Well, you're certainly acting consistently with the motive I suggested.  Cop=good cop.  Cog=bad cop.   Like Cop, you've ignored the five reasons why I couldn't accept his declaration.  For example, I posed this question in the last post:

"Don't you agree that given the number of similar proclamations that have been falsely or mistakenly reported in the past, it is prudent to dismiss such claims without something other than a textual claim to back them up?"

People lie, Cog.  They lie a lot.  Isn't it prudent to dismiss such claims without something other than a textual claim back them up, given that well-established fact?

". . . similar proclamations to what?"

Any.  Isn't the point that, given people lie, "everyone does' that we cannot rely only on the textual assertions?

"People don't lie a lot. They do lie -- everyone does -- but not a lot. Generally, people try to tell the truth, especially in regard to events about which they are indifferent."

And the only way to know that people lie or tell the truth is to examine corroborating evidence, right?  You cannot take the matter on mere assertion, you need some sort of independent corroboration.  Right?  Also, your caveat that people try to tell the truth "especially in regard to events about which they are indifferent" seems to imply that conversely, when they have a vested interest, they are more likely to lie.

Thus, since we don't have a way to test this at this point apart from either of your words, and you both have a vested interest, the burden of demonstration of truthfulness is higher, right? 

"No one can know with infallible, indubitable certainty that they are not -- not even the posters themselves."

Well, this is definately a different tone than the one you presented when I had the 'Does Cogito indisputably exist' thread.  In there, you adamantly asserted that it is 'proved' that 'Cogito' does exist.  I can't keep your standards straight.

"For example, you say that some words used by Copernicus and I are ONLY used by us, yet you give no specific words as evidence. You simply throw out the naked assertion and hope that others will believe it is true."

No, actually, what I did was say that we are assuming that you are the same person, and I declined to provide evidence because it was a foregone conclusion and required no demonstration.  Its self-evident.  Do you have a problem with this line of reasoning?


The fact that our writing styles are dissimilar,"

Most of your litany is all subjective.

"that we have different IP#s,"

Easily faked.

"that we've had disagreements on th"is board in the past,"

Just what we'd expect from someone trying to portray themselves as two people rather than one.  Clever- but perfectly consistent with the assertions in this thread.

"perhaps do not fully mentally process it because it doesn't support what you want to believe is true."

Me thinks that the jokes on you in terms of being able to mentally process what is going on in this thread.  See:

"This is unsurprising to me. You do the same thing with your belief in your god."

Too funny.  You may want to put a helmet on.  Some of the things currently going over your intellectually advanced head may hit it and cause lating damage.

100% of the people voting in the poll that you are both the same person.   That should tell you something.

Aha.  The light has dawned, eh.  Here comes cut and run number 2.

Well, let's take your comments, first.

About cimics:  you have to remember, he's a theist himself, so his judgement can't be trusted, right?  He should fit into the category of believing 'without evidence' as much as I do.    Anyway, I notice that you've avoided making a definitive statement about the quality of the logic itself.   If this thread is to become interesting, you're going to have to eat crow and 'play along.' 

So, to summate previous points (reserving the right to return to them), since both you and Cop have an interest here (and thus are not indifferent), and people have been known to lie, especially when they are indifferent (and you guy's' ain't), explain to me why we should accept Copernicus' explicit textual statement that he is not you, and your insinuation that you are not him?

I would take that 'different screen names', 'writing styles,' IP #s, are being implicitly considered by you as mechanisms of corroboration... even though all can be faked...  its your view apparently that such conspiracy-mongering requires some sort of actual evidence to support it, and not merely the presupposition.  Do I understand that right?  I don't want to read into your sparse comments too much.

"To be explicit, I would call the logic used in your argument weak."

Thank you.

"Second: I agree that Copernicus is not a disinterested observer and that therefore his claim not to have created me (boy, those are strange words to type! :)) is not necessarily a good reason ceteris paribus to believe that his claim is true."

Thank you again.

"[As a side note, I'll just point out that Copernicus never offered his denial as 'evidence' that your claim is false. He only denied what is fairly obvious because you wrote that his failure to do so up to that point was tacit agreement that your claim is true. Now that he and I have both denied this, you can no longer make this particular claim.]"

In my own side note, I never said that he did so.  The question is whether or not it is evidence to US. 

