Most of metaphysics is word play. — Banno

I recognize that I'm not going to sway your opinion because it's fully committed to the Wittgensteinian model, but there is perhaps value in pointing out the source of our ongoing disagreement to the extent there's confusion in that regard.

If our focus is only upon words (which is your model), then it follows their meaning must be deciphered from shared use as opposed to the ontologicial constitution of the object because to explore the meaning of an object absent language would violate your foundational principle.

That it to say, to you, the beleagured beetle is not what anchors the word "beetle" to mean beetle, but it is our shared understanding of the use of the term, as opposed to the mystery that lies within our box. An entire system has therefore been created to avoid figuring out what the beetle actually is through language alone. Since you won't break character and you insist upon responding consistent with your language-centric position, we just go in circles arguing within our preferred systems speaking (ironically) from unshared positions.

Hopefully this post will at least point out the competing systems and let the casual reader pick his poison.

You may believe my approach is a form of incoherentism, referencing that which can't be described, but I see yours as a form of avoidism and denialism, refusing to delve into the real question as to what the beetle is and refusing to admit to simple scientific truths about how perception imposes upon reality. The best you can say is that the beetle is something, but since we can't speak of it, we avoid discussing it, and we deny it can be anything but the very beetle we talk about.

This leads to a difficult direct realism that is attenuated by mental gymnastics where we don't actually say the beetle is exactly as it appears, but we instead say the beetle isn't anything other than what the lot of us agree that it is, but, at the same time, that is actually what it is. The term "actually" even causes problems for you because it offers the suggestion there is something other than what the beetle is versus what we agree the beetle is. "Actual" is outmoded Kantian talk according to this model.

The avoidism becomes most apparent in your discussions with @Michael where he begins to offer an explanation of the beetle, as in its color is not a part of it, and that results in your refusal to speak of the beetle as an object versus it being a word. That, I think, forms the substance of his repeated complaint that you can't distinguish between a noun (a thing) and an adjective (a subjective descriptor).

Maybe this summarizes this well, maybe not, but it's a try. I do think the fact that you can't admit to the simple fact that color is imposed on an external object and is a subjective interpretation is a serious difficulty with your position. My position suffers from possibly falling into idealism, or at least an irrelevant form of realism, which too is a problem. Mine at least (I'd argue) has a certain fidelity to truth where it's willing to admit we may get no where in finally explaining things because of limits imposed by the noumena, but yours (I'd argue) is conconcted. Clever, complicated, obscure at many points, but concocted.

Nothing compares to this:

What is the purpose of saying "The pen is red"? Why is that useful to say? — Harry Hindu

You are reporting upon what you see. Maybe you want to be provided the red pen

Does a red apple and red pen have the same constitution? Could we mean more than one thing in saying "the apple is red" vs. "the pen is red"? — Harry Hindu

The noumena isn't known.

- define... so what, setting out essence-of-pen? "Comprised" of redness? Nothing so sophisticated. Just one red pen amongst others, red and not so red. — Banno

You're forever caught up in language games and not metaphysics, and so you ask these sorts of questions. I'll give you props for consistency, but your comments fail to appreciate perhaps my rejection of linguistic analysis as a meaningful way to fully address metaphysics.

So, no, I'm not in search of the essence, suggesting the redness is an accidental property and not a necessary one. I'm saying the pen has no red in it at all. It is not a property of the pen itself

The property of the pen itself is noumenal. The redness is phenomenal.

Then if you also think that there is no such thing as internal red, we might well agree. — Banno

How could there not be internal red? I see red, and it's not even necessary that external stimuli exist for sensations to exist.

In other words, stop trying to be God and be happy with your lot as a tiny human, with limited understanding. — frank

That we can't know everything doesn't mean we can't know anything.

We still landed a man on the moon even if we've not figured out Xeno's paradox.

The human viewpoint is that gravity did it. The view beyond human ideas is not available to me. — frank

Assuming it possible the planets moved differently prior to human perspective, it does not follow they moved differently prior to human language.

I can accept that language offers us a tool to understand the world and that it shapes some of our understanding, but the idea that non-liguistic organisms have no understanding of the world or that all that I touch and all that I feel and all that I know is language mediated is a concocted theory to sustain a Wittgensteinian model that is likely based upon a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein.

