Living in Pool Rooms (literally)

[Celtic]

Celtic, I was a little rash in my first response to you. We argued in another thread so when you said "There is no way I would have just stood there and let that happen" I took that as an insult, as if you were calling me a coward. I got frustrated because I was there and knew the circumstances and you did not, which is why I "went off" in that post. I felt you were indirectly calling me a coward or something, which you did in your next post. Naturally I responded even more angry and that's how it escalated. I wasn't lying about what type of people were regulars at that poolhall. Like I said in one of my posts, you can ask someone else on this board who knows me and knows what that poolhall was like before it got cleaned up.

Understood. After all the trash talking back and forth the truth of both sides is finally revealed and we both end up the the same side of the fence wispering to each other how much it sucks that the gangsters are smearing mustard all over a bum and not doing a damn thing about it because we are both not retarded enough to take his place in being in the center of attention to a bunch of nutjob gangsters who love to show people how to mind their own business in the future.

As I said I never meant the first post I made to be a cut against your inaction and given the circumstances you explained after the fact I sure as hell dont blame you because I am no more an idiot then you and would be silently feeling bad for the bum all the while taking no action to defend the guy from his mustard predicament. Hell I would probably be trying my damdest to stiffle my laughter when the bum woke up and ruined the gangsters shirt because I have to think I would be pretty damn amused and yet laughing at a now really pissed off gangster that just basically got owned in front of his friends could very well end up with me in a dumpster bleeding profusely.

Nevertheless I can see where my post may have come across as an attack on your character and as such I want to make sure you know it was never meant as such and I instead was more attacking the idiots who did the thing, albeit with a very different image of the guys doing the deed. Attacking their character given the new info is ludicrous in an of itself because they are clearly not the type of people who would give a rats ass about the bum or the life of a guy who tried to tell them they were dinks for doing what they did. Trying to enlighten them would likely lead to waking up in the hospital and going "I sure showed them the error of their ways...." while your asskicking was the amusing story of the night they shared over some beers.

 

[LastTwo]

If Nat is talking about Billiard Connection in Northridge I can vouch for how messed up it was. The first time I went to a 9ball tournament there I came out and my car that was parked right in front had a bullet hole through two of the windows. I went back one more time and someone came into the poolhall and was shooting at someone else. I ducked behind the last table where an Asian guy asked me if i could see the black guy with the gun. I asked if he was after him and he said yes. I took off behind another table. After that night I didn't go back for a couple of years until some players convinced me the place was cleaned up.

Wayne

LOL I heard about that incident, and not too long after that happened I think someone was shot in the alley where you can park. That place sure was a shithole.

 

[LastTwo]

LOL it seems like if I had just mentioned what type of people they were in the first post this whole arguement could have been avoided since it's been us misunderstanding each other. LOL

 

[chefjeff]

Nah I read the summary on the page you linked where it said his main sources of reference were the bible and the Iliad, works I would be hard pressed to take as proof of any social consciousness. I am not a philosophy major or even a anthropologist, I am as you may be able to gather by the comparison I made an archaeologist. As such I would definitely question why a work such as Hammurabi's Laws would not be used in such a work as it IMO shows obvious evidence of a morality or a so called consciousness. One might be able to look at the times of Hammurabi and even his laws as a sign of a lack of morality due to their more sever nature but then you are opening up a Pandora's box inviting a person to bring forth modern examples of extreme actions and morally wrong actions of entire populations of people and claim that those people as individuals must be an archaic form of human with no consciousness or morality. What makes 2500 BP so important that he saw that as the date of enlightenment? As a person with a fairly decent understanding of ancient history I cannot really see a universal change such that one can say humans gained an ideology en masse at that very moment. I am very happy to debate this with you (actually you are causing me to procrastinate a little more on my thesis atm so you suck! but anyhow....) but you stated



and that is a really strong assertion to make on a forum such as this where the average person is probably not a student of history and may take that claim as being an actual strongly supported theory or even fact as you stated it with extreme certainty. It is instead a highly debated and extremely fringe claim that by no means is anywhere nearly universally accepted enough to be presented as fact.

Yes, it certainly is a strong assertion. I don't make it lightly or qucikly...I've thought about this theory for decades now. It really makes more and more sense to me as I learn more history and how/why things happened. Also, I rarely post all my thoughts in one post. I'd rather throw out a bone, get a response, and then add more to that....this makes the forum reading a little easier and less boring than me putting all the stuff in just one post. That's why I called it a theory in a later post, to clarify it more.

If you're into archaeology, then you are going to love this book. To me, an amateur history buff, the archaelogy stuff he uses is the most fascinating. I'd love to hear your opinion on it.

