Truth Discussion Time - Page 70

So, I was listening to Immolation in the gym this morning and it got me thinking about this warped Nietzschean Christianity that JBP espouses. His interpretation of "God is dead and we killed him" is that this is a deeply sad event. You can't claim that is what Nietzsche is saying. My interpretation is that maybe it is a bit sad but mostly it is indifference. Not some nihilist position like oh who cares but rather a "truth." God is dead and we killed him... ok, now what? You can't take the premise God is dead and we killed him and then say the solution is Christianity. God is dead and we already killed him. After this point Christianity is delusional. It is an illusion. It is a fear of truth and false reassurance.

I wanted to talk more about Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Jesus Christ and further examples of the weird way JBP markets Christianity (and himself) but I have to get to work. I think that first paragraph is the most important though. He constantly uses Niezschean ideas and values of ethics and tries to market Christianity in that fashion when that is not what Christianity is. There is no warrior ethos or sailing unchartered seas or scaling mountains in Christianity. Christianity is meekness, turning the other cheek, piousness. You can only make it sexy in so far as heaven would be a cool place to be if it existed and God watching out for the true worshippers is comforting.

On February 15 2018 11:01 RiKD wrote: Show nested quote + 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.

yes i find that very interesting as that is my struggle too, at least from time to time. Will give it a shot. Thanks ^^

On February 15 2018 14:07 VanDerMeyde wrote: Show nested quote + On February 15 2018 11:01 RiKD wrote:   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. yes i find that very interesting as that is my struggle too, at least from time to time. Will give it a shot. Thanks ^^

It's a frustrating podcast at times because Joe Rogan is very uneducated about these topics. He just wings it based on his intuitions. He thinks most people can become successful like him if they just make better choices and become really disciplined and tuned in to what it is they really want. And that depression is largely alleviated when you're getting active and eating a ketogenic diet. Johann does his best to not be too antagonistic and it must have been quite hard. Even just saying Rogan oversimplified some things caused some tension early on.

On February 15 2018 13:23 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On February 14 2018 20:55 Baalim wrote:   On February 14 2018 17:48 Loco wrote: 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.

Actually I agree with most of what you said.

You know I dont believe in their conservative ideas if religiousness and morality, I dont know why you waste your time arguing as if I did, what I'm saying is that this loneliness epidemic you mention is one thing their "model" solves with nuclear family its actually one of their strongest weapons against their perceived social degration into inmorality, I dont get why you bring it up.

You believe the nature/nurture point is crucial and I continue saying its not, at least for me it doesnt matter, if we are "wired" to be unfaithful it doesnt mean we can't overcome it, if we were hardwired as lobsters or not, it doesnt matter either, perhaps the only change would be of how hopeful one would be, but its not important I agree that cooperation over competition would work best, but you are making grave mistakes when you go futher into that.
and
You are saying that we can't live in a free society because altruism is so rare we need a state, so to emulate Kathy here, so what you are saying is: "We cant be free because humans are selfish and we will abuse each other, therefore we will create this group of all-powerful equally selfish humans so that they police us" your model is far worse than each living on their own, you create entities formed by the worst of all handling power no man is able to, and thats why we kill and abuse each others that wouldn't be possible in any other way.

I think you also misinterpreet individualism, at least mine, its not Ayrn Rand every man for himself, and its not lack of seeing us as an organism, I've said many times that we are like bees creating a honeycomb by our individual actions as a collective consciousness, and that is key, free individual actions together, not compulsory actions pushed by theats of violence and socially-engineered by fools and knaves

Here's a Jordan Peterson quote from his first book:

"To live with free women, and gain the advantages of their freedom and sophistication, men must therefore bring their shadowed psychic identification with the Divine Mother and Child into the light, without losing their Divine Individuality in the process. They must consciously, voluntarily, deliberately and strategically accept their responsibility for the relationship between autonomous female companionship, support, love, and the responsibility of producing that next generation. This means rejecting, among other things, the misbegotten idea of casual sexual gratification. Sex is either the impulsive, short-term gratification of a domineering biological impulse, or the union of two conscious spirits taking responsibility for what they are doing. The former is not commensurate with the demands of an advanced civilization, which requires the adoption of responsibility above all for its preservation, maintenance and expansion. It is for this reason that the sexualized interactions between young men and women – in universities, for example — are increasingly and inevitably falling under the harsh and tyrannical regulation of the state."

