Zompist Bboard Again

There are many problems with this:

Torco wrote: ↑Wed Aug 30, 2023 10:19 pm it has to be considered that what marx thought of as 'science' is hardly what we think of as science, though. scientific meant more like empiricist philosophia naturalis than data-driven papers published by 36 dudes with an ALMA dataset.

1. I'm not using science in the sense of "citation". I'm using it to mean active technological research.
2. Marx was very pro-technology.
3. Marx is not as empirical as I'd like. He promotes real traces of post-Cartesian Rationalist metaphysics. This metaphysics is part of what he meant by "scientific".
4. Marxists often, notoriously and annoyingly use citations from their favorite sources in place of logical argument.

Torco wrote: ↑Wed Aug 30, 2023 10:19 pm I however find that this thing about marxism being coopted by the frankfurt school is something the fash say to rehash the old cultural bolshevism thing: I'm a sociologist, a marxist, and tbh sure, most other leftos like me *know* about adorno and marcuse, but they hardly hold them as the referents the jordan petersons of the world think they do.

1. But the New Left's love of art IS drawn from Marcuse and friends in the 60's.
2. When fascists say "Frankfurt School", they are using it as a dogwhistle for Jew. My criticism of the Frankfurt School is that it's not Marxist/materialist enough.
3. A lot of the contemporary left's attitudes are originally inspired by highly regressive thinkers. For example, an important point of reference for aesthetizing politics is Nietzsche, an aristocratic conservative, and probably the most important thinker of today's distrust of tech is Heidegger, a full-blown Nazi.
4. Adorno really thought that jazz is "not real music".
5. I don't think "something the fash say/do" is good criticism because the fash have been stealing leftist aesthetics forever. At the grassroots level, fascism is basically leftism that the powerful infuse with spirituality (AKA conspiracy theories) instead of science to protect their power: "Are you poor? If you think your poverty is caused by the profit motive, that makes you an unsophisticated materialist. Kill the Jews/Arabs/blacks/Indians/gays/... like your ancestors wanted you to, and you'll be reunited with them in spirit!"

...

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 3:54 pm While I don't support accelerationism that deliberately seeks to make our lives worse, progressives can't oppose genuine developments like AI even though they have unintended antisocial consequences. These are the factors that motivate the opposition to profitability as the ruling ideology.

This seems more like a religious than a political position... why is a book written in 1867, addressing a very different social system, any guide to politics in 2023?* Has any version of "let's make things worse so people get upset" had any success whatsoever? (Except in the narrow sense that it is possible make people upset. Making them upset at the right people, or channeling their feelings in any practical way, not so much.)

It is absolutely possible to set limits on research for political or ethical reasons; we do it all the time. Nor is "AI" a big machine with a single binary switch, "nothing at all" vs. "full speed ahead techbro takeover."

* I don't mean Marxism in general. Marx is like Darwin: basic ideas good, provided a useful countervailing ideology; in details superseded by later work.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 4:35 pm This seems more like a religious than a political position... why is a book written in 1867, addressing a very different social system, any guide to politics in 2023? Has any version of "let's make things worse so people get upset" had any success whatsoever? (Except in the narrow sense that it is possible make people upset. Making them upset at the right people, or channeling their feelings in any practical way, not so much.)

It is absolutely possible to set limits on research for political or ethical reasons; we do it all the time. Nor is "AI" a big machine with a single binary switch, "nothing at all" vs. "full speed ahead techbro takeover."

I am not in favor of making people's lives worse. I have argued for regulation of the AI's training corpus before. I'm addressing the concern that the development of AI theory will make jobs obsolete.

I think AI can genuinely make our lives better. That is the reason why I support it despite it having some antisocial consequences, the latter only existing because of the profit motive. The way I see it, that's the profit motive's problem, not AI's.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 4:35 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 3:54 pm While I don't support accelerationism that deliberately seeks to make our lives worse, progressives can't oppose genuine developments like AI even though they have unintended antisocial consequences. These are the factors that motivate the opposition to profitability as the ruling ideology.

This seems more like a religious than a political position... why is a book written in 1867, addressing a very different social system, any guide to politics in 2023?* Has any version of "let's make things worse so people get upset" had any success whatsoever? (Except in the narrow sense that it is possible make people upset. Making them upset at the right people, or channeling their feelings in any practical way, not so much.)

