Getting your shit together starter pack

So, this was in the ROFL thread and pretty ROFL



It got me thinking though it isn't a bad starter pack but surely sub-optimal. Where are the improvements?

Peterson has a lot of good stuff to say about responsibility but pretty questionable beyond that. No fap probably isn't bad but I don't believe it will make too much of a difference from experience. I would rather put some Kant and ethics books in there. Some Sartre, some Dosteovski, existentialist stuff, maybe Waiting for Godot that sort of thing. Denial of Death. Nietzsche. I am sure I am missing a bunch. Cleaning the apartment is a definite. Studying or just acquiring useful knowledge is definitely a definite. Exercise yes. It would be interesting to see if some people think playing tennis is better or doing yoga or doing jiu jitsu. I am currently trying to get my shit together and find a place I can deadlift a lot of weight and do kettlebell swings. Meal prep - I instantly think of a vegan diet. There is a way to learn about fashion but I think it just takes time. It is mostly about achieving an authentic style that works for oneself. I am not trying to look like Team Vulgarian that is for damn sure. Waking up early yes sure. This Haircut - ROFL.

Overall, ROFL but I am curious to see what people would add. Is it just getting your shit together to DOMINATE DOMINANCE hierarchies or are we trying to live a finite life? Are they the same thing? People have been discussing this since Socrates and Plato. How do we best live this finite life?

Did you know that kant made a rigourous ethical argument against masturbation using the categorical imperative? The basic jist of it is that you are using yourself as a means to an end when you do it. There is a paper that mentions this by a well known harvard psychologist called joshua greene, called 'kants sick joke'.

pretty sure for most people, getting ur shit together is for the obvious reason of living life in happiness, dignity, and fufillment, and a sense of achievement. If you dont get your shit together you will become old and look back on life and ask yourself, why did i bother living?

I see all these fat people nowadays dressing like everybody else and it's hilarious. dress your body type and pick shoes that fit your overall frame
I've noticed people who do this can wear anything and still look good even if they arent ripped or go to the gym everyday. as long as you are not obese there are ways to make clothes look way better on you if you just don't blindly buy stuff you see in pictures of guys who are built differently thinking that it looks the same on you.

shoe size matters, if youre 6'5 with a big frame but got a size 9 feet it's going to look terrible no matter what shoe you buy, so you buy a size 10 or 11, stuff something inside those shoes

"How do we best live this finite life?"

A few things come to mind. Not pandering to an immediate self all the time (being able to delay gratification for the sake of a more satisfied future self). Being indifferent to other people's opinions. Once survival needs are taken care of (prosaic living), doing things that don't make you feel like you are wasting your time. Ideally, things that embed your life with richness (poetic living).

This quote rings very true to me: "Happiness results from esteem, earned in the right way, from the people that matter." The right way is debatable, of course, and I don't believe there is a universal one, but there are clear constancies delineating it for all.


"Getting your shit together" is really just about being curious and consistent. If you're curious you'll explore, and you'll find things worth doing; if you're consistent you won't be distracted from it often. Well, it's also probably about having good sense when it comes to prioritization as well. We have competing desires at all times and sorting through them and prioritizing the ones that are more likely to lead to good things is a difficult task.

On November 07 2017 22:05 Stroggoz wrote: Did you know that kant made a rigourous ethical argument against masturbation using the categorical imperative? The basic jist of it is that you are using yourself as a means to an end when you do it. There is a paper that mentions this by a well known harvard psychologist called joshua greene, called 'kants sick joke'. pretty sure for most people, getting ur shit together is for the obvious reason of living life in happiness, dignity, and fufillment, and a sense of achievement. If you dont get your shit together you will become old and look back on life and ask yourself, why did i bother living?

My man Kant. Masturbation is a surrogate to actually having sex with women but it can be fun. I don't feel like tracking down the awesome Martin Amis piece on having a wank when you want to have a wank... I have already posted it on here multiple times. I went 7 months with out masturbating and I don't think it motivated me more to sleep with a woman or motivated me to do anything really. I do think masturbation and particularly porn conditions people to look at women more as sex objects. I think of the times I have masturbated with out porn and it is images of x in the backless red dress or y in the yoga pants. With porn it is pretty explicit objectification. However, when I wasn't masturbating I would go to the beach and still find myself looking at asses and breasts and shapes. I am sure it is conditioned but I am also sure that it is biological.

On November 08 2017 04:31 Loco wrote: "How do we best live this finite life?" A few things come to mind. Not pandering to an immediate self all the time (being able to delay gratification for the sake of a more satisfied future self).

Yeah. Thankfully I am pretty good at this one. Being a slave to screens or really anything is -ev. I have talked about this before but even getting control of fidgeting and nervous behavior is the ultimate goal. Some are better than others. I used to compulsively pick hang nails. I don't anymore for some reason. That stuff is really fascinating. Everyone's different fidgeting and what it means.

Being indifferent to other people's opinions.

This is a huge one but quite difficult to master. I mean it is in relation to the last one in a way of being very calm. Calm is not the right word. Self-assured. Ok. In the present. I don't have that kind of confidence in all things and certainly not all the time that I am not effected by others' opinions. It is something to strive for.

Once survival needs are taken care of (prosaic living), doing things that don't make you feel like you are wasting your time. Ideally, things that embed your life with richness (poetic living).

If I could only walk the streets of Paris for a croissant and cafe au lait.

This quote rings very true to me: "Happiness results from esteem, earned in the right way, from the people that matter." The right way is debatable, of course, and I don't believe there is a universal one, but there are clear constancies delineating it for all.

I am maybe happiest when I am helping people. Then I can start questioning myself and feel like a piece of shit because I don't have my own apartment or a girlfriend. I actually think a great haircut can add esteem but it is tricky. Grooming for 15 min. and checking oneself out in the mirror through out the day certainly does not.

"How do we best live a finite life?"

Be honest.

Find some sort of a tribe. Conformity sucks so don't do that but there are people out there that I found I really like and get a long with. Human connection goes a long way.

Self-esteem is such an interesting topic. It can go up with a nice outfit and a great haircut but then I am checking myself in the mirror to make sure it looks good or hasn't changed. That isn't real self esteem. Although this one time I was in a great headspace and wearing a sharp blazer with a rose in the lapel and never gave a shit how I looked and was charming and gregarious all night. Of course, I end up back at the hotel with a woman wet through her yoga pants. Then there was a chance at a three some. Then the sister came into the room and was hooking up with the other girl in front of the sister but we really didn't think anything of it at the time. Maybe that is one of my regrets I was unable to close on the full blown orgy. It was quite fun and liberating regardless. I don't think it is the type of thing to chase though.

How about giving a homeless man a ride and not telling anyone about it?

Helping someone through a tough time and not telling anyone about it?

If I am among tribesmen and being honest the esteem can be unbreakable, unshakeable.

I feel like being able to make the right choices in terms of when to pick delayed or instant gratification is the most important thing anyone could ever learn

So, what is it? DOMINATING DOMINANCE hierarchies and being THE MAN!

Is it Christian values?

Is it Buddhist values?

Kantian ethics?

It's probably any of them depending on the person.

"Do esteem-able things in the eyes of the people that matter." Like Loco said.

Were there Nazis in Germany gaining esteem through killing Jews? Like they were that deluded that they could lay down their head at night thinking they are doing great work?

You're looking for a standardized value system, which doesn't exist. If there was one, life would be much easier. The values differ from one culture to another. Naturally Nazi Germany is a pretty extreme case and I doubt there were too many people feeling increased value of their self due to killing jews, except a group of deranged people.

Tbh I just read " A Clockwork Orange" and it hints at the possibility of people being born evil, which is kind of an interesting topic. Now, our natural state should be related to altruism as it enables us as species to preserve the survival of our genes in future generations. Anyway if we're able to be born evil, then the whole concept of value systems kind of hits a paradox.

lol.

just accept your fate. you will be happier for it.

if you're a loser then you're a loser but so the fuck what?

just responding to above comments:

christian and buddhist values are a far better code of living than kantian ethics for sure. Philosophers typically create far worse ethical systems than average people. no one takes utilitarian and deontological systems seriously in reality, since they are far too simplistic for every day living. The law is what we take seriously, and although it is highly flawed, it takes into account many complexities and intricacies of every day life rather than just moulding people to an abstract rule or set of axioms.

As to the answer of whether nazi's could possibly be that deluded, you can find this out yourself from reading himmler's diaries or joseph goebbel's dairies-ive skimmed some of their dairy entries, and you can see that of course they were that deluded. It is a rare person who would accept that they are completely evil and go around doing evil things anyway. It's much more common to just convince your evil doing is justified somehow.

Although moral values differ from culture to culture, our biological endowment is similar. So we are all fixed with similar genetic pre-programming and it is reasonable to beleive-given modern science, that we all share a similar moral faculty which will undergo an ontogenetic development that is shaped to some extent by our cultural surroundings, similar to how language acquisition works. So we should be able to find common ground on what is right and wrong across cultures.

On November 09 2017 02:29 lucky331 wrote: lol. just accept your fate. you will be happier for it.

This pretty much.

Most people are never happy because they always want more and more. And think that "later when x happens, i will finally be happy"
I'm not saying you shouldn't try to achieve X. Having better life conditions is great.
But i feel like a lot of people don't appreciate their current life enough.

On November 09 2017 03:29 Stroggoz wrote: just responding to above comments: christian and buddhist values are a far better code of living than kantian ethics for sure. Philosophers typically create far worse ethical systems than average people. no one takes utilitarian and deontological systems seriously in reality, since they are far too simplistic for every day living. The law is what we take seriously, and although it is highly flawed, it takes into account many complexities and intricacies of every day life rather than just moulding people to an abstract rule or set of axioms. As to the answer of whether nazi's could possibly be that deluded, you can find this out yourself from reading himmler's diaries or joseph goebbel's dairies-ive skimmed some of their dairy entries, and you can see that of course they were that deluded. It is a rare person who would accept that they are completely evil and go around doing evil things anyway. It's much more common to just convince your evil doing is justified somehow. Although moral values differ from culture to culture, our biological endowment is similar. So we are all fixed with similar genetic pre-programming and it is reasonable to beleive-given modern science, that we all share a similar moral faculty which will undergo an ontogenetic development that is shaped to some extent by our cultural surroundings, similar to how language acquisition works. So we should be able to find common ground on what is right and wrong across cultures.

An example I think of is how they spit everywhere and cut in lines in China. To the Western world that is barbaric but they think it is fair. John Rawls in "Theory of Justice" talks about ignorance veils as the decider. There cannot be cultural biases involved. Ethics can be a tough topic. Nietzsche could never quite get it. I suppose it is just easier to go with Christian ideals but so so lacking in my opinion. You'll have the anti-contraceptives crowd and the anti-LGBT crowd. We also have laws based completely on a free will perspective and God in the courtrooms. Obviously, compatibilism and true separation of church and state is best.

I want to write more about esteem and how it relates to this because I got myself kind of fascinated by it at the moment but I have to go to work. I can ask myself "how can I be useful?" in a general level but working the hours I am scheduled to the best of my ability is typically going to answer that question. That brings esteem regardless of what the job is. It is interesting to think about say Doctors who have an occupation typically thought of highly in our society. Do they derive more esteem through their work? I would think the answer would have to be yes but I am an unsure if anyone could answer completely truthfully or reliably. Society does not really value my job but if I do a good job I do get some esteem. I think chasing the perfect job can get people into trouble.

Could the getting your shit together starter pack boil down to getting a good job. Whether that is studying and getting good grades in a good major or working hard for promotions and good jobs. I brought up doctor earlier. They are in a very unique position of making a lot of money and helping people. So, regardless of the tribe or the social sphere it is difficult not to have a innate respect for doctors. Must we ask what does society want and value? Shall we tailor our lives around that? Would our lives be easier? Would there be more bliss?

I would wager most buddhist monks are more comfortable in their skin and content than any Wall Street billionaire.

I wish to be somewhere in between all this stuff but I don't know if it's possible. It might have to be all or nothing. I want to be my own person. I can go off the rails with anything but I don't want abstinence in all things.

I am of the belief that we have to go out and do things to gain esteem and self-esteem. It doesn't have to be winning in business. It can be helping someone. I think we have been through this before.

On November 10 2017 03:31 RiKD wrote: Could the getting your shit together starter pack boil down to getting a good job. Whether that is studying and getting good grades in a good major or working hard for promotions and good jobs. I brought up doctor earlier. They are in a very unique position of making a lot of money and helping people. So, regardless of the tribe or the social sphere it is difficult not to have a innate respect for doctors. Must we ask what does society want and value? Shall we tailor our lives around that? Would our lives be easier? Would there be more bliss? I would wager most buddhist monks are more comfortable in their skin and content than any Wall Street billionaire. I wish to be somewhere in between all this stuff but I don't know if it's possible. It might have to be all or nothing. I want to be my own person. I can go off the rails with anything but I don't want abstinence in all things. I am of the belief that we have to go out and do things to gain esteem and self-esteem. It doesn't have to be winning in business. It can be helping someone. I think we have been through this before.

more like getting a better mindset. i can be a bum but have a better outlook in life.

Yeah, but it is difficult for the bum to have great self-esteem unless they have Christianity or Buddhism or strong delusions. They could have a sense of strong gratitude especially if they have been in worse places. I don't really know. I haven't met many homeless people but the ones I have met were typically struggling. In some instances they were doing their best to keep an upbeat vibe but I sensed a storm brewing. Either they didn't really know where they were going to sleep that night or didn't really know how they were going to get some crack or both. It is almost impossible to have self-esteem as a problem alcohol or drug user. Most of society has the opposite of respect and admiration. I'd imagine one could get a tribe of fellow hobos and it might not be so bad. I didn't mean to say all homeless people are addicted to alcohol or drugs. Many have untreated mental illness which is no walk in the park. I have heard many just want to be homeless. So, yes, a homeless person can surely have a better mindset and living more successfully (can mean a lot of different things) than a doctor in some big house with a wife and kids but in general I just don't think that is going to be the case.

This homeless man lives near me. Bunch of clips on him on YouTube. He's awesome. Homeless by choice apparently. I'd rather live like him than any of those people in that other vid (at least the shopping ones).

That homeless man is living better than most although that was only 8 min. of his life. Pretty solid 8 min. though. I kept thinking I wish I would of kept playing the violin and gotten better at thai chi. What a hero. I like my bed though. I would assume he makes enough performing his art to eat ok. I want to know more.


I am currently working to pay bills. I thought I had some meaning in becoming a chef but now I am just a wage slave. I don't even like writing it out because it could affect my mood on the job. I don't really do it to go shopping though. It does bring up that everyone should go for meaning in an occupation. That is the only thing that matters. I have grown accustom to certain things and then had that brought down on my head. I may only make like $15,000 this year. How the fuck does one live on $15,000/year? I don't really know I just do. I don't shop. Of course, I live with my parents so the largest expense of rent is covered. If I had more friends like I did in Pittsburgh in similar incomes or people with inexpensive tastes life is much better.

My mom was a librarian. She said a lot of the homeless would come in and socialize. Compare notes on where to get the best food, etc.

It's an intriguing life style. I think I like my bed and private shower a bit too much to go off and try it. I wouldn't like to panhandle either. I would rather get a job.

Oh well, LP is free. That is nice. It is sometimes entertaining enough. I am only really on here anymore in the mornings before I go to work when I usually don't have a lot of time or after I come home from work and I am pretty tired. I guess it doesn't matter. *Shudder* I don't ever want to be one of those shopping people (I have been in the past).

"Must we ask what does society want and value?"

George Bush is what society wanted and valued. Donald Trump is what society wanted and valued. Consumerism, shopping, marketing. It takes someone very brave to completely decide that they don't want any part of what society wants and values. It really is difficult to do. You can disregard some aspects but we were programmed and conditioned our whole lives by this stuff. It can be easy to get swept back in. At least in some aspects. I DO need a tribe though. I need some sort of social sphere. I can't do it without human connection.

fsociety

How does dating, sex, relationships play into living life?