In what world is this not a collectivist position? He's saying that monogamous (Abrahamic) social norms must be adhered to in order to prevent society from falling into chaos.

This quote goes from one extreme to the other like its the same thing, what the hell :D

responsibilities that come with a relationship =/ casual sexual gratification

I get how you could find some connections that the latter could lead to problems when in the situation of the former, but it's a huge conclusion to make.

On February 16 2018 03:35 Baalim wrote: I think you also misinterpreet individualism, at least mine, its not Ayrn Rand every man for himself, and its not lack of seeing us as an organism, I've said many times that we are like bees creating a honeycomb by our individual actions as a collective consciousness, and that is key, free individual actions together, not compulsory actions pushed by theats of violence and socially-engineered by fools and knaves

Right, well, this is why I've qualified it as "hard-nosed individualism" multiple times. Your individualism is more nuanced than the average libertarian/Randian if you understand that self-organization occurs in humans and human societies like with bees and ants. I have far less issues with your position and I am very individualistic myself. For me not to hold your position is a bit of a paradox but I have reason to believe it is a good kind of contradiction (from an Hegelian/Morinian framework). It's also that I come at all this from a much stronger ecological/systemic perspective.

I don't want to give you the impression that I think I know what a perfect society would be like (or as close to perfect as it can be). I'm much closer to Foucault at this point in time in not being able to propose it (like he says in his debate with Chomsky). This is something I'm trying to learn more about every day. I do understand that the assistantial state actually prevents social solidarities from forming, as you said. The problem here is tragic because it is both causing this problem and increasingly failing to meet the needs of people, all the while being indispensable in terms of how much suffering it would cause to abolish it without being able to slowly transition out of it.

I brought up the conservative stuff because I don't believe they are partly correct, as in, they don't have part of the solution because it's a house of cards. That model requires too many constraints and a lack of perturbations which it can't avoid in a rapidly advancing technological society. You can argue that it can be transposed in a non-dogmatic environment, but I think it's much better to broaden the family unit, to make oneself and the world better suited to finding a "second family".

On February 16 2018 13:38 Loco wrote: I don't want to give you the impression that I think I know what a perfect society would be like (or as close to perfect as it can be). I'm much closer to Foucault at this point in time in not being able to propose it (like he says in his debate with Chomsky). This is something I'm trying to learn more about every day. I do understand that the assistantial state actually prevents social solidarities from forming, as you said. The problem here is tragic because it is both causing this problem and increasingly failing to meet the needs of people, all the while being indispensable in terms of how much suffering it would cause to abolish it without being able to slowly transition out of it. I brought up the conservative stuff because I don't believe they are partly correct, as in, they don't have part of the solution because it's a house of cards. That model requires too many constraints and a lack of perturbations which it can't avoid in a rapidly advancing technological society. You can argue that it can be transposed in a non-dogmatic environment, but I think it's much better to broaden the family unit, to make oneself and the world better suited to finding a "second family".

I am unsure too I mean, for all I know ancap might kill more people than communism, its easier to see what system wouldn't work than which one would, I hate being "described" easily but that chart I talked about before is spot on for me, what I value the most by far is freedom when building a society, thats why I appear like a fascist to lefties and as a cuck to righties, both sides want to seize freedom in order what they believe is the common good.

I don't believe either that family is the solution its in the end some form of tribalism which can be a good thing but over emphatizing it is simply bad (even if it has its big advantages).


On that quote from Peterson I find it funny that the "political horse-shoe" theory applies, while the left is obv more "sexually deviant" many factions from the left also hare these sexual repressive ideas like the #MeToo movement, "rape culture" bullshit, the banning of Formula 1 grid girls, being against porn because its exploitive etc, as I said, they want to control freedoms in pursuit of what they see as moral and just.

So I shared an article that I thought was the best critique of JBP and now, on the flip side, I happen to have found my favorite JBP video. It's a really good talk with a great scholar and JBP does a good job making the conversation interesting. This is what I wish he stuck to discussing along with personality psychology because I feel I can always learn some things from it. It also has an element of critique as well because McGilchrist brings up disagreements and asks for clarifications on some critical points which I've brought up before. The two most important points are made half way: how much chaos is Peterson willing to tolerate and how willing he is to live in a space of uncertainty and ambiguity. I personally hold the Hegelian/Taoist views that McGilchrist presents and it's interesting to see Peterson basically agree with them here, yet when it comes to a lot of what he says and writes about, this is never stressed as it should be and it's often contradicted in his speech. (I also hold the Heraclitean, 'Processist' view he brings up in the second half.)

