The analogy I was recounting isn't meant to be strictly related to communication in philosophy but applies to scientific discussions as well. It's in fact even more important to understand it there because there isn't really any threat of "philosophism" but there is a very real threat of scientism--in fact its rampant-- which this approach prevents. In the book, before mentioning the analogy, they were talking about Paul MacLean's Triurne brain model. One person thought it was problematic that someone (Henri Laborit) still discussed it as if it was an accurate and rigorous depiction of the brain, while the other person defended it by use of this analogy. Another way to put it is to say there is immense explanatory value in the model. In a group setting between highly educated people like those in the book (Nobel Prize winners, etc.) having multidisciplinary discussions and trying to learn from each other and view things globally with the goal to inform political action, less rigor and less rigidity and more openness and strong explanatory value is much more desirable. This is how they managed to keep the monthly reunion group going and flourishing for 10 years.
The interesting thing is that there is a clear parallel between this group of French thinkers/cyberneticians I'm influenced by and the Moving Naturalism Forward conference. In both groups, they're about the same number of people with different backgrounds but all of them are naturalists coming together to exchange ideas. The main difference is that there is only one cybernetician in the MNF (Terrence Deacon). If you watch the conference you'll see what I mean by intellectual rigidity, it's especially present in Alex Rosenberg who is a hardline eliminative materialist/reductionist. As such, some of the discussions aren't productive at all, but it gets at its most interesting when Deacon is in charge. He takes a completely different approach as a cybernetician, he isn't debating/butting heads with people, he is trying to bring them on a ride to explore things together.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Last edit: 13/02/2018 21:13
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Feb 13 2018 21:54. Posts 5296
yeah, i've always been opposed to scientism. It is clear there are severe limitations on science and its ability to explain the world, but it is the best thing we have. It's not actually clear even what science is, it just seems to be whatever sounds rational and what scientists agree on and its hard to get a more accurate definition of science than that. I think there are a few philosophers who suffer from serious scientism as well,,, like patricia churchland for example. and i agree with interdisciplinary cooperative learning to be a good model. I mean people like sokal and post modernists didnt interact for a long time, but when they did real progress was made. That is a good example of different disciplines coming together and one learning from the other. (even if those journal editors didnt want to, their discipline did learn from it.) On the topic of materialistc/reductionism. materalism was actually disproved by isaac newton, for some reason many philosophers do not understand this, but isaac newton showed you can move objects from a distance, and that disproved cartesian materialism. That was the last coherent forumalation of what materialism meant. later on philosophers formulated 'physicalism', which is an incoherent concept, and until it's explained properly, no philosopher making arguments for physicalism will make sense. I don't understand the appeal of reductionism either. biology can be explain in terms of chemistry, but historically it has gone both ways, the quantum revolution in phyiscs explained modern chemistry. so science doesn't always get explained through reduction.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
The postmodern boogey man similar to the lesbians at Brown. What about the frat boys at Duke or Vanderbilt? That is a much scarier proposition. A guy like Bill Frist or those lacrosse players that raped women. Not some 20 year old who colors her hair blue, doesn't shave her armpits and reads Foucault.
Again, this false perception that this blue-armpit-haired woman are harmless, it seems this thead need even more twitter screenshots
Maybe they aren't all harmless or maybe when they all get together they can be quite annoying or "dangerous" somehow but the ones I have known in real life are actually quite harmless. Where I used to live a lot of my female friends were "lesbian at brown" types or had red colored hair, blue colored hair, green colored hair or just what some would label as "freak" haircuts. There was a crowd who stopped shaving their legs and armpits. Most of them were pretty cool people and I don't see how they were causing any harm. They may talk about the patriarchy or white men but genocide? No. Most of them were just cool people I was happy to associate with.