Hero Mark Landry might have a tough time getting a girlfriend. Does that matter? Does that matter to him? It doesn't matter to the bums we call buddhist monks. DSR is a big factor in why people shop. It feels like it is filling a void but we also have to impress people of course. Something that actually gets to me is when these women have these bags with the Coach C all over the damn thing. The Polo shirts with a GIANT polo guy across the chest. What the fuck? I love it when a woman has some eccentric ass bag she made herself. I enjoy shopping at Goodwill. I don't like stores that are just sort of bleh and have the message of shop here and you will be on the team. I can respect some higher fashion but obviously can not afford it. There is a real art to making great clothing.

There is a difference in the want to have sex with a lot of women and the want to couple up with someone compatible. I think the former typically takes climbing dominance hierarchies, shopping, consuming, or just having some exceptional skill that is valued by society. The ladder is all about finding someone compatible.

I think I am in part always a little discontented with out dating, sex, relationships in my life. I don't think it plays a huge role but I do feel as if I am missing out. There is a lot of magic involved with falling in love. It makes life a lot more interesting.

new starter pack!

On November 10 2017 20:18 Loco wrote: This homeless man lives near me. Bunch of clips on him on YouTube. He's awesome. Homeless by choice apparently. I'd rather live like him than any of those people in that other vid (at least the shopping ones).

Neat video, the piece he starts with at 3:03 is the same one Joshua Bell played from the DC Metro video and also my favorite piece of music

How many songs are about love? Sex? Finding the one? Much of advertising is geared towards this. Being cool. Being attractive. Being wanted. What is real?

Magical love is fleeting. It can't last. It is quite powerful and magical though hence why it can make for a great song. Finding the one. What does that even mean. The answer is just date and have fun. If it isn't fun just buy a fleshlight and delve into deeper and deeper depths of pornography or go completely celibate but that isn't as fun. Fuck advertising. Fuck being cool. Attract with your fucking soul. Not everyone is going to want me. Deal with it.

Spend time with people you like spending time with who like spending time with you. Don't worry about the rest. Fuck em.

glad i dont fit into any of these stupid starter packs. im an actual classical liberal that reads adam smith and wilhelm von humboldt for the insight. being homeless sucks btw, there arn't many things worse.

On November 12 2017 15:26 RiKD wrote: How many songs are about love? Sex? Finding the one? Much of advertising is geared towards this. Being cool. Being attractive. Being wanted. What is real?

in most love songs, changing the word "love" for the word "drugs" fits in nicely.

try it and you realize it's all bullshit.

On November 11 2017 20:51 bigredhoss wrote: Show nested quote + On November 10 2017 20:18 Loco wrote: This homeless man lives near me. Bunch of clips on him on YouTube. He's awesome. Homeless by choice apparently. I'd rather live like him than any of those people in that other vid (at least the shopping ones). Neat video, the piece he starts with at 3:03 is the same one Joshua Bell played from the DC Metro video and also my favorite piece of music

That is Bach's chaconne and he plays it very poorly

On November 13 2017 04:51 Stroggoz wrote: glad i dont fit into any of these stupid starter packs. im an actual classical liberal that reads adam smith and wilhelm von humboldt for the insight. being homeless sucks btw, there arn't many things worse.

It does suck. I heard him say once that he was doing this as a voluntary poverty thing for religious reasons. I also learned he has a place to stay. However, I learned more about him today and he has schizophrenia and he's almost completely blind. His place was being used by drug dealers and sex trade workers and he's had his violin stolen. His life is a lot worse than he lets on. I think, without romanticizing it, that for someone who does actually take it up as a voluntary thing and who doesn't have a mental illness it might not be that bad if they have a talent like he does. At least I think it's an experience that would change you for the better if it's done temporarily, assuming you can do it without becoming an addict of course.

On November 13 2017 06:48 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On November 13 2017 04:51 Stroggoz wrote: glad i dont fit into any of these stupid starter packs. im an actual classical liberal that reads adam smith and wilhelm von humboldt for the insight. being homeless sucks btw, there arn't many things worse. It does suck. I heard him say once that he was doing this as a voluntary poverty thing for religious reasons. I also learned he has a place to stay. However, I learned more about him today and he has schizophrenia and he's almost completely blind. His place was being used by drug dealers and sex trade workers and he's had his violin stolen. His life is a lot worse than he lets on. I think, without romanticizing it, that for someone who does actually take it up as a voluntary thing and who doesn't have a mental illness it might not be that bad if they have a talent like he does. At least I think it's an experience that would change you for the better if it's done temporarily, assuming you can do it without becoming an addict of course.

Why would it change me for the better? The one time i was homeless, it didn't change me for the better in any way that i can think of. it would have made me miserable if it lasted for a long enough time.

I think I get what Loco is saying and I agree. It would be an interesting experiment for some duration of time. If one had a transcendent skill or means of performance that would be a valuable endeavor in itself but could also provide some money for food or entertainment. I have always heard non-noob homeless people know where to get not only food but good food. I think for me it would be more about how do I spend my days. Would going for a long walk through the city mean my makeshift bed gets stolen? I don't want to sleep on concrete or park benches. I have talked to these guys that end up having to sleep even in a park and have trouble sleeping or worse by some freeway keeping them up all night. As I said earlier the library is always accepting. One could mess around on the internet or read for a time. If I could stake out a place in a park with a sleeping bag I would be cool with that. Of course, if I was skilled in something truly transcendent I may just want to start my own business or join an existing one. I really do like my bed and walls and roof and taking showers with out hassle and eating a good breakfast but that's not what this is about. The question is would being homeless for a time be an interesting experiment and for me the answer is yes.

I don't think people would just become an addict living on the streets. Maybe though. If there is nothing to do and no connection drowning in some red wine starts looking like a great option. Heroin is more complicated. There is a code though. Most won't shoot noobs up but I am sure there are users out there that don't give a shit. One can not simply just go to the store and buy and use heroin.

There has got to be a documentary out there somewhere of someone who is homeless voluntarily. No mental illness, disability, drug problems, or anything. I would like to see what his/her life entails.

On November 11 2017 18:39 Loco wrote: new starter pack!

gotta cross Milo off that list he has fallen from grace in the circle now.


I remember thinking "theres not really Nazis anymore, come on"... then I watched an American history-esque video of Milo singing some patriotic cliche american song to a crowd of people doing the Nazi Salute and I thought "Well I'll be damned, they do exist" lol

Last few days I actually went through 2-3 hrs of videos of Peterson & Shapiro, each, and tbh I don't really get what Loco s bashing them for. Sure, there's some stuff you could certainly disagree with (Shapiro especially is a very good speaker and knows how to divert the conversation to the path he s comfortable in, steering it away from potentially threatening to his opinion arguments), however, it is their ideology that it doesn't matter if you disagree or agree as long as there are rational arguments to back your shit up. Trying to ironize their free speech beliefs is kind of concerning, to say the least

Now I obviously barely know shit about these people and their agenda, but they don't really strike me as someone to ironize and be reasonable about it.

Tbh Peterson does sound to me like a homophobe, but it doesn't matter cause he is standing on an insanely solid argument and the fact that even if he is actually a homophobe and is able to do that, then there is something fundamentally wrong on how the system is being built.

Shapiro sounds like Baal tbh

the mexican accent? =D

On November 17 2017 02:21 Spitfiree wrote: Shapiro sounds like Baal tbh

lol fierce "in your face" debate ftw


Peterson had conservative bias, as Loco pointed out before, Peterson once just tossed aside even the possibility of a reasonable argument about anti-natalism so he can be intellectually dishonest its very evident in his religious views too, that being said I love many of his talks, he makes very strong well tought points in a very articulated fashion and turns them into usable every-day knowledge, I think Loco dislikes him because he is kind of a purist and also he is also probably unaware of his left leaning bias.

btw this is the Milo vid I was talking about.... I swear the only thing that vid is missing is Derek stomping some guys skull in a curb, what in the actual fuck.

On November 13 2017 07:15 Stroggoz wrote: Show nested quote + On November 13 2017 06:48 Loco wrote:   On November 13 2017 04:51 Stroggoz wrote: glad i dont fit into any of these stupid starter packs. im an actual classical liberal that reads adam smith and wilhelm von humboldt for the insight. being homeless sucks btw, there arn't many things worse. It does suck. I heard him say once that he was doing this as a voluntary poverty thing for religious reasons. I also learned he has a place to stay. However, I learned more about him today and he has schizophrenia and he's almost completely blind. His place was being used by drug dealers and sex trade workers and he's had his violin stolen. His life is a lot worse than he lets on. I think, without romanticizing it, that for someone who does actually take it up as a voluntary thing and who doesn't have a mental illness it might not be that bad if they have a talent like he does. At least I think it's an experience that would change you for the better if it's done temporarily, assuming you can do it without becoming an addict of course. Why would it change me for the better? The one time i was homeless, it didn't change me for the better in any way that i can think of. it would have made me miserable if it lasted for a long enough time.

Did you miss the "voluntary" part of my post, or did you do it voluntarily and it didn't wasn't an important experience? What I said doesn't apply to anyone who is forced into that situation. The circumstances that force people into homelessness are probably much more likely to destroy you than make you stronger. The cycles of addiction you're forced into just to make your daily life bearable are incredibly hard to surmount.

I just think a lot of people would benefit from a withdrawal from their daily comforts and bad habits for some time and just living with the bare minimum for some time could help some people. It's one of the things I learned from studying Stoicism, though they rarely took it to that level themselves unlike the Cynics, they just chose to undergo other more minor uncomfortable experiences regularly. I don't think most people would need to go that far, but I can imagine it being positive for the rare individual. I think it's positive in two possible ways. If there is a religious or purpose-oriented reason behind it, like a wandering monk. Or if it's someone who is crippled by fear, it could be overcome by throwing himself into it. If your worst fear is homelessness and it eats you alive to think it could happen to you one day, it's probably not a bad idea.

On November 17 2017 08:20 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On November 13 2017 07:15 Stroggoz wrote:   On November 13 2017 06:48 Loco wrote:   On November 13 2017 04:51 Stroggoz wrote: glad i dont fit into any of these stupid starter packs. im an actual classical liberal that reads adam smith and wilhelm von humboldt for the insight. being homeless sucks btw, there arn't many things worse. It does suck. I heard him say once that he was doing this as a voluntary poverty thing for religious reasons. I also learned he has a place to stay. However, I learned more about him today and he has schizophrenia and he's almost completely blind. His place was being used by drug dealers and sex trade workers and he's had his violin stolen. His life is a lot worse than he lets on. I think, without romanticizing it, that for someone who does actually take it up as a voluntary thing and who doesn't have a mental illness it might not be that bad if they have a talent like he does. At least I think it's an experience that would change you for the better if it's done temporarily, assuming you can do it without becoming an addict of course. Why would it change me for the better? The one time i was homeless, it didn't change me for the better in any way that i can think of. it would have made me miserable if it lasted for a long enough time. Did you miss the "voluntary" part of my post, or did you do it voluntarily and it didn't wasn't an important experience? What I said doesn't apply to anyone who is forced into that situation. The circumstances that force people into homelessness are probably much more likely to destroy you than make you stronger. The cycles of addiction you're forced into just to make your daily life bearable are incredibly hard to surmount. I just think a lot of people would benefit from a withdrawal from their daily comforts and bad habits for some time and just living with the bare minimum for some time could help some people. It's one of the things I learned from studying Stoicism, though they rarely took it to that level themselves unlike the Cynics, they just chose to undergo other more minor uncomfortable experiences regularly. I don't think most people would need to go that far, but I can imagine it being positive for the rare individual. I think it's positive in two possible ways. If there is a religious or purpose-oriented reason behind it, like a wandering monk. Or if it's someone who is crippled by fear, it could be overcome by throwing himself into it. If your worst fear is homelessness and it eats you alive to think it could happen to you one day, it's probably not a bad idea.

no i'd never be voluntarily be homeless unless someone gave me an interesting/valuable perspective on it that i have yet to see, and i wasn't voluntarily homeless before. it really wasn't a big deal because i knew i was going to get a new place to live soon. Seems like an inefficient use of time to me to conquer your fear that way. I'd rather just make money to prevent myself from becoming homeless, or help create a socialist system to prevent homelessness. I also don't fear being homeless already and am not religious, so that could be it as well. I actually know a guy that lived in the woods voluntarily for 3 years and came out fine afterwards, i think it was something spiritual for them, but i would go crazy doing that. It would be seriously bad for my social life and mental health and intellectual life, and it is the same for most people. I want to grow as a person and become smarter and more useful to other people, and i can't without basic necessities that would allow me to do so. Well, living in the woods is not exactly the same as being homeless i guess, but it seems similar in some ways.

lol i thought you had something there Baal, but that Milo's video is nothing

edit: actually i take that back. it is something, but not really that much

On November 17 2017 05:05 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 17 2017 02:21 Spitfiree wrote: Shapiro sounds like Baal tbh lol fierce "in your face" debate ftw Peterson had conservative bias, as Loco pointed out before, Peterson once just tossed aside even the possibility of a reasonable argument about anti-natalism so he can be intellectually dishonest its very evident in his religious views too, that being said I love many of his talks, he makes very strong well tought points in a very articulated fashion and turns them into usable every-day knowledge, I think Loco dislikes him because he is kind of a purist and also he is also probably unaware of his left leaning bias.

I am unaware that I lean to the left? lol, are you joking? It's certainly not a bias either, every reason I have for it is a rational one.

I dislike him in a similar way I dislike all gurus. Peterson doesn't have anything original to contribute. The number of ridiculous beliefs he holds is astoundingly high, yet he presents himself as someone who is very self-critical and skeptical. I also don't think it's true that he expresses himself very well. He gives off that impression, but when you really slow down and listen, he says a lot of words that say absolutely nothing. It's empty rhetoric that strings people along and makes them feel like they're part of his thought process. I think people who regard him as an intellectual giant have had their intellectual growth stunted somewhere along the way. I've talked with a lot of professional philosophers and not a single one of them think Peterson is something other than a hack.

It comes down to staying in your lane, as they say. If you specialize in one field and that's where you're an authority, your confidence to opine on matters in other fields shouldn't be the same (but it is for people like Peterson). If you want to know what a real transdisciplinary thinker is so that you can dispense with people like JP, read Edgar Morin. You have the chance of doing so since his work has been widely translated and he's famous in Latin America.

On November 17 2017 02:21 Spitfiree wrote: Last few days I actually went through 2-3 hrs of videos of Peterson & Shapiro, each, and tbh I don't really get what Loco s bashing them for.

Here's a treasure trove of a subreddit where you can see things from another angle (with the help of educated people) and learn. It's up to you, I'm not going to do the work for you.

Dunno man, if that is a treasure trove I'm kinda disappointed by the things that impress you. I've read 3 posts and they are just trying to do the exact same things I dislike in Peterson, except on the other side of the specter, its actually quite amusing since they don't realize they're basically doing the same thing ... It's a whole subreddit dedicated to shitting on him, naturally, you'll find reasonable arguments, but I'm guessing you could see where my concern lies.

Also, does Peterson believe in cultural Marxism? Never heard(those whole few hours I've listened to him :D) him say anything close to that. The whole idea of cultural Marxism seems too idiotic for someone like him to believe it though I've been surprised on things that looked much more unlikely

On November 17 2017 05:05 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 17 2017 02:21 Spitfiree wrote: Shapiro sounds like Baal tbh lol fierce "in your face" debate ftw

Obv excluding the religious part and etc. you're both anti government and think that ppl should do w/e they want as long as they don't hurt anybody else etc.

It's kind of odd that he's so religious but anti government though, that almost feels like an oxymoron tbh

On November 17 2017 18:34 tapatapaz wrote: lol i thought you had something there Baal, but that Milo's video is nothing edit: actually i take that back. it is something, but not really that much

Dude you can see Richard Spencer, an open white supremacist doing the siegl heil and you can see many others doing it in Milos face while singing a nationalistic song, how is this not evidence of being involved in white supremacist groups?