Btw, the concept which Peterson refers to around 13:30 is called enantiodromia.

On February 16 2018 22:42 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On February 16 2018 13:38 Loco wrote: I don't want to give you the impression that I think I know what a perfect society would be like (or as close to perfect as it can be). I'm much closer to Foucault at this point in time in not being able to propose it (like he says in his debate with Chomsky). This is something I'm trying to learn more about every day. I do understand that the assistantial state actually prevents social solidarities from forming, as you said. The problem here is tragic because it is both causing this problem and increasingly failing to meet the needs of people, all the while being indispensable in terms of how much suffering it would cause to abolish it without being able to slowly transition out of it. I brought up the conservative stuff because I don't believe they are partly correct, as in, they don't have part of the solution because it's a house of cards. That model requires too many constraints and a lack of perturbations which it can't avoid in a rapidly advancing technological society. You can argue that it can be transposed in a non-dogmatic environment, but I think it's much better to broaden the family unit, to make oneself and the world better suited to finding a "second family". I am unsure too I mean, for all I know ancap might kill more people than communism

Although this is not specific to ancap, which he opposes more than anything as far as I know, Chomsky wrote the following on comparing communism vs capitalism death tolls:

"We don’t say that the US government kills the huge number of infants who die because of the rotten policies here that yield a shocking rate of infant mortality for a rich country. [...] If you’re interested in an expert analysis you should look at the studies by Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen, the world’s leading specialist on famines and a specialist on Asia as well, some of it with his colleague Indian economist Jean Dreze. All very public, but ignored. Sen charges the Chinese government with a political crime for the horrendous Chinese famine, which he estimates at much higher than 20 million. The reason is that the totalitarian state made it impossible for information to flow from the provinces to the center, so that by the time there was any government reaction, it was too late. He compares the situation to India. Once the British left, India had no more of the hideous famines that killed 10s of millions of people under British rule. The reason was that Indian capitalist democracy provided relatively free flow of information. He then proceeds with further information that explains why his work is ignored. He shows that from independence in the late 40s until the end of Maoist rule, Indian policies led to 100 million extra deaths as compared to China. As he and Dreze put it, every 8 years democratic capitalist India put as many skeletons in its closest as China did during its years of shame (the Great Leap). That too is a political crime. But we wouldn’t say that democratic capitalism “killed” 100 million people in India – and if the study were extended worldwide the toll would be colossal."

yeah i've read that study by jean dreze and amartya sen, and some of their new work as well. Indian's new rulers basically admire their former british colonial masters, it seems. It's kind of interesting that the great leap foward is considered mass murder. I agree that it was a political crime and a terrible one of resulting from a totalitarian state. that's what amatya's study indicates. But it isn't murder like sending someone to the gulag is. very few scholars counts structural violence from capitalism as murder, or homicide as well. Tens of millions die from intellectual property rights too. Is that a murder from capitalism? Actually, a true free market society wouldnt have IP rights from what i can see so that may be contradictary. But it's still death resulting from some twisted corporate lawyers.

There is a simple and devastating criticism to be made on ancap, economists point out that markets have some flaws, one of them being an externality, which is when two people make a market transaction and a third person gets affected by it. Well global warming is one such externality. In a truly free market society global warming would be completely unhindered, and it would kill a lot more than 100 million.

Yes, precisely, this is why I've mentioned my ecological perspective a few posts ago, I think it's probably the biggest divide between Baal and I. I imagine that Baal believes there would be cooperative measures spontaneously arising amidst the competition to prevent this, and if that wasn't the case, he would be more than willing to realize he made a mistake.

I've just finished reading this article in Nature reviewing Pinker's new book which touches on this and other risks that came with globalization that are often overlooked, it also relates to our previous discussion on Enlightenment ideals and optimism, it's worth a read: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02148-1

Ok, i thought that was a very average review. Some of it is true and some of it is false, i dont have time to go through all the details but i'll link a much better review of pinkers book by edward herman and david peterson. It's a 148 page long review, just going through claim after claim and showing how bad pinkers research standards are. http://coldtype.net/Assets.12/PDFs/0812.PinkerCrit.pdf . A lot of pinkers work is just empirically false.

