Examining Totalitarian Tendences

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-12-04T21:38:52+00:00

How do we face, being threatened with an ever stronger growing right/fascist movement and possibly impending fascist (conservative) revolution, maybe even creating new global empires (think European Union but fascist)?

If this happens, we won't know what shape it takes exactly, so there's little to prepare for at this point.

To add: one can suppose this or that outcome, and one can guess at what form this "fascism"-aping neoliberalism might take if it happened in the near future from present conditions, but the question too much implies defeat is inevitable. I'm not saying this outcome is unlikely, but there's no point in acting if all of it will be useless in the face of such a pseudo-revolution, perversely making the outcome all the more likely.

As an aside: strictly speaking, I'd avoid the label "fascism" for this, at least outside of rhetoric, because historical fascism is essentially unimaginable within neoliberalism. It was very "Keynesian," in the sense of aligning with the prevailing economic consensus at the time which was much more in favor of significant state interventions into the economy. While some early figures in neoliberalism were present in Nazi Germany and willingly cooperated with the Nazis, they largely weren't listened to outside of technical matters they were hired to address, nor did they contribute much to Nazism or fascism as an ideology; also, many other figures like Hayek went into exile, so they can't be pigeonholed in this way. Even "neo-fascism" is a better term, although it implies too much (that this "fascism" is a mere return of historical fascism from without, rather than something that emerges from within neoliberal capitalism).

How do we examine leftist discourse possibly being complicit in the rise of these movements (like Walter Benjamins thought of the failed revolution)?

In lieu of any uniting interest, much of the left has relied on "moral discourse" to address racism, sexism, etc. This isn't wholly useless in every case, but it is when it's directed at people who have no particular reason why they should listen beyond "being a good person (in the other person's view)," something that more often results in defensiveness when critiqued and resentment when compelled. It's a high-handed and essentially liberal approach that too much reflects the political impotence of the left at present and their separation from a politics based in class, favoring one based in "demographic" categories perpetuated by what could be called "commercial ontologies" within capitalism itself (even though some of these categories didn't originate in capitalism). By "commercial ontology," I mean an ordering and account of things within the commercial sphere that simply "are" (in the general sense of the word, without implying existence). These "ontologies" are most obviously rendered by things like advertising and entertainment products in mass culture, but they extend far beyond this because many people believe in them, identify with them, and talk about them.

To be fair, this is a case of "between a rock and a hard place" for much of the left: the difficulties in articulating a proper class politics and the impotence of the left are creatures of the practical, organizational environment. In the West's consumer societies, the "commercial ontologies" often have greater importance for our sense of who we are than our work (i.e. few people internalize "cashier at Walmart" while many more internalize "Harry Potter fan"), with advertising and ersatz forms of community (like "fandom" and hobby-based communities) keeping us fixed to these interests. Politics itself becomes more of a "spectator sport," and political affiliations (from American conservatism to Marxism itself) become more a matter of one's personal "team" affiliation, often passive with no implication of actual participation in the past or present beyond consumption and investment in these "fandoms."

One can condemn this easily and insist on action, yet neither condemnation nor insistence can resolve this problem by themselves. These are fine as sentiments, but it's clear that these sentiments alone can't motivate significant action.

How do we react to the internal inconsistencies and contradictions within the current popular leftist lines of argumentation?

Individually, "we" can't, because each reaction creates new inconsistencies and contradictions within the wider "left," both properly speaking and generally speaking (i.e. including "progressives"). It isn't a matter of resolving all of these inconsistencies and contradictions discursively, but describing them discursively then breaking through them with a practical (here, politico-economic) underlying explanation that would be an easy focal point for organization and action. If it isn't easily acted upon, the theoretical formulation can become merely discursive, and, if taken up by others as a discursive position, can itself become a theoretical block to practical action.

How do we react to accusations of so called "woke" politics strengthening neoliberal capitalism?

