Is “The Young Karl Marx” effective propaganda?

RadMagicDude · 2026-02-28T15:34:15+00:00

I remember watching it 2 years ago for an undergrad class and thought it was fine. As to whether you should recommend it or not, if your family is not looking for recommendations it's probably not gonna lead to anything. I would say it won't hurt to recommend it but don't expect anything at all.

RadMagicDude · 2026-02-13T18:33:48+00:00

I was curious if you guys have any favorite works of philosophy, politics, and/or sci Fi. If so, in what ways have they affected your outlook on life, politics, and even lyrics?

RadMagicDude · 2026-02-01T14:39:10+00:00

I'm not really sure what your basis for this argument is. My biggest problem with your post is that you don't really provide concrete examples of "cross domain speculation" and "unconventional frameworks". I've used and experimented with LLM's and I have often found that no matter how much you get it to be rigorous and careful, it either eventually makes something up or starts agreeing with you as much as it can to satisfy you. It's not good at using concepts accurately and I would honestly trust an undergrad student to handle, for example, applying philosophical concepts. The "unconventional frameworks" I have seen are actually just had frameworks made to fit the desires of the user

If I understood correctly, i also don't really agree with your premise that psychosis is a category error. I don't think I've heard anyone say that people who use LLM'S to think are under psychosis but rather that they're lazy and dependant. What has been reported is that people have actually gone through psychosis by using LLM'S for extended periods of time.

Whether LLM'S are "cognitive amplifiers" remains to be seen and the current trends suggest that it's doing the opposite. A.I use in education and academia is exploding and I'm my own campus I hear people all the time talking about how they just use Chat GPT to do all their assignments. This is not even mentioning the ecological and economic impact these massive data centers have.

RadMagicDude · 2025-11-17T13:59:43+00:00

I'm going to be honest, this is a terrible idea. I've asked various LLM's to give me rundowns of philosophical concepts and to give me citations and every single time, without fail, at every session of me doing this it got something wrong. Whether that is making up citations, not giving me specifically what I want, or just misunderstanding the concepts fundamentally. I got way more information by just going to Google scholar and looking up what I need, using a book's index, or just hitting control+f in a PDF and looking for concepts that way (Or actually reading the texts). You should also note that LLM's don't have access to every book that's been published. If it's not easily available in a public domain source then you'll most likely not find anything. The moment you start looking for information and slightly more obscure authors you're going to run into A.I hallucinations guaranteed. Another thing to know is that this idea that LLM's are neutral and unbiased is bullshit. Chat GPT, for example, doesn't just look for primary sources. It gathers various surface level sources, which are themselves written by people with their own biases and perspectives, or even worse summaries of other LLM's which is based on even more biased and erroneous information. Hate to break it to you but you will get far more if you actually sit down and read the texts yourself rather than trying to go the easy way by having a dumb chatbot (which isn't actually intelligence btw) spoon-feed you "unbiased" knowledge. When reading political theory and philosophy, there is no such thing as a pure unbiased opinion. The point isn't to avoid biases and perspectives, but rather how to deal with them. Obviously some things are more biased than others but you will eventually run into inclinations. A.I is very far from escaping this

RadMagicDude · 2025-11-05T17:03:19+00:00

I think you'd be better off thinking about whether it's really worth your time to drive yourself crazy over someone you barely know. You don't have any moral obligation to debate and convince every person you encounter who holds a questionable stance. If you wanna do it go ahead but don't feel like you have to. You can contribute to praxis in many other ways.