The only thing i agree on with pinker is that there has been real moral progress and we should endorse enlightment ideals. But in some ways I don't really see him as pro-enlightment. He has a hobbesian world view, which is the opposite of an enlightenment world view. The hobbesian world view is paternalist, it's about authority having to dictate to people because otherwise they will fight, ect. (oversimplification here). Ok, the enlightment is about removing as much authority and allowing humans to grow, and stand on their own two feet. As for pinkers endorsement of science, well i agree with him obviously, but his own research standards are very sub-par, as Herman and Peterson show in their very long (but worth reading) review.



just some parts of the review that irks me. 'Both eras show that science and evidence-based thinking do not necessarily triumph over irrationality and ideology'. Um no, it doesn't show that at all. That statement is a contradiction to me. It's possible to have some sectors of society that are advancing while others are complete savagery. The enlightenment didn't extend to all sphere's of society obviously.

'Yet he essentially defends globalization and the growth of market economies by claiming that it has brought more progress than any force in history. As an economist, I agree.' Wow, really? It just shows both pinker and this economist have barely studied political economy, or deny the relevant research in it. For example, the market society brought on india by the british actually decreased the life expectancy of the average indian to the average human in the neololithic era. (quoting from amartya sens recent book on india's economy). and economic growth has slowed in the last 30-40 years because of the financialization of the economy.

The idea that markets are good for economic growth is actually a myth. it's impossible to know and what do we compare it with? If you look at say nazi germany they achieved very good economic growth in the 30's, so did stalin when he turned russia into an industrial society. Both of those countries had impressive records, so did western nations, from 1945-71, when markets were regulated the most. Russia did very poorly when it went back to a capitalist society in the 1990's.

The review you linked is not of the same book though, but it may as well be. This new one seems to be version two of the same project. I was already aware of those criticisms and just thought others might not be. I think the point about progress was that in that specific example the cost of the advancement is paid for elsewhere in the system, they are not disconnected nor trivial.

The Enlightenment's project of human progress was also most definitely one that assured it to be incremental. But as soon as we mastered nuclear energy that narrative became impossible to believe in, if it wasn't hard enough to believe in before. And now we have even more threats to the species that are the direct results of technological advancements. Threats to individual freedom and flourishing we didn't have before as well, just think of the impacts of new media. We've created the perfect environments for people to become more biased and misinformed. Trump is literally advised as a president by Fox & Friends. It's more of an irony than a contradiction.

I think a book that just glosses over these dangers and deficiencies to sell the idea that things are on the whole just constantly getting better is naive if not delusional.

On February 17 2018 22:04 Loco wrote: I think a book that just glosses over these dangers and deficiencies to sell the idea that things are on the whole just constantly getting better is naive if not delusional.

yeah, i basically agree. Certainly there are some serious threats to humanity that didn't exist in the past. It looks like 100 years from now the world may well be a terrible place to live in.

Right, and the biggest problem with Pinker it seems is that he cherry picks his data and frames it in a particular way in order to fully deny this possibility.

On February 17 2018 17:58 Stroggoz wrote: There is a simple and devastating criticism to be made on ancap, economists point out that markets have some flaws, one of them being an externality, which is when two people make a market transaction and a third person gets affected by it. Well global warming is one such externality. In a truly free market society global warming would be completely unhindered, and it would kill a lot more than 100 million.

Indeed ancap has many potential problems but most if not all of these problems arent solved or better in the current world, Global Warming is a big issue that the staes arent solving, the sate is supposed to think long term, but its made of politicians that think short-term and wont commit political suicie by enacting certain laws that need to be passed, Trump is again promoting coal, Merkel banned Nuclear, all in the pursuit of personal political gain against the public interest.

Monopolies is also a big scare, without anti-trust laws what would happen? well most monopolies in the world are state owned or simply generated by the state, even modern monopolies of silicon valley were heavily subsidized by the government like Facebook and Google, and Amazon has contracts with the CIA worth hundreds of millions etc.

Consumer's choice is the voting booth in an anarcho capitalist society, if global warming is a public concern, purchase from clean industry, that is real power unlike choosing which psychopath is going to fuck you for the next 6 years

we all know https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview right?

On February 18 2018 18:46 Santafairy wrote: we all know https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview right?

no, what/who is that?