Could you guys say "yes" if you find this style nice and "no" otherwise?Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe
Curious to have your comments on why you answered what you did if you could write this down.
Thx!
TMPHBITEU
I agree with Schmatt here. I actually haven't read any of your posts in this thread over the past week. I just approved them, trusting you to be a nice person. This non-standard presentation is quite tedious and uninteresting. But, if you just enjoy typing, proceed.
Member
Could you guys say "yes" if you find this style nice and "no" otherwise?
Curious to have your comments on why you answered what you did if you could write this down.
Thx!
TMPHBITEU
Maybe you could just make a paragraph here. Don't hit the Return button after every sentence. Like this:
Then I'd ask, what does "answered what you did" refer to?Could you guys say "yes" if you find this style nice and "no" otherwise? I'm curious to have your comments on why you answered what you did if you could write this down. Thanks!
Member
Wasn't really going to comment. Seemed like it would be too forward of me to chime in on something like that unprompted.
... BUT SINCE YOU ASKED. No, I don't much care for the bullet point approach to writing "texts". I have a basic understanding of text structures, being a linguistics and literature(s) student and a journeyman writer. I understand that texts are built by means of paragraphs which consist of specific sentences which consist of specific words in specific orders. Even the freest of word orders in the weirdest of languages show structure in speech and writing that is unique to the medium (but don't quote me on that). For English, for example, you'll have introductory or linking sentences at the beginning and end of the paragraph with information that is considered new or expansive in the middle. This isn't always true since you have different styles, codes, registers, contexts, and genres etc, but it's a good rule of thumb for writing texts, nonetheless.
Having this "set" structure also means you can actually read properly written texts better. Skimming a good text means reading the first and maybe last lines of every paragraphs. This is incredibly useful when you're looking for relevant information in source material you need to cite for papers or sth. Obviously you return to these relevant passages later on and read them fully, but skimming texts in this way is a great way to save time. You can even do it to very poorly written texts if you've "already read them before". For instance, if you're reading yet another fascinating op-ed about someone getting fondled somewhere at some time in some vague way, you can just skim it as I've described and be pretty damn sure you won't be missing out on anything new. Can't do that when texts are made of bullet points.
What's more is I don't even skim your posts at all. I just read whatever people are specifically responding to, if that, because I love reading properly layed out texts, regardless of the contents. So if I see a post that starts and ends with hyphens on the left and words trailing out of them, I just scroll on down to see a reaction. If there's no reaction, your post may as well not be there cos I don't read it and don't remember who wrote something on the board that day.
Writing well is a skill like any other. It may seem daunting to get started cos it's by no means easy, but then nothing worth doing ever is.
Member
Not comparing authors, obviously, but this nested form has been judged interesting
by interesting people, e.g. www.tractatuslogico-philosophicus.com,
even though I may have used it incorrectly so far.
SS has a surprisingly wide applicability: young or old, as long as you can walk
and know that things are rarely like advertised, you are vulnerable to SS, even
more so if you have to get strong. I am not aware of a better "bang for the
bucks" that comes even close to what SS has to offer.
SS has a surprising depth: you begin with a seemingly innocuous physical program
and you end up as a buffed scientist thinking in terms of models and
experiments. The combination of physical and intellectual growth is properly
amazing and could probably be taken further. Taking its roots in the physical
world, SS rises up to a world of ideas.
I tried to defend and/or introduce a couple of ideas. "Truth" as a physically
verifiable statement is not enough: what's the redness of red? Modelling
societies as networks where nodes are humans and arcs are transactions of
physical or intellectual goods helps see why attacks create and amplify
stupidity and why is self-defeating: who may think to be surrounded by alienated
people and not being dumbed down as a consequence?
It helps see why caring (w/o naïve interventionism) about each other is a
necessity: it yields global properties on the network that are difficult to
predict. A consequence of new global properties of the network is new rights and
duties: a fantasy society where scarcity is abolished has probably not the same
definition of "property", "earnings", "resources" than ours.
Finally, as equality between people is a none-sense so is equality in rights.