I say "likely" because Wittgenstein's communication skills were lacking. Ironically.

He is talking about the field of physics, not the laws of physics. — Lionino

We both know what each other are talking about.

No, you need language for physics, don't you? — frank

How did the planets move before Adam looked up and saw it go from evening to the morning?

Language sets out the whole framework of physics. — frank

Prior to language, was there physics?

But the pen looks red to me, too. And given the right filter we might make the red pen look blue... which pen? The red pen. The red pen looks blue. Not Hanover's "The pen that looks red to me looks blue to me". — Banno

But this ignores my disambiguation.

The constitution of the pen is disputed, not the appearance.

If by "red pen" you mean to define a pen as comprised of redness, whatever that means, then sure, your red pen can look blue if you filter it.

My point is there no such thing as external red, so your hypothesized "red pen" isn't a thing. Yes, the pen looks red. If you want to reclaim the ambiguity and say "yet we say 'the pen is red' and refuse to distinguish between reality and perception, have at it.

Ok. So for Hanover, "the pen is red" is not true. I think it is. — Banno

If "the pen is red" means the pen looks red to me, I agree with that.

If "the pen is red" means the pen contains redness, I don't.

And yet we agree that the pen is red. — Banno

No, that is our disagreement. We agree we perceive the pen as red. Maybe you think the pen is actually red, but I don't.

We agree the pin causes us to perceive pain. Maybe someone thinks the pin is painful. I don't, but that would follow if one insists upon imbuing physical objects with mental interpretations.

There is no external red. At best, there is an external object that elicits a phenomenal state of red. Just like pain. There is no external pain. At best, there is an external object that elicits pain.

Do unto you what was done unto me to determine if my sensation is like yours.

If you want to know if my pain is like your pain, I can stick you with the same pin I stick myself.

Pin | Pain || Apple | Red.

Pin is to pain as apple is to red. There is nothing philosophically special about the sense of touch that distinguishes it from the sense of vision.

I'm guessing you're like me. — frank

And I think I'm guessing I'm like you, which is that if I walk in drenched, with an angry look on my face, and with a broken umbrella, you recognize I got caught in the rain, my umbrella broke, and I'm angry about it. Do you really say all those things internally in words prior to arriving at your conclusion?

I'll trust you if you say you do, but I don't, which is why I find much of this language based metaphysics contrived. You have to buy into facts that are just false, and the facts are non-empirical, but entirely internal, so there's no evidence that can be pointed to to prove these critical facts needed to support the linguistic theory.

Language plays a very important role in everything you experience. — frank

How do you know how I experience?

I'm telling you there are plenty of experiences I have that language plays no role in. How do you know that to be false?

I suppose a point could be made that without an external example, we wouldn't be able to know we're using the term "red" consistently over time (and then only maybe), but the suggestion we couldn't distinguish colors without words is ridiculous.

Thanks for the effort that you put into your post but I can't connect your reply to the example I brought up in my post, I agree that subjective consistency doesn't suggest objective existence but I feel like my example wasn't really addressed. — Lionino

Your question was, as I understood it, that you get how we can doubt the redness of the ball is part of the ball but we can't doubt the roundness is part of the ball.

Is that a correct restatement?

If it is, my response is to ask what you're relying upon other than your senses to distinguish primary qualities (the roundness) from secondary ones (the redness). And the follow up is to then ask why touch is more reliable than sight.

My point being that your brain is what interprets and your mind is where the experience lies. Why must there be a direct link from what is "out there" to what is in your experience when it comes to touch but not vision.

My prior post just pointed out that the extent to which the brain could interpret and translate the data input is unlimited.

However, if someone sees and feels a round object where someone else sees and feels a square one, and the square-person told the round-person to grab the object by the edges, wouldn't the round-person be bewildered? Surely, when a square-person says corner the round-person would think of a round object, but the round-person can't think of anywhere special in that object (any given point on the surface of a sphere is the same). — Lionino

That only points to the consistency among human beings when it comes to detecting gross properties of shape, but subjective consistency doesn't suggest objective existence. That is, if every last human being saw apples as red, you'd still conclude that the color were subjective, but then assume that their being red to human perception satisfied some universal need for humans.