If they aren't ranting about the patriarchy, toxic masculinity and cis white male and privileges then these are not the people we are talking about
Yes and no. I think there is a spectrum. Patriarchy, toxic masculinity, cis white male and privelege all of these things do exist but it is another thing to obsess about it and to hate white men and to spit venom. If that is one's life's work and they are really getting carried away with it then sure it is harmful. I think one of the issues is that being an activist can be seriously meaningful to the activist. That's the life that is lived and they see "progress" or can indoctrinate. I am sure it happens with professors as well but I think it is much smaller of a problem than the right like to think. I don't think I've actually met one of these single minded venomous post-modernist communists. Lets say I have 20 female friends that can fit this archetype. Another 10 or so that look a certain way but are not even close to being in this "dangerous" feminist camp. They can talk about the patriarchy and the cis white male and privelege or maybe they can't. Probably none of them has read Derrida or Foucault or Baudrillard and maybe a few have read Marx. My point is it's the boogeyman. You could put all 30 of their pictures up and say "oh, here we go again, look at these deluded freaks ruining all semblance of order."
I can't even really speak THAT much on the frat houses at Vanderbilt or Duke but I can speak on the frat houses at Ohio State and they caused more damage than any mousey blue haired feminist holed up in her dorm room reading Jane Austen. Congress is a fucking frat house. You can't tell me that the patriarchy or cis white male privelege does not exist?
Stroggoz have you seen the movie Rashomon? From my recollection that movie does a great job of illustrating what I mean by versions of truth, illusions, delusions.
I honestly am not sure what I meant when I said "this is my truth" but my interpretation of that would be this is my best interpretation at the time.
On the Joe Rogan Podcast Jordan B Peterson was talking about the line from the bible "the meek shall inherit the earth." He picked out his best interpretation for it from a 3 page list that went something like "warriors who keep their swords sheathed shall inherit the earth." Yeah, that sounds great but I think that is fucking terrible. My interpretation would be thou who turn the other cheek and be pious will inherit the kingdom of God. What is true?
Also, I don't consider myself a post-modernist. I have just found some thinkers that I like. There was so much talk about a lot of these guys or this "post-modern" movement I actually put my foot in the waters a bit and found out there is some good stuff there. Honestly, I've read some of it just to get a bit acclimated and I am not all that excited to read more. One thing I definitely have learned though is do not trust Jordan B Peterson's account of anything related to the topic. That bit about not being able to have rational argument had to come from somewhere. I think it can be true if power and coercion is involved but the power of knowledge and good points will shine through in most settings.
On February 13 2018 22:53 RiKD wrote:
You can't tell me that the patriarchy or cis white male privelege does not exist?
Depends how you define patriarchy, certainly men have ruled through all history mainly because we are physically stronger and more violent and this permates in modern culture, thankfully nowadays women have all the rights men have (and more) in western society, so I dont think there is anything to "smash" besides actually giving women rights in the 3rd world.
cis white male privilege doesnt exist, unless we are talking about statistical advantages, in which case Asian privilege is bigger, or blacks donig much worse in the judicial system being given longer sentences, but then we would have to talk about female privilege because they also get more lenient sentences, there are a near infinite traits that will make society treats us differently, but you are discriminated because you are ugly far more than your race, or you get discriminated because of your IQ, or your social skills, the pitch of your voice, your height, your weight, your smell etc.
On February 13 2018 18:49 Stroggoz wrote:
one of those existential comic quotes is a mild understatement. If you believe in democracy for the workplace, you will get murdered/added to the US terrorist list, so long as you live in a poor country. The united states had nelson mandela on the terrorist list for those views, up until 2008. There is a good book called 'killing hope', which has a lot of examples of the US murdering people and overthrowing governments for believing in workplace democracy.
And the united states is very open about this, the cold war presidents called this the 'domino theory'. you basically have to murder everyone in vietnam to stop the idea of workplace democracy spreading to other countries. And workplace democracy is communism for those that havn't read much early 20th century libertarian communist literature.