Btw, I'm looking at the index and Jaynes refers to Hammurabi about 6 or 7 times. Jaynes says, bascially, that Hammurabi hallucinated judgments from his god, Marduk, or possibly Shamash, as carved on the top of a stele listing those judgments about 1750 B.C.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up on the pool forum is that a sharker can learn to actually expoit the bicameral mind and use it against an uninformed victim. I first read about Jaynes, and using the concept, from a book I read called, Controlling People Through Their Bicameral Minds. I decided that reading Jaynes would help me understand this better, so I plowed through his dry, 467 page book even though a lot of it was foreign and somewhat boring to me. You'll probably love it. Here's the link to a sampling of the book that I first read that led me to Jaynes:

http://www.neo-tech.com/neotech/discovery/nt3.html

And another reason I bring it up here is some players actually use their bicameral minds against themselves! I won't mention any names or any methods now.

Enjoy, and thanks for responding.

Jeff Livingston

 

[Celtic]

Man, that guy is Von Danekin through and through. You believe that tripe?

The major components of Jaynes's discovery are:

* All civilizations before 1000 B.C. -- such as Assyria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, pharaonic Egypt -- were built, inhabited, and ruled by nonconscious people.

* Ancient writings such as the Iliad and the early books of the Old Testament were composed by nonconscious minds that automatically recorded and objectively reported both real and imagined events. The transition to subjective and introspective writings of the conscious mind occurred in later works such as the Odyssey and the newer books of the Old Testament.

* Ancient people learned to speak, read, write, as well as carry out daily life, work, and the professions all while remaining nonconscious throughout their lives. Being nonconscious, they never experienced guilt, never practiced deceit, and were not responsible for their actions. They, like any other animal, had no concept of guilt, deception, evil, justice, philosophy, history, or the future. They could not introspect and had no internal idea of themselves. They had no subjective sense of time or space and had no memories as we know them. They were nonconscious and innocent. They were guided by "voices" or strong impressions in their bicameral minds -- nonconscious minds structured for nature's automatic survival.

* The development of human consciousness began about 3000 years ago when the automatic bicameral mind began breaking down under the mounting stresses of its inadequacy to find workable solutions in increasingly complex societies. The hallucinated voices became more and more confused, contradictory, and destructive.

* Man was forced to invent and develop consciousness in order to survive as his hallucinating voices no longer provided adequate guidance for survival.

* Today, after 3000 years, most people retain remnants of the bicameral guidance system in the form of mysticism and the desire for external authority.

* Except for schizophrenics, people today no longer hallucinate the voices that guided bicameral man. Yet, most people are at least partly influenced and are sometimes driven by the remnants of the bicameral mind as they seek, to varying degrees, automatic guidance from the mystical "voices" of others -- from the commanding voices of false external "authorities".

* Religions and governments are rooted in the nonconscious bicameral mind that is obedient to the "voices" of external "authorities" -- obedient to the voice of "God", gods, rulers, and leaders.

* The discovery that consciousness was never a part of nature's evolutionary scheme (but was invented by man) eliminates the missing-link in human evolution.

* Essentially all religious and most political ideas today survive through those vestiges of the obsolete bicameral mind. The bicameral mind seeks omniscient truth and automatic guidance from external "authorities" such as political or spiritual leaders -- or other "authoritarian" sources such as manifested in idols, astrologers, gurus. Likewise, politicians, lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists, professors, doctors, journalists and TV anchormen become "authoritarian voices".

I mean what does he define as "consciousness"? Homo neanderthalensis was burying their dead 50,000 years ago with valuable grave goods and I think that is a pretty clear indication that they had an idea of "consciousness" as most people would define it. Egyptians long before his 3000 years BP were building pyramids as burial chambers and planning their funerals and grave goods in a belief that their spirits would move on to another form of being and that takes a conscious realization of their own mortality and is far from action and reaction Jayne thinks people were limited to. His idea that hieroglyphics reflect a mentality different to our own just shows he has no clue how modern writing has actually evolved from the earlier forms. There is no light bulb going off 3000 years ago that became modern writing using phonetic symbols instead of descriptive images, it was an evolution from one form to the other that was slow and deliberate. There was no sudden consciousness that made that happen, people have been conscious for hundreds of thousands of years. There are just too many examples of people actually acting not on impulse or reflex to their environment but in an organized fashion that shows forethought way beyond "I am hungry, I eat now".

Jaynes shows that man's early writings (hieroglyphics, hiertatic, and cuneiform) reflect a mentality totally different from our own. They reflect a nonmetaphoric, nonconscious mentality. Jaynes also shows that the Iliad, which evolved as a sung poem about 1000 B.C., contains little if any conscious thought. The characters in the Iliad (e.g., Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Helen) act unconsciously in initiating all their major actions and decisions through "voices", and all speak in hexameter rhythms (as often do modern-day schizophrenics when hallucinating). Hexameter rhythms are characteristic of the rhythmically automatic functionings of the right-hemisphere brain. Moreover, the Iliad is entirely about action...about the acts and consequences of Achilles. The Iliad never mentions subjective thoughts or the contents of anyone's mind. The language is nonconscious -- an objective reporting of facts that are concrete bound and void of introspection and abstract thought.