Consider it this way, if we saw the world as an air traffic controller saw airplanes, as little blips on the screen, that wouldn't suggest airplanes were blips, even if every person saw it that way. That would just be our mode of perception designed for us to navigate our existence. The alarm that activates when another plane is approaching too fast is accepted as not being the airplane itself, but only an alert for us to be aware of the danger to our existence. It is as logically possible then to assume the visual we see of the oncoming airplane when it comes up to our face is not the airplane itself either, but is just our alert system activating.

If we accept evolution as true, the expectation would be that our senses would be designed for survival more than direct fidelity to the truth. Offensive smells are offensive not because it says anything at all about the object, but it could just be telling us about ourselves and what is beneficial to us or not.

My analogies do assume an external threat to our existence, but a construct could be created where they don't, but those threats are internal and they are modifying our behaviors as necessary. That is to say, if we're going to question reality, we can go as deep into the Matrix as our imagination allows us.

This is Hume's phenomenalism, and I agree with it. There's nothing in the visual field that says: tree. Tree is an idea. — frank

I was thinking more along the lines that I was describing Kant's transcendental idealism, which, per Google's AI function "is a philosophical position that states that the mind structures the data our senses receive from the world, meaning that the world as we experience it is dependent on the way our minds work."

That would appear a direct response to Locke's suggestion that there are primary qualities that describe true reality, which Kant pushes away into the noumenal.

And the phenomenal state we have of the tree is not just a tree standing in some sort of isolation, but it's of everything we think about the tree and the millions of pieces of data we use to then form it into a conscious state of the tree (i.e. transcendental apperception).

The discussion of the subunits of the tree (the trunk, the limbs, the leaves, and then going all the way down to its most basic atomic substructures) isn't helpful to the question of what is the tree devoid of the mental interpretation. Regardless of where we place our microscope to look, whatever we see remains mediated by the mind.

But you just did with pain? You accept that pain is a mental percept. Presumably you accept that trees are not a mental percept? — Michael

I'm saying if a tree exists I have no idea what a tree is.

A "tree" is noumenal the way you're using it and it's greenness is phenomenal.

When you speak of its atomic level parts you know about, you're still speaking of the phenomenal.

All your talk of color and pain as being mind dependent is true, but you've not found in those properties some special exception. All descriptions of all objects are mind dependent. The speed of the subatomic particles in the tree are mind dependent as are their size and shape.

If your point is that color is mind dependent, mine is that every property you know of (as in truly every last one) is as well. Why focus on color specifically then?

Do you believe that pain is a mental percept or a mind-independent property of distal objects? — Michael

Pain is a mental precept.

Some things, like pain, are in the head. Other things, like trees, are not. — Michael

I'm just not buying into Lockean primary and secondary qualities where some qualities are deemed mind created and others inherent in the object.

Locke would acknowledge color is secondary, or mind dependent but would insist shape, size, motion, solidity, and number were primary, or not mind dependent.

I find that distinction arbitrary and impossible to support. A perceiver has no way of knowing what his mind created and imposed on an object and cannot begin to describe what a unperceived object would be.

All you know of the tree is the bundle of properties you perceive and since no property can be said to be primary, all the tree is as far as you know are those mentally imposed perceptions.

When you say the tree is mind independent, what is the tree? All you refer to are mind dependent aspects when you describe it.

The tree to you is just some vague whatever that makes the secondary properties in your mind appear.

Since you can't know of the existence of the vague whatever by perceiving it, you must have another way of knowing it. How do you know the noumena is there? Faith, necessity to salvage realism, or how?

you have a red pen in your hand, you can pass the red pen to me. If you have a pain in your hand, you cannot pass the pain to me.

The analogy between pain and colour fails because there is a public aspect to colour that it not available for pain. — Banno

This has nothing to do with public and private. It has to do with a category mistake you're making.

We convey matter to our senses in different ways. If I want you to feel the pen, the pen must be put in your hand (or "passed" as you say). I click it for you to hear it. I wave it to spread it's aroma so you can smell it. I put it to your lips to taste it.

All those things can be shared or done privately. We can taste it and feel it together, or I can touch it or see it alone. That the experience of whatever the sensation is is ultimately private is obvious, but because you can't hold a pen up in the front of the room and we not all feel the pain of its point just means we don't experience pain by emitted light, soundwaves, or in an otherwise distant way.