Milo's only defense was that it was dark and he couldnt see them and that obviously is bullshit

On November 18 2017 02:12 Spitfiree wrote: Dunno man, if that is a treasure trove I'm kinda disappointed by the things that impress you. I've read 3 posts and they are just trying to do the exact same things I dislike in Peterson, except on the other side of the specter, its actually quite amusing since they don't realize they're basically doing the same thing ... It's a whole subreddit dedicated to shitting on him, naturally, you'll find reasonable arguments, but I'm guessing you could see where my concern lies. Also, does Peterson believe in cultural Marxism? Never heard(those whole few hours I've listened to him :D) him say anything close to that. The whole idea of cultural Marxism seems too idiotic for someone like him to believe it though I've been surprised on things that looked much more unlikely Show nested quote + On November 17 2017 05:05 Baalim wrote:   On November 17 2017 02:21 Spitfiree wrote: Shapiro sounds like Baal tbh lol fierce "in your face" debate ftw Obv excluding the religious part and etc. you're both anti government and think that ppl should do w/e they want as long as they don't hurt anybody else etc. It's kind of odd that he's so religious but anti government though, that almost feels like an oxymoron tbh

Obviously, you don't know Peterson well enough and/or you don't understand the things he's involved in. I've been following the guy for a long time, not just a few days, so we can't expect to reach an agreement regardless of what your views are. I didn't have any major criticisms of the guy either when I had only watched a few hours of his stuff.

The subreddit offers a pretty thorough debunking of him if you read it for long enough and you know what he's about. Just today there were a couple really on point articles posted on him. It's not about it impressing me, it just echoes my own feelings a lot of the time (which I arrived at independently).

And yes he did use the words Cultural Marxism at first but he soon realized it wouldn't fly and changed it to Neo-Marxists. Read this thread and the post it links to, it's on his recent controversial harassment campaign: https://www.reddit.com/r/onguardforth...ty_of_toronto_professors_warn_jordan/

On November 18 2017 02:12 Spitfiree wrote: Dunno man, if that is a treasure trove I'm kinda disappointed

QFT

I gave it a quick look and so far I saw a girl bitching that his boyfriend follows Peterson and Rogan and ruined his relationship, then another post saying that Person debunks himself when he claims in a video that he is against the activist ethos, and then a third one that laughed at this:



That to me looks pretty reasonable as all those ideologies are collectivist in nature and refute the false dichotomy of socialism vs fascism when they are both collectivist authoritarianism.


So far that link looks like a garbage can that you claim there is gold if you keep looking but so far it all seems like trash and I dont feel like digging anymore, dissapointing.

On November 17 2017 19:13 Loco wrote: I am unaware that I lean to the left? lol, are you joking? I dislike him in a similar way I dislike all gurus. I've talked with a lot of professional philosophers and not a single one of them think Peterson is something other than a hack.

I said you were unaware of your bias

You believe you hate him because he is a "guru" yet you are probably like other "gurus" more than anybody else in this entire forum.

Oh you talked with professional philosophers and all said that Peterson is a hack... case closed gentleman, lets all go home, Loco got this lol.

Do you have an actual argumenta against specific subjects against him? or all we are going to just have to settle with Reddit hunts?

We probably agree on most of the things we think he is wrong about, but I dont discard the rest because of that, I disagree with Foucault but he has a lot interesting points that I agree with and I think your tendency to dislike him is that bias I'm talking about an intelectual snobbism.

On November 18 2017 04:46 Baalim wrote:

I said you were unaware of your bias

Which is basically a tautological statement. You could elaborate on why you think I'm biased because this says absolutely nothing. I am biased in favor of what, the idea of there having less harm and more fairness in the world? What liberal values do you think I hold and which I'm not aware of?

You believe you hate him because he is a "guru" yet you are probably like other "gurus" more than anybody else in this entire forum.

How am I guru-like? I've been passionate about philosophy for many years and I pursued my interests autodidactically. I've also been disillusioned about how much philosophy can be of any help. My favorite thinkers are two people who were radical in their youth and became disillusioned and spent the rest of their lives exploring how to live with as few illusions as possible. "More than anyone else on this forum." Honestly, that's by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say. And putting "guru" in quotes, rofl. Peterson is the epitome of a guru. Look at the amount of money he earns per month to tell people how to live their lives and tell them who is an enemy of his sacrosanct Western Values and who isn't. Please.

Oh you talked with professional philosophers and all said that Peterson is a hack... case closed gentleman, lets all go home, Loco got this lol.

Yes, believe it or not, the opinions of people who actually read books and take ideas seriously have more merit than the average person who browses the internet and loves getting into politically heated exchanges. It's pretty telling when there is a consensus among them that someone has no idea wtf they're talking about. It's also pretty telling that people who want to bolster their worldview use Peterson's credentials when none of his arguments on post-modernism and neo-marxism have been peer-reviewed. His work has largely nothing to do with the things he's involved in now [and famous for].

Do you have an actual argumenta against specific subjects against him? or all we are going to just have to settle with Reddit hunts?

Have you already forgotten my previous arguments? It would be pretty hard not to have any arguments on specific subjects with a Christian conservative pro-lifer who is by all evidence a raging sexist. The problem is that I have a big personal problem with brevity. If I set out to do something like debunk someone's ideas, I want to do it rigorously. I do that shit too much already (mostly elsewhere) and it's simply not worthwhile. The subreddit is filled with examples of his idiocy and bad arguments. Feel free to cherry pick the stuff you don't think has any merit and ignore the rest, I really don't care.

We probably agree on most of the things we think he is wrong about, but I dont discard the rest because of that, I disagree with Foucault but he has a lot interesting points that I agree with and I think your tendency to dislike him is that bias I'm talking about an intelectual snobbism.

I was the first to post a Peterson video on this site where he discussed meaning in life with some Buddhist guy and I found it stimulating. In other words, I was the first here to believe he had valuable things to say or else I wouldn't have posted it. I didn't dislike him at all when I watched his Existentialism lecture after that and gave him the benefit of the doubt for a long time even when he became involved in highly politicised subjects. I've precisely said that the problem is that he takes himself to be a transdisciplinary thinker when he is not -- he should stay in his lane. He's now little else than a guru/ideologue -- and a bully to boot -- with an harmful agenda, so that's why I dislike him, not because of some preformed opinion of the guy.

Peterson is pretty good when he sticks to psychology, self-improvement, Big 5 personality, clinical experiences and he has done enough close reading that he can reference Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche pretty well but I just realized we are in another Peterson discussion. I'll have to read that subreddit.

Cliffs on how he is a raging sexist?

I basically had a bad taste in my mouth when a lot of his Christian beliefs started coming to light.

On November 19 2017 03:00 RiKD wrote: Peterson is pretty good when he sticks to psychology, self-improvement, Big 5 personality, clinical experiences and he has done enough close reading that he can reference Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche pretty well but I just realized we are in another Peterson discussion. I'll have to read that subreddit. Cliffs on how he is a raging sexist? I basically had a bad taste in my mouth when a lot of his Christian beliefs started coming to light.

He believes that traditional gender roles are entirely based in biology and contribute to the stability of a society. Recently he came out and tweeted that "“With all the accusations of sex assault emerging (eg Louis CK) we are going to soon remember why sex was traditionally enshrined in marriage.”

He said last month that the problem with "crazy" women is that you aren't allowed to beat them. He also said that "feminists don't criticize Islam because they unconsciously long for masculine dominance."

I'm not surprised he adores Jung so much, Jung was a fucking asshole who cheated on his wife every week.

Damore wrote that women, on average, have “higher levels of neuroticism”, something that may “contribute to the lower number of women in high stress jobs”.

I am sure there is some discussion there.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolog...-google-memo-interview-autism-regrets

I also found out yesterday that Peterson came out with a more in depth 100 question Big 5 Personality test.

understandmyself.com

On November 19 2017 02:28 Loco wrote: the idea of there having less harm and more fairness in the world? What liberal values do you think I hold and which I'm not aware of?[/b] people pursuing fairness have burnt the world many times, and for example you are not aware of your sexism-pranoia, you called Peterson a raging sexist, that is just crazy [quote] How am I guru-like? I've been passionate about philosophy for many years and I pursued my interests autodidactically. I've also been disillusioned about how much philosophy can be of any help. My favorite thinkers are two people who were radical in their youth and became disillusioned and spent the rest of their lives exploring how to live with as few illusions as possible. "More than anyone else on this forum." Honestly, that's by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say. And putting "guru" in quotes, rofl. Peterson is the epitome of a guru. Look at the amount of money he earns per month to tell people how to live their lives and tell them who is an enemy of his sacrosanct Western Values and who isn't. Please.

I didnt say you were guru-like, I said you like following gurus more than anybody else in here.

Yes, believe it or not, the opinions of people who actually read books and take ideas seriously have more merit than the average person who browses the internet and loves getting into politically heated exchanges.

argumentum ad verecundiam... lately you have done a lot of those.

Have you already forgotten my previous arguments? It would be pretty hard not to have any arguments on specific subjects with a Christian conservative pro-lifer who is by all evidence a raging sexist.

I think we agree on the many things Peterson is wrong, you are wrong calling him sexist tho.

We probably agree on most of the things we think he is wrong about, but I dont discard the rest because of that, I disagree with Foucault but he has a lot interesting points that I agree with and I think your tendency to dislike him is that bias I'm talking about an intelectual snobbism.

I've precisely said that the problem is that he takes himself to be a transdisciplinary thinker when he is not -- he should stay in his lane. He's now little else than a guru/ideologue -- and a bully to boot -- with an harmful agenda, so that's why I dislike him, not because of some preformed opinion of the guy.

I dont know how he regards himself, he has many interesting things to say, and his "bullying" is simple dissent to the leftist dogma that took a hold of academia and students and is precisely what we need.

On November 19 2017 03:24 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On November 19 2017 03:00 RiKD wrote: Peterson is pretty good when he sticks to psychology, self-improvement, Big 5 personality, clinical experiences and he has done enough close reading that he can reference Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche pretty well but I just realized we are in another Peterson discussion. I'll have to read that subreddit. Cliffs on how he is a raging sexist? I basically had a bad taste in my mouth when a lot of his Christian beliefs started coming to light. He believes that traditional gender roles are entirely based in biology and contribute to the stability of a society. Recently he came out and tweeted that "“With all the accusations of sex assault emerging (eg Louis CK) we are going to soon remember why sex was traditionally enshrined in marriage.” He said last month that the problem with "crazy" women is that you aren't allowed to beat them. He also said that "feminists don't criticize Islam because they unconsciously long for masculine dominance." I'm not surprised he adores Jung so much, Jung was a fucking asshole who cheated on his wife every week.

So he has a stupid belief that sex should remain in marriage, that makes him wrong and a conservative, not a sexist.

Pretty dishonest way to frame what he said, because he is 100% truth, women can get away with pushing discourse far beyond any man could and its something feminist very often do, for example:



I can post dozens of vids where feminists get away with violence and that is what Peterson was saying, I guess you are a raging sexist if you point that out


He said they unconsciouisly long for masculine dominance, since he is a psychologist isnt that "staying in his lane" as you want? to what do you attribute feminists supporting Islam?

On November 19 2017 03:53 RiKD wrote: Damore wrote that women, on average, have “higher levels of neuroticism”, something that may “contribute to the lower number of women in high stress jobs”. I am sure there is some discussion there. https://www.theguardian.com/technolog...-google-memo-interview-autism-regrets I also found out yesterday that Peterson came out with a more in depth 100 question Big 5 Personality test. understandmyself.com

when he speaks of neutoricism he speaksin the big 5 terms, and he is right, women score higher in neutoricism and agreeableness

On November 19 2017 05:15 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 19 2017 02:28 Loco wrote: the idea of there having less harm and more fairness in the world? What liberal values do you think I hold and which I'm not aware of?[/b] people pursuing fairness have burnt the world many times, and for example you are not aware of your sexism-pranoia, you called Peterson a raging sexist, that is just crazy [quote] How am I guru-like? I've been passionate about philosophy for many years and I pursued my interests autodidactically. I've also been disillusioned about how much philosophy can be of any help. My favorite thinkers are two people who were radical in their youth and became disillusioned and spent the rest of their lives exploring how to live with as few illusions as possible. "More than anyone else on this forum." Honestly, that's by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say. And putting "guru" in quotes, rofl. Peterson is the epitome of a guru. Look at the amount of money he earns per month to tell people how to live their lives and tell them who is an enemy of his sacrosanct Western Values and who isn't. Please. I didnt say you were guru-like, I said you like following gurus more than anybody else in here. [quote]

That's what I read at first and I wrote a reply to that, but then I reread your statement which says:

"yet you are probably like other "gurus" more than anybody else in this entire forum."

So I edited my post. Ok, so, which gurus do I like? I thought you said I was an independent thinker? If I like gurus more than anybody else on this entire forum, that says quite the opposite. Means I need people to tell me what to think, because that's what gurus are for.

On November 19 2017 05:21 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 19 2017 03:24 Loco wrote: [QUOTE]On November 19 2017 03:00 RiKD wrote: Peterson is pretty good when he sticks to psychology, self-improvement, Big 5 personality, clinical experiences and he has done enough close reading that he can reference Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche pretty well but I just realized we are in another Peterson discussion. I'll have to read that subreddit. Cliffs on how he is a raging sexist? I basically had a bad taste in my mouth when a lot of his Christian beliefs started coming to light. + Show Spoiler + He believes that traditional gender roles are entirely based in biology and contribute to the stability of a society. Recently he came out and tweeted that "“With all the accusations of sex assault emerging (eg Louis CK) we are going to soon remember why sex was traditionally enshrined in marriage.” He said last month that the problem with "crazy" women is that you aren't allowed to beat them. He also said that "feminists don't criticize Islam because they unconsciously long for masculine dominance." I'm not surprised he adores Jung so much, Jung was a fucking asshole who cheated on his wife every week.

So he has a stupid belief that sex should remain in marriage, that makes him wrong and a conservative, not a sexist.

I wasn't aware that conservatism and sexism were mutually exclusive, good to know. Also lol if you think the only thing that tweet says is that he has a silly belief about sex and marriage. That's the least ridiculous part of the tweet. And you know as well as I do that I just picked one recent example to show to RiKD but his beliefs conform pretty much 100% with traditional sexist beliefs. He thinks women who don't have children miss out on their main purpose in life. His beliefs are so strong there that he even denies overpopulation.

Pretty dishonest way to frame what he said, because he is 100% truth, women can get away with pushing discourse far beyond any man could and its something feminist very often do, for example: I can post dozens of vids where feminists get away with violence and that is what Peterson was saying, I guess you are a raging sexist if you point that out

"Extremists can be violent, therefore we should be able to beat women and what keeps a conversation civil is the threat of violence. I can show you more examples of extremists being violent while pacifists take it, if you don't believe such a thing exists." Yawn.

He said they unconsciouisly long for masculine dominance, since he is a psychologist isnt that "staying in his lane" as you want?

Yep he sure is, and that's an instance of him making a sweeping generalization that he can't back up with any solid evidence. Or am I just not aware of the many replicated studies that show this is true? Help me out if that's the case.

to what do you attribute feminists supporting Islam?

Well, first of all, where did you learn that feminists support Islam? I'm not informed on the matter, but it sounds like one of those things that gets repeated within an echo chamber and is assumed to be self-evident as a result. I'm pretty sure there are feminists that criticize islam, but let's assume there aren't many. Seems like a complex answer is required there, certainly one that's a lot more complex than jumping to a conclusion and pandering to an audience that pays me $100k+ per month. I don't know, maybe because progressives defend minorities regardless of their views? Defending Islamists from abuse is not the same as avoiding to criticize the rotten ideas of Islamic doctrine. Also, religious practice manifests in different ways depending on socioeconomic conditions. People don't often act on the bad ideas in their religions even if they're well educated, so it's probably not a very efficient use of one's time.

I wish I was smart enough to formulate complete thoughts about some of the topics here but I'm probably not, and I'm certainly not dedicated enough right now to make a full attempt.