First off this is evidence of a non-conscious world at the time of Homer? The Iliad is an epic novel wrote hundreds of years AFTER the Trojan war. It has no inner dialogue or impetus because it was impossible for Homer to add such not knowing the people and asking how they felt when they made the choices they did. It was told as a epic story of history, the Iliad has a much feeling in it as Beowulf which is as reactive and non-conscious a story but was likely wrote in 1000AD, long after we supposedly gained our consciousness. Plus where is the Odyssey in the whole discussion? A book ALSO by Homer that explains the journey of Odysseus back to his homeland immediately after the Trojan war and is filled with evidence of conscious thought, that story could be bloody Shakespeare with all the inner dialogue and conscious thought. Ya know where it is? Far away from any discussion about this theory because it does not support his claims. This whole theory is littered with sources that are so clearly biased towards his claims and so devoid of huge amounts of evidence against his claims it is simply amazing. It is no wonder he got a ton of backlash from the academic community, we don’t get away with that kind of scholarship.

I also love the "voices" that is a nice addition to a ludicrous "theory" and I use that word as lightly as I do when calling Von Danekin's alien assisted Mayan and Egyptian civilization and the rocket ship of Pacal a "theory". Sorry man, none of that stuff is in the least bit compelling to me, I find is absurd and a perfect example of poor scholarship.

 

[chefjeff]

Man, that guy is Von Danekin through and through. You believe that tripe?



I mean what does he define as "consciousness"? Homo neanderthalensis was burying their dead 50,000 years ago with valuable grave goods and I think that is a pretty clear indication that they had an idea of "consciousness" as most people would define it. Egyptians long before his 3000 years BP were building pyramids as burial chambers and planning their funerals and grave goods in a belief that their spirits would move on to another form of being and that takes a conscious realization of their own mortality and is far from action and reaction Jayne thinks people were limited to. His idea that hieroglyphics reflect a mentality different to our own just shows he has no clue how modern writing has actually evolved from the earlier forms. There is no light bulb going off 3000 years ago that became modern writing using phonetic symbols instead of descriptive images, it was an evolution from one form to the other that was slow and deliberate. There was no sudden consciousness that made that happen, people have been conscious for hundreds of thousands of years. There are just too many examples of people actually acting not on impulse or reflex to their environment but in an organized fashion that shows forethought way beyond "I am hungry, I eat now".



First off this is evidence of a non-conscious world at the time of Homer? The Iliad is an epic novel wrote hundreds of years AFTER the Trojan war. It has no inner dialogue or impetus because it was impossible for Homer to add such not knowing the people and asking how they felt when they made the choices they did. It was told as a epic story of history, the Iliad has a much feeling in it as Beowulf which is as reactive and non-conscious a story but was likely wrote in 1000AD, long after we supposedly gained our consciousness. Plus where is the Odyssey in the whole discussion? A book ALSO by Homer that explains the journey of Odysseus back to his homeland immediately after the Trojan war and is filled with evidence of conscious thought, that story could be bloody Shakespeare with all the inner dialogue and conscious thought. Ya know where it is? Far away from any discussion about this theory because it does not support his claims. This whole theory is littered with sources that are so clearly biased towards his claims and so devoid of huge amounts of evidence against his claims it is simply amazing. It is no wonder he got a ton of backlash from the academic community, we don’t get away with that kind of scholarship.

I also love the "voices" that is a nice addition to a ludicrous "theory" and I use that word as lightly as I do when calling Von Danekin's alien assisted Mayan and Egyptian civilization and the rocket ship of Pacal a "theory". Sorry man, none of that stuff is in the least bit compelling to me, I find is absurd and a perfect example of poor scholarship.

I'm sorry that you're not going to actually read it before judging it. Too bad for us. I was hoping for your viewpoint on the actual book.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by your reaction. If Jaynes' ideas are true, about half of the history books could be trashed and this threatens alot more acedemics' livelihoods than average Joes'.

Thanks for your input. Later,

Jeff Livingston

 

[Nostroke]

You know? All of this time on the AZ forums and I had no clue that you were Nostroke! So, if you're Nostroke, I guess that makes me Really-really-weird-stroke. Right?

QUOTE]

I read your post and said "wait, how do i not know this guy?" I had to reread some of your posts til you mentioned Buddha162 and VF and then my Columbo skills finally figured it out.

Anyway, see you over there soon-hopefully this time I might win a game.

 

[1pRoscoe]

I was thoroughly entertained. Thank you!

 

[The Kiss]

A guy, that lived in his car, in the parking lot, was your fish?... Was it a Pacer? Pacers looked a lot like fish-bowls. Those must have been some really high-stakes matches. LOL

Tracy

Haha...Well he did'nt have to pay rent so he was rollin in dough, hey fish come in all sizes and who am I to discriminate on where he lived

 

[RSB-Refugee]

Haha...Well he did'nt have to pay rent so he was rollin in dough, hey fish come in all sizes and who am I to discriminate on where he lived

You gotta admit, it does seem a little fishy.

Tracy