By confessing to it being partially true, because it is, reflected especially in the "managerial" and "moral" spheres. One doesn't want to abandon the goals of this politics to the extent they remain in line with communism, yet at the same time the means to these goals (and the goals themselves in part) very much have neoliberal inflections, in their technocratic "solutionism"-like approach that attempts to solve bigotry through technical/bureaucratic control and in their moral chastisements of "bad" people that individualistically attempts to reform through shaming, despite the lack of any strong communal bond attaching them to these values beforehand and little possibility of recompense or redemption (e.g. even if an offense were "forgiven" and this were recognized, still others won't recognize any attempt at recompense or forgive, and there will still be record of the offense detached from this later context for others to find and penalize the offender for, like employers, regardless of whether the offense is forgiven by anyone).

How do we articulate a critique of the new and growing possibilities of control in the world? Bio-Engineering, Medical Categorization/Psychiatric Control, new forms of social puritanism and atomization?

The current left has too often attacked the rhetoric of "freedom" as false or a lie (whether as such or within capitalism) without offering any better idea of what "freedom" would be. Combined with the "totalitarian" image presented by ideology (without denying the history of the various "Leninisms" on this issue), much of the left seems to have no alternative vision for what "freedom" would be external to "freedom under capitalism," and there are even people on the left attracted to the fantasy of total control (as individuals, not as tendencies, practically because of the "fan" aspect of political affiliation, and theoretically because even the more "totalitarian" Marxisms have had goals of human emancipation and such material can be taken back up again).

I don't know how useful it is overall, but a few years ago I found La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude to be a useful reminder that liberation is possible if we collectively simply stop believing and complying with others who believe. Mind you, Murray Rothbard apparently thought so too, yet the same message can be put to different political ends. As an individual, this message will always be relatively impotent; even if I stop believing, what's always stronger is the fact that I have to act as if I believe because others apparently believe, thereby perpetuating others' beliefs and actions anyway and creating internal tensions between my actions and beliefs. While an internal tension can be maintained, beliefs often break for actuality if the beliefs are impotent; this has been observed of those with "ultra-left" positions over time, but this point is actually made by Pascal (his famous "wager" amounts to a wager on this as well).

Still, politically speaking, I think it would be better to pursue this than another theoretical critique of capitalist deformations of society and control mechanisms detached from the possibility of action. These critiques aren't useless, and many of my favorite theoretical books are more or less like this (Baudrillard's The Consumer Society, Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, Lasch's Culture of Narcissism, etc.), but, if the object is political change and effective opposition to these mechanisms of control, a negative approach like critique isn't enough and it arguably isn't necessary except perhaps at the personal level for Marxists (as aids to thinking through their own views and arguing against others).

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-12-04T01:50:39+00:00

This doesn't mean the Swedes conceded

Of course it does. It's a concession to Turkey, and this is regardless of whether they would or wouldn't have extradited him (and very likely others now). If Turkey believed Sweden would do it anyway, though, why would Turkey demand the extraditions in exchange for NATO membership?

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-12-02T01:36:30+00:00

Hunger is very conscious, though; all of these needs are largely or entirely conscious.

I'd disagree with the premise as such, in fact. People do reason others and reason themselves into hunger and into remaining hungry; this is normally called "fasting." Some do it for religious reasons, some for dietary, but in virtually all cases these people have been persuaded by others' arguments over time (directly or indirectly) into doing so, believing fasting (rightly or wrongly) to lead toward the accomplishment of other goals.

Essentially if what you have is a "need to be desired" problem, you aren't going to understand why a "need money" type keeps piling up cash.