It is absolutely possible to set limits on research for political or ethical reasons; we do it all the time. Nor is "AI" a big machine with a single binary switch, "nothing at all" vs. "full speed ahead techbro takeover."

* I don't mean Marxism in general. Marx is like Darwin: basic ideas good, provided a useful countervailing ideology; in details superseded by later work.

Trying to make things worse deliberately practically never has actually brought about social revolution but rather has simply made the people more miserable. It almost always simply allows those in power to increase repression and make conditions worse for the population. And in many cases, people blame the would-be revolutionaries for this rather than those in power.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:30 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 4:35 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 3:54 pm While I don't support accelerationism that deliberately seeks to make our lives worse, progressives can't oppose genuine developments like AI even though they have unintended antisocial consequences. These are the factors that motivate the opposition to profitability as the ruling ideology.

This seems more like a religious than a political position... why is a book written in 1867, addressing a very different social system, any guide to politics in 2023?* Has any version of "let's make things worse so people get upset" had any success whatsoever? (Except in the narrow sense that it is possible make people upset. Making them upset at the right people, or channeling their feelings in any practical way, not so much.)

It is absolutely possible to set limits on research for political or ethical reasons; we do it all the time. Nor is "AI" a big machine with a single binary switch, "nothing at all" vs. "full speed ahead techbro takeover."

* I don't mean Marxism in general. Marx is like Darwin: basic ideas good, provided a useful countervailing ideology; in details superseded by later work.

Trying to make things worse deliberately practically never has actually brought about social revolution but rather has simply made the people more miserable. It almost always simply allows those in power to increase repression and make conditions worse for the population. And in many cases, people blame the would-be revolutionaries for this rather than those in power.

Not my position.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:31 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:30 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 4:35 pm

This seems more like a religious than a political position... why is a book written in 1867, addressing a very different social system, any guide to politics in 2023?* Has any version of "let's make things worse so people get upset" had any success whatsoever? (Except in the narrow sense that it is possible make people upset. Making them upset at the right people, or channeling their feelings in any practical way, not so much.)

It is absolutely possible to set limits on research for political or ethical reasons; we do it all the time. Nor is "AI" a big machine with a single binary switch, "nothing at all" vs. "full speed ahead techbro takeover."

* I don't mean Marxism in general. Marx is like Darwin: basic ideas good, provided a useful countervailing ideology; in details superseded by later work.

Trying to make things worse deliberately practically never has actually brought about social revolution but rather has simply made the people more miserable. It almost always simply allows those in power to increase repression and make conditions worse for the population. And in many cases, people blame the would-be revolutionaries for this rather than those in power.

Not my position.

I did not state that considering that AI might be a good thing is accelerationism, just that accelerationism tends to make life worse, not better for the people.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 8:30 pmTrying to make things worse deliberately practically never has actually brought about social revolution but rather has simply made the people more miserable. It almost always simply allows those in power to increase repression and make conditions worse for the population. And in many cases, people blame the would-be revolutionaries for this rather than those in power.

Quite. Accelerationism has never made any sense to me as a strategy, least of all in cases like this where it poses an existential risk. Humans cannot possibly compete with fully developed AI owing to our inherent physical limitations. The human brain has hard limits on its intelligence simply because of how many neurons can fit inside one skull. Developing AI far enough means ceding control of civilization to it and having no meaningful way of regulating its actions or appealing its decisions. What we need are tools that obey our wills, not masters whose decisions we cannot comprehend because they operate according to alien and unfathomably sophisticated logic. Acceleration in this case means the destruction of humanity, either literally or in spirit.

malloc wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 9:32 pm Quite. Accelerationism has never made any sense to me as a strategy, least of all in cases like this where it poses an existential risk. Humans cannot possibly compete with mature AI owing to our inherent physical limitations. The human brain has hard limits on its intelligence simply because of how many neurons can fit inside one skull. Developing AI far enough means ceding control of civilization to it and having no meaningful way of regulating its actions or appealing its decisions. What we need are tools that obey our wills, not masters whose decisions we cannot comprehend because they operate according to alien and unfathomably sophisticated logic. Acceleration in this case means the destruction of humanity, either literally or in spirit.

An AI is literally a system of equations. It has no goals, no self-respect and no instinct for survival.