I don't follow how it's more public for me and you to see a red pen simultaneously than for me and you to feel a warm swimming pool simultaneously. I recognize that often pain and direct touch sensations occur privately, but that distinction isn't consistent. I taste my drink privately but you could stick a second straw in the drink as well

You've simply identified that a scream is public and a caress private in the vernacular sense, but that doesn't identify a meaningful philosophical distinction. An important philosophical distinction would arise if I experienced a sensation you couldn't imagine due to an entire lack of consistent experience. In that case, we'd have a true beetle in the box, which is (maybe) what you're getting at.

I'm of the position that the pen is an amalgamation of sensate properties, underwritten by noumena. The phenomenal state is of those senses and it forms the identify of the pen to the perceiver, but this passing of public objects versus feeling of private pain doesn't form an important difference.

That we don't see pain distantly and touch color privately just means the category of pain is transmitted differently than the category of vision.

Now that we're talking philosophy and not strictly science, I'll re-enter:

So to make this simple, here are two sets of claims:

Naive realism
1. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of sui generis, simple, intrinsic, qualitative, non-relational, non-reducible properties.
2. These sui generis properties are mind-independent.

Dispositionalism
3. Our ordinary conception of colours is that of micro-structural properties or reflectances.
4. These micro-structural properties are mind-independent.

I agree with (1) and (4) and disagree with (2) and (3). — Michael

I don't think you can consistently hold 1 and 4 without adopting a non-emprical epistimology. I say that because I don't see where the property of color is ontologically different than any other property such that you can draw a distinction between how you can know micro-structures any better or worse than colors. Both are properties and both are gained through perception, and we have already determined that perception is flawed due to mediation with the mind.

So, if you know that micro-structures are mind independent, your justification for that knowledge must be based upon something other than perceptions. It could be raw faith, it could be just a foundational belief to avoid solopsism, it could be a pragmatism, and it could be something else, but it can't be based upon empirically based information because such information is inherently subjective. From subjective perceptions you are concluding something objective and absolute, and I don't see how that can be done.

.

I didn't enter this discussion to question scientific realism and argue for idealism or solipsism or nihilism. I am simply explaining what the science shows. I trust the science. — Michael

Fair enough, but that sound less like philosophy and more just basic neuroscience and physics. I trust science as well for daily living, but I don't think it addresses the metaphysical questions except to the extent it admits to the corruption between the perception and the reality.

Your argument seems to be that if I claim that colours are mind-dependent then to be consistent I must claim that everything is mind-dependent. This is nonsensical reasoning. You might as well argue that if I claim that pain is mind-dependent then to be consistent I must claim that everything is mind-dependent. — Michael

What I'm saying is that all that you know is mediated by the mind. There is no science that suggests otherwise. What that means is that you cannot trust your perceptions to be accurate reflections of reality because you don't know what your mind did to the incoming objects.

For example, an apple might be represented by some as sweetness, others as red, others as round, and others as a bound up mass of atoms. The reason we perceive it as we do might have nothing to do with truth, but perhaps just what maximizes our chances of survival or even something else.

Fire is experienced as red and as pain, both of which you know not to be properties of the fire. At some level you stop acknowledging that the perception isn't correlated to the object, but you declare it an inherent property. That seems to occur at the atomic level as you've presented it, where you just throw down and say I know there are atomic properties and they present as X,Y, and Z and they behave in a, b, c ways.

My question is why can you say you just know the subatomic particles move at certain speeds (for example) or that photons behave in certain ways if you're relying upon your mind mediated perceptions?

If we've established an unreliability of the mind as to how it correlates with reality, I just don't see how you can call an end to that unreliability at a certain level and then feel safe to claim that what you know about your perceptions are accurate and not blurred, manipulated, altered, and corrupted by the mind.

↪Michael I'll have to think about this for a while.
12 minutes ago — frank

It's been 12 minutes for God's sake. How much time do you need?

Atoms are mind-independent objects with mind-independent properties; their electrons absorb and re-emit various wavelengths of light, this light stimulates the rods and cones in the eyes, the eyes send signals to the brain, the neurons in the visual cortex are activated, giving rise to visual percepts, including colour percepts. — Michael

What can you possibly know about an atom other than your perception of it?