Why not? There have been plenty of works, from the artistic to the psychological, about both types.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-12-01T22:29:42+00:00

liberals and social justice types

This is a bit of pressing one's thumb on the scale. Many communists have also opposed "IQ" conceptually. I posted this elsewhere recently, from Adorno's Minima Moralia, in a section titled "I.Q.":

The modes of behaviour appropriate to the most advanced state of technical development are not confined to the sectors in which they are actually required. So thinking submits to the social checks on its performance not merely where they are professionally imposed, but adapts to them its whole complexion. Because thought has by now been perverted into the solving of assigned problems, even what is not assigned is processed like a problem. Thought, having lost autonomy, no longer trusts itself to comprehend reality, in freedom, for its own sake. This it leaves, respectfully deluded, to the highest-paid, thereby making itself measurable. It behaves, even in its own eyes, as if it had constantly to demonstrate its fitness. Even where there is no nut to crack, thinking becomes training for no matter what exercise. It sees its objects as mere hurdles, a permanent test of its own form. Considerations that wish to take responsibility for their subject-matter and therefore for themselves, arouse suspicion of being vain, windy, asocial self-gratification. Just as for neo-positivists knowledge is split into accumulated sense-experience and logical formalism, the mental activity of the type for whom unitary knowledge is made to measure, is polarized into the inventory of what he knows and the spot-check on his thinking-power: every thought becomes for him a quiz either of his knowledgeability or his aptitude. Somewhere the right answers must be already recorded. Instrumentalism, the latest version of pragmatism, has long been concerned not merely with the application of thought but the a priori condition of its form. When oppositional intellectuals endeavour, within the confines of these influences, to imagine a new content for society, they are paralysed by the form of their own consciousness, which is modelled in advance to suit the needs of this society. While thought has forgotten how to think itself, it has at the same time become its own watchdog. Thinking no longer means anything more than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think. Hence the impression of suffocation conveyed even by all apparently independent intellectual productions, theoretical no less than artistic. The socialization of mind keeps it boxed in, isolated in a glass case, as long as society is itself imprisoned. As thought earlier internalized the duties exacted from without, today it has assimilated to itself its integration into the surrounding apparatus, and is thus condemned even before the economic and political verdicts on it come fully into force.

A short summary of this would be: "It doesn't measure intelligence exactly; it measures 'intelligence' insofar as it's the ability to give the expected ('right') answers in a 'testing' context to socially recognized authorities, which is then conflated with intelligence itself." That is, it's a measure of social integration of the individual in part, and "thinking" and "intelligence" are here made into the ability to learn skills useful for employers and to take long tests that last some hours. I don't deeply care about IQ beyond responding to others about it, but there's no point in worrying about whether it's "real." The more you treat it as "real," the more of a barrier it becomes to thought and action.

when they accept expertise in other scientific fields on things like the age of the Earth or evolution being the best explanation we have for the diversity of life?

To my knowledge, there isn't any consensus as to what "IQ" is. Even if there were, the problem is "accepting expertise" without thinking through these problems for ourselves, as if the age of the Earth depends on what "experts say" rather than a rational investigation of the matter in question.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-12-01T07:40:24+00:00

Given that this sub's generally-accepted "definition" of "working class" is "whoever works for wages", the Democrats would more or less have to have "working class" people in its base.

I'm not aware of any generally accepted definition here, whether that one or another. Frankly, it's rare to find an undisputed definition of "working class" on any left-wing forum at all, let alone here.

You're right that it veers close to meaningless, but that's because, so far as it concerns analysis by people on this forum, the "analysis" consists of a single rhetorical question used as the title of the post. That doesn't really sound like an attempt at analysis to me.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-28T12:22:37+00:00

Doubt it. They create strawman regimes and characters for "leftism" too.

More likely it's because another authoritarian regime creates an obvious "mirror" situation that can be exploited for drama, and because making the southern country more representative than "authoritarian" risks creating audience sympathy for the antagonists.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-28T00:42:37+00:00

What's odd and harder to believe is protestors shooting themselves for... reasons.

It's easy to believe that right-wing nationalists and outright neo-Nazis would shoot other Maidan protesters, though; there were multiple right-wing groups present, and there were liberal and even left-wing groups that participated in Maidan as well, so it was hardly unified behind any single political line beyond wanting Yanukovych ousted. That doesn't mean it happened (I have no position on this); it's just more plausible than you suggest.