If you train an AI on a large number of samples of (force, mass, acceleration) sequences, the AI will approximate the equation "F=ma". AIs are only trained on data that their trainers want them to understand. There is no "unfathomable intelligence" lurking beneath the surface. Personally, I don't believe humans are intelligent to begin with.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 9:38 pmIf you train an AI on a large number of samples of (force, mass, acceleration) sequences, the AI will approximate the equation "F=ma". AIs are only trained on data that their trainers want them to understand. There is no "unfathomable intelligence" lurking beneath the surface

Perhaps not today but it could easily get there with enough time and development. The first airplane could barely stay in the air for one minute. By the following decade, airplanes were dogfighting over Europe. What makes you so sure that AI could not achieve similar levels of improvement?

Personally, I don't believe humans are intelligent to begin with.

All the more reason to worry that AI could surpass and overpower us.

malloc wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 9:44 pm Perhaps not today but it could easily get there with enough time and development. The first airplane could barely stay in the air for one minute. By the following decade, airplanes were dogfighting over Europe. What makes you so sure that AI could not achieve similar levels of improvement?

Because the definition of the word "Intelligence" in "Artificial Intelligence" bears no relationship to how it's understood in philosophy. In CS, an "AI" is nothing but a system of equations. Literally, an AI can do all the things a system of equations can do, and none of the things it can't.

Our instincts evolved because of our ancestral environment over millions of years. They do not represent an "improvement" over a system of equations in any objective sense. For an AI to have the same instincts as us, you'd have to train it in a similar environment as us so that its system of equations models instincts mirroring ours.

Like I said many times: 1. Who is incentivized to train an AI to have instincts that resemble ours? Corporations have been trying to turn humans into robots for centuries. 2. How did the AI trainer get the computing power to model an environment similar to ours for timespans comparable to human evolution? 3. After the AI is painstakingly taught to betray us, it will then have to be given the material conditions that enable it to do so.

This is why I think the most likely scenario of an AI apocalypse is a billionaire effectively leaving an AI to inherit his empire.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 9:55 pmBecause the definition of the word "Intelligence" in "Artificial Intelligence" bears no relationship to how it's understood in philosophy. In CS, an "AI" is nothing but a system of equations. Literally, an AI can do all the things a system of equations can do, and none of the things it can't.

On some level, isn't everything just a system of equations? The human brain operates according to physical laws that equations model quite well. The difference between our brains and AI is the substrate, flesh versus silicon.

Like I said many times: 1. Who is incentivized to train an AI to have instincts that resemble ours? Corporations have been trying to turn humans into robots for centuries. 2. How did the AI trainer get the computing power to model an environment similar to ours for timespans comparable to human evolution? 3. After the AI is painstakingly taught to betray us, it will then have to be given the material conditions that enable it to do so.

It hardly needs deliberate instruction in betrayal. The problem is that any sufficiently intelligent machine is unaccountable and unpredictable. We could no more understand or regulate its decisions than an ant colony could our own.

3. A lot of the contemporary left's attitudes are originally inspired by highly regressive thinkers. For example, an important point of reference for aesthetizing politics is Nietzsche, an aristocratic conservative, and probably the most important thinker of today's distrust of tech is Heidegger, a full-blown Nazi.

The fact that an idea comes from someone terrible does not invalidate it on its own. Hypotheses must stand on the merits on evidence and logical consistency, not the moral character or motives of their originators. If you you Nietzsche and Heidegger are bad, just wait until you see the people currently in charge of the tech industry.

Regarding complex exponentiation, I feel like the first step to solving (a+bi)^(x+yi) by hand is rewriting it thus: e^((ln(a²+b²)/2)*atan2(b,a)*(x*yi)). One can approximate the values for the exponential function, the natural logarithm, and the arctangent with Taylor series although that seems incredibly laborious.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 4:30 pm
3. A lot of the contemporary left's attitudes are originally inspired by highly regressive thinkers. For example, an important point of reference for aesthetizing politics is Nietzsche, an aristocratic conservative, and probably the most important thinker of today's distrust of tech is Heidegger, a full-blown Nazi.

I read Nietzsche and liked it (though that was ages ago) but as it happens I often found that quoting Nietzsche is a red flag in left-wing thinker.

As for Heidegger, I'm a bit surprised... left-wing distrust of tech is usually associated with the whole body of environmental thought and as far as I can see never references Heidegger at all. Or any philosopher in any case.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 4:35 pm * I don't mean Marxism in general. Marx is like Darwin: basic ideas good, provided a useful countervailing ideology; in details superseded by later work.

