Quote: (07-27-2013 09:30 PM)soup Wrote:
Quote: (07-27-2013 07:49 PM)Roosh Wrote:
So I guess you can say he literally was a basement dweller troll.
I think the reason we got duped is because so many of us on this side of the manosphere aren't close to his age. How can guys 35 and under do a reality check on the writings of a 60 year old? His anti-marriage rants fit our model of the world, so we quickly accepted them as a sort of truth and validation of our beliefs.
What I like about the forum is that many guys are meeting each other, so the seed is already planted to prevent this from happening again. At the minimum, I will be looking for a "I met him... he exists" level of verification. Otherwise, I will believe nothing.
We're arriving at the point where if you want to be a prominent member of this community, you must be prepared to shake hands with others.
This is a community of ideas.
It's like how Al Qeada isn't centralized. If he couldn't live up to his own words, that's his business.
Truth is truth, it doesn't matter who is saying it.
An example of this is game-deniers. They talk shit all they want, but the truth is that if you go out and try some of the stuff we talk about here, the results are real.
This is why I don't care if a woman like Girls Says What posts MRA videos. As long as what she says is true, it doesn't matter.
It's like medicine; throughout history, there have been atrocious experiments done, but does that mean the knowledge gained from them shouldn't be used to save peoples lives?
Quote: (07-28-2013 04:12 AM)Anaguma Wrote:
Quote: (07-27-2013 09:16 PM)scorpion Wrote:
I think we should take a step back here. It's not like Mark Minter was leading a manosphere cavalry charge. He was just a guy who spit some major venom on marriage and his words managed to strike a chord and resonate with people. I can't speak for everyone of course, but personally I never saw him as some kind of leader or role model. He was just a guy who made some good anti-marriage posts.
The fact that he couldn't live up to his own advice doesn't really bother me, or surprise me. It's like a former drug addict who preaches zealously against drugs for awhile, and then relapses. Anyone who could be so fiercely against something was clearly once very taken in by it. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. In hindsight it was obvious that Mark Minter very much wanted to be married, he liked the idea of being married; he just felt betrayed and wronged by marriage, and he let that anger out in his posts.
However, that doesn't invalidate his writings, in my opinion. I believe they can still stand on their own as a warning to others. Any man who reads them and as a consequence starts to think more carefully about jumping into marriage will still benefit, regardless of Mark Minter's marital status.
Ultimately, the idea is more important than the man himself.
Exactly. His posts stand or fall on their merits regardless of who he is or what he does afterwards. Discrediting his writings because of his actions is an ad hominem attack. Y'all should know better; that is the work of shallower minds like manboob.
His writings indicate that it is possible to end up turning into someone with that line of thought and subsequent fate if you get married without red pill knowledge. And that even if you have the red pill knowledge, it may not be enough to save you from falling anyway. His writings provide very interesting glimpses to possible fates for younger people in the manosphere, which allow them to make better decisions to avoid such fates or know what to expect.
Quote: (07-28-2013 11:13 AM)Vicious Wrote:
Quote: (07-28-2013 06:01 AM)Roosh Wrote:
To think you can separate the idea from the man is foolhardy.
But the idea was never his in the first place, he just worded other men's thoughts in a very accessible way.
I think we're doing ourselves a disservice if we have to accept everything he says or nothing of it.
Heck I'm a guy that's fairly positive about marriage (though not by American law) and I found a lot of gems in his thoughts.
There are many who are saying, "Hey, that's ad hominem - who cares about the man, it's just the ideas that matter!"
I believe this statement is true
except for moral arguments. For moral arguments, which are arguments that make the case for the best way to live one's life, or the right or wrong course of actions, hypocrisy can be used to discredit ideas. And here's why.
As Norset said, it comes down to epistemological reasons:
Quote:Quote:
The ONLY truths we have are mathematical truths.
Remember that scientifically we can only disprove, not prove.
Then way down the "purity hirearchy", far away from 1+1=2, comes advice on how to live your life in relation to other people. Here the messenger and the message can not be separated. The advice in the manosphere falls into this category.
Maybe xkcd can illustrate:
http://xkcd.com/435/
100% spot on good job. Mathematical proofs can be proved without any doubt. In fact there is a large debate in the philosophical community for the last 250 years if mathematics are true by definition (i.e. math is a function of logic, making math a tautology), or true because of formal rules (i.e. math is a function of language, making math nothing more than a game with rules), or true because of the why our brains are wired (i.e. math is a reflection of the mind).
Regardless in all cases no one disputes the validity of math. It does not matter if you are a rapist, 1+1=2.
Then, when it comes to questions that involve empirical research, or as we like to call, "science," we are always left in doubt if our results are complete or not because there is always more empirical data to discover.
Finally, when it comes to questions involving "How should I live my life best?" or "What
should be permissible in a civilized society?" then we no longer have any standards to go by other than our intuition. Ethics cannot be proven logically or mathematically, nor can they be disproved scientifically. For questions of morality all we can do is look at the example of the man.
Thus it is men like Jesus or Socrates who are held as exemplars of morality, and live on in our social consciousness for thousands of years, because these men were not hypocrites. They practiced what they preached and lived their code even as it brought about their death. The truth of their statements could be seen through the power of their lives, and men understand that great moral prophets are not sophists who are only there to bullshit for their own gain.
Mark Minter is a sophist. Not only did he contradict what he wrote, but he used what little online fame he could get to cash out on any pussy he could find. He was a highly entertaining writer (His "Marriage is for Pussies" rant is still one of my favorite pieces of manosphere writing) but his heart was not in it; he was just telling us what we wanted to hear so we would elevate him to some position of fame.
And now, because everyone knows Mark was a hypocrite in it for himself and not for others, we know that everything he wrote is suspect and probably contains falsehoods designed to deliberately mislead and manipulate his readers for own own gain.
Thus ad-hominem is not a fallacy when applied to moral arguments; indeed ad-hominem is perhaps the only thing that invalidates any moral teachings due to their unfalsifiable and unprovable epistemological nature.
This is why people look at Catholicism with skepticism when you've got priests preaching abstinence and yet they are molesting little boys.
This is why people looked at Al Gore's global warming alarmism as bullshit when his mansion consumed more energy than 20 normal houses combined.
This is why men look at women with suspicion when they claim they want nice guys, yet they spend their youth's chasing bad boy alphas.
You
cannot separate a moral teaching from the person who makes the teaching, because the person is the only standard by which we can judge a teaching by.
Contributor at Return of Kings. I got banned from twatter, which is run by little bitches and weaklings. You can
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