Anyone that has read about Price's Square Root Law and can show me some proof e.g. empirical evidence that it's indeed correct? Heard about it in a JP video but can't really find any evidence to it being a legit thing
This is the best critique of Peterson I've read yet. It's not a comprehensive one (doesn't even touch on his interpretations of Nietzsche/Jung) but it goes right at the core of some of the issues with the current culture war and the individualism/collectivism dichotomy and it avoids getting bogged down in the controversies that are being repeated by critics. I think it would have benefited from a restructuring since it starts off pretty hostile which will sadly turn off the people who would have benefited the most from considering the points in an impassioned way. In any case, I highly suggest everyone reads the whole thing (while taking Peterson's own rule at heart: assume the other person knows something you don't).
Edit: The first critique that is linked in the above article is also worth reading. It makes a strong case for Peterson being a Counter-Enlightenment figure. Stroggoz, you will probably find this one particularly interesting.
Also a little neatly-timed add-on to this on individualism, I am currently watching a Joe Rogan video and learned something. At 33:10 of this clip for context, and 33:50 for the main point: in a survey about the number of friends you could rely on in a time of crisis, more people (in the US) answer "none" than any other number.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Last edit: 14/02/2018 20:16
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Santafairy Korea (South). Feb 14 2018 19:06. Posts 2226
did you already reveal what peterson knows that you don't?
It seems to be not very profitable in the long run to play those kind of hands. - Gus Hansen
Yes, he knows a lot on personality psychology that I don't, among a few other things I'm sure. He certainly does know a lot more about things that I don't value, e.g. how to market yourself.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
If I am a prisoner of war and my feet hurt and they might be infected and they lose me for weeks if they get infected so please I should go to the doctor today instead of building that bridge doesn't work if their argument is "Shut up or we beat you." That is an extreme.
My boss at work could always have the argument "Shut up or I fire you." "Just do it" is a more common one. Rational argument doesn't necessarily win out. The boss could also just genuinely have more knowledge or not.
In most settings including LP knowledge and good points will have an effect. Baal could always say "Shut up or I ban you" but the words will be written there for everyone to see. It shouldn't be about "winning" or any bullshit like that though. We are a collective looking to further our knowledge. Now, it is good to bring it with the arguments. Baal bringing up discrimination in looks, height, iq, etc. versus race ya know I had to look at that and say fair enough.
But, part of why I was writing this is that like that article Loco posted talks about Peterson just flat out makes stuff up. I have been saying it for a while. He has never read or misread most of the prominent "post-modern" thinkers. It's not surprising as he misreads Nietzsche too and makes stuff up. I have never come across this "dangerous" "post-modern" thinker who doesn't believe any rational discourse can take place. I have heard him talk about that and the power structures and I am sure somewhere out there actually believes in it. Probably one of those misinformed, blue haired, armpit hair lesbians with the hammer and sickle flag spitting venom all over twitter. (How dangerous is that really?) That bitch hasn't read Derrida or Foucault or anyone either.
Great article though. I couldn't help but think about this warped Christianity of Peterson either when the author talks about that whole crew being afraid of truth and needing their spirit reassured. It's one thing to be pious and as Christ like as possible it's a whole other thing to think that Christ carried weapons with him or was some kind of warrior. He even admitted he barely read the Bible before doing a lecture series on it. Charlatan is right. I have a hard time trusting anything he says anymore even the stuff on personality psychology.
On February 14 2018 18:19 Loco wrote:
Yes, he knows a lot on personality psychology that I don't, among a few other things I'm sure. He certainly does know a lot more about things that I don't value, e.g. how to market yourself.
that like if you asked the same question to a JBP fan about if he acknowledge Foucalt knew anything he didnt and he answered, "he sure knows more about french than I do, and also how to be a total bold faggot too", pathetic response.
Muh man Johann Hari. He is probably responsible for something that at the end of the day seems to be my "higher power" or at least something substantial enough to keep me from drinking: Human connection and community. I guess you could say I had a spiritual experience. Probably more so a psychic change but really I have deep and effective connections with other humans and a sense of community. I think I will give it a listen.