It denies the fact that people have intrinsic abilities that vary wildly: it
grants de facto and implicitly some people more rights than others while
explicitly avoiding them the associated duties. A rough illustration is two
powerlifters competing, the first one is 4'11" and 135lbs the other one is 6'2"
400lbs: they both are granted the right explicitly to lift any weights but these
rights are implicitly and differently limited by intrinsic factors. This is
why trans people in women competition is utter none-sense and will necessarily
kill women competitions.
Member
Wait, what?
Member
Ffs. Your original post was asking for short videos warning people that our bodies can be broken in the worst ways to scare them into correct form. Now you have leapt so far down a dozen rabbit holes that your original thought (which you know is wrong now) has lead you to lecture about the basis of all philosophy since the beginning of time.
Fine.
And for the record, color is literally one of the most subjective experiences you could possibly compare with "physically verifiable". Color literally only exists in the brain. An object does not have a color, we percieve color from the way that light reflects off its surface. Something that exists only in the brain is a pretty damn good definition of subjective, and thus should not be used in the search of truth. I'm pretty sure that most educated individuals would more heavily lean towards using physically verifiable (objective) methods to find truth in almost every situation.
Member
If you take the context into account, it's possible to understand that it's essentially a writing style exercise: instead of a lorem ipsum I filled it with a summary of various comments.
You missed the point: the question was not subjectivity (or objectivity) of "truth". The point is that language is so fucked up that even the term "truth" is ambiguous, even among relatively homogeneous crowds.
The reference to Wittgenstein was double: first because of its uncommon and interesting writing style, second because he precisely questions the limits of language while serving as a "filler" to my little exercise submitted to harsh judgements. You know that we cannot measure past some limits, yet things "exist" beyond these limits... Words lack to point at these things!
Your certitude about the appropriate definition of truth is exactly what is interesting to question: disregarding what is not physically measurable is to be blind to extremely powerful things. Some ideas (which exist like colors just in heads of people) are older than the Parthenon and have shaped things to our own minds today. A very close question is how is it possible that we know what "red" looks like since no one taught us? Do your impression of red is the same as someone else? How come? A few languages have names for only 3 colors or less... it's kind of limiting. How many things do we miss because we do not have words of them despite experimental evidence (albeit indirect) and lack of cautious agnosticism? I think that while failing to coach the guy this thread was about, I succeeded at the same time: he will probably get hurt and not being a masochist he will ask his memory and remember about this guy talking about SS.
I wonder why SS is “narrow casting" to people that end up saying: "Wtf, I payed this stupid yoga coach for functionally deploying the ROM of my ass and after 1 year in, still no freaking results? Does someone actually know something about training?" and how to change that since SS is experimentally correct ("it just works"). It's the same as asking the question: how to beat intellectual inertia? This question is very hard and placing SS as preventive medicine seems to me the way to go. Still not powerful enough though for the 2 people I would like to train... I wonder if having videos with Rip in a white coat, glasses, a stethoscope around the neck and maybe a pipe would work.
TMPHBITEU
This excellent point will be addressed very soon.
Member
Matthew! You did it, bud! Nicely worded and thought out paragraphs!
I concede to your points about language being a potentially horrendous burden to free thinking. Yet, considering this is a forum mainly considering topics that have a prescribed vernacular that applies to all pertinent concepts, we don't need to worry about not having linguistic tools that help us "measure past limits that obviously exist that do not have words to describe them".
Also, I'm pretty sure ss is not narrowcasting on purpose. I'm sure that they would like to grow massively and gain a huge following and change the entire world by increasing people's quality of life. These people don't seem afraid of success.
In fact, you'll notice a common thread between people in the ss community: hard work and dedication. It's impossible for the normal person to reach a true intermediate stage without those two things in the absence of pharmaceuticals. SS is hard, repetitive, takes longer to see results than the average person would like (even though it shows results incredibly fast), and many cases require hands on coaching (a financial/situational impossibility for many). The fact that they won't lower their standards to create a "mass market" product is both what makes the process so valuable and naturally repelling to those who won't commit the hard work and dedication.
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