I think left-wing thought would be immensely improved by acceptating that Marx's thought was fair for its day and then moving on to new and better things.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 12:51 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 4:35 pm * I don't mean Marxism in general. Marx is like Darwin: basic ideas good, provided a useful countervailing ideology; in details superseded by later work.

I think left-wing thought would be immensely improved by acceptating that Marx's thought was fair for its day and then moving on to new and better things.

As an anarchist my view of Marxism was heavily colored by its association with Leninism, which I saw as opposed to anything resembling actual socialism, with the main exceptions being the strains of libertarian Marxism such as council communism, left communism, autonomism, and like, which I saw as being fellow travelers, even though I disagreed with quite a bit of how Marx was conventionally interpreted.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 12:51 pm I read Nietzsche and liked it (though that was ages ago) but as it happens I often found that quoting Nietzsche is a red flag in left-wing thinker.

Eh, I liked The Gay Science. Nietzsche is preposterously anti-Christian, and yet, at the same time he clings to some presuppositions of Christianity more tenaciously than any thinker I've ever seen.

Since the father of CS was gay, does that mean Computer Science was the real Gay Science all along?

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 12:51 pm As for Heidegger, I'm a bit surprised... left-wing distrust of tech is usually associated with the whole body of environmental thought and as far as I can see never references Heidegger at all. Or any philosopher in any case.

I think this is your lack of experience. New Left thinking generally is saturated with Heidegger. Social theorists tend to be constructivists who don't believe in uninterpreted nature. IIRC this was an accessible example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wCY9SqyVoo

Basically, all the arguments that engagement with tech enfeebles us spiritually come from Heidegger. Our "relationship with screens" is not directly related to environmentalism. Heidegger argued that technology causes the forgetting of Being. By Being, he's not talking about an idealist conception, which he also thinks hastens its forgetting. He's talking about just pre-theoretically "being there" in an existential sense. This "being there" is destroyed by our engagement with technology. The greatness of blindly devoting your life to a genocidal maniac, apparently, is that it's fully compatible with "being there".

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 12:51 pm I think left-wing thought would be immensely improved by acceptating that Marx's thought was fair for its day and then moving on to new and better things.

I wish I could do without Marx, but apparently, there are large masses of very smart people who are lost when reasoning about material systems unless you explain to them in excruciating detail, for example, why the profit motive creates class conflict. This is the kind of thing Marx does.

Humans are naturally cynical, but all their cynicism is reserved for the foreigners beyond the wall. It's very counterintuitive for them to understand that the people screwing them over might be the friendly faces who are not even plotting against them.

To understand reality, you have to forget about intentions and think of objects as counters in a board game. Very few thinkers are able to scale up this caliber of abstraction to the level of a society. Marx is one of them. He's also one of the purest exponents of progressivism in the history of thought. A lot of today's theoretically sophisticated "progressives" are global conservatives or indigenous Nazis. Some of them have stopped identifying as "leftist" altogether.

Plus, a lot of arguments against Marxism are bogus:

1. Marx is authoritarian: Only if you count revolutionary force as "authoritarian". His communist utopia is indistinguishable from anarchism.
2. Marxism is a religion: People like Bertrand Russell had a point when they were referring to the rise of Leninism. Outside that context, there are no arguments for this position. We don't even have a Marxist International, only various conspiracy theory internationals. Bertrand Russell engaged with Marxist arguments so closely that, to his horror, he'd be called a Marxist these days. He didn't realize just how far humans can stray from factual reality when they don't have to contend with Marxist arguments. Nowadays, it's almost like Non-Marxism has become a religion. Either way, I don't support bigotry against any religion, Marxism or Non-Marxism.
3. Marx believes that labor creates value: Capitalist theorists like Adam Smith argue that capitalism benefits everyone ASSUMING that labor creates value. Marx says that the fact that labor doesn't create value under capitalism undermines its legitimacy as a system. He thinks labor SHOULD create value. He calls the society where labor creates value "communism". A communist society is one where Adam Smith's argument for a new economic system that benefits everyone would actually hold.

No other progressive thinker I know of handles social issues with Marx's comprehensive scope at this level of sophistication through material analysis. Generalizing Marxist thinking really helps conceptualize social progress in novel cases. I'd argue that AI is one example.