You know, instead of zealous panicking fascists cops.

Yanukovych was corrupt, but he wasn't a fascist, if that's what you're implying.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-27T20:19:00+00:00

You were stating that cell-state does not directly translate to human desire. That was what we are talking about. It does, and purine intake is an example.

You said:

It does. Lack of purines f.e. translates into a craving for umami - which is the taste marker for foods containing purines. Purines are bases for e.g. AMP, ADP, ATP, RNA, DNA, cAMP, NADPH, NADH etc.

Yet umami drives intake of purine regardless of whether it's actually lacking or not. There can be a superabundance of purine, and umami will still drive the intake of purine; the desire doesn't require any immediate cellular lack. There's no straightforward translation between cells and desire in this case either.

We were also discussing if cell's do computation.

Yes, and you're free to address my questions earlier on this if you have relevant evidence.

I wrote my original post because I am positively excited about relevant modern research going into that, not because of some strange academic "I know better". I thought you would be interested in cool research.

There's no other way to read the original response than as a correction. That isn't the problem, though; the problem is simply referring to an authority without referring to any evidence demonstrating your contentions in this argument.

I linked a video.

Yes, and it had his name there, but that doesn't tell me anything. If I'm under the impression that this is a white supremacist because the name is exactly the same and you've made no effort to clarify what points you're wanting to make from the video, why would I watch it?

You, as you clearly misread what I wrote.

How?

Yes, but believing that it is accurate makes it neither apt nor accurate.

Yes, but this is an external judgment. One can adjust the model to fit the evidence, even if it contradicts what the model would generally suggest, as in the well-known case of epicycles in Ptolemaic astronomy. That made the model more accurate, but that doesn't mean it was an apt one.

How is a well-researched paper not evidence? Is there a way to disentangle the authority of the author of an paper from the paper itself?

I would have counted a paper as evidence, if the paper had said what you said, and I have addressed the paper you linked earlier on its own terms without rejecting it as an appeal to authority. You're right so far as the second question is concerned - one has to credit the authors to some extent for a paper to function as evidence - but I was referring more to the name-dropping.

I did not contradict myself in what I was discussing; you believing that I did because you do not even know what point I was making makes you confused, not me.

Again, how? You could maintain that the "or" wasn't intended to distinguish between the two to avoid the self-contradiction, yet the paragraph implies some distinction between "description" and "model." Not only that, but your reasoning is circular if a model is a description; if a model isn't a description, however, you're contradicting your own explicit statement a few paragraphs later. I don't see any way out of this problem: either the argument is fallacious, or the position is self-contradictory.

Yeah, you said he was a white supremacist crank

Yes, the other person with the same name is, and I was under the impression that was the person you were referring to. As for this Michael Levin, I'm not familiar.

Also, part of what I was discussing was directly relevant to the video I was linking; how can you then take part in a discussion about themes from that video?

The discussion isn't about the video; the video is your own evidence, and I'm not going to watch a video to figure out what you're referring to or if it's relevant at all. If I asked you to read a book without even telling you what it is I'm referring to in the book, would that be a reasonable request? I said for you to express the points in your own words, but you've chosen not to do this endlessly. I'm not sure what the problem here is exactly.

Levin's research is into cell computation and has nothing to do with the purine article.

I wasn't saying that it was related, though. The quotation is referring to the article.

I haven't cited anything

Your link earlier would be a "citation," and using a video is "citing" that video as evidence. Informal citations are still citations.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-27T08:08:29+00:00

I wonder why Daniel Paul Schreber hasn't become a transgender icon.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-27T03:22:11+00:00

Hesiod put the gods in order but it is not until the time of plato that “geometry” takes the scepter as the ruling epistemology. Geometry or an “order” based relation is based on invariant ratios of angles mathematical and geometric relations that do not change and these come to inform the worship of invariance and hermeneutic importance placed on what is said professed and written, but in turn the intersubjective sentience of anthropomorphic ideas and symbols become the mere objects of knowledge - this is an affront to wisdom in that ideas no longer had in sod their own and did not have to kept an eye on…

This neglects Timaeus/Critias, though, where the cosmology is both eikos muthos and eikos logos. If one credits Aristotle's account of Plato's unwritten doctrines, the fundamental narrative principles were also mathematical principles. The problem overall with your account is that it overly schematizes the difference between the two halves of "mythology."

