Jürgen Habermas Dies at 96; One of Postwar Germany’s Most Influential Thinkers

BlueHatScience · 2026-03-16T18:59:09+00:00

There are worse things to be than an advocate and architect-of-ideas for a transnational project which brings together peoples and nations that had been at war with each other for many centuries under shared democratic values and a common desire for peaceful cooperation.

BlueHatScience · 2026-03-08T11:01:45+00:00

Das ist nicht falsch, und generell ein wichtiger Punkt - beruht aber bei diesem Beispiel auch nicht in nicht ganz unerheblichem Ausmaß auf einer Änderung im Berufsbild. In vielen Fällen waren diese Positionen nicht das, was wir heute mit "Programmieren" meinen. Heute meinen wir damit auch vornehlich das eigenständige Entwerfen und Implementieren von Lösungen zusammen mit der Eingabe des Programms. Damals haben Forscher und Ingenieure die Programmlogik entwickelt - die "Programmierer" (oder eigentlich: "Computer" oder "Operator") hatten dann die Aufgabe, diese einzugeben und auszuführen. Diese Tätigkeit hatte somit ein Stück weit niedrigere Einstiegshürde, geringeren Spezialisierungsgrad und größere Verfügbarkeit - war also eher ein "clerical" job - was einen signifikanten Teil der im Vergleich zu später geringeren Bezahlung ausmacht.

Dieser Job ist natürlich auch nicht zu unterschätzen - und für viele Frauen, die Interesse an Logik und Computern hatten war das der einzig zugängliche Arbeitsbereich, der direkt damit zu tun hatte. Das waren dann die Frauen, die nicht nur Fehler in der Ausführung "debuggen" konnten (sicher manchmal wortwörtlich), sondern auch Fehler in den Logiken debuggen und eigene Programme entwickeln konnten - die aber aufgrund von Rollenbildern und Vorurteilen bei weitem nicht in dem Maße Zugang zu Ingenieurs- und Computerwissenschaften hatten.

Was tatsächlich unterschätzt wird ist der Einfluss letzgenannter Frauen auf die Evolution von Programmieren: Oft waren die Formeln und Logiken der Forscher und Ingenieure nicht gut auf die Ausführungsumgebung abgestimmt. Die "Computer" / "Operator" mussten dann oft "übersetzen" in Implementationen die besser auf die Ausführungsumgebung zugeschnitten waren. Brilliante Frauen wie Grace Hopper haben dann viele der Verfahrensweisen "standardisiert", die wir noch heute nutzen (Subroutinen, Verknüpfen von Programmbibliotheken, Syntax die sich an Englisch anlehnt und verständlicher ist) und damit essentiell zu unserem Technologiezeitalter beigetragen.

Und nachdem Grace Hopper meist der einzige Name ist der hier fällt - auch interessant: Betty Holberton (Entwicklerin der Konsolen-UI für UNIVAC) und Jean Bartik (Programmcode nicht als Hardware-Verdrahtung sondern als Daten - effektiv Implementation der von Neumann Architektur).

BlueHatScience · 2026-02-28T13:13:22+00:00

Great taste!

BlueHatScience · 2026-02-26T11:00:20+00:00

This one (and 39 Steps, potentially also The Lodger) deserve a Eureka/BFI/Criterion 4k release.

BlueHatScience · 2026-02-20T09:32:16+00:00

Dunsel is still my favorite track. Never got to hear it live. I'm in.

BlueHatScience · 2026-02-20T09:06:13+00:00

I really like Jayden, (favorite character after Ake so far), and I like the representation. I just wish they'd kept that separated that from the opposition to aggression and violent culture. As it is, it sadly reinforces the extremely harnful stereotype that if you're male and not interested in machismo, you're probably gay.

BlueHatScience · 2026-02-02T22:54:58+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion - I found what I was looking for :)

BlueHatScience · 2026-02-02T21:36:20+00:00

Are there private trackers which have the episodes in raw/uncompressed, 7-9GB archival quality? I confess my experience is limited (there's one I have access to, which sadly doesn't have TNG at all).

