back.



Two stances can be taken. One is reporting on how absolutely awful it is down at the dole office and the other is finding solutions they can use to better their circumstances. One type of thinking is an attempt to make things better where the other is generally endless mush, much like the News reports. The News never takes the positivist view. I do though and I readily admit I'm odd. In other countries though it is different. You might like to read the history of the invention of the jet engine. That serves as a classic example of how stupid and messed up this country is, where over in America they did not think at all like we did and started to think creatively. They looked at public transport and saw opportunity. They wasted no time in grabbing it, and the result was Boeing. That was something they built. It's still around today.

Sorry but that is not defining creativity.

[Nalaar]

There are a few different strands to this - but I think the one that really stands out is the sense that someone has agency over their positivity.



If you are a particularly positive person, that is no more under your control that any number of other biochemical processes.