I don't think there's anything too wrong with listening to a variety of speakers like those listed above as long as one attempts to critically weed through the good and bad. Can I see it being annoying if someone just parrots another's viewpoint as truth blindly? Sure! It's not something horrible either though.

For instance, Ben Shapiro is someone I will use to clue in on "what news story seems to matter now and why," ie. I find him valuable and honest as a gatekeeper of news (his bias is clear,) but the dude self-promotes and shills in a way that I feel is beneath his level of intelligence/potential. I don't agree with all of his opinions but I do believe he is mostly honest about the way he presents himself. Ben could probably do better for his world view/society if he dropped his entertainer persona... which I feel limits his potential. Who am I to judge (even if I do) when he says or does something I disagree with? I don't see him as the arbitrator of right and wrong. He is popular, makes decisions on how to maximize his brand, and seems to do a good job at whatever he's trying to do. (Probably much better than I do at whatever I'm trying to do.) It's infotainment.

Knowing that it's infotainment (or at least thinking that it is) makes me take people like Ben, Peterson, Harris, Rogan, Nate Silver, etc etc etc and people who seem to live and die by public figures like them with a grain of salt. They will have ideas to consider, occasionally worth thinking about and often ideas that annoy by seeming distasteful, boring, obnoxious, or totally off base (to me.)

The illusion that one person has all the right ideas and is worth following is just that. Plenty of people I respect/admire in some areas I see as having huge blind spots in others.

Overall it's probably a great thing that there are a multitude of voices that attempt to speak honestly on subjects that we can listen to and choose to contemplate (or not contemplate) imo. Even if we feel they, or many of them, are full of shit in certain areas/domains.

On November 19 2017 05:15 Baalim wrote: argumentum ad verecundiam... lately you have done a lot of those.

And lately I've had to correct you guys' misunderstandings of an appeal to authority a whole lot. An appeal to consensus is not the same as an appeal to an authority. "My friend has a PhD therefore what I'm saying here is true if he agrees with it" is an appeal to authority. Second statement: "Everyone who works in this field and has studied the subject rigorously and whom I've come across thinks this person is wrong." The second is not a strong argument in itself, but it's not a fallacy. It serves the purpose of quickly letting people know that their confidence in their belief should be much lower than it is if there is a consensus against it.

I dont know how he regards himself, he has many interesting things to say, and his "bullying" is simple dissent to the leftist dogma that took a hold of academia and students and is precisely what we need.

And who has appointed himself arbiter of all things objective in order to know what is corrupt/dogma and what isn't? Has this anti-Post-Modern Neo-Marxist agenda been promoted by any reputable people? What actual academic work has been done on it and which would justify this kind of harassment?

It's funny because I found a clip by chance yesterday (unless it's Jungian synchronicity!) between two scientists/philosophers that have been very valuable to my studies and one of them (imo one of the world's greatest geniuses) was making fun of this whole agenda and the way people are so worried about the boogeymen postmodernists (14:40-15:00), and this is from 1998:



I thought wow, this is an old joke and it took two decades before it got so many believers to try and take action against "them".

This quote belongs in the ROFL thread:

“Jordan Peterson is the most important and influential Canadian thinker since Marshall McLuhan. His international fame and impact continue to grow exponentially. Peterson’s bold interdisciplinary synthesis of psychology, anthropology, science, politics and comparative religion is forming the template for the genuinely humanistic university of the future.” —Camille Paglia

This lady must have been hit in the head hard. I don't know if I should laugh or cry. This is in the "praised by:" section of his new book, "12 Rules for Living" (don't be fooled by the title tho, it's totally not a self-help book, he's totes not a guru...). It's kind of funny to read that quote since there are no praises by any other intellectuals following.

There really shouldnt be any respect for postmodernists, they are harmful to society because a lot of stupid people think they know what they are talking about. They are by and large people talking gibberish in the university. Experiments have been conducted by two physicists who showed this to be true, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Anyway, the basic experiment, which is known as the sokal affair, consisted of writing a fake journal article using made up words and getting it peer reviewed and published in a reputable post modern academic journal. It's pretty laughable to read the book on this, 'fashionable nonsense' is what it's called.

Here's a basic truism that largely holds true: if an academic/'intellecutal' is the media a lot, they are typically a hack/egotistical/clueless. If they work in their office 70 hours a week and are unknown to the outside world, they probably know a bit more. So we should be high skeptical of anyone in jordan petersons position, but i wont criticize him because i havnt read his work.

I agree with Stroggoz's post. Not too aware of his works either, but tbh it just seems that he would like to not be censored by a law, which is pretty common sense. Take the law away and the whole argument becomes pointless.

On November 19 2017 03:24 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On November 19 2017 03:00 RiKD wrote: Peterson is pretty good when he sticks to psychology, self-improvement, Big 5 personality, clinical experiences and he has done enough close reading that he can reference Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche pretty well but I just realized we are in another Peterson discussion. I'll have to read that subreddit. Cliffs on how he is a raging sexist? I basically had a bad taste in my mouth when a lot of his Christian beliefs started coming to light. He believes that traditional gender roles are entirely based in biology and contribute to the stability of a society. Recently he came out and tweeted that "“With all the accusations of sex assault emerging (eg Louis CK) we are going to soon remember why sex was traditionally enshrined in marriage.”

men and women are different, in free rich societies they diverge even more than usual

I don't know how people squeeze sexism out of that tweet as it's basically saying men should only fuck their wives and not roofy actresses in hotels

or is that part and parcel of sexual liberation

On November 19 2017 03:24 Loco wrote: He said last month that the problem with "crazy" women is that you aren't allowed to beat them.

crazy women mistake the deference given to the fairer sex as dominance, and so delude themselves into thinking they're competent when really men are playing by different social rules because men and women not same

what he did not say is you should be allowed to beat women, but he does make interesting observations about society

the answer he gave to the problem, which you probably can't even say exists because no women are crazy right that's sexist, was that sane women should fix crazy women, and that they don't because they're busy doing things sane women do and the crazy women are busy being harpies, and that's as far as the clip got and it's an interesting issue because crazy women are civilization wrecking balls

but anyway that was a great video thanks I especially enjoy that the secretary interviewing him was so quiet and internalized misogynist so she kept herself from interrupting him when a man was spewing his sexist screed

On November 19 2017 03:24 Loco wrote: He also said that "feminists don't criticize Islam because they unconsciously long for masculine dominance."

do you think feminists not criticizing Islam is adequately explained only by other reasons, then? because he didn't say this to the exclusion of those it's just an interesting idea

On November 19 2017 07:30 Loco wrote: I thought wow, this is an old joke and it took two decades before it got so many believers to try and take action against "them".

that's an interesting video but I struggled with Von Foerster's accent a lot while watching

Firstly feminists do criticize islam so I don't agree with the premise that they don't. But to the degree where you can observe that they don't, it has absolutely nothing to do with an unconscious longing for masculine dominance, that's fucking absurd. Feminists not being that vocal about opposition to islam is easily explainable through one simple factor and logical deductions of that: feminists are almost always leftists. Leftists are almost always pro-immigration. A lot of immigrants are muslim and thus a pro-immigration and anti-muslim pov are difficult to combine. Focusing on how bad muslims are would essentially attack their own political agenda. Then there's the argument that focusing on external rather than internal problems is pointless; I have no problems accepting that Islam in the middle east is 'worse' than christianity in the west is, but being that I live in the west, criticizing Christianity in the West is still far more productive and likely to spur political change.

(note that while leftisism, feminism and pro-immigration are all independent thoughts, they are also stances that originate from a similar point of departure, wanting a more equitable society (because this corresponds to a more just society),so people who believe in one of these should usually also believe in the other two.)

Political beliefs influencing scientific belief happens all the time. (Though tbh this is not really what happens with feminists "not criticizing islam" (although they do), but it is related.)
The reason why right wingers are less likely to believe in climate change wasn't originally that they are more likely to be scientifically illiterate idiots, it's that all the political solutions to climate change require more regulation and government action. Like, if not for the linkages between various political attitudes, you could expect lack of scientific acceptance for X to be the same across party lines, but it's not. Leftists are more willing to reject scientific consensus on GMO, right wingers are more likely to reject scientific consensus on everything else.

On November 19 2017 11:57 Stroggoz wrote: There really shouldnt be any respect for postmodernists, they are harmful to society because a lot of stupid people think they know what they are talking about. They are by and large people talking gibberish in the university. Experiments have been conducted by two physicists who showed this to be true, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Anyway, the basic experiment, which is known as the sokal affair, consisted of writing a fake journal article using made up words and getting it peer reviewed and published in a reputable post modern academic journal. It's pretty laughable to read the book on this, 'fashionable nonsense' is what it's called. Here's a basic truism that largely holds true: if an academic/'intellecutal' is the media a lot, they are typically a hack/egotistical/clueless. If they work in their office 70 hours a week and are unknown to the outside world, they probably know a bit more. So we should be high skeptical of anyone in jordan petersons position, but i wont criticize him because i havnt read his work.

Sokal is brought up at the end of the video I posted above your post. You have a very simplistic understanding of postmodernism and what the Sokal affair actually meant which leads you into making an illegitimate generalization about "postmodernism". I'm not a fan of post-structuralists myself (with the exception of Barthes maybe) but this rhetoric that goes around and the people who spread it is troublesome. Every time I see someone being pushed on this they show an inability to mention specific authors and contextualize their ideas and they turn postmodernism into some strange boogeyman for everything they basically disagree with. Anyway, I posted a debate a while ago which goes into the nuances of the Sokal affair at some point. I recommend you watch it. The physicist in the debate brought it up in a similar fashion as you just did here but he recanted his position later on.

On November 19 2017 20:57 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On November 19 2017 11:57 Stroggoz wrote: There really shouldnt be any respect for postmodernists, they are harmful to society because a lot of stupid people think they know what they are talking about. They are by and large people talking gibberish in the university. Experiments have been conducted by two physicists who showed this to be true, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Anyway, the basic experiment, which is known as the sokal affair, consisted of writing a fake journal article using made up words and getting it peer reviewed and published in a reputable post modern academic journal. It's pretty laughable to read the book on this, 'fashionable nonsense' is what it's called. Here's a basic truism that largely holds true: if an academic/'intellecutal' is the media a lot, they are typically a hack/egotistical/clueless. If they work in their office 70 hours a week and are unknown to the outside world, they probably know a bit more. So we should be high skeptical of anyone in jordan petersons position, but i wont criticize him because i havnt read his work. Sokal is brought up at the end of the video I posted above your post. You have a very simplistic understanding of postmodernism and what the Sokal affair actually meant. I posted a debate a while ago which goes into the nuances of it at some point. I recommend you watch it. The physicist in the debate brought it up in a similar fashion as you just did here but he recanted his position later on.

Can you actually explain what is wrong with my views other than saying it's 'simplistic.' I said by and large the people known as postmodernists are talking gibberish and basically have no clue what they are talking about, which i think is a correct and simplified attack on the postmodernist movement in academia, given the results of the sokal affair. Which, i know just focused on what was being said about physics and maths by postmodernists, but it generalizes. is that wrong?

I was editing my post to add some more detail while you were writing yours. Yes, you're wrong about extrapolating that much from the Sokal affair. My thoughts on it are echoed in the video you just quoted so you can just listen to that.

On November 19 2017 06:11 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On November 19 2017 05:15 Baalim wrote: [QUOTE]On November 19 2017 02:28 Loco wrote: the idea of there having less harm and more fairness in the world? What liberal values do you think I hold and which I'm not aware of?[/b] people pursuing fairness have burnt the world many times, and for example you are not aware of your sexism-pranoia, you called Peterson a raging sexist, that is just crazy [quote] How am I guru-like? I've been passionate about philosophy for many years and I pursued my interests autodidactically. I've also been disillusioned about how much philosophy can be of any help. My favorite thinkers are two people who were radical in their youth and became disillusioned and spent the rest of their lives exploring how to live with as few illusions as possible. "More than anyone else on this forum." Honestly, that's by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say. And putting "guru" in quotes, rofl. Peterson is the epitome of a guru. Look at the amount of money he earns per month to tell people how to live their lives and tell them who is an enemy of his sacrosanct Western Values and who isn't. Please. I didnt say you were guru-like, I said you like following gurus more than anybody else in here. That's what I read at first and I wrote a reply to that, but then I reread your statement which says: "yet you are probably like other "gurus" more than anybody else in this entire forum." So I edited my post. Ok, so, which gurus do I like? I thought you said I was an independent thinker? If I like gurus more than anybody else on this entire forum, that says quite the opposite. Means I need people to tell me what to think, because that's what gurus are for.

Oh I typed wrong then.

I only framed gurus under your own terms, I mean, what makes you believe these people tell their minions what to believe and they do it so out of blind devoltion yet when you read Schopenhauer its you critically analizing what he says and rationally accepting or rejecting their ideas?

On November 19 2017 06:53 Loco wrote: I wasn't aware that conservatism and sexism were mutually exclusive, good to know. Also lol if you think the only thing that tweet says is that he has a silly belief about sex and marriage. That's the least ridiculous part of the tweet. And you know as well as I do that I just picked one recent example to show to RiKD but his beliefs conform pretty much 100% with traditional sexist beliefs. He thinks women who don't have children miss out on their main purpose in life. His beliefs are so strong there that he even denies overpopulation.

They are not mutually exclusive, but they arent the same thing, yes he pushes idiotic traditional beliefs of procreation but I havent seen something specifically "raging sexist" because if saying that is raging sexism then I guess we have way difference ideas of what raging is.

"Extremists can be violent, therefore we should be able to beat women and what keeps a conversation civil is the threat of violence. I can show you more examples of extremists being violent while pacifists take it, if you don't believe such a thing exists." Yawn.

more dishoensty, Peterson never said we should be able to beat women, he said you cannot control CRAZY which means extremist feminists becaues they can be violent without recieving any violence back.

[Yep he sure is, and that's an instance of him making a sweeping generalization that he can't back up with any solid evidence. Or am I just not aware of the many replicated studies that show this is true? Help me out if that's the case.

But I thought that the opinions of professionals were far more important than the one of random people in the internet who get into heated political arguments?... see? I can make stupid argumentum ad verecundiam too!

to what do you attribute feminists supporting Islam?

Well, first of all, where did you learn that feminists support Islam? I'm not informed on the matter, but it sounds like one of those things that gets repeated within an echo chamber and is assumed to be self-evident as a result. I'm pretty sure there are feminists that criticize islam, but let's assume there aren't many. Seems like a complex answer is required there, certainly one that's a lot more complex than jumping to a conclusion and pandering to an audience that pays me $100k+ per month. I don't know, maybe because progressives defend minorities regardless of their views?[/QUOTE]

For some self destructive reason I somewhat follow the subject so yes I've learned that the feminist standard is to defend Islam, for example, the womens march symbol was a a woman in a hijab, which is obviously a misoginistic islamic garment, I can post you endless articles, posts etc about feminists aligning with Islam, I believe mainly because their enemy is the patriarchy which is mostly western civilization and Islam is also at odds against that, and no its not because they just protect minorities, they dont protect jews, Linda Sarsour one of the most prominent if not the most prominent feminist in the past years is quite openly anti-semitic.