Also a little neatly-timed add-on to this on individualism, I am currently watching a Joe Rogan video and learned something. At 33:10 of this clip for context, and 33:50 for the main point: in a survey about the number of friends you could rely on in a time of crisis, more people (in the US) answer "none" than any other number.
Funnily enough this "loneliness epidemic" is a big talking point for social conservatives like JBP or Shapiro, they say that its not a loneliness epidemic, but people not having close family ties, and they are partically correct.
For example, I remember how shocking downtown San Francisco was, there was a crazy homeless in every corner at night, and in México where we are obviously far more poor you dont see crazy people in the streets, why? because if theres a squizofrenic of deeply trouble person, usually the parents, grandparents, uncles or whatever take them in their homes.
The problem is that you think that the solution to that is collevitism, meaning compulsory state/society safety instead of actual empathy by our own volition
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Stroggoz New Zealand. Feb 15 2018 00:34. Posts 5296
edit: i read the critque loco recommended. It's representation of the enlightenment seemed accurate, but i havnt read petersons book so i can't really address the content. The enlightenment scholars were ridiculously intelligent, and moral. and the part in the review where he talks about enlightenment scholars being harshly critical of the west is often accurate. Adam smith for example was very anti plutocracy, and seriously opposed to the crimes of the british in india. Many enlightenment scholars were opposed to excessive class privilege, whether attained through hereditary means or through capitalist pursuits. Peterson seems to depart from this part of the enlightenment philosophers, if the review represents him correctly. Don't get me wrong, the philosophers in the 18-19th century did accept a lot of oppressive institutions that were normal during the time, but the overall intellectual movement during their time was a noble one, and extremely impressive. moral westerners should be criticizing the worst elements of western society. That's what moral agents do, they criticize parts of society they are responsible for. I dont know much about petersons work, he completely misrepresents 'marxism', and uses extreme hyperbole. Genocide is a powerful word evoking the worst images, he just casually throws it out there for people he dislikes it seems. That's a serious intellectual crime imo.
One of 3 non decent human beings on a site of 5 people with between 2-3 decent human beings
On February 15 2018 05:23 VanDerMeyde wrote:
Dont mean any disrespect to anyone but:
Who is Johann Hari ? and why is he relevant (before investing 2.5 hours)
Google says author and journalist but I want a little more ^^
Johann recently wrote a book about depression and anxiety. Him and Joe talk about depression and anxiety (obesity, addiction, trauma, related topics). I am finding it pretty insightful as I have struggled with depression, anxiety, being overweight, and addiction/alcoholism. If you have not dealt with any of these things or don't know anyone who has or don't care it probably would not be worth a listen.
On February 14 2018 18:19 Loco wrote:
Yes, he knows a lot on personality psychology that I don't, among a few other things I'm sure. He certainly does know a lot more about things that I don't value, e.g. how to market yourself.
that like if you asked the same question to a JBP fan about if he acknowledge Foucalt knew anything he didnt and he answered, "he sure knows more about french than I do, and also how to be a total bold faggot too", pathetic response.
What does knowing more about French mean? French language? French culture? I fail to see any link, I named an academic subject that he clearly knows more about than me, not a language or a culture you've been immersed in all your life. I also said among other things. Santa didn't ask me to enumerate everything. And yes, I don't value the ability to market yourself, so what? Do you think Bill Hicks is pathetic for making that point? I don't know what you expect me to answer. How is it anything like asking a JBP fan about Foucault anyway? I have little in common with a JBP fan and JBP has little in common with Foucault. There's hardly any comparison between a psychologist/guru/cultural critic like JBP and a highly influential intellectual like Foucault... You think they have had a similar impact in academia?
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Also a little neatly-timed add-on to this on individualism, I am currently watching a Joe Rogan video and learned something. At 33:10 of this clip for context, and 33:50 for the main point: in a survey about the number of friends you could rely on in a time of crisis, more people (in the US) answer "none" than any other number.