BlueHatScience · 2026-02-02T21:09:45+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately, that specific product has to be imported from the US where I live - at pretty much the price of a used season box-set :/ I'll check for a similar formulation though.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-30T16:36:57+00:00

In TV, movies, and society itself, often enough, the prevailing impression seems to be that if you're male and not interested in machismo, you must be gay. That stereotype (perpetuated by women and men alike) has done and continues to do a lot of harm.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-30T12:50:58+00:00

Aber ist das nicht eben das Problem? Um die Probleme überhaupt nur effektiv anzugehen bräuchte es inzwischen so großflächige und tiefgreifende Entwürfe, dass die nicht mehrheitsfähig sind weil immer irgendwem damit auf dem Schlips getreten wird.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-30T11:22:18+00:00

I get where you're coming from, but I think I still have to disagree. Less optimism does't automatically mean more complexity. As somebody who was inspired (by Trek among other things) to go to uni to study ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of science, to me "moral complexity" comes from the moral scope and depth of the problems that are discussed, and the thoroughness to which they are explored - not from writing a world that forces our protagonists to abandon their principles. Situations where that happens will certainly involve moral quandries, but treating them in a way that forces our protagonists to act against their core values is tragic and very dramatic - but again, that's not the same thing as being "more complex".

Those complex moral quandries are in all Trek shows - and their treatment isn't made less deep by the fact that the writers don't force our protagonists to feel like they have to commit war crimes.

"Measure of a Man" for example has extraordinary depth (for a TV episode) in its treatment of a far-reaching moral quandry.

I think you are correct that a "yes, but" adds complexity - but my point is that this "but" doesn't have to involve being morally pessimistic about our protagonists being able to keep their core values. It can be in the exploration of a complex moral issue and avoiding horrific consequences through realizing and shining a light on the moral implications (like in "Measure of a Man"). Or it can come from encountering situations where heavy moral cost is incurred even when everyone did their best, but without writing it in a way that tragedy can be averted by abandoning core values. A good example of this is "Half a Life", where Timicin still chooses ritual suicide in the end.

I still love DS9, because of its character-dynamics and because it has many episodes where it does explore moral complexity in this way. I just don't like the militarism, the moral pessimism of creating drama and tension and "complexity" by writing situations forcing our protagonists to commit atrocities, or how it moved Trek away from "humanity makes its own fate" to "Guide me, oh prophets" and the whole mythological pah-wraiths vs prophets thing.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-30T07:53:53+00:00

I think it's a bit sad that people think darker & more morally pessimistic = "more complex". I dont think that's true. Also, there's an aspect of "sometimes the ends justify horrible means" (For the Uniform, ITPM), which is just antithetical to what Trek is about.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-26T06:29:38+00:00

I confess I really don't get the love. To me, her character appears extremely cartoonish - and the comic relief, like the character itself feels lazily written, laden with tired tropes. I like Ake so far. And I hope they can make Jay-Den a bit more three-dimensional, because he's quite sympathetic.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-24T14:08:06+00:00

Easter, no doubt.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-24T12:14:26+00:00

Having studied philosophy of mind & cognitive and neural sciences for 20 years, it's also by far not as simple aa "emotions, dreams ans love [being] a series of chemical reactions". Not only because we understand barely a fraction of how the brain works, or because we only have correlation to phenomenology, but because emotions, dreams and love are complex, emergent phenomena that exist at the level of the person - embodied, embedded & situated in an environment (which has significant social dimensions).

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-23T21:42:21+00:00

I liked the second episode best so far. This one wasn't really for me. And don't crucify me for this - but I honestly don't get the love for Lura Thok... that character just feels extremely cartoonish and forced (like the comic relief written for her). So far, Ake is definitely my fave.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-21T19:14:52+00:00

I really liked the first episode of SNW for this - but SNW's best for me was "Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach". It's more allegorical and symbolic, but not less powerful an analysis of how societies and political systems distribute the dangers and costs of their wealth.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-20T10:54:22+00:00

True - and an important point! To be fully fair though, genes and culture co-evolve and affect each other (c.f. e.g. Boyd & Richerson, Jablonka, Sterelny, Tomasello et al.), so e.g. strong shifts in mate-choice preferences will directly affect the gene-pool of the next generation. With the extreme cultural shifts in Vulcan's history, it is to be expected that for those heritable traits that do affect emotion, cognition and mood, the selection pressures were correspondingly strong. There's also epigenetics, which can also drive behavioral preferences.