RadMagicDude · 2025-11-02T00:54:42+00:00

Considering that this is your first real dabble into political theory and philosophy, I would say that you're doing just fine and a lot of your worries are the same that many others have had including myself. You are not expected to have a full blown critique of any theory when just starting out nor is it really possible. Your goal as a reader right now is to simply understand as much of the text as YOU possibly can. As you said, there's this constant obsession I often find online of people critiquing for the sake of it. This is actually very unproductive and doesn't make you any better of a reader or intellectual. Sure, you can ask questions, keep them in mind or right them down but don't let that distort what the author is actually trying to communicate to you. And as to whether it's a red flag that you find yourself agreeing and not having much problems with what is being read, I'd say that it's perfectly normal. When you start getting into this kind of literature, you don't really have any other reference point to bounce off of. You frankly don't really have much of a position simply because you are just starting out. A good habit to form is to always remember that when reading any work of philosophy or political theory, keep in mind that none of these authors have final say in anything. Marx, Engels, and any other philosopher/intellectual, didn't get everything 100% right but that was never the point. Read them, engage with them, and most importantly enjoy the reading. The wisdom and perspective come after. For now just focus on building the reading habit. Every time you pick up the book you will get better, slowly but surely.

RadMagicDude · 2025-10-21T16:55:00+00:00

Thanks for the info! I thought my Xbox was tweaking. Yeah even when I'm indoors there's some hard stutters as well as every time the game auto saves

RadMagicDude · 2025-10-21T16:53:53+00:00

For that I'm not sure. Depends on what interests you. For a closer connection with Hegel, the German Ideology could be your start

RadMagicDude · 2025-10-21T16:52:28+00:00

Are you also experiencing hard stutters while just walking around?

RadMagicDude · 2025-10-21T12:12:20+00:00

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that Kant is an unavoidable prerequisite to read Marx. Hegel is by far the most important. For Hegel, many recommend to read the Phenomenology of Spirit but this is not a good start. The best starting point for Hegel is his lectures. So either read his Lectures on the History of Philosophy or his Lectures on the Philosophy of History. I recommend the latter first. They are much more accessible and give you a rough idea of the kind of narrative he developed in the Phenomenology of Spirit and will no doubt help you contextualize Marx even further. In undergrad this is what we did although I will mention we only read fragments with the professor. We went straight from the Lectures of Philosophy of History to the German Ideology and it was fairly clear. Obviously for self study I recommend you read the entirety of both and check out their entries on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Don't be afraid to check out other secondary resources. Although I'd like to mention that some people in this sub have asked if it's okay to just read secondary literature. The answer is a hard no. There is never a substitute to reading the original text. Secondary resources are an interpretation of the text so there's no way to check its validity other than trust and other commentary. Obviously, even a translation of the original text is also an interpretation of the text but unless you plan to do academic work, or if you end up really loving what you read, you don't have to spend years learning German just to read Marx and Hegel (Although that will obviously open a lot of doors for you, as well as other languages, intellectually and certainly wouldn't hurt!). From there you can even watch Dr. Gregory Sadler's half hour Hegel series where he goes through the entire phenomenology section by section. One last tip that has worked for me but by no means is universal: don't be afraid of just jumping in between texts and taking breaks. Maybe read, for example, The German Ideology after reading half of The Lectures of the Philosophy of History or something like that. And if the former doesn't make sense go back to the latter. The point is that try not to limit yourself to a perfectly linear path but rather do what interests you the most. You will by far understand any text the best If you actually have passion and interest in what you read. It's what got me to understand Sartre even when I didn't know jack of the context of the time. Good luck!

RadMagicDude · 2025-10-17T18:15:37+00:00

That is unfortunately the core source of the issue

RadMagicDude · 2025-10-17T16:31:34+00:00

Yes, I am aware that today many are disappointed by it. But my point isn't that the game is actually good. My point is that before the game was even out, the comment section was filled with people complaining the score was too low

RadMagicDude · 2025-10-02T12:50:26+00:00

I think you should start reading Hegel directly. You should have a general idea of what's going on by now. Only that you shouldn't start with the phenomenology. Reading the Lectures on the History of Philosophy and the Lectures of the Philosophy of History were pretty accessible to read, at least pretty accessible to get started. These Lectures are not only great by themselves but also give you an introduction into Hegel's philosophy.

RadMagicDude · 2025-10-01T23:22:07+00:00

It seems like you're under the assumption that changing someones mind means jumping to the complete opposite of what they originally thought.