But for the record yeah its pretty retarded to make a claim about being subconsciously attrackted to muslim opression, I was just fishing to see what you thought about the feminist/islam thing

On November 19 2017 17:56 Liquid`Drone wrote: Firstly feminists do criticize islam so I don't agree with the premise that they don't. But to the degree where you can observe that they don't, it has absolutely nothing to do with an unconscious longing for masculine dominance, that's fucking absurd. Feminists not being that vocal about opposition to islam is easily explainable through one simple factor and logical deductions of that: feminists are almost always leftists. Leftists are almost always pro-immigration. A lot of immigrants are muslim and thus a pro-immigration and anti-muslim pov are difficult to combine. Focusing on how bad muslims are would essentially attack their own political agenda. Then there's the argument that focusing on external rather than internal problems is pointless; I have no problems accepting that Islam in the middle east is 'worse' than christianity in the west is, but being that I live in the west, criticizing Christianity in the West is still far more productive and likely to spur political change. (note that while leftisism, feminism and pro-immigration are all independent thoughts, they are also stances that originate from a similar point of departure, wanting a more equitable society (because this corresponds to a more just society),so people who believe in one of these should usually also believe in the other two.) Political beliefs influencing scientific belief happens all the time. (Though tbh this is not really what happens with feminists "not criticizing islam" (although they do), but it is related.) The reason why right wingers are less likely to believe in climate change wasn't originally that they are more likely to be scientifically illiterate idiots, it's that all the political solutions to climate change require more regulation and government action. Like, if not for the linkages between various political attitudes, you could expect lack of scientific acceptance for X to be the same across party lines, but it's not. Leftists are more willing to reject scientific consensus on GMO, right wingers are more likely to reject scientific consensus on everything else.

I agree with almost every word, its ridiculous to think its longing for dominance, they align with it because they align with the left and people support/oppose science based on their political agenda.


The only thing I disagree with is that feminist criticize Islam, some tiny amount do and they are ostracized by the community mainly because as you say politics, the right pushes against Islam, use of veils etc, so feminists take a pro-hijab stance without realizing the huge contradiction.



Besides that we agree totally, I'm thinking I give the impression to be way more right wing than I am to people who align with the left like you and the opposite happens with conservatives like wobbly who recently called me a SJW

On November 19 2017 07:30 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On November 19 2017 05:15 Baalim wrote: argumentum ad verecundiam... lately you have done a lot of those. And lately I've had to correct you guys' misunderstandings of an appeal to authority a whole lot. An appeal to consensus is not the same as an appeal to an authority. "My friend has a PhD therefore what I'm saying here is true if he agrees with it" is an appeal to authority. Second statement: "Everyone who works in this field and has studied the subject rigorously and whom I've come across thinks this person is wrong." The second is not a strong argument in itself, but it's not a fallacy. It serves the purpose of quickly letting people know that their confidence in their belief should be much lower than it is if there is a consensus against it.

And the consensus is your profesional philosopher friends? all right, totally not argumentum ad verecundiam lol.



Even in the case of concensus in a field, while that obviously holds a lot of weight if the idea itself is being questioned the argument of consensus is not enough because you either acknowledge ignorance on the subject and withdraw from the discussion or you elaborate on the actual evidence or rational argument

They're not exactly my friends, they are the academics who run the /askphilosophy subreddit. If I am totally not credible to you, you can start here to explore their criticisms. The actual evidence is that there is no evidence of that conspiracy to be found, and that the people who have read Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Barthes, etc, are constantly responding that he's misrepresenting them and giving their reasoning. What has been his response? Oh yeah, nothing at all, he only goes on podcasts that agree with him and think he's an intellectual giant because that's what rakes in the views and the Patreon bucks. Are we really going to go back to our previous argument where you thought the burden of proof was on me to discredit his ideas, when those ideas have never been legitimized in the first place? The whole shtick is traced back to a book by Stephen Hicks, an objectivist, is that good enough evidence to you that it's credible? I know you were naive enough to fall for Molyneux's own objectivism but surely you've grown out of that by now since you've said many years ago you had been disillusioned. I'm not sure what it is you're defending here.

I knew you would mention Schopenhauer since you literally know nothing about my intellectual interests and he's someone I've quoted often in the past. It's pretty clear that Schopenhauer was a legitimate philosopher and not a guru. You have to be pretty desperate to think someone who preceded the self-help movement and who wrote that life was a mistake could be considered some kind of guru. But let's assume that you're right, that still doesn't say anything about me being attracted to gurus more than anyone else on this site. It's also pretty easy to know that I'm not a German Idealist and a sexist like Schopenhauer was. If you could point me to any post that suggests that I have assimilated Schopenhauer's philosophy uncritically then maybe you'd have a point, but I doubt you can do that, since I don't even subscribe to his philosophy as a whole (it's pretty outdated).

I initially wrote that JBP is transphobic and sexist and I edited out transphobic because I didn't want to repeat the same tired argument I've already had with LP transphobes. So I felt like I needed to replace the word with something and raging was the first thing that came to my mind for whatever reason. I was using it informally to mean "tremendous", but fine, I'll take it back, whatever. Little did I know you guys are so easily fooled you don't even think he's sexist at all. I think his "raging" sexism is simply inhibited (and in the instances of his transphobia, which is a form of sexism, that inhibition faltered a few times). This is someone who relies on society to tell him what's acceptable and what isn't. Put him back 200 years ago and this is someone who would have happily defended slave-owning. The idea that he's not sexist, i.e. he doesn't discriminate based on gender, is laughable and can only be entertained by the people within his own echo chamber and the people who have had the wool pulled over their eyes by his rhetorical tricks.

what makes you believe these people tell their minions what to believe and they do it so out of blind devoltion yet when you read Schopenhauer its you critically analizing what he says and rationally accepting or rejecting their ideas?

I've seen the YouTube comment sections, I've seen his subreddit, I've seen people argue with his followers (on this, this comment thread is very accurate in my experience), I've even argued with a few myself. One of my main interests deals with the possessive nature of ideas (noology), the inherent fanaticism of human beings, their desire for certainty (see Cartesian anxiety) and it's easy to see that his followers are largely ignorant of those drives within themselves. I guess the main difference between my approach to knowledge and theirs is that I'm interested in knowledge for knowledge's sake, unlike them. If you're interested in knowledge you'll develop your critical thinking skills and think in a complex manner, something you won't be doing when you're constantly involved in self-serving endeavors or trivial debates over culture wars topics.

Here's a question along the lines of the one you've asked me. How do you know to which degree I'm engaging in intellectual snobbism and to which degree it is you who is engaging in anti-intellectualism (or being intellectually lazy)?

So, I have heard Psychology has pretty horrible scientific standards.

What is sexist?

Based on the Big 5 Personality test women score high on neuroticism and agreeableness. (How reliable is this test?)

Since women score high on neuroticism and agreeableness they should be something like a nurse or a secretary where they can help people and they don't have to be in high stress situations like negotiating.



Also, Loco has a point. That is another big thing with Peterson. He'll go off on a rabid tangent on how bad Pomo is and how they are all lepers and we should all stay very far and very against them. He does not really express why and just attacks them. Off course none of his YouTube videos include discussion with bright Pomo thinkers. He does this with Pomo, anti-natalism, nihilism, atheism, etc. I am surprised he even went on Sam Harris's podcast to discuss Truth but I guess Sam has a lot of listeners. Boy, that was a shit show. If Peterson was really in it for good as the motive like he says he is he would engage true intellectuals on these topics not just pander to 18-40 year old men looking to self-radicalize. In the ladder area he gets a lot right but that does not mean he does not get some stuff very very wrong.

On November 20 2017 01:23 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 19 2017 17:56 Liquid`Drone wrote: Firstly feminists do criticize islam so I don't agree with the premise that they don't. But to the degree where you can observe that they don't, it has absolutely nothing to do with an unconscious longing for masculine dominance, that's fucking absurd. Feminists not being that vocal about opposition to islam is easily explainable through one simple factor and logical deductions of that: feminists are almost always leftists. Leftists are almost always pro-immigration. A lot of immigrants are muslim and thus a pro-immigration and anti-muslim pov are difficult to combine. Focusing on how bad muslims are would essentially attack their own political agenda. Then there's the argument that focusing on external rather than internal problems is pointless; I have no problems accepting that Islam in the middle east is 'worse' than christianity in the west is, but being that I live in the west, criticizing Christianity in the West is still far more productive and likely to spur political change. (note that while leftisism, feminism and pro-immigration are all independent thoughts, they are also stances that originate from a similar point of departure, wanting a more equitable society (because this corresponds to a more just society),so people who believe in one of these should usually also believe in the other two.) Political beliefs influencing scientific belief happens all the time. (Though tbh this is not really what happens with feminists "not criticizing islam" (although they do), but it is related.) The reason why right wingers are less likely to believe in climate change wasn't originally that they are more likely to be scientifically illiterate idiots, it's that all the political solutions to climate change require more regulation and government action. Like, if not for the linkages between various political attitudes, you could expect lack of scientific acceptance for X to be the same across party lines, but it's not. Leftists are more willing to reject scientific consensus on GMO, right wingers are more likely to reject scientific consensus on everything else. I agree with almost every word, its ridiculous to think its longing for dominance, they align with it because they align with the left and people support/oppose science based on their political agenda. The only thing I disagree with is that feminist criticize Islam, some tiny amount do and they are ostracized by the community mainly because as you say politics, the right pushes against Islam, use of veils etc, so feminists take a pro-hijab stance without realizing the huge contradiction. Besides that we agree totally, I'm thinking I give the impression to be way more right wing than I am to people who align with the left like you and the opposite happens with conservatives like wobbly who recently called me a SJW

Linda Sarsour isn't a prominent feminist. Look at this list : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ry_and_notable_21st-century_feminists

I'm not doing a precise count here, but that looks like a list over 200 or so currently living artists or writers or activists or intellectuals who have by some metric been influential members of 'the feminist movement'. Linda Sarsour doesn't make the cut. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani both do. I grant you that most feminists don't really relate themselves to Islam (it's not relevant for them; because a) criticizing a society from the outside doesn't yield positive results, b) in the west, male muslims are discriminated against as well and the same mechanisms that made those girls feminists make them opposed to anti-muslim discrimination, too, c) politics.

On November 20 2017 05:21 Liquid`Drone wrote: Show nested quote + On November 20 2017 01:23 Baalim wrote:   On November 19 2017 17:56 Liquid`Drone wrote: Firstly feminists do criticize islam so I don't agree with the premise that they don't. But to the degree where you can observe that they don't, it has absolutely nothing to do with an unconscious longing for masculine dominance, that's fucking absurd. Feminists not being that vocal about opposition to islam is easily explainable through one simple factor and logical deductions of that: feminists are almost always leftists. Leftists are almost always pro-immigration. A lot of immigrants are muslim and thus a pro-immigration and anti-muslim pov are difficult to combine. Focusing on how bad muslims are would essentially attack their own political agenda. Then there's the argument that focusing on external rather than internal problems is pointless; I have no problems accepting that Islam in the middle east is 'worse' than christianity in the west is, but being that I live in the west, criticizing Christianity in the West is still far more productive and likely to spur political change. (note that while leftisism, feminism and pro-immigration are all independent thoughts, they are also stances that originate from a similar point of departure, wanting a more equitable society (because this corresponds to a more just society),so people who believe in one of these should usually also believe in the other two.) Political beliefs influencing scientific belief happens all the time. (Though tbh this is not really what happens with feminists "not criticizing islam" (although they do), but it is related.) The reason why right wingers are less likely to believe in climate change wasn't originally that they are more likely to be scientifically illiterate idiots, it's that all the political solutions to climate change require more regulation and government action. Like, if not for the linkages between various political attitudes, you could expect lack of scientific acceptance for X to be the same across party lines, but it's not. Leftists are more willing to reject scientific consensus on GMO, right wingers are more likely to reject scientific consensus on everything else. I agree with almost every word, its ridiculous to think its longing for dominance, they align with it because they align with the left and people support/oppose science based on their political agenda. The only thing I disagree with is that feminist criticize Islam, some tiny amount do and they are ostracized by the community mainly because as you say politics, the right pushes against Islam, use of veils etc, so feminists take a pro-hijab stance without realizing the huge contradiction. Besides that we agree totally, I'm thinking I give the impression to be way more right wing than I am to people who align with the left like you and the opposite happens with conservatives like wobbly who recently called me a SJW Linda Sarsour isn't a prominent feminist. Look at this list : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ry_and_notable_21st-century_feminists I'm not doing a precise count here, but that looks like a list over 200 or so currently living artists or writers or activists or intellectuals who have by some metric been influential members of 'the feminist movement'. Linda Sarsour doesn't make the cut. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani both do. I grant you that most feminists don't really relate themselves to Islam (it's not relevant for them; because a) criticizing a society from the outside doesn't yield positive results, b) in the west, male muslims are discriminated against as well and the same mechanisms that made those girls feminists make them opposed to anti-muslim discrimination, too, c) politics.

She has 250k followers, perhaps she doesnt have alot of academic weight but she is very famous, she is also one of the leader organizers of the Women's March.

On the rest, I agree with as I said earlier.

On November 20 2017 02:27 Loco wrote: They're not exactly my friends, they are the academics who run the /askphilosophy subreddit. If I am totally not credible to you, you can start here to explore their criticisms. The actual evidence is that there is no evidence of that conspiracy to be found, and that the people who have read Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Barthes, etc, are constantly responding that he's misrepresenting them and giving their reasoning. What has been his response? Oh yeah, nothing at all, he only goes on podcasts that agree with him and think he's an intellectual giant because that's what rakes in the views and the Patreon bucks. Are we really going to go back to our previous argument where you thought the burden of proof was on me to discredit his ideas, when those ideas have never been legitimized in the first place? The whole shtick is traced back to a book by Stephen Hicks, an objectivist, is that good enough evidence to you that it's credible? I know you were naive enough to fall for Molyneux's own objectivism but surely you've grown out of that by now since you've said many years ago you had been disillusioned. I'm not sure what it is you're defending here.

Its still an argument appealing to authority when your claim is that these people in reddit agree that JBP is a hoax.

Its not a conspiracy obviously, its simply people taking postmodernist ideas and pursue their own agendas and biases with them, it wasnt a Nietzschenian conspiracy to fuel nazism, but they took some of their ideas and pursued their own twisted view of the world, about direct criticism about postmodernist philosophers you can read what Noam Chomsky said, I think he does a better job than JBP.

I wasnt "fooled" by Molyneux I agreed with his anarchocapitalist views, then later on I discovered he believed in a lot of stupid shit, but I still agree with most of his anarchic views, the same happens with JBP, I think he has very good insights particuarly in the psychological and pragmatic advice area, but I too see his huge blind spots and wrong ideas.

I knew you would mention Schopenhauer since you literally know nothing about my intellectual interests and he's someone I've quoted often in the past. It's pretty clear that Schopenhauer was a legitimate philosopher and not a guru. You have to be pretty desperate to think someone who preceded the self-help movement and who wrote that life was a mistake could be considered some kind of guru. But let's assume that you're right, that still doesn't say anything about me being attracted to gurus more than anyone else on this site. It's also pretty easy to know that I'm not a German Idealist and a sexist like Schopenhauer was. If you could point me to any post that suggests that I have assimilated Schopenhauer's philosophy uncritically then maybe you'd have a point, but I doubt you can do that, since I don't even subscribe to his philosophy as a whole (it's pretty outdated).

I mentioned Shopenhauer because I know we both like his stuff, but as you said you can learn from him without having to also take his sexist ideas, the same can happen with JBP (obv im not implying they are on the same lvl), but you dont grant the people who listen to him this possibility.

I initially wrote that JBP is transphobic and sexist and I edited out transphobic because I didn't want to repeat the same tired argument I've already had with LP transphobes. So I felt like I needed to replace the word with something and raging was the first thing that came to my mind for whatever reason. I was using it informally to mean "tremendous", but fine, I'll take it back, whatever. Little did I know you guys are so easily fooled you don't even think he's sexist at all. I think his "raging" sexism is simply inhibited (and in the instances of his transphobia, which is a form of sexism, that inhibition faltered a few times). This is someone who relies on society to tell him what's acceptable and what isn't. Put him back 200 years ago and this is someone who would have happily defended slave-owning. The idea that he's not sexist, i.e. he doesn't discriminate based on gender, is laughable and can only be entertained by the people within his own echo chamber and the people who have had the wool pulled over their eyes by his rhetorical tricks.

Agreed he is very conservative thus can't see past the social paradigm, his conservative views make him fall in a sexist category, (thinking having children is essential to women as you said for example), but he isnt raging sexist, and why is he transphobic, all I've seen him do is refuse to adress people with their own pronoun, I think he said that if someone looks certain gender he will call that person that gender, like if a trans-girl who looks like a girl he wont call her "he", he simply dont want to be forced to call some attention whore in black lipstick "XER".

