Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 2:16 am
To some extent, we simply don't. My point is that the truth exists (on matters of fact), not that we can ever completely figure it out. To the limited extent to which we can try to at least get
somewhat closer to the truth, we deal with the factors you mention by trying to be as aware as possible of them.
Umberto Eco once did a bit where he said that he agrees with the postmodernists on the deceptiveness of appearances and with science on ontology, making him a "minimal realist". I think it was this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZnwpW3OEZo
Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 9:30 am
IMO the constant Marxist bashing of all things really or supposedly bourgeois is one of the
least attractive features of the hard Left.
For serious Marxists these days, "bourgeois lifestyle" often means you work a boring 9-5 job, come home bone tired and drink yourself to sleep (substitute the dissipation of your choice) every night. In Marxism, the goal is to let everyone become a dilettante working freely in any field of their choosing every day, thereby allowing work to become a method you use to improve yourself. Against the prevailing intellectual consensus of our times, Marxism has nothing to do with turning the world into a dreary snow-covered plain where huddled masses stand in bread lines and work themselves to death.
For me, the least attractive part of Marxism is its metaphysics. Of course, Marxists don't call it that. According to Marxists, "mechanical science" is metaphysics, against which Marxism proposes the "science" of dialectics.
What is "dialectics"? Marxists don't agree on what it means, except insofar as it has something to do with natural dynamism as opposed to rigid "mechanism".
According to Leninists, "dialectics" means that all nature is causally connected as opposed to there being high level levers of power like gods. This reading was widely repudiated outside the Third International at the time. People have pointed out that this interpretation is closer to Buddhism's
Dependent Origination than anything Marx said. But say goodbye to your neck if you disagree with Stalin.
If you closely read Marx himself, dialectics is a high level description of material processes. At the abstract level, dialectics is something like Hofstadter's strange loops: As you rise in a hierarchy, you circle back to the bottom. One difference is that Marxist dialectics applies strange loops to material processes. The most influential application of dialectics is Marx's value-free demonstration of how capital accumulation (increase in wealth) necessarily leads to economic depression (poverty), the form in which class struggle appears at the economic level. Marx thinks these instabilities in material processes necessarily lead to social progress in a
punctuated equilibrium as modes of production advance.
(Note that for Marx, "progress" comes with no value judgment attached. It is very possible for "progress" to leave people worse off than before. This is what he believed the French Revolution had done.)
This theory has a lot going for it, but Marx's original interpretation was somewhat rigid. For example, Marx believed that when the Great Depression hits, capitalists will absolutely refuse to change their ways, and the workers will have to effectively eat them. Instead, we got a New Deal world where capitalism co-exists with government intervention. This is why Marxists with a philosophical bent think they can extend Marxist theory with inspiration from Freud. In Marx, new social systems completely transform (aufheben) the old. This was based on a model of psychology derived from Hegelian (post-)rationalism. Freud, OTOH, primarily deals with compromise formations like repression, disavowal and foreclosure. What would Marxist theory look like if social democracy was capitalism "repressing" socialism? What if the appropriate response to social democracy was not revolution but something analogous to a psychoanalytic intervention that helps the patient (society) come to terms with her real desires? Through these analogies, Marxist "science" slips into hardcore philosophy.
Other problems with dialectics include:
1. Marxists traditionally universalized dialectics, applying it to all material processes without discrimination. This effectively regresses to a vitalist universe that denies the fact of inertia.
2. There is one exception to this universalization of dialectics. According to one common interpretation of Marxism, dialectics comes to an end in Communism. So, what, the revolution will turn all matter into spirit or something?
1. This is called consequentialism. Deontologists don't have preferred outcomes. According to them, they always behave in the only way they can rationally justify everyone always behaving. So for example, if an axe murderer came to their door and asked for the whereabouts of their children, they wouldn't lie because they can't rationally justify the sentence, "Everyone ought to lie all the time."