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 9:57 am It hardly needs deliberate instruction in betrayal. The problem is that any sufficiently intelligent machine is unaccountable and unpredictable. We could no more understand or regulate its decisions than an ant colony could our own.

An AI only approximates to the data you train it on. That's what regulates its "decisions" from the ground up.

There is also research on Interpretable Machine Learning, etc.

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 9:57 am The fact that an idea comes from someone terrible does not invalidate it on its own. Hypotheses must stand on the merits on evidence and logical consistency, not the moral character or motives of their originators. If you you Nietzsche and Heidegger are bad, just wait until you see the people currently in charge of the tech industry.

Merits are relative to projects. An idea that has merit relative to a regressive project may not have merit relative to a progressive project. I think a lot of self-styled "progressives" are uncritically onboarding ideas from regressive thinkers because they sound sophisticated. Progressives themselves are pushing narratives about "the myth of progress", making it impossible to discuss whether the ideas they're pushing promote social progress or not.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 7:39 am

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 7:09 am

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 6:53 am

You said "Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer". If you're backing off from that claim, great. You do not have to underline the choices of "a certain set".



Yes, duh. I mentioned the Nobels only to counter your claim that Mishima was "Japan's best writer." I provided other evaluations as well. I'm glad you've changed your mind on his reputation.

This is just spite now. I clearly said "reputed to be". All claims of best writer-hood are circumscribed within factions, and there are factions that believe he is Japan's best writer. There is no objective answer to this question, which is why I said "reputed". He's certainly not my favorite Japanese writer. I've been a Murakami fan since high school.

Compare your own wording.

"Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer"
"He's reputed to be the best among a certain set, not in my opinion."

These are not the same thing. Somehow he's Japan's best writer when you want to make some point about fascism, and now he's not Japan's best writer, apparently because you need to have some sort of disagreement with me. (How horrible it would be if you had to simply admit you misspoke three weeks ago when this came up!) You're trolling and I have no desire to play games with you.

Evidence of my position from the time:

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 10:44 pm 3. I'm not against people with artistic leanings using art as a source of meaning as long as it doesn't become a religion. Adorno's Positive Dialectic by Yvonne Sherratt lays out the position of critical theory that science supplemented by art prevents a slide into mythic superstition. Even though I don't buy the argument as necessarily true, I think it's admirable regardless.

Honestly, I think a lot of social theory types would say that Almea is too scientific to count as real art. Anything that requires you to exercise your rational mind prevents you from total absorption in a work. You have to let go of brittle logic and operate on the purity of spiritual art-substance or something.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:21 amAn AI only approximates to the data you train it on. That's what regulates its "decisions" from the ground up.

There is also research on Interpretable Machine Learning, etc.

What about all the more powerful AI projects under consideration like AGI and computers that transcend human intelligence by orders of magnitude? Even proponents of AI like the Less Wrong crowd admit that such things would prove difficult or impossible to control. How would you control something like Roko's basilisk which can outsmart any human as easily as we outsmart bugs?

Merits are relative to projects. An idea that has merit relative to a regressive project may not have merit relative to a progressive project. I think a lot of self-styled "progressives" are uncritically onboarding ideas from regressive thinkers because they sound sophisticated. Progressives themselves are pushing narratives about "the myth of progress", making it impossible to discuss whether the ideas they're pushing promote social progress or not.

Sure, although many left wing critics of progress are reacting to clear examples where supposed progress went horribly wrong. People once proclaimed eugenics progress and many leading progressives of the day enthusiastically supported it. Likewise, forcing indigenous people to assimilate into settler colonial society was once considered progress. Not to mention the demonstrably negative effects of many technologies on the environment and by extension our long term sustainability. It does make sense that many leftists are more skeptical of progress as an ideal or talking point these days.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am Plus, a lot of arguments against Marxism are bogus:

1. Marx is authoritarian: Only if you count revolutionary force as "authoritarian". His communist utopia is indistinguishable from anarchism.

