Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

well @poodleowned, if you read my posts you'll notice that i pretty much copy and paste your derogatory words, directed at kbehan, in my replies to you. you are calling the kettle black while throwing the first stone. i thought you'd connect the dots and self modify your own style and maybe not use such harsh language, for the purposes of advancing the conversation.

and dishing what out exaclty? i never called on a moderator. i just pretty much copy pasted your own words. you are calling on a moderator and you are insulting in your remarks to kbehan.

for your reference and other readers, here are a few of poodleowned's remarks followed by excerpts from my responses.

. poodleowned

Most of thiis is off the planet in terms of facts that we know... i have to go the distance so that others don't think that you hold the answers because you don't.

my quote

you are completely off in another world @poodleowned.

poodleowned

That is why i detest your carry ons.You cheapen the work of real hard working scientists with BS .

and my quote

Indeed, you do cheapen the work of real hard working scientists by getting the facts wrong.

and i never insulted your dog. i've never met your dog. i said that trophies are meaningless. my opinion on trophies is as relevant as the stories about dogs winning them. this was the point and it missed your radar screen.

corgidog

fail. that's not behan's premise. try again and if you get it right, then i think that can be the basis of a meaningful conversation. you're just being derogatory.

you are so confident that it's wrong but you can't even recite the argument. this is weak and reveals your bias.

liking something that is simple, doesn't make something true. have you ever trained or met a dog trained with NDT? how can you know then it does/doesn't work? i agree that there are questions and areas that need clarification and better explanation. however, you have to approach that which you don't understand with an open mind otherwise you'll never learn.

 

Similarly, I've met dogs trained on electronic collars, and that "works" if you prefer the inhibition of behavior to the encouragement of behavior.  The dogs looks obedient in both cases.  My sense is that the only reason you think others do not have an open mind is that they don't agree with you.  But, the very essence of scientific inquiry is not only to have an open mind, but to imagine possibilities beyond the scope of the known universe, which it is clear the people you castigate have, since they have been arguing for 35+ pages in favor of it.  But, imagining the unknown in order to hypothesize is not the same as accepting your own opinions as fact without proper scientific investigation.  Until you investigate, you still only have a hypothesis.  What people have been asking for, if I may speak for them, is the hypothesis, method, results and conclusions of a properly constructed experiment/study.   So, if you are so sure that they are wrong and you and Behan are right, where is the evidence?  I, for one, welcome being proved wrong if I am, because my ultimate goal is to better understand dogs.  But, convoluted prose and obfuscation of issues doesn't make either of you right in your assumptions about dogs, and your persistent adherence to your convictions without the willingness to support them except by opinion adds to our feeling that you are more like the follower who is participating in a cult, rather than someone who is independently seeking knowledge. 

 I'm trying to boil it all down so that we can arrive at a fundamental point of distinction, this would be the basis of a reasoned and principled discussion. I also think I can reprise the basic arguments made on the mainstream side, but I know that critics of NDT cannot reprise my argument which on one level is to be understood, but is clearly also a knee jerk reaction that anyone who questions mainstream biology is being illogical, mystical, religious and is anti-scientific. You would think that people interested in behavior would enjoy debates about behavior, I know I do. But if I say the sky is blue it would be challenged (I know, I know, it's not really blue, but rather scatters the light of that wavelength)

However just to be clear when you say--- "3) Affective systems are the ultimate evolutionarily developed categories of emotional experience of which creatures are consciously aware (feel)." --- Are you also saying that there could be a level of emotional experience of which animals are unaware? That point remains unclear in my reading of your position statement.

 

 Sure.  We both have subconscious mind activities - dreams show that. Our moods and temperaments are largely the fruit of subconscious action, I think.

 

How are you on my mods to points 1 and 2?

well there are a couple different points here.

1) i'm comfortable with calling ndt a hypothesis/theory/natural philosophy etc. kbehan is stating his model and opinion. he's been clear and consistent from the start about this. it is not a religion, cult or anything more than a competing idea to the interpretation of behavior and evolution based on physical laws of nature. and in practical reality it's used to train dogs.