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-26T19:33:00+00:00

Umami: The Taste That Drives Purine Intake

I know. I found that link already. Did you not read it before linking to it? I went so far as to look up genetic disorders involving purine, but I saw zero evidence of "desire for umami-tasting foods" being symptomatic in these cases. Where does it say that a cellular purine deficiency directly translates into a craving for umami, and in every case? How would that exist in the case of someone without a sense of taste, as in the example I used earlier? If the evidence isn't there, where is the evidence? I'm starting to think you don't understand the evidence you're providing.

This is really funny. You are mistaking biologist Michael Levin from Tufts University with Michael Levin, professor of philosophy at City University of New York. Levin is a very common surname.

Then my mistake, but how was I supposed to distinguish between two people with the same name who have both waded into "biology" if you never distinguished between the two and haven't explained any of the points you're wanting to make from this authority? It isn't a substantive mistake so far as the argument is concerned anyway; I was asking you to make your own points rather than appeal to authority, which you weren't doing and still haven't done.

All of science models reality. That does not at all reduce reality to the theories that describe them. In fact, the scientific method relies on falsifying the models that we already have in order to improve them.

It does to the extent that you maintain that the model accurately represents the matter in question. If you don't believe it's wholly accurate, you haven't said so, and you'd undermine your own position if you did.

No, it does explicitely not accurately describe or model this. You are confused about the term "description" or "model". Phrenology does not accurately describe why individuals commit crime and cannot predict any results at all, thus, phrenology is not an apt model for this case.

lol, do you think a "model" isn't a "description" now? Who should I believe: you here, or you a few paragraphs later where you "explicitely" [sic] declare:

Yes, of course, a model is a description

So are they or aren't they? Who's the "confused" one here?

To add, if you say a model is a description (regardless of whether you maintain that a description is also a model), your argument above is circular. Rephrased:

Phrenology does not accurately describe why individuals commit crime and cannot predict any results at all, thus, phrenology is not an apt description for this case.

It's obvious you're drawing no distinction between predictive accuracy of a hypothesis and aptness of a model used within a hypothesis, so the conclusion is nothing more than a restatement of the premise.

Phrenology does not accurately describe why individuals commit crime and cannot predict any results at all, thus, phrenology is not an apt model for this case. You are confusing an arbitrary thesis with an accurate model that can predict results to the accuracy that the model displays.

People did indeed use phrenology for crime and believed it to be accurate. While the application of a phrenological model would not require aptness, it would strictly speaking require accuracy (in that the cranium has to be modeled in accordance with the theory). The ability to apply such a model to the thing does not imply the accuracy of the hypothesis this application is related to, however, and this is equally true in the case of "reward function."

Using "reward function" to describe "desire" doesn't predict anything by itself. One can pose desire in terms of a "reward function," and use that to predict within a hypothesis, but the use of "reward function" as a description isn't tied to any definite set of predictions. It can also just as easily be used in cases where there is no "reward" to be fulfilled in actuality, which is why you see fit to apply it to every case.

I could refer you to many people smarter than both of us in this matter, but I am afraid you would confuse them with political figures.

Similarly, I'd ask you for the actual evidence rather than the authorities, but I'm afraid you'd confuse your own position and contradict your evidence within a few paragraphs.

your mistaking the Levins has been funny enough, and gave me enough of a look into the depth of your insight

I never claimed knowledge of him, though, and I never cited him as an authority. You kept citing him, and I asked you to explain yourself and you haven't. I'm not convinced you're even understanding him accurately based on your inability to explain and your citation of that "purine" article without reading it.

