Is Shaolin-Do for real?

[Judge Pen]

I believe that Truth exists outside of human experience. It is absolute and it is not relative. It just is. No human knows truth because their perception of truth is always clouded by the limitations of their objectivity and their own self-serving ego. When I try a case, we seek the perspective of the truth that best serves our client's interests. So does my opponent. It is up to a jury to determine what is closest to the truth (although their conclusions are only the best approximation of 12 people's perception). It isn't ideal, but it's the best we have.

[Syn7]

I don't think truth is subject to perception. You can spin all day, but it doesn't change what is.

Facts on the other hand, they are VERY subjective.

"The difference between fact and truth is that facts can be intepreted in different ways. Truth cannot"

[Judge Pen]

I don't think truth is subject to perception. You can spin all day, but it doesn't change what is.

Facts on the other hand, they are VERY subjective.

That is what I'm trying to say. I think our ability to perceive the truth is based on or own subjective limitations.

[Syn7]

That is what I'm trying to say. I think our ability to perceive the truth is based on or own subjective limitations.

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." - Anais Nin




“and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anais Nin

[Shaolin Wookie]

Strange turn of conversation, I guess.

But here's a universal truth not open to modes of perception or any kind of refutation:

"Subjects predicate."

In order to know something---anything--you need a subject term (of the actor/causal category) and an action (entailing a concept of action embedded in a verb [to be, to know, to falsify] and usually some kind of object that is utilized as a means in a human operation [i.e., to "falsify information."]

Once you accept these terms, and you have to (every operation of your mind requires a subject [namely, "you"] who engages in a course of action [namely, piecing together other subjects and predicates] directed at some kind of end/goal [namely, to "know" something subjectively useful or true])---again, once you accept these principles, then you also have to admit that all actions have beginning and end points, and so time is synthetic a priori-----a precondition for human intelligence, logical operations of the mind, and action itself.

Since you cannot imagine anything that operates outside of time and space (though theologians regularly try to do this), then you must also admit that space is synthetic a priori--- a precondition for knowledge. How can actions happen in no time, or no space? They can't, or else you contradict yourself. Imagining actions in no space and no time requires you to act in no space and no time, but your actions are always in space and time.

So, why can all knowledge NOT be boiled down to purely empirical things? Think about a tsunami. Tsunamis do not know beginning and end points of generation. They don't know anything. In order for you to know about tsunamis, you need evidence. But you can't examine nature-in-itself, as it is in its entirety, because you are not a god. You have to select beginning and end points of relevant sectors of information. You then examine nature and say: "Why did nature turn out this way rather than it would have in another way." You presuppose a kind of regularity in the concatenation of phenomena, and then try to find causal factors that lead to tsunamis.

During this whole process, the a priori framework of mind (or, the logical structure of mind) that I outlined above remains in operation.

I just gave you the theoretical model for mind that will help you slash through academic bull**** like a hot knife through butter.

[Shaolin Wookie]

Now, for empirical truth.

Empirical truth does not exist. It can get to a small margin of error--say, like Quantum Physics. A priori truth does exist---I just gave you an irrefutable theory of mind. (and I will enjoy watching a flurry of posts to the contrary, because all of them will be phrased in the subject predicate standard, and anyone who says--that's just grammar--will of course be utilizing subjects and predicates on a conceptual level as well, and will presuppose the necessity of space and time). They are also, as subjects, individuals engaged in the action of refutation because they woudl prefer to believe one thing rather than another out of a subjective preference----and now we're in the province of theoretical economics.

Now, consider the recent turn in discusssion in Global Warming debates. "There's consensus," the partisans of anthropogenic global warming cry. "The science is in."

What they ignore is that even people who agree that there is very likely a margin of manmade global warming (like myself) will argue that you don't get to imagine a static state of climate, and then work towards the variables for change. Climate is, by denotation, a variable. To work out the variables for change, then you need to imagine that climate is steady, but it is never steady. Now, scientists go out and get temperature records from ice cores in order to form statistical aggregates (much like Keynesians form statistcal aggregates of spending and then fret over GDP, when wealth is actually measured by the ratio of goods and services in a society to the number of units of a medium of exchange [i.e., money]). So, at what point is climate steady? Dullards point to the calendar and say--it's colder at this point in the season than it was three thousand years ago. The fault is that a calendar is fixed and predictable, climate is not.

Before the Industrial Revolution, climate was in a Little Ice Age. Things warmed up, eventually. And then the Industrial Revolution hit. How much warming was due to natural warming (the end of a little ice age) and how much was manmade? What are the margins here, and what would climate have been had there not been an IR? Nobody can say because we have no facts---we only have statistical aggregates of climate and aggregates of human information. Statistics are historical information---not theoretical information. Cannot reason inductively here.

There are so many logical fallacies at work in such debates, that they're actually quite fun to debunk and pick apart, because such "GREAT MINDS" are at work upon them.

There are many intelligent people who believe that Hurricane KAtrina and Sandy were caused by Global Warming. But hurricanes and storms exist independently of manmade global warming (whatever small margin that is). And nobody blames storms that do not hit large centers of human popluation upon Global Warming. We tend to fixate upon "human affairs" and "human disasters." Nobody worries about every storm in Antarctic waters. They're of little importance in the small picture, but probably of larger importance in the big picture (for any all-encompassing study of climate change), and we don't care much about them because nobody except a couple of hippies ever stakes out a claim down there.


But of course, haters will think I'm just a schill for some big oil company. I haven't studied the science enough to be able to overcome logical fallices in a barrage of statistics.

[sean_stonehart]

In SD is there any concept of Sifu, sigung, sisook etc etc?