"And third: We should believe Copernicus' counter-claim is true not because he says it's true but because you haven't proved your non-self evident assertion to be true."

Very interesting.  So, barring the absence of the introduction of actual evidence, it would be your view that a mere presupposition or assumption that one person may possibly themselves find to be 'self-evident,' you would take what we might call an 'innocent until proven guilty' approach.  Would that be fair?


"Since the assumption"

This is not an important point for me to dwell on, but given your statement above, evidence to support the view that 'every screenname' every 'Ip', etc, would actually have to be connected to evidence if the thing is to be done rigorously.  But as I pointed out already, some of those (like the writing style) are subjective, and others could be faked by a crafty, intelligent person.  Or do you think Cop is not an intelligent person? 

It seems to me that especially -- ESPECIALLY! -- we should be skeptical of a belief that we hold based solely on another person's fallible interpretation of his or her experience when that interpretation just so happens to confirm a preexisting bias of ours.  A 'bias' is not so far from an 'assumption.'  So, yes, this is an aside, but since your perspective requires and relies on us to submit to a preexisting bias, I think we are perfectly rational in remaining skeptical.

"the onus is upon the person who believes this not to be the case in some particular instance to show that it is not the case."

That assumes that we are allowed to just adopt the assumptions that are self-evident to YOU.  There ought to be an onus on you'all to show that your assumptions are reasonable and that the potential cloaking mechanisms which I have mentioned can be ruled out.

That belongs still to the 'aside.'

"Perhaps if you laid out your argument in a more formal style, you, too, could see the flaws inherent in it."

heheheheheh

""I would take that 'different screen names', 'writing styles,' IP #s, are being implicitly considered by you as mechanisms of corroboration... even though all can be faked...  its your view apparently that such conspiracy-mongering requires some sort of actual evidence to support it, and not merely the presupposition.""

"Conspiracy? What conspiracy? It takes a minimum of two people to conspire."

Read the quote again.  The 'conspiracy-mongering' was not a reference to you, or Cop, or the putative single agent being argued for in this thread, but rather the arguments that I am using.  I'm not characterizing ya'll as conspiracy mongering, I'm characterizing my own argument that way. 

You're quite the rigorous thinker yourself. 

In this case, where are we going to get the 'something more?'  Right now we have bald assertions and evidence that is largely subjective (and the objective evidence can be faked easily), and the only counter is that the burden is on me to go beyond the prima facie appearance of things.  Why?

Well, you are the one making the assertion.  You carry the burden of proof, whether you like it or not.  Despite that Cogito has made a reasonable prima facie case that we are not the same person.  And, contrary to your assertion, the objective evidence cannot be faked easily.  It would be expensive and time consuming to build up two distinct online personas and keep them apart consistently.  Moreover, you haven't even suggested a possible motive for a single individual to make such an effort on your board, with its handful of participants.  I've seen sock puppets exposed on larger boards, such as Internet Infidels, and usually they are quite easy to spot in terms of similarity of writing styles and vocabulary usage.

That you are one in the same is not an improbable event that I ought to outrightly reject.  Depending on how you define 'outrightly,' of course.  But, since there is nothing particular extraordinary about people posing under different screen names, I don't see why I shouldn't take the position represented in this thread seriously.

I prefer the word "implausible" over "improbable" in order to avoid distracting discussions about probability theory.    And your claim is quite implausible, given your lack of evidence or even the suggestion of a possible motive.  For people to pose under a different screen name (aka to create a "sock puppet") is not all that common.  Usually it happens on discussion boards when someone is banned and wants to continue the discussion.  I've personally never done that.  In the few cases where I have had posts censored--e.g. in the Christian Forums--I've always elected to move on to boards where I can post more freely.  I have neither the time nor the desire to play that kind of game. 

This isn't really that difficult of a concept to understand. The more a claim flies in the face of human experience, the more extraordinary the claim is; the more likely the evidence is to convince an unbiased person that a claim is true, the more extraordinary the evidence is.  There is nothing extraordinary about this claim, it is within human experience, I'm not positing anything miraculous, so the position is perfectly rational to hold.  Ok, the idea that you are two separate individuals is not extraordinary either- but both positions are rational and the evidence you've cited before is far too easy to fake to merely dismiss.