2) there has never been any research done specifically to prove/disprove ndt. i agree that until this happens there will obviously be some questions and skepticism. skepticism is welcome.

but participants of a forum have to realize what a forum is about and it that isn't really possible to prove the validity of a model on a thread. he is expressing logical ideas, exercises and opinions, and asking for anything beyond this is kind of silly. it takes years of work to compile and test a model. kbehan is asking you to entertain his position in your mind as an exercise in logic. folks here are asking for a treatise on par with the work of hundreds of thousands of people over 100s of years, before even taking the time to understand the questions he's presenting.

i think "they" don't have an open mind because they title forum threads like " Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy." They also don't make sound arguments, just silly,bold statements without first understanding the context in which kbehan is speaking.

kbehan's doesn't write "convoluted prose and obfuscation". i'm aware that you find the language and ideas confusing. but so far people haven't been able to articulate what kbehan is saying and i believe it's because they haven't taken the time. the ideas kbehan presents are simple, not necessarily intuitive on first read. i think some are guilty of the very things they accuse kbehan and ndt of, because kbehan has taken the time to learn the material that they present, read each articles they post (and videos) and can recite the current model on behaviorism and evolutionary biology.

and what really makes me doubt the intentions of certain posters is that the basics of argument and logic are ignored and false comparisons are made (ndt and religion) over and over while relying on condescending remarks and insinuations to buttress their positions.

corgidog

then i think that can be the basis of a meaningful conversation.

 

I don't know how to argue against his premises.  I don't understand him and don't wish to spend the energy learning  about NDT .  It's too complicated .  I like what is simple and proven to work.

 I like a good argument as well as anybody does-one with facts, research, real data.  Beliefs are really hard to argue against, I've looked in on the thread basically because I didn't see how the argument could go on this long.  All the opponents seem to be looking for is documentation, not pronouncements.  Evidence- you know- the basis of anything scientific. Facts that can be replicated and proved or disproved.

My unprofessional opinion from what I've seen is that NTD has to be made to be complicated  and esoteric. The following definition of esoteric seems to fit:understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest;  As I just don't care, I am not going to argue either way.  Have a nice day.

 

 

Burl:  "We both have subconscious mind activities - dreams show that. Our moods and temperaments are largely the fruit of subconscious action, I think."

KB: I'm still unclear as to what the above means. Does this mean that dogs have a subconscious state of emotional experience, such as when dreaming, and that this is deeper than the systems that Panskepp is studying, and apparently has escaped current research since nothing to date has been cited? 

Burl: "1) Dogs have what is known as ToM:  which simply means they are consciously aware that other subjects are likewise conscious just like them. 2) Dogs experience time as a facet of reality (like they do space) - they actively use it to direct their behavior (4 o'clock = let them know it's walk time), just as they would use space judgement to jump a chasm.  I do not know what level of abstract conceptualization they have – likely not much."

Yes, I understand and so given (1) and (2), does it logically follow that since a dog is aware that another being is conscious as it is conscious itself, is said dog further aware that such a conscious being could be entertaining a divergent point of view on a situation than the one it is entertaining, and therefore if it can be thus doubly aware in this way, can such a dog then cognitively modify its own affective system that has been triggered by whatever is going on, so that it is responding according to how it construes this other beings' perception on the situation in order to effect a future result? 

@poodleowned, i'm not sure what you're driving at here.

the position isn't that animals are computers. rather, all economies have network properties, whereby the amount of information available is amplified via participation and informs participants how to behave. this is the point - emotion is the animal's interference to its environment.

the specifics of TC/IP aren't too important in this discussion either. you need a universal protocol (TC/IP, money, emotion) in order to allow self organization and thus coherent behavior. this is the point.

interesting, if you take an animal out of its environment, even providing proper nutrition, disposition changes not only in behavior but in physique (look at animals in a zoo esp. killer whale dorsal fins). nature is also incredibly wasteful at times , look at how many seeds a tree has to produce to get a shoot in the ground.

KB:  Does this mean that dogs have a subconscious state of emotional experience, such as when dreaming, and that this is deeper than the systems that Panskepp is studying, and apparently has escaped current research since nothing to date has been cited?

I am applying analogous experience reasoning that as similarly structured higher-ordered brainminds, dogs and we should have similar subconsciousnesses.  I am not sure how Panksepp handles subconscious activities related to conscious feeling of his affects, but I’ll bet he has, and if not, the affective neuropsychiatrist following Jaak in the two speajer video should cover this material somewhere.  

I would think you would be on board with our subconscious minds being alike, as this is the more evolutionarily set, primitive underlayment part of dog and man brainminds.