Funnily enough this "loneliness epidemic" is a big talking point for social conservatives like JBP or Shapiro, they say that its not a loneliness epidemic, but people not having close family ties, and they are partically correct.
For example, I remember how shocking downtown San Francisco was, there was a crazy homeless in every corner at night, and in México where we are obviously far more poor you dont see crazy people in the streets, why? because if theres a squizofrenic of deeply trouble person, usually the parents, grandparents, uncles or whatever take them in their homes.
The problem is that you think that the solution to that is collevitism, meaning compulsory state/society safety instead of actual empathy by our own volition
They are only trivially correct, the family unit is very important but they only believe in a traditional family unit due to their own conservative/religious perspectives. Their answer here is just as simplistic as saying that you can't be moral without God (which is also what they argue). You can say they're partially correct here because hey, it works right? Religion is the opium of the masses. Well, okay, but it only works until it doesn't. It works if you have a 'traditional identity'. It works if you have stopped being curious and asking questions. It works if you've traded your skepticism for a solid foundation by which you can judge everything.
But then what do you say to people for whom this opium no longer seduces? Or people who are simply predisposed differently, say, they have a personality Type B or LGBT folks. "Toughen up buddy and get back in touch with your true nature, you have to accept our values (God's values, 'rational values') and you'll be okay."? And that's the insidious nature of conservatism. However, that doesn't mean that all elements of conservatism are bad. It's necessary not to introduce too much deviance/positive feed-back at any given time in a system, otherwise it just breaks down. This is the wisdom of conservatism but also its stupidity (especially so in its neoreactionary form, believing that it can't tolerate any and resorting to alarmism).
The disintegration of the family unit is due to the socio-economic system that they support and which atomizes the individual, this is patently obvious; they just use volition and lack of individual fortitude as a scapegoat because they have been imprinted to act as if this system best serves their own, consciously chosen interests. It's not hard work and intellectual pursuits that have led them to these opinions, it's age-old value judgments that have been imprinted in people's nervous systems at an early age -- it's the hijacking of their limbic system by a socio-culture that is solely concerned with the maintenance of its hierarchical structures of dominance. They were taught that this is what is natural and good; they are playing out those internalized value judgments like automata because they never experienced a rupture that allowed for those automatisms to come to light.
More-than-individualism =/= collectivism. And more importantly, individualism and collectivism are not mutually exclusive concepts. It's not about embracing one or the other. I'm repeating myself but I can't stress how important it is. This is what is inherently destructive. It's about understanding the complex reality of the various part-whole relations in any given system; understanding interdependence: there is unity in diversity and diversity in unity. Hard-nosed individualism fails to perceive that the whole that is a living system, like a social system, is not just parts (here individuals) added up together. It misses the essential notion of organization (leading to emergent properties, self-organization and auto-poiesis). It's not possible to understand life without understanding these notions.
This is why you can make the mistake of believing that the market simply responds to the innate desires of individuals. Yet an individual cannot desire what they are ignorant of. An individual must be produced to want what is produced. If we went back in paleolithic times and we asked what one person desires, they'd answer a nice big bear for dinner and someone to lay with. Compare that to now and it's hard to conceive of our desires for specific "stuff" as innate. What's innate are those instincts to meet your needs. One of those needs is change--novelty-- and so over time we've introduced a lot of new desires into people's consciousness but this has ultimately been hijacked to serve the interests of those in power.
To think the problems we face are largely a simple matter of volition is incredibly naive when people have only ever used their brains to dominate each other--they are fully determined to behave that way and produce more people like themselves. We have the potential to desire and behave differently and we will most certainly have to in order not to destroy ourselves. As it is there's maybe only 10% of the population who are strongly altruistically motivated. Until that number is much higher removing the influence of the state for social safety is going to be a terrible idea.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
United States. Feb 13 2018 23:53. Posts 8538