If the redness is in my head and not the chair, why don't I say that about the shape as well? And why don't I keep going down the list until I realize that everything I know about the chair, including its atomic composition, is based upon my perceptions. Since I've already said my perceptions are mind creations, then I'm not talking about the atoms, but I'm talking about my perceptions, which is all I can ever talk about.

I get that my perceptions present to me a world where everything works together, like it appears that light bounces off chair objects that goes into my eyeballs and that makes me see chairs, but that doesn't mean that system is underwritten by an external reality of mysterious unknowable objects. That just means chairs look red when there's nothing inherently red about them and it might mean that eyes look like they receive light that gets interpreted, but that doesn't mean those perceptions of those events actually happened. If we can't say the red of the chair is in the chair, why are so sure your analysis of cones and rods isn't just mind created interpretations?

In other news, if you put a capital Y in parenthesis, you'll create the thumbs up symbol. I learned that in the post above, so I had to insert a space after the Y to disable it. As in (Y ) versus (Y).

This shortcut will save hours. (Y)

How do we perceive a fire’s propensity to cause pain? By putting our hand in the fire and being hurt. In the case of colour, we look at the pen and see red. — Michael

I think all we can say is that when we have the perception of X and we perceive ourselves doing Y and we then experience Z that we can say Z follows from X and Y, but I don't see where the jump comes to explaining the external world.

That is, I see my hand (X) and then I see my hand go toward a perception of fire (Y ) and then I feel pain (Z). If I've started with the assumption that all the properties I perceive are mental creations, it just seems an item of faith to suggest there is an external reality composed of definitionally unknowable substances that underwrite all my perceptions. I say they are definitionally unknowable because if we assert that all properties are mental creations, it seems necessary to admit that a propertyless substance would be unknowable because what can I know other than properties?

I think it’s a little more than an assumption. Perhaps it’s the most rationally justified explanation. — Michael

It's certainly a built in assumption that generally goes unchallenged, but that would seem consistent with everything else we've said, which is that reality as perceived is a mental construct. That is, no one outside of philosophical circles goes around questioning if the flower is red or if the redness of the flower is a mental construct. If you're going open the door to questioning inherent beliefs, then why arbitrarily limit it? Why is it a rationally justified explanation to say the red is just in your head but it's not a rationally justified explanation to also say the entirety of the flower is just in your head?

I think it’s justified to claim that mind-independent chairs exist but that mind-independent pain doesn’t, and most would agree. — Michael

Except that the concept of a mind independent chair is incoherent. The only thing I know about chairs are its subjectively imposed properties, and so I have no idea what a true chair is.

Since physics studies what we perceive, it is the study of perceptions, just like all of science. It's for that reason you can't use physics as evidence of the external world.

All you're doing is assuming a dualistic universe of minds and bodies as your starting point , but I don't see how it's any more rational to assume idealism, materialism, or dualism. I defer to dualism as well, but that's either because it's a foundational construct in modern thought or it's something that we inherently accept as human beings, but if we're going to dig deeper into the question of what reality is composed of, I don't see how it survives any better than the alternatives.

The existence of its atoms and their propensity to reflect light at certain wavelengths. — Michael

How do we perceive this propensity? Do we just assume our perceptions are externally caused?

Since all perceptions are subjective responses, you can't claim any property to exist objectively, except to just say the perceptions must be being elicited by something.

That is, an atom has no particular shape, size or color. It just makes me see what I think to be a chair.

Prince's solo at the end of this is conclusive proof for the existence of God.

I can be sure that there's red and that there's pain, but given our scientific understanding of physics and biology and psychology, it seems to be that red and pain are properties of minds, not properties of pens and fire.

The issue isn't over whether or not these properties exist, but over where in the world these properties exist. At least when it comes to colour, some appear to be locating them in the wrong place. — Michael

But doesn't this just raise the age old problem associated with Locke's primary and secondary properties distintiction? You've identified pain and color as secondary qualities not inherent in the object itself and have suggested there are primary properties independent of the observer that exist in the object.

If we know that the blueness of the chair is only in my head, what is an example of a property of the chair that is in the chair itself even if my head (or nobody's head) never existed?