I've seen the YouTube comment sections, I've seen his subreddit, I've seen people argue with his followers (on this, this comment thread is very accurate in my experience), I've even argued with a few myself.

Well I've also read the youtube comments, I havent argued against these people perhaps is where this difference of opinions come from, you have dealt with the minions and thats why you dislike the whole thing

Here's a question along the lines of the one you've asked me. How do you know to which degree I'm engaging in intellectual snobbism and to which degree it is you who is engaging in anti-intellectualism (or being intellectually lazy)?

Well I do know that I fall for these petty discussions/topics for some reason I've always enjoyed them knowingly knowing its intellectually lazy, and I also feel intellectual snobbism from you, but to which degree that is only something you can know.

Ok well, we can agree that it is a (defeasible) form of an appeal to authority, but it isn't an appeal to authority fallacy, which is the important distinction to make. An appeal to authority is used "in a cogent form when all sides of a discussion agree on the reliability of the authority in the given context." I think linking to a large group of professionals who have many differing views but who have a consensus on one particular topic is relevant and shouldn't be dismissed as a fallacy. I should have linked to the askphilosophy threads before linking to the circle jerk subreddit, that was a misstep on my part. Don't let that prevent you from learning a few things from educated people. There are plenty of threads that treat his ideas fairly and critically.

Right, I know it was mostly the anarchocapitalism stuff (which I think is part of the silly stuff too) but I find it weird how you gravitate towards these people whose confidence is derived from a strong objectivist stance. Peterson studied Ayn Rand in his youth just like Stefan and he had to use all of his mythological studies only to come back full circle and conclude that there are objective/absolute truths independent of us and people who don't agree with them are destructive and worthy of scorn etc. It's as unsophisticated as thinking gets and I wouldn't feel compelled to listen to anyone who believes that. Whatever is good in there is not original and I'd rather direct people to those original sources. For Peterson that would be Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dewey, Campbell and Jung. As for the self-help tidbits, a few of his sound bites might be original but overall I'd be hardpressed to choose him over quality ancient philosophers like Lao Tsu, Zhuangzi, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius.

I do grant people who find JBP to have valuable things to say that possibility, it's just that there is such a huge personality cult around him that there's very few of those people. Just recently someone posted a thread about dreaming about Peterson and there was like 10 other people who jumped in and expressed how great it is to dream of him or whatever. It's creepy as hell. There are YouTube channels dedicated to applying the wisdom of Peterson to life. I've never dreamed of Schopenhauer or seen any channel dedicated to his wisdom. I also haven't read Schopenhauer in years, fwiw, but I read some parts of a book I was gifted by prof Frederick C. Beiser that goes into the developments of German Idealism/Pessimism which I plan on finishing after I'm done with more important stuff.

When I say he's transphobic, I'm not saying he's going to disrespect every trans person he comes across. I mean it in the broadest sense that he is uncomfortable with anyone who doesn't conform to society's gender expectations. As a deviant myself I'm sensitive to that kind of thing and it's very visible that he has an issue with deviants of all sorts, whether they are antinatalists or trans/nonbinary people. What he's comfortable with is what is normal and traditional.

nvm delete

You are a leper in Peterson's world Loco. Everyone stay far away from Loco. The world will break into gulags with any ounce of crediting anything Loco has to say. Have you even read the Gulag Archipelago bro? Neither have I but this is truth. The world is a complex mechanism and we have to keep everything as traditional as possible. It's God's will. Haven't you studied the bible. Let me tell you a story about Cain and Abel. Have you even seen Pinnochio? Beauty and the Beast? Sleeping Beauty? You have to listen to Dr. Peterson break down these movies. It may be the key to life. That and cleaning your room. I once saw someone holding a "Poverty Is Bad" sign on the street and thought that was a worthy cause but now I make my bed every morning and clean my room 3 times a day. I couldn't even name a post-modern thinker but fuck those guys. They are trying to destroy the world like those damn nihilists.

Sidenote: I have heard Peterson talking about tragedy and nihilists responding "who cares, it won't matter in 100,000 years." Has anyone actually had any experience with that? I am basically a nihilist trying to figure out worthwhile things to do and I hear a story of someone getting raped the last thing I think is "oh, who cares, it won't matter in 100,000 years."

I mean I would love to see how Peterson responds to the idea that we should all just walk into extinction hand in hand. That makes the most sense to me. It will never happen as long as Catholicism is around. Those fucks have like 10 kids. Too many accidental kids. Too many people thinking having kids is the meaning of life or at least a meaning in life. I obviously don't think murdering everyone with a nuclear weapon is sound but if a meteor were to head our way it would be a little scary and a little sad but it's got to happen sooner or later right?

"You don’t have to engage with postmodernists, socialists or Marxists because they are wrong, Peterson tells his followers.

When you’re arguing with a socialist, you’re arguing with someone who is “murderous and genocidal,” and who would be more than happy to fill our streets with blood if it meant winning the ideological war — “the precise antithesis of good.”

“Postmodernists don’t believe in facts,” he said. They are motivated by hatred, not compassion, and they see truth as an obstacle to overcome before implementing their sick agenda."

https://www.ubyssey.ca/culture/Jordan-peterson-versus-everyone/

"This is Peterson’s favourite rhetorical play. Once you define the “other” as evil, bloodthirsty tyrants, you leave no room for any definitions they propose — anything your opponent says becomes an extension of Pol Pot’s ideology"

"It paints your opponents into a corner: they can accept the wisdom you are willing to dispense, or they can live a savage life, untethered by morality.

It makes you a hero, and it makes them easy to dismiss."

If there is anything that gives Jordan B Peterson boners these days it is the idea of being a hero in his own story.

Peterson's Crusade against postmodern neo-Marxist indoctrination cults! (aka liberal arts education)

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/a...-calls-indoctrination-cults-1.4396974

"One thing I think is dangerous about Peterson is he claims to know the one true way towards the future and I think what history has taught is that there's no one person who is ... that prescient," they said.

–]apricots256 18 points 8 days ago
This is a problem with Patreon, Youtube, etc people - your massive income is dependent on you giving your audience what they want. At this stage you're practically an entertainer. Before long you start eating your own dogshit and sliding into a zone you can never, ever come back from.

On November 20 2017 10:47 Loco wrote: Ok well, we can agree that it is a (defeasible) form of an appeal to authority, but it isn't an appeal to authority fallacy, which is the important distinction to make. An appeal to authority is used "in a cogent form when all sides of a discussion agree on the reliability of the authority in the given context." I think linking to a large group of professionals who have many differing views but who have a consensus on one particular topic is relevant and shouldn't be dismissed as a fallacy. I should have linked to the askphilosophy threads before linking to the circle jerk subreddit, that was a misstep on my part. Don't let that prevent you from learning a few things from educated people. There are plenty of threads that treat his ideas fairly and critically. Right, I know it was mostly the anarchocapitalism stuff (which I think is part of the silly stuff too) but I find it weird how you gravitate towards these people whose confidence is derived from a strong objectivist stance. Peterson studied Ayn Rand in his youth just like Stefan and he had to use all of his mythological studies only to come back full circle and conclude that there are objective/absolute truths independent of us and people who don't agree with them are destructive and worthy of scorn etc. It's as unsophisticated as thinking gets and I wouldn't feel compelled to listen to anyone who believes that. Whatever is good in there is not original and I'd rather direct people to those original sources. For Peterson that would be Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dewey, Campbell and Jung. As for the self-help tidbits, a few of his sound bites might be original but overall I'd be hardpressed to choose him over quality ancient philosophers like Lao Tsu, Zhuangzi, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. I do grant people who find JBP to have valuable things to say that possibility, it's just that there is such a huge personality cult around him that there's very few of those people. Just recently someone posted a thread about dreaming about Peterson and there was like 10 other people who jumped in and expressed how great it is to dream of him or whatever. It's creepy as hell. There are YouTube channels dedicated to applying the wisdom of Peterson to life. I've never dreamed of Schopenhauer or seen any channel dedicated to his wisdom. I also haven't read Schopenhauer in years, fwiw, but I read some parts of a book I was gifted by prof Frederick C. Beiser that goes into the developments of German Idealism/Pessimism which I plan on finishing after I'm done with more important stuff. When I say he's transphobic, I'm not saying he's going to disrespect every trans person he comes across. I mean it in the broadest sense that he is uncomfortable with anyone who doesn't conform to society's gender expectations. As a deviant myself I'm sensitive to that kind of thing and it's very visible that he has an issue with deviants of all sorts, whether they are antinatalists or trans/nonbinary people. What he's comfortable with is what is normal and traditional.

Indeed a consensus isn't a fallacy but "my professional friends say this" isn't an expert consensus, if you had used different wording or went more into detail perhaps it would have been better, but still its generally a silly way to argue.

I gravitate thoward objectivism ideology because I partially agree with it, its hard and fruitful but limited and nearsighted while subjectivism becomes a nihilistic anti-intellectualism filled with charlatans.

I've usually argued your side (against my mom mostly), why read and follow these mediocre gurus instead of reading much better ones if you have them easily available, and I think I see her point a bit more, philosophy can be heavy and difficult to read, and while presented by people like JBP its more digestable so I guess its "better than nothing".

I get that you believe JBP to be a negative force overall for the world, I disagree, I think many young ppl will listen and find purpose and structure and yeah sadly he will spread some stupid conservative ideas but I think in general he does good and I also think fighting the growing left ideology is important, I think that is far more dangerous than conservatives, its pretty well documented that capitalism is less popular than ever among the youth, naturally its easy to see its grotesque flaws particularly for a generation that has not seen the potential of desctruction of collectivism.

On the transphobic absolutely he is not comfortable with it but I think those words like racist or sexist and even rape are being thrown away so lightly that its actually counter-productive, quoting that meme: "if everyone is a transphobe, nobody is"

On November 20 2017 19:13 RiKD wrote: Sidenote: I have heard Peterson talking about tragedy and nihilists responding "who cares, it won't matter in 100,000 years." Has anyone actually had any experience with that? I am basically a nihilist trying to figure out worthwhile things to do and I hear a story of someone getting raped the last thing I think is "oh, who cares, it won't matter in 100,000 years."

Nihilism is the ultimate truth but its a dangrous one, it can be liberating or it can be very destructive for yourself and others

On November 21 2017 04:20 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 20 2017 19:13 RiKD wrote: Sidenote: I have heard Peterson talking about tragedy and nihilists responding "who cares, it won't matter in 100,000 years." Has anyone actually had any experience with that? I am basically a nihilist trying to figure out worthwhile things to do and I hear a story of someone getting raped the last thing I think is "oh, who cares, it won't matter in 100,000 years." Nihilism is the ultimate truth but its a dangrous one, it can be liberating or it can be very destructive for yourself and others

Nihilism with a moral compass and reasons to continue living is the only path I see myself on. I guess there will be times of depression and despair for me unfortunately but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Nihilism with no moral compass and resentments is the danger zone.

Nihilism does not equal bitterness, resentment and evil even if there are cases in which that is true.

There is perhaps more bitterness, resentment and evil among Catholic priests.

Nihilism isn't "the ultimate truth" nor is subjectivism the (only) alternative to objectivism. If you want to know what's truly at the root of everything harmful in this world it is this kind of binary thinking that is assumed as self-evident. If you want to expand your thinking, read "El arbol del conocimiento" by Humberto Maturana and "Introducción al pensamiento complejo " by Edgar Morin. I can quite confidently say that these works could have a life changing influence on you if you give them the time.

I agree about the destructive nature of nihilism though, and I think that destructiveness is not a sign of having found the truth but rather a sign of not being embodied in truth, in other words it distorts (displaces) reality, which is co-constructed. The question of meaning is answered by Merleau-Ponty when he said that we are condemned to meaning -- it is irrelevant whether meaning exists independent of us or not.

Also, I've hung around a lot of nihilistic types and the truth is that they are never truly nihilists. The possessive nature of ideas and our desire for certainty precludes it. These people believe they have abandoned grand narratives and are absolutely lucid but they are still fanatics, most of them have uncritically embraced a greedy reductionism or scientism. If there's one thing Peterson gets right it's the power of myths or mimetic desire which no one ever manages to escape unless they end their lives. Even the most staunch nihilist carries a bunch of illusions to confirm and take pride in their conception of the world. At its worst they'll become ill due to the inhibition of action, and they'll project their ills onto the world.

On November 21 2017 04:09 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 20 2017 10:47 Loco wrote: Ok well, we can agree that it is a (defeasible) form of an appeal to authority, but it isn't an appeal to authority fallacy, which is the important distinction to make. An appeal to authority is used "in a cogent form when all sides of a discussion agree on the reliability of the authority in the given context." I think linking to a large group of professionals who have many differing views but who have a consensus on one particular topic is relevant and shouldn't be dismissed as a fallacy. I should have linked to the askphilosophy threads before linking to the circle jerk subreddit, that was a misstep on my part. Don't let that prevent you from learning a few things from educated people. There are plenty of threads that treat his ideas fairly and critically. Right, I know it was mostly the anarchocapitalism stuff (which I think is part of the silly stuff too) but I find it weird how you gravitate towards these people whose confidence is derived from a strong objectivist stance. Peterson studied Ayn Rand in his youth just like Stefan and he had to use all of his mythological studies only to come back full circle and conclude that there are objective/absolute truths independent of us and people who don't agree with them are destructive and worthy of scorn etc. It's as unsophisticated as thinking gets and I wouldn't feel compelled to listen to anyone who believes that. Whatever is good in there is not original and I'd rather direct people to those original sources. For Peterson that would be Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dewey, Campbell and Jung. As for the self-help tidbits, a few of his sound bites might be original but overall I'd be hardpressed to choose him over quality ancient philosophers like Lao Tsu, Zhuangzi, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. I do grant people who find JBP to have valuable things to say that possibility, it's just that there is such a huge personality cult around him that there's very few of those people. Just recently someone posted a thread about dreaming about Peterson and there was like 10 other people who jumped in and expressed how great it is to dream of him or whatever. It's creepy as hell. There are YouTube channels dedicated to applying the wisdom of Peterson to life. I've never dreamed of Schopenhauer or seen any channel dedicated to his wisdom. I also haven't read Schopenhauer in years, fwiw, but I read some parts of a book I was gifted by prof Frederick C. Beiser that goes into the developments of German Idealism/Pessimism which I plan on finishing after I'm done with more important stuff. When I say he's transphobic, I'm not saying he's going to disrespect every trans person he comes across. I mean it in the broadest sense that he is uncomfortable with anyone who doesn't conform to society's gender expectations. As a deviant myself I'm sensitive to that kind of thing and it's very visible that he has an issue with deviants of all sorts, whether they are antinatalists or trans/nonbinary people. What he's comfortable with is what is normal and traditional. I've usually argued your side (against my mom mostly), why read and follow these mediocre gurus instead of reading much better ones if you have them easily available, and I think I see her point a bit more, philosophy can be heavy and difficult to read, and while presented by people like JBP its more digestable so I guess its "better than nothing". I get that you believe JBP to be a negative force overall for the world, I disagree, I think many young ppl will listen and find purpose and structure and yeah sadly he will spread some stupid conservative ideas but I think in general he does good and I also think fighting the growing left ideology is important, I think that is far more dangerous than conservatives, its pretty well documented that capitalism is less popular than ever among the youth, naturally its easy to see its grotesque flaws particularly for a generation that has not seen the potential of desctruction of collectivism. On the transphobic absolutely he is not comfortable with it but I think those words like racist or sexist and even rape are being thrown away so lightly that its actually counter-productive, quoting that meme: "if everyone is a transphobe, nobody is"

The thing is that there's no reason to commit to an either/or view here (either listen to people like Peterson or nothing). There are accessible texts for people who want to learn about philosophy, written by actual philosophers. There are philosophy podcasts and YouTube channels that serve the purpose of introducing key ideas/figures to lay people. There's no reason to go to a psychologist for that. Especially not one who supports really stupid/dangerous ideas and has literally no philosophy at all on his reading list outside of Nietzsche.