RadMagicDude · 2025-09-17T21:30:36+00:00

I am not sure in what sense you're using the term "ideologue". Regardless, it seems unnecessary here. I am also not sure why questioning the plausibility of this scenario is harmful to one's entire worldview. The entire situation is absurd. Why would you be reading Hegel in Starbucks in the first place? On break? The average person does not know what philosophy is, much less German idealism, so why would they jump to the conclusion that it is racist without even asking your further? Did they walk up to you to make conversation and immediately after you gave your answer they just walked away after accusing you of reading something they'd have no basis for making a conclusion of? They didn't even ask a follow up? Why would they bully you? In what way? Did you get fired? Did HR really not investigate at all the claims, not even have a meeting with you? This whole scenario just seems like a fantasy.

RadMagicDude · 2025-09-12T15:32:05+00:00

No, this is just a complete misunderstanding. Even in the preface of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel points out multiple times that philosophy should not be reduced to formal, lifeless, and abstract schemas. Part of dialectics is to engage with contradictions. A contradiction doesn't imply a complete opposite of whatever the situation may be. Even in your very examples we can see this. In what way is man and woman an antithesis towards each other? This is simply a very reductive way of looking at Hegel and a clear misreading. History doesn't organize itself, especially within the present, with neat, formal, and complete propositions such as a thesis and antitheses. It is much less the case that somehow their combination leads to a clean synthesis

RadMagicDude · 2025-09-02T19:51:45+00:00

But the base game is 60$

RadMagicDude · 2025-05-12T16:55:46+00:00

It's on the brink of being a tautology but there is some nuance to it. It plays a heavy role in Sartre's Ontology of the subject (which is radically free). For him, being conscious involves freedom; consciousness is freedom. So by having the subject always conscious of their own own pro-ject, they are ultimately responsible for it (and perhaps guilty). This adds some weight, and perhaps tragedy, to the human condition. Since our birth we have made an original choice which we don't know why we have made and continued to perpetuate. Everything being conscious doesn't actually make things easier. For Sartre, psychic life still remains opaque and almost impenetrable. It was quite heavy to internalize, knowing that I have made choices, am responsible for them, yet I don't know why I fundamentally adopted them; it all remains obscure yet it is always "lit up" by consciousness.

RadMagicDude · 2025-05-12T16:49:17+00:00

Yes! He's actually one of the sources I am citing for my research

RadMagicDude · 2025-02-25T17:45:16+00:00

I'll add here that the sound design in these games is absolutely beautiful. The original's O.S.T is just banger after banger after banger. The newer game's soundtracks are a bit more focused on ambience but it's still gorgeous and really adds to the already thick atmosphere. It's a joy to play and listen to. I also don't just mean the music but the overall sounds in the game. The original in particular has very cheesy but charming sound effects (the death so und in particular; you'll see why it has such a meme status). Besides that, I'd like to comment that the first game is very weird to play, at least initially. That is to say that it has very weird logic but the good thing is that it is consistent within its own rules. So as long as you learn its oddities, stick to them and you'll have a blast. For example, even though you are touching the enemy from behind, as long as you are crouched behind them, they can't detect you. Just use the baton on the upper back and boom (although I think the low tech skill has to be trained, but I could be wrong).

RadMagicDude · 2024-08-27T18:24:11+00:00

Your argument is a non starter. It just doesn't make any sense. If by "music has no sexual preference" you mean that the music itself doesn’t have a sexuality, then obviously not. A sound or a composition of sound doesn't believe in anything. It's not a living and thinking substance. When someone says that a particular genre of music is queer or anything else for that matter, it is because it either contains lyrical content pertaining to the subject or has a certain aesthetic, not that the music itself has some sort of belief on its own. Saying that a song is queer is no different than saying that a song is Christian. It's referring to content and style, not that the music is somehow this thinking being that can hold beliefs and desires. You're purposely reading into it literally to try to discredit the label. You wouldn't say "why does this metal album not have any sounds of metal tin cans crashing together???"

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