KB: Yes, I understand and so given (1) and (2), does it logically follow that since a dog is aware that another being is conscious as it is conscious itself, is said dog further aware that such a conscious being could be entertaining a divergent point of view on a situation than the one it is entertaining, and therefore if it can be thus doubly aware in this way, can such a dog then cognitively modify its own affective system that has been triggered by whatever is going on, so that it is responding according to how it construes this other beings' perception on the situation in order to effect a future result?

I guess so, since I stated as much in point 5, which is a good example of what you are describing.

DougB, what do you expect from a guy that writes:

 

"There is never a moment of animal consciousness wherein an animal is not in a state of attraction. When an animal is not in a state of attraction, then it is in a state of confusion"

And he sees nothing wrong with it, even when it's pointed out to him!!

  
"I would think you would be on board with our subconscious minds being alike, as this is the more evolutionarily set, primitive underlayment part of dog and man brainminds."

KB: Actually, yes indeed I am on board but I am also maintaining there is a deeper emotional system (emotion as universal "force" of attraction), and that this is the part of our unconsciousness that subscribes to a network template, and that this is the only logical model that is consistent with the phenomenon of evolution. This template can be shown to run through all behavior as in the dog/deer video linked on my site. I've also commented that given fractal mathematics and how it has been shown by Mandlebrot to be expressed everywhere in nature, I'm surprised that modern biology isn't concerned that no such fractal module in behavior has been identified. Each gene is a distinct unit of information, and genomes are fundamentally different sets of information, their own unique blend of random mutations as filtered by selective pressures and environmental constraints. In this vein, and I believe this is true of modern evolutionary theory, you have stated earlier that capacities can emerge from the substrate without precedent in regards to any specific capacity of the substrate, and therefore you're not concerned with absence of a common behavioral module constantly repeating itself as the source of complex behavior. In other words, there doesn't have to be a straight line running from the "bottom" to the "top" of the evolutionary phenomenon of consciousness. But if this is true, then unless dog and human minds are exactly alike, your assumption that --- "I am applying analogous experience reasoning that as similarly structured higher-ordered brainminds, dogs and we should have similar subconsciousnesses." --- is not logical. According to this logic (which I don't subscribe to) human capacities could have emerged without precedent from capacities of animals as the substrate of human consciousness. 

 "I am not sure how Panksepp handles subconscious activities related to conscious feeling of his affects, but I’ll bet he has, and if not, the affective neuropsychiatrist following Jaak in the two speajer video should cover this material somewhere."

KB: If Panskepp is being cited as the definitive rebuttal of my theory of a universal and monolithic emotion, shouldn't running that fact down and bringing it into the discussion be the first order of business before arriving at an opinion of NDT theory? Or are you simply saying that my theory just doesn't seem right and/or square with your observations of dogs and that is the basis of your opinion and not Panskepp?  

 

 

 

Kevin Behan

I also think I can reprise the basic arguments made on the mainstream side

 

If you can, then you've been keeping it to yourself.  Rather why don't you tell me how you turned selective imitation into uncontrollable urge.

 Why don't you come up with some experimental scheme to demonstrate the main points of NDT.  

And while you are at it, why don't you read up on allergies and tell us if the example you were trying to use was correct.

Kevin Behan

also a knee jerk reaction that anyone who questions mainstream biology is being illogical, mystical, religious and is anti-scientific

It's not a knee jerk response, but rather a very reasoned, intellectual response given the outrageous and fallacious claims you are making.What you peddle is illogical, is irrational, is unscientific, is mystical. There is really no other way to categorize it.

 1. To start off, NDT is not based on the physical laws of nature.  And I'd be suspicious of a guy making such a claim when he doesn't even understand basic thermodynamics, as Behan did a few pages back.  He has also mucked up information theory, we could go on but the list is far too long.

2. NDT is nonsense and you'd have to go back 250 y or more for it to be accepted as plausible by any knowledgeable person. 

corgidog

but participants of a forum have to realize what a forum is about and it that isn't really possible to prove the validity of a model on a thread.

The Baloney Detection Kit is a tool that allows us to test a claim, when applied to NDT we see it for what it is pure woo. It works because of the general characteristics shared by quackery. 

However, if you think it is not appropriate then apply it to mainstream scientific theory and see if you can get a false positive.

corgidog

@poodleowned, i'm not sure what you're driving at here.

 

 

Now that's a thing and a very good start!!  All that you have done in the next few sentences is prove my analogy and avoided the bit about group and singular behaviour. I didn't say take the animal out of the enviornment, just disconnect the comms. 

corgidog

@poodleowned, i'm not sure what you're driving at here.