Still for brevity’s sake, I reach the conclusion sans argument that while books are to be read, they are also to be challenged, and once challenged and the challenges disposed of, to be set aside or even discarded in favour of the business of living a life. I leave it to the discussion to settle what books this applies to, whether all, some, or none, or what types. — tim wood

But what is a book but words and what are words but communication and what is communication other than information? How is it meaningfully different to see a bird in a tree than to reduce to symbols "the bird is in the tree"? That is to say, reading a book about a bird is an experience of life just as is seeing a bird. The book is but another way to obtain information, and it is through words we learn of other people's experiences, not exclusively, but almost.

If you say you are to absorb what you experience, challenge it, and then move on, that is a theory of living, but I don't see how you can limit that to only symbolic experiences. I also am not sure we see the thing in itself anyway, so the visualization of the bird might be nothing more than a symbol anyway.

This is part of my greater theory that all language and all experience is poetry.

And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be
Pink Floyd

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1

Colours are biological phenomena that arise when we and many other organisms interact with our visible environment. — jkop

I'm sure there's red. Do you know of a good reason to doubt colour realism? — jkop

You describe environment X that interacts with perceiver Y and the perceiver has the subjective state of seeing red.

Without Y, what can be said of X? How do you know it exists and what are its properties?

There's little reason to doubt the existence of a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that we by convention label 'red' . — jkop

If you can be assured there is radiation, why can't you be sure there's red?

Even in deciding not to run, Joe Biden did something Trump could never do - which was to put the interests of the Party and the nation above his own.

I’m not particularly swayed by the euphoria sorrounding Harris today. Let’s see how it plays out over the weeks and months ahead (although there’s not that many of them.) I think it is true to say that it’s the politics of hope against the politics of hate and fear. — Wayfarer

If Harris does make a major misstep in the next few weeks, I wonder who the powers that be will replace her with so that I can know who to vote for. I think the total vote count for the candidate of the party that hails itself as the protector of democracy is zero, as in exactly zero people voted for her to be the Democratic nominee.

What happened has nothing to do with love for country and selflessness. It has to do with the Democrats having selected Biden as the nominee, blocking any other candidate from running against him, denying he had become mentally incompetent over objections by the right, finally being exposed and realizing they couldn't win with him, and then forcing him out and finding someone they thought might be able to win.

I'm not saying anything positive about the Republicans here. I'm just refusing to pretend that some higher ideals drove the Democrats, that there is anything particularly democratic about the Democrats, or that either side is interested in anything other than maintaining power.

Man's Best Friend

Fred jumped on the couch right before I sat down, not because he wanted to steal it, but because he wanted to sit with me.

Yup! More platitudes.

So my conclusion for this topic is -- we don't have an answer. Nothing. Rien.

Morality is a chore. — L'éléphant

It was more a reductio ad absurdum.

Yea, but that's child's play compared to the way the Republican party has gerrymandered North Carolina. So the attack on the Capitol where they appeared to be prepared to freakin execute the Vice President is like infant's play. Like with a rattle or something. — frank

I doubt that. I think the removal of a competitor from the race is about as anti-competitive and anti-democratic as it comes. You won that race in the back room without a single vote cast.

I'm not seeing anything criminal in Dems pursuing legal challenges. — RogueAI

There is nothing criminal in that for sure. And there's nothing criminal in carving out districts that give advantage to one party over the other, to putting polling places in unreachable locations by those without transportation, to closing polling places at earlier times to benefit one party over the other. These are the games the parties play to interfere with the will of the people being expressed.

It's the way it always works. A sophisticated player creates rules to benefit him (like regulations, tax code, or whatever) and makes out like a bandit. An unsophisticated player kicks open a door a busts heads.

The question then isn't one of legality, but morality. If you place a moral value on the successful candidate being the one who the public most wants to win, then you won't try to enforce rules that do the opposite.

I will also repeat that there is a difference between the morality of injuring persons or damaging property versus manipulating social procedures like voting. That is, I do beleive its worse morally to bust someone's head open and to set fire to his property in an effort to obtain an unfair result than to do the same through a more peaceful and calculating means.

The point I made in comparing January 6 to the efforts to remove RFK from ballots wasn't to suggest an equivalency in terms of how rogue and violent they both were. It was to point out that in terms of the specific harm we were pointing to - impeding the democratic will - what the Democrats are doing exceeds what the Republicans have done. I get that the Democrats didn't go about it by throwing chairs through windows or wearing viking hats, but their result has been more successful.