In large part, not really since it's rank based instead of TCMA family tree based. At the school I was at (which is the same one Wook is at now), it's still rank based, but there's a little deference given to people who are recognized as "old timers" as it were, regardless of stripes on the belts.

You hear the term "sifu" all the time, but again that's a "position" that can be awarded & removed within schools at a certain level of rank & accomplishment. Not the old, "one school, one sifu". But to mitigate my statement, as with any MA, there are those who deserve the title and would have in ANY MA they chose to practice. There are those you look at going "WTF??".

But the traditional layout, not so much that I've encountered.

[kwaichang]

I am in Clarks ville training 101st for a friend. So there is a combat component, If I were training senior citizens or children i would teach the Art, If someone wants to learn to fight I teach that , if they want to learn forms I teach that. Everyone is different and should not be held to the same standard. If they are improving as they progress then they get a Black Belt or Sash that is what is important. Everyone has different expectations and desires when training. Otherwise if a Form for BB level has the split in it should I not reward you for trying, even if you cant do the split? Its about trying and effort not kicking butt all the time. Few if any would progress otherwise. KC

[kwaichang]

Sifu to me is like Sensei, one who teaches, in SD where I was 3rd BB and above was Sifu. KC

[Judge Pen]

Wook, that all sounds like academic bull**** to me.

[Judge Pen]

I am in Clarks ville training 101st for a friend. So there is a combat component, If I were training senior citizens or children i would teach the Art, If someone wants to learn to fight I teach that , if they want to learn forms I teach that. Everyone is different and should not be held to the same standard. If they are improving as they progress then they get a Black Belt or Sash that is what is important. Everyone has different expectations and desires when training. Otherwise if a Form for BB level has the split in it should I not reward you for trying, even if you cant do the split? Its about trying and effort not kicking butt all the time. Few if any would progress otherwise. KC

True, but when you teach a general class, like most SD classes are, then everyone should have a basic understanding of marital principles, aestic principles and health prinicples. But only a few really seem to get the marial aspect of the art.

[Empty_Cup]

True, but when you teach a general class, like most SD classes are, then everyone should have a basic understanding of marital principles, aestic principles and health prinicples. But only a few really seem to get the marial aspect of the art.

I disagree with you here. This would make it seem like schools don't train with any concept of application which is not the norm from what I've seen in at least 4 schools.

[Kellen Bassette]

So what your saying Wookie, is...

We can't claim that the earth is warming or cooling based on 30 year averages, because it is impossible to know a true average climate without taking into consideration the entire history of the earth?? Is it somehow ridiculous to say any of the non-uniform warming in the past century and a half was caused by the industrial revolution, simply because doing so requires one to discount the Little Ice Age, erase several centuries from existence and ignore the fact that the glaciers that we are melting began receding 100 years before the industrial revolution?!

Do you mean to tell me that it's absurd to claim "the lowest amount of sea ice ever" in the Arctic summer, simply because we are basing that claim on 40 years of satellite data while ignoring the fact that higher average temperatures were actually observed in the region during the 1930's and 40's than in the 90's to the present?? Are you suggesting we should include the great break up of sea ice in 1815, into this discussion??

This a slippery slope you want us to travel sir! If we stop claiming every hurricane and snowstorm as the freak, unprecedented results of a climate that is more extreme than "ever", ("ever" being the past century "scientifically" and the past 30 years colloquially,) how will we account for the fossilized plant life above the Arctic circle, glaciers in Kansas, the mild climate of southern Greenland and Labrador a millennium ago, the subsequent freezing of the North Atlantic or the incredible summer droughts and severe winters of New England in the 17th and 18th centuries?

Simply because the experts suggested in the 70's that an Ice age was inevitable, then in the 80's that NYC would be lost to rising ocean levels by 2000, does not mean we shouldn't believe that the Himalayan glaciers will be totally gone in 18 years, or question the "science" of blaming rising sea levels for the sinking of small delta islands, merely because if it were from rising sea levels than all islands at that elevation world wide would have been lost.

Yes, we've retracted the argument that our brightest minds offered about the loss of sea ice flooding the east coast, when lay people disproved this theory with a glass of water and ice cubes, but the new idea of the massive Greenland ice cap, sliding off the land into the ocean must be taken seriously!

Simply because actual observed data has shown an increase in the Antarctic sea ice, does not mean we can quit saying it's melting on every weather related news bite out there!! Think of the consequences! The average annual temperature is 70 below zero, take into to consideration a global temperature rise of 1 degree per century, assume this trend will last forever, unchanging, ignore the fact that temperatures aren't observing this trend in the Antarctic, calculate how long it will take for temperatures to rise above freezing, then how long it will take to melt 15,000 feet of ice...we, sir, could very well lose the ice cap in the next 78 billion years!!!!!

How dare you question the integrity of the "scientists" competing for the funding of these studies which require completely ignoring all world history before 1850??!!

You are obviously an ignorant, uneducated, religious fanatic. Everyone point and laugh.

[Kellen Bassette]

Not that anyone cares, but my bit on the average annual temperature was referring to the South Pole area, not the entire Antarctic Continent, just realized I didn't clarify that and I don't want to be party to spreading misinformation...

Now, in other related Chinese martial arts matters....

[Judge Pen]

I disagree with you here. This would make it seem like schools don't train with any concept of application which is not the norm from what I've seen in at least 4 schools.

No they train with applications, but I only think a small percentage get the concepts and how to make them work for them against resisting opponents. I do not think this is unique to SD schools, but to many TMA schools. You have a base of students of varying skill and a few really good students.