Personally, I think this is dubious because it doesn't acknowledge relativities in the concepts of sameness and difference. Is the sentence, "Everyone ought to lie to axe murderers asking for your children's whereabouts all the time." a "different" sentence, or a less "general" version of the same one? People have suggested that a deontologist ought to slam the door in the axe murderer's face instead of lying. But how? Can deontologists rationally justify the sentence, "Everyone ought to slam doors in people's faces all the time?"
2. You're assuming that arbitrary parts of a moral outcome is still moral. Courtesy of King Solomon, if it's moral to have your kidnapped baby returned to you, is it also moral to have half of your kidnapped baby returned to you?
3. Putting yourself in a stance of compromise makes it less likely that your opponent will give you what you want. Compromise also puts you in Prisoner's Dilemma traps, etc.
1. It's not so much that I think people are not compassionate. I think people overrate how useful compassion is to the less fortunate. It doesn't matter what people think when the structure of the state incentivizes bad behavior in certain contexts.
2. Religious people are religious, but they don't seem to notice that religion doesn't actually teach anything. Religious source material is a bunch of suggestive-sounding ideas with potentially infinite exceptions that invite followers to draw vague, analogical conclusions.
3. The feminist argument is that women shouldn't have to settle for a relationship to make them happy.
4. It is a fact that a lot of conservative activists are deliberately lying for pay.
You could argue that loyalty is just the expectation that someone you help will be your friend.
As the local cult leader, it is my solemn duty to provide ad hoc advice that makes just enough sense to attract the easily impressed. Start from the first prerequisite you don't understand and plot everything in FMSLogo using for, pu, pd, setxy, power, etc:
https://fmslogo.sourceforge.io/ Tutorial:
https://fmslogo.sourceforge.io/workshop/ The commands are explained in Index under Help.
Trivial example:
Let's say you come across the equation:
x^2 + y^2 = 10000
Write y as a function of x:
y = +/- sqrt(10000 - x^2)
Write a Logo function by clicking Edall. There's no need to write efficient code: (Note: IIRC variables have " before them when they're written as strings, : when they're used, and nothing when just named like in the for loop conditions.)
Code: Select all
to p1
for [x -100 100] [
make "y sqrt(10000-:x*:x)
setxy :x :y
make "y -sqrt(10000-:x*:x)
setxy :x :y
]
end
Click Save and Exit. Then in the instruction box, enter:
This should create a solid black circle. CS clears the screen. Here's code for an empty circle:
Code: Select all
to p2
pu
setxy -100 0
pd
for [x -100 100] [
make "y sqrt(10000-:x*:x)
setxy :x :y
]
for [x 100 -100] [
make "y -sqrt(10000-:x*:x)
setxy :x :y
]
end
If this is still too advanced for you, it's time to break out my pet theory that mathematical ability is improved by training the memory to remember abstract permutations. A mathematical expression is basically a sequence of steps represented as function composition. For example, b(a(x)) sends x as input to mapping a, whose output is sent as input to mapping b. In an inperative language, this would be:
Code: Select all
make "temporary_output a :x
make "final_output b :temporary_output
"Understanding" comes from playing around with the memory of which steps come in what order.
After expressions, an equation is a proposition that selects a set of points from a space. For example, a(x)=0 selects, from the space of all outputs a can have, the points where, if you send x as input to a, the output is 0.
Assuming this makes sense, the way to train the memory on abstract permutations is to play the right genre of puzzle games:
1. Play the Android game called Wordscapes.
2. When you get past level 500, play the Android game called Code Breakers on Easy/Beginner/whatever mode.
3. Once you finish 100 of those, try FMSLogo again. If you get addicted to puzzles, play the paid game Baba Is You until you get sick of them.
Something is missing... right, it's not a complete cult leader recommendation until I "fix" your diet. I guess try ingredients that are associated with adult neurogenesis like the spice turmeric?
PS. Slightly more advanced programming in Logo:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Logo_Programming