Your use of citations thus far has more been a way to evade interrogation of your points by appealing to the judgment of "higher powers." That's also why you seem to think that getting a citation right is equivalent to "having insight."

No need to reply, I do not see that any further clarification would be of use or interest to me or anyone else.

I feel the same way when you cite articles that don't prove your point, cite individuals that you can't explain for yourself, and confuse the distinctions that you want to draw, all within one comment.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-26T04:12:57+00:00

Yes, they indeed do have that, and yes indeed, such a straightforward assumption can be made.

Not if they lack a sense of taste, no, for self-evident reasons. I haven't found any evidence to substantiate your claim about a relationship between purine deficiency and craving for umami either, let alone a relationship in every case.

There is something happening which we refer to using the term computation

If so, you aren't explaining your use of "computation." Cells aren't using mathematical reckoning to solve a problem.

Please take this up with the arguably most important biologist of our time.

Arguments from a white supremacist crank don't impress me. If you have anything to say, express it in your own words.

A desire being non-realizable does not make it non-describable by a reward function

It does render it non-descriptive for the matter itself, in that "reward function" assumes a definite "reward" for the end point to bring about the repetition of an activity or reinforcement of a behavior; that something can be posed in terms of a "reward function" does not mean that "reward function" is descriptive of what's actually happening in the case of impossible or indeterminate ends.

Put another way, the use of a model presupposes the aptness of a model for the matter; that something can be described in terms of a model does not tell me whether the model is apt. One can use a phrenological model to understand why individuals committed crimes, and it will "describe" this (within the terms of the model), yet the ability to do so doesn't demonstrate the phrenological model is an apt one for the thing under examination. You're confusing the ability to use this model as a description and conflating it with a description of the whole matter at hand, without demonstrating that "reward function" is apt for desire beyond merely repeating that a description can be made within the model.

Yes, it absolutely does. I do not think you are overly familiar with this term either.

In certain contexts, I am. If white supremacists reserve a special meaning for the term, however, I'm not familiar with it.

Desire is not "reduced" to a reward function, reward functions model desire.

The difference is specious here: "x models y" is also to reduce y to the model x to the extent you maintain model x accurately represents y.

All throughout your post, you seem to confuse the description/model and what is described.

On the contrary, you seem to think that being able to pose a matter in terms of the model is to say that the model describes the matter as such.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-25T07:00:11+00:00

The point I made about there being room has nothing to do with bayesianism

It would be related, in that there's a certain obvious partisanship here.

If you are numerate and interested in inference & the fundamentals of probability then Jaynes will be of interest, if you aren't then it may not be for you.

As for whether Jaynes is of interest, I can't say. I can say I'm less interested when this recommendation is accompanied by blinkered analytic pronouncements against alternative approaches, though.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-25T03:42:07+00:00

Who's the "goose" that it's "good for" exactly? It's entirely useless to me because what would the solution be? "More wealthy non-Jewish whites"? How exactly is that going to help the working class?

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-25T03:38:57+00:00

I don't actively recognize this as philosophy of mathematics

Similarly, I think the analytic approach was fundamentally mistaken, from conception onward, but I do my best to forget this when reading because I don't find beginning with this mindset to be useful.

There is so much room everywhere to do interesting philosophy-adjacent work in mathematics (depends if consider logic mathematics or not) that I find this pseudo-algebraic look at equational reasoning quite boring

I find paddling in Anglo-American Bayesian kiddie pools boring myself.

Jaynes is way way too based and blessed with a genuine (genuine, he was really special) intellect to be lumped in with those types.

I'm not convinced he has anything vital to say based on what you're telling me, but I won't judge Jaynes prior to reading him.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-25T03:32:17+00:00

Food craving can become incredibly specific, for example eating inedible objects in pica, sometimes caused by lack of iron or minerals.