Contrary to you, I would argue that it's worse to have the illusion of knowledge than to know that you're ignorant. People don't really act on their ignorance, but they do in a destructive manner when they're in the grip of illusions. I would add that people have honestly no idea how bad learning from YouTube in general is. It can take years to break out from an echo chamber on there and undo the damage that was done by giving too much credit to the wrong people. It also doesn't test you, or help you contextualize your knowledge, which is the most important thing of all. 99% of people using this medium and who believe that they are becoming educated are in fact doing a very poor job at it and listening to second-rate thinkers and self-promoters, which is what that environment breeds.

I think if you have a real interest in knowledge you'll come around and see you were fundamentally wrong about Peterson and I have no doubt his influence and legacy will not be a positive one. Having given him the benefit of the doubt previously I think it's crazy to think that in general he does more good than harm at this point. He's only gotten worse with time. But I can see why you would think that since you're under the illusion that fighting this culture war the way he does is a positive thing. I couldn't disagree more that this fight has any real value, it's all bickering and profit-oriented nonsense. It's a massive distraction from the real problems humanity is facing and if it keeps growing it will culminate in pointless violence and nothing will be learned from it.

Alright i havn't quoted anyone this post is directed at some comments over last 2 pages.

subjectivism is retarded haha-the belief that knowledge is merely subjective and that there is no external or objective truth. no one can truly beleive it, since as soon as you argue for it, you stop being a subjectivist. You can question weather there is an external world or objective truth, fine, everything is open to question. but you cant actually be a subjectivist without losing brain cells, and you can't be one in everyday life, where you believe things to be true. I don't see what's wrong with ridiculing people who say they are subjectivists, since that's the level they are on. A lot of very long philosophy essays are written on this by undergraduates, but it's actually very simply a self defeating idea and you can point it out in about two sentences.

my brief look at peterson's comments from reading this thread, he criticizes it but in a very unprofessional manner, involving lots of hyperbole and the criticisms are not good, or scientifically rigorous. Nothing good can come from this type of criticism, so i agree with loco on that. Just look at what alan sokal and jean bricmont, noam chomsky, or richard dawkins have said about postmodernism. Their criticisms are much better imo.

The guy in loco's video he linked said sokal and bricmont only criticized the culture of postmodernism, not the actual scholarship. (2:00) I didn't really get that from reading fashionable nonsense, it came across very clearly that the scholarship was beyond idiocy level. I mean just take the wiki page on the book, it summarizes it, correctly imo, as what the book critized them for:

-Using scientific or pseudoscientific terminology without bothering much about what these words mean.
-Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities without the slightest justification, and without providing any rationale for their use.
-Displaying superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical terms where they are irrelevant, presumably to impress and intimidate the non-specialist reader.
-Manipulating words and phrases that are, in fact, meaningless.
-Self-assurance on topics far beyond the competence of the author and exploiting the prestige of science to give discourses a veneer of rigor.

seems like a criticism of scholarship standards to me.

I have read a lot of words but I don't follow why a professor on Youtube is stupid and dangerous and 99% of Youtube is shit so I should go Reddit instead and educate myself with an obsessive subreddit dedicated to debunking someone who apparently copies Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dewey, Campbell and Jung but has literally nobody on his reading list except Nietzsche

On November 21 2017 13:50 Stroggoz wrote: Alright i havn't quoted anyone this post is directed at some comments over last 2 pages. subjectivism is retarded haha-the belief that knowledge is merely subjective and that there is no external or objective truth. no one can truly beleive it, since as soon as you argue for it, you stop being a subjectivist. You can question weather there is an external world or objective truth, fine, everything is open to question. but you cant actually be a subjectivist without losing brain cells, and you can't be one in everyday life, where you believe things to be true. I don't see what's wrong with ridiculing people who say they are subjectivists, since that's the level they are on. A lot of very long philosophy essays are written on this by undergraduates, but it's actually very simply a self defeating idea and you can point it out in about two sentences. my brief look at peterson's comments from reading this thread, he criticizes it but in a very unprofessional manner, involving lots of hyperbole and the criticisms are not good, or scientifically rigorous. Nothing good can come from this type of criticism, so i agree with loco on that. Just look at what alan sokal and jean bricmont, noam chomsky, or richard dawkins have said about postmodernism. Their criticisms are much better imo. The guy in loco's video he linked said sokal and bricmont only criticized the culture of postmodernism, not the actual scholarship. (2:00) I didn't really get that from reading fashionable nonsense, it came across very clearly that the scholarship was beyond idiocy level. I mean just take the wiki page on the book, it summarizes it, correctly imo, as what the book critized them for: -Using scientific or pseudoscientific terminology without bothering much about what these words mean. -Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities without the slightest justification, and without providing any rationale for their use. -Displaying superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical terms where they are irrelevant, presumably to impress and intimidate the non-specialist reader. -Manipulating words and phrases that are, in fact, meaningless. -Self-assurance on topics far beyond the competence of the author and exploiting the prestige of science to give discourses a veneer of rigor. seems like a criticism of scholarship standards to me.

Is there a reason why you only chose to outline the problems of subjectivism (I'm assuming we're talking about solipsism and not panpsychism here) and didn't equally say that its antithesis is just as ridiculous? Naive realism and Randian Objectivism is just as bad if not worse.

He didn't say that it wasn't at all about the scholarship, he said it spoke mostly about the terrible reviewing processes surrounding postmodernism and that it ended up casting a long shadow on non STEM disciplines (due to people jumping to conclusions like you did). Sokal precisely said he doesn't include Derrida, Barthes, Althusser and Foucault in his critique of postmodernists misusing scientific terminology, yet these are some of the most influential people that are supposed to be at the head of the postmodernist cabal that's corrupted the universities. Sokal and Bricmont also specifically stated they did not intend to analyze postmodernist thought in general, just what they thought was an abuse of concepts from mathematics and physics.

On November 21 2017 14:03 Santafairy wrote: I have read a lot of words but I don't follow why a professor on Youtube is stupid and dangerous and 99% of Youtube is shit so I should go Reddit instead and educate myself with an obsessive subreddit dedicated to debunking someone who apparently copies Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dewey, Campbell and Jung but has literally nobody on his reading list except Nietzsche

I was very clear in saying that it was a misstep of me to link to the circle jerk subreddit and I linked to the /askphilosophy subreddit. That's where I last said people should be going to see if his ideas stand up to scrutiny. There's no obsessiveness and no cults of personality there and a great diversity of views, so that's why it's a better learning environment than YouTube. Also because YouTube (and audiobooks) are shitty learning tools compared to text.

He doesn't copy these thinkers, the ideas he presents are a mishmash of these people's ideas, and easy impressionable people mistake that as a synthesis of their ideas. He does not offer a synthesis nor even a competent introduction to these ideas a lot of the time. Some of it is a fair representation of their ideas (especially with Jung) but a lot of it is inconsistent, especially his views on Pragmatism. You go to the source because you don't have to trust one person's interpretation. If going to the source is too daunting you can find other popularisers who were more rigorous, in part because they didn't spend their life studying clinical psychology. Video lecture-wise, Rick Roderick from the Teaching Company has a lot of great lectures available online.

The reading list I am referring to is Peterson's "Great Books" recommended reading list, which has no philosophy other than Nietzsche. It doesn't mean that's all he's ever read, but it gives a good idea that he hasn't read much philosophy if that's all he can recommend to people.

On November 21 2017 05:30 Loco wrote: Nihilism isn't "the ultimate truth" nor is subjectivism the (only) alternative to objectivism. If you want to know what's truly at the root of everything harmful in this world it is this kind of binary thinking that is assumed as self-evident. If you want to expand your thinking, read "El arbol del conocimiento" by Humberto Maturana and "Introducción al pensamiento complejo " by Edgar Morin. I can quite confidently say that these works could have a life changing influence on you if you give them the time. I agree about the destructive nature of nihilism though, and I think that destructiveness is not a sign of having found the truth but rather a sign of not being embodied in truth, in other words it distorts (displaces) reality, which is co-constructed. The question of meaning is answered by Merleau-Ponty when he said that we are condemned to meaning -- it is irrelevant whether meaning exists independent of us or not.

Are there decent translations of those 2 books?

We are condemned to act. I don't see how we are condemned to meaning?

On November 21 2017 07:22 Loco wrote: Also, I've hung around a lot of nihilistic types and the truth is that they are never truly nihilists. The possessive nature of ideas and our desire for certainty precludes it. These people believe they have abandoned grand narratives and are absolutely lucid but they are still fanatics, most of them have uncritically embraced a greedy reductionism or scientism. If there's one thing Peterson gets right it's the power of myths or mimetic desire which no one ever manages to escape unless they end their lives. Even the most staunch nihilist carries a bunch of illusions to confirm and take pride in their conception of the world. At its worst they'll become ill due to the inhibition of action, and they'll project their ills onto the world.

I never heard of mimetic desire before. Pretty cool. There is definitely always some group I would love to be a part of and on the Peterson front there are always going to be archetypes that I admire. I could always shave my head and start making my own clothes but it still would have been influenced by someone or something. I could move into the forest but I like going out to dinner and hanging out with friends. I suppose "true nihilism" as you define it isn't for me and it probably isn't for anyone.

Define inhibition of action please.

On November 21 2017 05:30 Loco wrote: Nihilism isn't "the ultimate truth" nor is subjectivism the (only) alternative to objectivism. If you want to know what's truly at the root of everything harmful in this world it is this kind of binary thinking that is assumed as self-evident. If you want to expand your thinking, read "El arbol del conocimiento" by Humberto Maturana and "Introducción al pensamiento complejo " by Edgar Morin. I can quite confidently say that these works could have a life changing influence on you if you give them the time. I agree about the destructive nature of nihilism though, and I think that destructiveness is not a sign of having found the truth but rather a sign of not being embodied in truth, in other words it distorts (displaces) reality, which is co-constructed. The question of meaning is answered by Merleau-Ponty when he said that we are condemned to meaning -- it is irrelevant whether meaning exists independent of us or not.

It was a snarky statement that I was 100% sure you would reply to

Will read El arbol del conocimiento, ill let you know what I think soon.



I dont think ignorance causes inaction, it should but it doesnt, and about the good that Peterson does is mostly about the "clean your room" thing, sort yourself out before you go and riot trying to social engineer the world, I think you like drone see more danger in the right than in the left currently thats why you dislike Peterson more than his leftist counterparts and I strongly disagree with that notion.

And yes its bickering and shallow but millions and millions have died on that cross, It shouldnt be just tossed aside as not worth the thought

On November 22 2017 03:21 RiKD wrote: Show nested quote + On November 21 2017 07:22 Loco wrote: Also, I've hung around a lot of nihilistic types and the truth is that they are never truly nihilists. The possessive nature of ideas and our desire for certainty precludes it. These people believe they have abandoned grand narratives and are absolutely lucid but they are still fanatics, most of them have uncritically embraced a greedy reductionism or scientism. If there's one thing Peterson gets right it's the power of myths or mimetic desire which no one ever manages to escape unless they end their lives. Even the most staunch nihilist carries a bunch of illusions to confirm and take pride in their conception of the world. At its worst they'll become ill due to the inhibition of action, and they'll project their ills onto the world. I never heard of mimetic desire before. Pretty cool. There is definitely always some group I would love to be a part of and on the Peterson front there are always going to be archetypes that I admire. I could always shave my head and start making my own clothes but it still would have been influenced by someone or something. I could move into the forest but I like going out to dinner and hanging out with friends. I suppose "true nihilism" as you define it isn't for me and it probably isn't for anyone. Define inhibition of action please.

"A major role of the brain is to organize behaviors, ie, action. There is inhibition of action when behaviors become impossible, and this is deleterious to health. This happens when an instinctive behavior (such as fight or flight) is impossible, when acting is useless, when a danger cannot be predicted, or when no previous response pattern exists to direct action. In these situations, a brain system, the système inhibiteur de l'action, or behavioral inhibition system (BIS), is activated and stimulates the neuroendocrine responses that were described by Walter Cannon in the 1920s and Hans Selye in the 1930s and 1940s." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984888/

I think you've already seen it demonstrated in "My Uncle from America", this is a concept I learned from Laborit. Understanding this was the beginning of my recovery after many years of ill-health. Laborit also simultaneously got me out of my old reductionist, nihilistic thoughts about the world by introducing me to systems thinking and cybernetics.

On November 22 2017 05:42 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On November 21 2017 05:30 Loco wrote: Nihilism isn't "the ultimate truth" nor is subjectivism the (only) alternative to objectivism. If you want to know what's truly at the root of everything harmful in this world it is this kind of binary thinking that is assumed as self-evident. If you want to expand your thinking, read "El arbol del conocimiento" by Humberto Maturana and "Introducción al pensamiento complejo " by Edgar Morin. I can quite confidently say that these works could have a life changing influence on you if you give them the time. I agree about the destructive nature of nihilism though, and I think that destructiveness is not a sign of having found the truth but rather a sign of not being embodied in truth, in other words it distorts (displaces) reality, which is co-constructed. The question of meaning is answered by Merleau-Ponty when he said that we are condemned to meaning -- it is irrelevant whether meaning exists independent of us or not. It was a snarky statement that I was 100% sure you would reply to Will read El arbol del conocimiento, ill let you know what I think soon. I dont think ignorance causes inaction, it should but it doesnt, and about the good that Peterson does is mostly about the "clean your room" thing, sort yourself out before you go and riot trying to social engineer the world, I think you like drone see more danger in the right than in the left currently thats why you dislike Peterson more than his leftist counterparts and I strongly disagree with that notion.

Those things are good when you look at them in isolation, but they don't work like that. He turns into a father figure to the people for whom this advice really made a difference, which inspires blind devotion in those who have no experience with fanaticism and have never been disillusioned before. And when you combine that with the fact that people are not educated about media ecology you have a recipe for disaster.

And yes its bickering and shallow but millions and millions have died on that cross, It shouldnt be just tossed aside as not worth the thought

And it will keep happening for as long as people act out unconscious patterns of behavior based on their misapprehensions about the world. It just feeds tribalistic behavior which gets rationalized as necessary and done "for the greater good". It is when you actually give it a thought that you stop the positive feedback loop. Those who are fervously fighting this culture war are the ones who aren't really giving it enough thought. The main fight the human species must be fighting at the moment considering the precariousness of our position is a paradigmatic one, but everyone is just too zoomed in and animated by trivialities.

I think there is danger on both sides, but the issue with free speech is massively overplayed. "Neo-Marxists" aren't creating an Orwellian world. People whose primary concern is free speech have more freedom of speech than ever. Everyone is free to create blogs, youtube channels, etc, to express their opinions. There are a ton of people on the left who do value free speech considerably but who also prioritize the well-being of minority groups, while people on the right value their free speech above all and think the very concept of social justice is bankrupt. That's a lot more extreme. I think people on the left who have self-radicalized are more salvageable than those on the right, but ultimately, anyone who is stuck with a binary "us vs them" mentality is a danger to themselves and others. Complex issues are not going to be understood and resolved with that kind of thinking. People on the right are the ones who are most resistant to acknowledging the complexity of things however.

Btw, if Jordan Peterson keeps spamming his twitter with the Laurier story and fails to talk about Net Neutrality real soon, that'll say a lot about the supposed nobility of his agenda.

I think the right is fueled by the tribalistic need to protect their own, and the left is driven by wanted to protect "the weak", so I agree that hard-right are less salvagable I think the motivation comes from something more primal however I think as a potential for unintentional destruction the left is far worse simply because of economics and history supports this point.

I was going to type that being idle and allow those ideologies to cycle felt morally wrong but in reality I dont think the true motivation is to help rather than being persuaded by the same reason everyone falls into that bickering.

Curious to hear your thoughts on this video Baal, though you have probably already seen it. You can choose spanish CC subtitles FYI.