Again, it is not.  Sock puppets are usually very easy to detect, because we all have fairly distinctive writing styles.  People in my line of work--computational linguistics--have produced algorithmic techniques for detecting authorship.  It is possible to do that because writing styles are a bit like fingerprints.  You are trying to minimize the difficulty of what you imagine, because you are trying to build a case for believing an implausibility.

Would the two of you be willing to scan in images of your driver's licenses and social security cards?  Then we might be able to get somewhere, I think.

No, I wouldn't be comfortable with giving out my driver's license or social security number.  I've already been the victim of identity fraud once.  And I like the partial anonymity of a pseudonym, although I don't think it much of a barrier to discovering my true identity with a little googling around.  I've never made a secret of my location in Bellevue or bits and pieces of my background over time.  But I don't really think that you doubt seriously that we are two different people.  You are trying to make a point that you think will ultimately support jumping to the conclusion that your god exists.  You have to build cases with this kind of logic if you are to hold onto your belief that your faith is rational.

Regrettably, being a linguist does not confer wizard-like powers in the use of language.  I can't even speak a foreign language without a bad accent.  One of the great linguists of the 20th century, Roman Jakobson, was described as speaking five different languages in fluent Russian. 

Apologies for the delay.  Had a slew of loose ends with my book to deal with.

"Despite that Cogito has made a reasonable prima facie case that we are not the same person."

Reasonable based on what criteria?  His case is based on making an assumption that two different screen names are two different people. 

Your distinction that the objective evidence cannot be faked 'easily' does not go very far.  At the very least, it would suggest that you know what is involved in faking such a thing, doesn't it?  How would you know if its easy or hard if you haven't looked into it yourself?  And if you haven't looked into it, why should we consider this point credible?  And if you have looked into it, that suggests that you have some knowledge on how to pull it off.

"Moreover, you haven't even suggested a possible motive for a single individual to make such an effort on your board,"

That's not true.  In the first place, you provided a motive all on your own.  In the second place, I've offered a possible and 'plausible' motive at least twice.

Hey, maybe if you repeat this assertion again it will be true.  We'll have to find out.

"And your claim is quite implausible, given your lack of evidence"

Who says I don't have evidence?

"or even the suggestion of a possible motive."

Oops!  There is the assertion again.  Is it true this time?  lol, nope.

As for 'motive' I don't think the goal is to keep anyone off balance.  I think the goal is to farm the dirty work of blatant insults off to Cogito so that Cop can use his veiled insult approach.  Indeed, you notice this sort of behavior in any thread where the two of them post- including this one and also the 'Time- Dawkins' thread, and others.

I think most English readers would consider this at least a 'suggestion' of possible motive.

"Again, it is not.  Sock puppets are usually very easy to detect, because we all have fairly distinctive writing styles."

Yes, but an intelligent person, being aware of this, could deliberately work to counteract it.  You are an intelligent person, and since you have pointed this out that shows that you are aware of this.  In fact....

"People in my line of work--computational linguistics ..."

Ah yes.  Not only are you intelligent, aware of the fact that distinctive writing styles exist among multiple personalities, but your specific LINE OF WORK is computational linguistics.  Means.  Motive.  Opportunity.  You've got the 'means' all locked up, don't you. 

Now, it so happens that it is precisely computational linguistical analysis was what first prompted me to consider they hypothesis in the first place.  Your posts are not as different as you might think. 

"No, I wouldn't be comfortable with giving out my driver's license or social security number."

Actually, I realized a couple of hours later that this wouldn't resolve the matter, anyway. 

"But I don't really think that you doubt seriously that we are two different people."

Oh?  What about this:

"However, I now have doubts that sntjohnny himself actually realizes how silly he has been.  He may actually believe that someone would bother to go to all the trouble to create two different sock puppets on his board just to give him grief."

Such vaccilations in your position makes it hard to try to present an argument.  Arguments are molded in an attempt to respond to people's true positions.  Yours appears to shift rapidly.    I will have to study harder on how to do that, myself.  :)

"You are trying to make a point that you think will ultimately support jumping to the conclusion that your god exists."

Are you so sure?  Perhaps if there is a point to be made it is that it will undermine arguments jumping to the conclusion that my god does not exist.  Two different things.

Well, the IPs they post from are different.

hehe... I've been able to change my IP too.  I can cruise the internet baby with any IP I want.  Not hard to do.

<---- [preparing to log in as "Sir Somebody Something"]

One person using two identities. What a ludicrous notion.

No, that never happens here.