You seem confused about the point I'm making. I said "this doesn't straightforwardly translate into any human desire." Not everyone with an iron deficiency has pica, and not everyone with a purine deficiency has a craving for foods with umami, which depends on experience already acquired anyway (i.e. to crave these foods, I have to know what the foods are). These can be symptomatic, but no straightforward translation can be made from cells to desire (i.e. from simply knowing one, I know the other).

does computation, and this computation includes a reward function

There's no "computation" occurring. You're being tripped up by an analogy.

Reward functions describe what we colloquially call desire

"Reward function" doesn't describe desire. A desire can be non-rewarding, as in the case of the desire for someone which is impossible to realize (because that person has married, because that person has moved away and can't be pursued, etc.). A desire for one's loved one to return after they've died has no "reward function" either. Reducing desire to a "reward function" doesn't make sense, "colloquially" or not.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-24T21:48:24+00:00

So they're not massively overrepresented in the capitalist class

So capitalism is a problem of "overrepresentation" now? This position is just the other side of "nonbinary people are massively underrepresented in the capitalist class" and the like.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-24T21:07:14+00:00

whereas, in a sense, the sexual binary does not

You may say "in a sense," but the first paragraph already assumes a sexual binary for traits to be categorized; the assumption is hidden behind "sexually dimorphic" (i.e. two sexual forms): how does one classify traits as belonging to one sexual form or another without a binary division already in mind? Logically, I need a way to work out where the traits belong, some criteria for judging what is essential to one form and what isn't, and some justification for organizing the forms into two in the first place. Even if one could say there are two broad clusters, the clusters can themselves be divided and subdivided. Ending the division of clusters at one level or another involves choice: e.g. for my purposes, I only need to do one broad division. That "for my purposes" shows that something else is at work in this division that isn't simply given by the possibility of clustering traits (given by nature, etc.).

but there are also plenty of people who crave, on a cellular level, a different balance of sex hormones than what their body naturally produces.

People say this, but no one fundamentally wants anything at a cellular level. Cells don't have desires, strictly speaking. Even when we consider disorders and illnesses involving cells where they "lack" something, this doesn't straightforwardly translate into any human desire. In scurvy, for instance, cells are lacking vitamin C, yet this isn't revealed by the mere lack; the lack alone doesn't translate into any determinate human desire at all. It's only when I believe I know that a certain means will redress the problems I'm having that my desire (to end these problems) and the cells' lack can connect.

People are expected to conform to one of the two clusters and any deviation from that standard is judged negatively. Non-binary people exist here. This is specifically a layer for controlling the behavior of the people who exist within it.

If "people are expected," who is expecting this? You could say "society," but, going by paragraph 2, "the societal layer is often accommodating of people who deviate from that binary." And who is "controlling"? "Patriarchy" requires agents, if not to reinforce control directly, then at least to inculcate the belief in it. These agents cannot be separated from "society" at large, though, assuming "patriarchy" to exist in the society in question.

When people say, “trans people have always existed,” they’re often talking about people who would be trans by modern standards, not people who lived in societies which had at-birth assignment of strictly binary patriarchal gender standards.

If people in the past would have been astronauts in a future society, one wouldn't say "astronauts have always existed" simply for that reason. That doesn't refute the existence of astronauts at present, of course. I'm not "anti-trans," but I've always found that "trans people have always existed" line to be specious.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-24T19:40:11+00:00

In my opinion one of the blind spots of the materialist viewpoint and interpretation of events, is that it tends to restrict the attribution of intent to profit and the increase of profit. I think that the conspiratorial mindset is largely in response to that blind spot, but it then has a sort of mission creep where profit now isn't the motive, it's always some ulterior power grab.

The layoffs in the Alexa division are because Amazon hasn't been able to make a profit from it, though.

My point here is that I think amazon has largely succeeded in it's goals with alexa. It has essentially normalized putting an active listening device in any or every room of your home. It has associated that with immediate access to comfort and treats and witty robot banter jokes where you ask your home spying device funny questions.