Didn't watch the whole vid, but its always been a bit funny to me that the general concept of "white race" is considered tall, blonde males with blue eyes and considered "western civilization", while those are actually Slavic & Nordic tribes e.g. nothing to do with Western Civilization.

the nazi party in greece does all the stuff mentioned in the video (not too great with the memes tho), especially after they got 7% and got into parliament. Of course they can't erase their past or easily stop all their goons from nazi saluting etc and their no2 even has a huge swastika tatoo, but they're really trying hard. They're currently on trial after a number of violent attacks that escalated with stabbing a known (to them) antifascist while he was out eating with his gf.
From where I'm standing the white nationalists are a serious threat and to suggest that antifa are comparable is laughable. Take the worst antifa member and assume they're all like that, they'd still be a bunch of uncoordinated idiots, while a political party like golden dawn is an army of apes ready to mindlessly do anything their leader says (they even swear on it in their torch holding initiation process)

On November 22 2017 09:24 Loco wrote: Curious to hear your thoughts on this video Baal, though you have probably already seen it. You can choose spanish CC subtitles FYI.

I agree with pretty much all of it, I recently realized that there is actually a white supremacy movement and indeed many famous rightists are playing into their hands.

I think something extremely important is how he admits paranoia because that is the reason why centrist are leaning to the right, becaues its a response to the madness and paranoia of the left that unlike white supremcist, they dont hide it. just a couple of days ago, some famous rapper called Vanessa Selbts, who is a SJW, a racist and like a dozen other poker players who clearly aren't



Thats why I took issue when you called JBP a raging sexist, you are inadvertedly making the equality cause you pursue the greatest disservice by lower the bar, so people will just think its leftist hysteria and as long as these overreactions keep happening the hard right will keep pulling centrist.


The only thing I disagree with the video is about deplataforming them on podcasts and shit, invite them and throroughly debate them and dismantelate their ideas, being "the town idiot" is less appealing to youth than some obscure un-mentionable group nobody speaks about.

On November 22 2017 19:11 lebowski wrote: From where I'm standing the white nationalists are a serious threat and to suggest that antifa are comparable is laughable. Take the worst antifa member and assume they're all like that, they'd still be a bunch of uncoordinated idiots, while a political party like golden dawn is an army of apes ready to mindlessly do anything their leader says (they even swear on it in their torch holding initiation process)

But Antifa is an equally violent group that the left refuses to disavow because " they fight fascist"

If I recall correctly, she doesn't encourage deplatforming them, just not giving them a platform. Pretty big difference.

And of course I knew you would take offense to my calling him a raging sexist, but in this context I disagree, I don't need to be strategic on LP, this site receives too little traffic to worry about that.

On November 23 2017 01:54 Loco wrote: If I recall correctly, she doesn't encourage deplatforming them, just not giving them a platform. Pretty big difference. And of course I knew you would take offense to my calling him a raging sexist, but in this context I disagree, I don't need to be strategic on LP, this site receives too little traffic to worry about that.

I dont think you should refrain from calling him raging sexist out of deceptive strategy, I think you should do it to be more precise in your language and qualifications



I'm also against not giving them platform as I said ridiculous ideas should be exposed for their ridiculousness, not hidden out of fear because they might be attractive, forbidden ideas are far more attractive than openly ridiculed ones

The ridiculous ideas have already been exposed, but it doesn't matter, it's a cyclical thing, they always come back and the strategies change. You're saying that in an idiocracy like the one we have now, the best way to get rid of harmful idiots is to give them more air time, I don't think that makes sense. It only allows people who are "on the fence" an opportunity to be swayed. People are ridiculous and they fall for ridiculous things all the time, you have too much faith in "man as a rational animal". People go online and they find the things that will meet them at their level, they don't go online to challenge themselves and "find the truth". They obviously think they are doing that, but the way social media is structured feeds into this illusion and makes it very hard to escape the echo chamber people find themselves in.

Loco the rhetoric you're using completely disregards any other opinion that might have any ground before the argument has even begun.... it's a "lets assume this right" ----> conclusion based on a very wide chance that you're wrong

Also your approach handles the whole thing preemptively, completely blocking any individual from further progress, while Baal's is much more rational and socially acceptable on many levels, which makes your original assumption problematic

Right, we've already had that debate. You think it's worthwhile to consider that homosexuality might be a mental illness. Go ahead and discuss that and whatever else strikes your fancy with others, I won't stop you. I'm not shutting down any discussion, I'm just not interested. I think you have no grounds to assume the illegitimacy of people's identities because they deviate from the norm, which is how these arguments/conspiracies begin.

Again using the same rhetoric pretty badly, I don't really know why I even bother, have fun falling for the fallacies you so strongly condemn. The fact that you believe authoritarian measures are best just so dumb people won't be allowed to make mistakes is simply laughable, thats what your whole argument comes down to.

P.S. lol @ homosexuality could be a mental illness, I guess you didn't understand a thing from that thread.

Which fallacies? Which authoritarian measures? Not handing out an invite to someone from the alt-right on my platform is authoritarian? That's what I was arguing against, not deplatforming people.

No where did I say people aren't allowed to make mistakes. I'm arguing that these mistakes have been made already, and they would just be repeated. If you know that someone is going to burn himself and endanger the lives of others by risking an explosion in the lab by doing a dumb science experiment that someone already failed doing, would it be "authoritarian" of you to try to argue him out of it? Hopefully we can agree that it would be a really stupid and unnuanced position to argue that we should pretty much always let people commit their own mistakes because we can "Never be 100% sure that we're right". In some cases yes, in some cases no. That's why we debate, so we can look at the pros and cons and figure out which wager to make.

I understood you quite well in that thread and that's how I was able to argue you out of your position (by saying that it wasn't relevant, which you didn't counter-argue). If you're now doubling down on the validity of such questioning after admitting over there that you were basically wrong, I should be the one who says "why do I ever bother?". I get it, I sound too sure of myself and someone should "put me in my place", but that doesn't mean you should just throw empty criticisms my way like that. I can assure you that despite how I come off, I don't think I have it all figured out. In the last year I can name at least 10 things that are pretty major and which I've changed my mind about. This pronouns thing is actually one of them, if you paid any attention to when we first started discussing it, I was fairly neutral about it, I expressed skepticism that it was going to be particularly bad but I didn't have a strong stance at all. I researched it and spent considerable time learning from both sides for months. It's almost as if you assume that people who don't operate under the fallacy of middle ground are just always biased or not paying attention to the other side because otherwise they'd be in the middle. I hope I'm mistaken or that you will grow out of that kind of thinking.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...htwingers-who-love-to-play-the-victim

The conspiracy theorists claim that these “cultural Marxists” began to use insidious forms of psychological manipulation to upend the west. Then, when Nazism forced the (mostly Jewish) members of the Frankfurt School to move to America, they had, the story goes, a chance to undermine the culture and values that had sustained the world’s most powerful capitalist nation. ... the conspiracy says, they promoted and even enforced ideas which were intended to destroy traditional Christian values and overthrow free enterprise: feminism, multiculturalism, gay rights and atheism. And this, apparently, is where political correctness came from. I promise you: this is what they really think.

The whole story is transparently barmy. If humanities faculties are really geared to brainwashing students into accepting the postulates of far-left ideology, the composition of western parliaments and presidencies and the roaring success of corporate capitalism suggests they’re doing an astoundingly bad job. Anyone who takes a cool look at the last three decades of politics will think it bizarre that anyone could interpret what’s happened as the triumph of an all-powerful left.

It allows those smarting from a loss of privilege to be offered the shroud of victimhood, by pointing to a shadowy, omnipresent, quasi-foreign elite who are attempting to destroy all that is good in the world. It offers an explanation for the decline of families, small towns, patriarchal authority, and unchallenged white power: a vast, century-long left wing conspiracy. And it distracts from the most important factor in these changes: capitalism, which demands mobility, whose crises have eroded living standards, and which thus, among other things, undermines the viability of conventional family structures and the traditional lifestyles that conservatives approve of. The story of cultural Marxism is also flexible and can be tailored to fit with the obsessions of a range of right-wing actors. As such, it’s one example of an idea from the extremes which has been mobilised by more mainstream figures and has dragged politics as a whole a little further right.

A few gems here:

On November 23 2017 01:54 Loco wrote: If I recall correctly, she doesn't encourage deplatforming them, just not giving them a platform. Pretty big difference. And of course I knew you would take offense to my calling him a raging sexist, but in this context I disagree, I don't need to be strategic on LP, this site receives too little traffic to worry about that.

I usually stay away from Culture War shit, but in my experience most SJ leaning leftists absolutely love to give them a platform so long as it's a negative one. I wouldn't even know who people like Milyo Yihasiosanasio and Richard Spencer were if it weren't for blue checkmarks on twitter going insane about everything they do.

Tangentially related, as you're Canadian, did you hear the leaked audio from the TA who got admonished for sharing a Jordan P. video in a class?

Link here: https://youtu.be/xQ2QmaM7JrA?t=26

It's definitely TL;DW, but it was just objectively fascinating to me. They basically bully her into breaking down and crying, and imo they knew exactly what they were doing. It happens by ~7:30 in so maybe can just watch the beginning. The most interesting part to me was around 22 minutes where she says "I presented both sides of the argument neutrally" to which the Dean or whatever immediately replies "that's the problem!".

It was tough to watch as a former humanities student, because I know that the type of people who teach these programs are doing this intentionally to punish her for engaging in heresy. Once in awhile you would come across a student like this in the humanities who believed in all the bullshit about Uni's being a place to challenge ideas and engage in uncomfortable topics and they would just get absolutely bullycided - not by students but by TA's, Professors and Admin.

Even when I bring this (my experiences in getting a Poli Sci. degree at the University of New Hampshire) up with people today many just flat out don't believe me and I find it a bit funny since I'm obviously not hyper political nor involved in academia anymore and really have nothing to gain or lose by exaggerating my experience. I took my studies seriously and graduated despite having a lot of poker success early in life, but it was just objectively a joke of an education. Anyone with a reasonable degree of social intelligence would recognize very quickly that all you had to do was write bland papers filled with postmodern buzzwords and attribute all disparities in outcome or really any social or political conflict to an intangible unquantifiable priviledge narrative with intersectionality nuances and you would be assured a B+ minimum. This was in 2008.

Ok sorry I went on a pretty long unrelated tangent there, but I just find it mind-blowing that some people still attempt to deny the extremely (relative to the societal norms) far-left bias in New World (and as far as I can tell also European) universities.

Yeah, we've discussed this story in the Truth Discussion Thread instead. I think it's a perfect example as to why avoiding culture war shit is the right thing to do and it's what I should really get back to doing. I think you're playing into reactionary paranoia/propaganda and jumping to conclusions here. These were bad admins making terrible decisions, it's not evidence of a global Marxist conspiracy and "political correctness" ruining academia and the humanities being corrupt (this is the agreed upon narrative of those who talk about this leftist bias you're speaking of, if you are not aware). Speaking of bias, I think if you haven't been manipulated by the media, you can only jump to this conclusion if you had a bias in the first place. There is simply no strong data on this, no reason to jump to this conclusion. If I'm wrong, please show it to me. A subjective uni experience just doesn't cut it. You can extrapolate from this story that there are others like them who suck at doing their job and that's pretty much it. Admins who suck at their job, who would've thunk it! There's probably a dozen good reasons why the left is more prominent in academia but all of this doesn't get any discussion, it's just all attributed to some nebulous bias. Actually that's not entirely true, Baal and I have discussed it fairly recently.

Point being, the neutral, unbiased position here I believe is to say that people have their beliefs and they fuck up. Abuses of power are not exclusive to the left. It's not unbiased to say that this is a systemic problem that was exposed or that this is evidence that passing Bill C-16 was negative. This whole thing is tragic because it's not just incompetent people getting crucified for doing a bad job. If you have a look on the other side of the spectrum, the LGBTQ Death Squad is out for blood thanks to this story. Lindsay is fine now, they are the ones paying the price for this. As always, people will find things to justify their traditional views and this is just the latest thing.

As for the broader issue here that doesn't deal with incompetence, if you have an issue with the university policy and you're a centrist/classic liberal, then I don't think it should be obvious to you that this was just a matter of free speech. There should be a reasonable discussion on whether or not playing this type of material neutrally potentially violates the harm principle. I've not seen this discussion happen. I think if there's something I learned from this thread is that the kind of middle of the road position advocated on this site is really misguided and naive. Most importantly, it's vulnerable to manipulation, but also because it stands for nothing of any worth, it just tries to play it safe and claim that it's in everyone's best interest because it's "not biased". It reminds me of a lecture by Roderick talking about Nietzsche, where he said the following:

"So, you know, it’s hard if one wants to place simple moral blame upon a body of text to go “Well Nietzsche was responsible for Fascism, and damnit now he’s responsible for its opposite number, Anarchism. Why wasn’t he just a damn good Liberal like John Stuart Mill?” Well, he thought Mill was a blockhead. [crowd laughter] You know, “Why wasn’t he just a middle of the roader?”… you know, the current politics that seems to dominate today: a middle of the roader, mainstream.

Well to quote my friend Hightower from Texas, there’s nothing in the middle of the road where I come from except yellow lines and squashed armadillos [crowd laughter]. And so I am glad that Nietzsche’s text isn’t in the middle of the road and it does allow for multiple political uses."

Of course he foresaw that he was going to be responsible for post-modernism too and this is just one more thing that could be blamed on him and for which I'd just have to say fuck it, people can interpret things however they want (which is the point). Even though I don't like the chaos, confusion and harm that these interpretations cause, it's the only world worth something. Aspiring for orderliness, homogeneity and upholding the sacredness of "Western Values", what a joke. Fuck being a middle of the roader, it basically amounts to nothing more than being someone who refuses to learn. That's my rant.

nvm

On November 24 2017 13:30 Loco wrote: https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...htwingers-who-love-to-play-the-victim Show nested quote + The conspiracy theorists claim that these “cultural Marxists” began to use insidious forms of psychological manipulation to upend the west. Then, when Nazism forced the (mostly Jewish) members of the Frankfurt School to move to America, they had, the story goes, a chance to undermine the culture and values that had sustained the world’s most powerful capitalist nation. ... the conspiracy says, they promoted and even enforced ideas which were intended to destroy traditional Christian values and overthrow free enterprise: feminism, multiculturalism, gay rights and atheism. And this, apparently, is where political correctness came from. I promise you: this is what they really think.   The whole story is transparently barmy. If humanities faculties are really geared to brainwashing students into accepting the postulates of far-left ideology, the composition of western parliaments and presidencies and the roaring success of corporate capitalism suggests they’re doing an astoundingly bad job. Anyone who takes a cool look at the last three decades of politics will think it bizarre that anyone could interpret what’s happened as the triumph of an all-powerful left.   It allows those smarting from a loss of privilege to be offered the shroud of victimhood, by pointing to a shadowy, omnipresent, quasi-foreign elite who are attempting to destroy all that is good in the world. It offers an explanation for the decline of families, small towns, patriarchal authority, and unchallenged white power: a vast, century-long left wing conspiracy. And it distracts from the most important factor in these changes: capitalism, which demands mobility, whose crises have eroded living standards, and which thus, among other things, undermines the viability of conventional family structures and the traditional lifestyles that conservatives approve of. The story of cultural Marxism is also flexible and can be tailored to fit with the obsessions of a range of right-wing actors. As such, it’s one example of an idea from the extremes which has been mobilised by more mainstream figures and has dragged politics as a whole a little further right.

>cultural marxism is a conspiracy theory
>patriarchal authority and unchallenged white power
thanks 2015 australian guardian op ed

Adapting this, later thinkers of the Frankfurt School decided that the key to destroying capitalism was to mix up Marx with a bit of Freud, since workers were not only economically oppressed, but made orderly by sexual repression and other social conventions. The problem was not only capitalism as an economic system, but the family, gender hierarchies, normal sexuality – in short, the whole suite of traditional western values.

this is exactly right, we tried to get power by scamming people into revolution against the bourgeoisie but every country that did that turned to dog shit

so we need something more relateable, and we need to repackage the ideas so people don't realize it's the same old nonsense... how about revolting against cishet white male oppressors instead