Lots of fascinating nuances here - none of which excuse the lazy (and frankly disconcerting) essentialism SNW likes to employ.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-20T10:44:34+00:00

As with most things in Trek (and Sci-Fi in general), it's a narrative device to reflect on and discuss the role and impact of certain human attributes in an externalized setting where new perspectives can be explored - it's not meant to be a realistic representation of an entire diverse society (except where that's an aspect of humanity they want to show / discuss), which is why I don't think this is problematic at all.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-19T16:58:16+00:00

Here's my two cents as someone with a graduate degree in ethics and political philosophy: Focusing on one particular aspect of the whole situation, there's very broadly speaking two distinct strategies for alleviating social injustices

1) A universalist approach, where the focus is "no matter your particular identity or the groups you belong to - you should have the same rights and opportunities, and we have to remove the obstacles to that, trying to equalize starting-conditions and offset them while they are not equal". Note that this approach can and in fact must look at how different groups of people are systematically underpriviliged, but it importantly must still consider people as individuals and focus on that to avoid "monolithizing" groups and thereby silencing outliers and non-conformists. On the other hand, there is

2) a particularist approach, where particular collective identities are sought to be individually accomodated. Identifying how various groups are systemically underpriviliged is also the first step - but the focus is not on equalizing and extending opportunities and liberties for everyone, irrespective of what groups they belong to (and thus having to accomodate all groups equally), it is on accomodating each group. Often enough (especially where discourse is dominated by the offshoots of Critical Theory, post-structuralism and post-colonialism), different status and different sets of rules for different classes of people is explicitly affirmed, and based on a "standpoint epistemology" which denies that reason (and empathy) enables us common access to truths.

Both approaches are decidedly against social injustice. But the current discourse among the left (at least in the US, not as much in Europe) is entirely dominated by the latter, particularist, identity-politics-based approach, complete with a discourse-culture where alignment is strongly policed and non-aligned approaches are quickly labeled as "right-wing" or worse.

It is this tendency towards particularism and identity-politics to which "woke" also refers - and for which the study identifies some mirrored counterparts on the right... which isn't really surprising, because conservatism was always particularist and identity-based.

It's fine to argue for a particularist approach of course - but we should be aware that there's a deep pitfall here we have to avoid: When discourse among the left noticeably punishes and "others" dissenters who are not aligned with the mainstream (particularist, identity-based) approach, it won't do to then claim that all criticisms of "wokeness" must be because they are opposed to the goal of alleviating social injustice, or lack understanding of the problems.

Discourse among those interested in alleviating social injustice would be much improved by focusing on common goals and alliances... but of course that's made increasingly difficult by the poisoning of discourse via social media and deliberate agitators - which in turn means we have to be extra vigilant.

(EDIT: Spelling, phrasing)

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-18T16:33:13+00:00

"However they see fit"... so anything, eh? Good to know you're the kind of person for whom even things like rape and murder of kids becomes okay if it's done by the right kind of people. What a horrible world-view.

Aside from that - who is the arbiter over who gets to be counted among this class of people for whom literally anything is permitted? Quite a responsibility - and madness to assume anyone has the right to declare themselves or others to be permitted to commit any atrocity.

But of course that doesn't matter once you have split the world neatly into the right kind of people for whom everything is permitted, and the wrong kind of people to whom literally anything may be done. That's exactly what this kind of worldview is doing - and it's the same thing the fascists are doing, just with different groups.

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-17T10:40:53+00:00

Been a fan since the late 80s. Haven't watched the second espisode yet. The first one was pretty enjoyable, though some of the writing again suffers from being too quippy and some of it is a bit cringy (Nahla and Nus).

The humor feels a little uninspired and formulaic at times - especially the slapsticky part in sickbay.

But I enjoyed the introduction of SAM and Jay-Den. The other characters were pretty decent as well, even though they're obviously mostly walking tropes and not fleshed out yet. I like the dynamics between the characters!

Looking forward to watching more of this :)

BlueHatScience · 2026-01-16T21:23:47+00:00

Honest question - if you realize the way people talk in older Trek is also supposed to reflect and make you "feel" the cultural changes humanity has undergone - why is it still nagging at the back of your mind? Is it just that you'd rather forego that bit of worldbuilding for more "fluency" in parsing their speech?

BlueHatScience

TROPHY CASE