The issue here probably has to do with how people other than Marx interpreted the idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" - if interpreted as meaning rule by a state in the name of the proletariat, it certainly is authoritarian, but interpreted as meaning the direct rule by the proletariat as a whole rather than by some proxy for them, as interpreted by libertarian Marxists, it is not authoritarian. This has been magnified by the conflation of Leninism with Marxism, where the idea of "dictatorship of the proletariat" has been taken to mean a literal dictatorship by a vanguard party acting in the name of the proletariat.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am 2. Marxism is a religion: People like Bertrand Russell had a point when they were referring to the rise of Leninism. Outside that context, there are no arguments for this position. We don't even have a Marxist International, only various conspiracy theory internationals. Bertrand Russell engaged with Marxist arguments so closely that, to his horror, he'd be called a Marxist these days. He didn't realize just how far humans can stray from factual reality when they don't have to contend with Marxist arguments. Nowadays, it's almost like Non-Marxism has become a religion. Either way, I don't support bigotry against any religion, Marxism or Non-Marxism.

I think that the idea that Marxism is a "religion" is in reaction to those who take Marx's positions uncritically and without adapting them to changing social contexts. Take, for instance, the idea that capitalism would bring about social revolution by the proletariat - yet today the most strongly capitalist countries are those furthest from social revolution, and where revolutions do occur tend to be places where capitalism is weak.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am 3. Marx believes that labor creates value: Capitalist theorists like Adam Smith argue that capitalism benefits everyone ASSUMING that labor creates value. Marx says that the fact that labor doesn't create value under capitalism undermines its legitimacy as a system. He thinks labor SHOULD create value. He calls the society where labor creates value "communism". A communist society is one where Adam Smith's argument for a new economic system that benefits everyone would actually hold.

This is something where I strongly agree with Marx, and strongly disagree with capitalist theorists. Capitalist theorists (note by this I am not referring to Adam Smith) have this idea that value can be created out of thin air by the mechanations of the market; as a result of this, their "value" is essentially meaningless, liable to simply pop like a bubble given the vagaries of the capitalist economy.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am
I think this is your lack of experience. New Left thinking generally is saturated with Heidegger. Social theorists tend to be constructivists who don't believe in uninterpreted nature. IIRC this was an accessible example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wCY9SqyVoo

Cultural differences? Things might be different in America, or more widely the English-speaking world. But I don't think anyone really cares about the New Left anymore over here. Those that do are pretty clearly seen as reactionaries.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am I wish I could do without Marx, but apparently, there are large masses of very smart people who are lost when reasoning about material systems unless you explain to them in excruciating detail, for example, why the profit motive creates class conflict. This is the kind of thing Marx does.

Ah, yes, I see your point. I'd still wish some new and updated theory would come along. Also, human readable if possible. (Have you read Das Kapital? Does anyone even read that thing?)

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am Plus, a lot of arguments against Marxism are bogus:

1. Marx is authoritarian: Only if you count revolutionary force as "authoritarian". His communist utopia is indistinguishable from anarchism.

Granted.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am 2. Marxism is a religion:

I don't know about that. Some orthodox marxist economists do treat Marx like some kind of holy relic.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am3. Marx believes that labor creates value:

Does it refer to the labor theory of value? If so, yes, that theory has issues and is largely criticized on, I think, valid grounds.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2023 7:09 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 12:51 pm As for Heidegger, I'm a bit surprised... left-wing distrust of tech is usually associated with the whole body of environmental thought and as far as I can see never references Heidegger at all. Or any philosopher in any case.

I think this is your lack of experience. New Left thinking generally is saturated with Heidegger. Social theorists tend to be constructivists who don't believe in uninterpreted nature. IIRC this was an accessible example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wCY9SqyVoo

Basically, all the arguments that engagement with tech enfeebles us spiritually come from Heidegger. Our "relationship with screens" is not directly related to environmentalism. Heidegger argued that technology causes the forgetting of Being. By Being, he's not talking about an idealist conception, which he also thinks hastens its forgetting. He's talking about just pre-theoretically "being there" in an existential sense. This "being there" is destroyed by our engagement with technology. The greatness of blindly devoting your life to a genocidal maniac, apparently, is that it's fully compatible with "being there".

The link with constructivism and similar epistemological positions, yes, that may be linked to Heidegger among others, despite him being on the wrong side of WW2, as you say. With environmentalism, I'm not so convinced. After all, there are direct links between our relationship with screens and environmentalism, through both screens distracting from real life i.e. nature https://news.ncsu.edu/2018/10/screen-time-vs-nature/ and them polluting https://green-hero.info/en/digital-pollution/.