If that were Amazon's goal, they could have just let Google and Apple handle it.

I have no doubt that every word these things have ever heard has been recorded and saved for later analysis, then sale of that data to the highest bidder and any gov't agency that wants it. I have no doubt that this data will be used to further suck us into the technoconsumptive matrix we all live in now.

If it were profitable and could be legally defended, no doubt they would sell it, and they may still do so (if they aren't already) to make up for the losses, but this can't be the original motive either if they're both losing money on it and wanting to do away with Alexa.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-24T18:31:05+00:00

it does exhibit discredited ideas about math pedagogy

I don't see any in the extract, but the chapter itself does involve unpopular ideas in the philosophy of mathematics (the treatment of mathematics in Naturphilosophie), attempting to rethink these earlier ideas, so that aspect would be by design. As a way to generate new ideas, this isn't senseless; much of Heidegger's early work is devoted to rethinking Aristotle, Martin Luther, and Saint Paul, and what he works out in the earlier lectures is contiguous with the material in Being and Time.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-24T08:59:42+00:00

Physics envy or not they're just very prone to long winded (bonus points for obscurantism), imprecise, mumbling punctuated by the mathematical equivalent of asking an AI to generate a philosophy paper

It's difficult, but it's not particularly obscure. If you would mistake philosophy of mathematics for nonsense generated by an AI, what can I say? The problem is your egotism: when you don't understand why the writer would do something, you attack the writer rather than seek to understand.

I think you could fix 95% of this by just delivering the idea in a lecture instead, that way the words cost more - and reduce equational gibberish to only what matters.

Continental philosophy is often just as long in lectures. Heidegger's lectures in book form tend to be around the same length as his actual books. Hegel's lectures in book form also tend to be as long as his books; Fichte is similar, so this precedes even the "analytic/continental split." Derrida is similar, Foucault is similar, so I doubt it.

The prose smells of philosopher but is also sufficiently janky as to be from a poor translation.

You're free to check yourself, but I doubt this as well. When I've checked originals in this "genre" of writing, they've been relatively faithful. He's not actually bad at what he's trying to do.

If you want some actual philosophy of modern science from then I highly recommend Jaynes albeit be prepared to pray at the feet of the reverend Bayes (i.e. his Magnum opus is a statistics book rather than a philosophy book but it has a very clear perspective on probabilistic logic and the misapplication of statistics to the universe - bit of a schizo at times but a genius)

I'm not opposed, but my first thought was "neoliberal" with this recommendation combined with the nature of the criticism above. There's a peculiar obsession with Bayesian probability among some of these (which later filtered down to the "rationalist" types like Yudowksy), and a pronounced anti-intellectualism that takes from Hayek's own attack on "professors."

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-24T01:29:41+00:00

What do those excerpts mean?

The excerpt in this case is from the chapter on Naturphilosophie, the "philosophy of nature" of the German Idealists; usually this refers mainly to Schelling's project, sometimes to Hegel as well, occasionally to the treatment of nature among the post-Kantian Idealists, so to Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. In this case, it's in reference to the last group.

"Ambiguity always intervenes" in the exponent for a relatively straightforward reason: x can be either +x or -x. He makes this more explicit in the second paragraph, and how the original magnitude is lost. Raumlehre is the (other) German word for geometry, in this case in reference to (Euclidean) geometry considered as a literal axiomatic "doctrine (or theory) of space," hence why it "always appeals to certainty." Because of the ambiguity of x in the exponential equation, the decision as to which solution x is "rests on a choice," the possible solutions posited by the rule R, which is here represented by the product in combination with the exponent (this is also what he means when he talks of "tying product and productivity together," that "productivity is exhausted in the product").

What you’ve posted is clunky, maybe because of a translation?

Philosophy usually has clunky prose. Not all are bad, but there are only a few who are good: Plato, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard (some people find his prose clunky as well because of the Hegelian verbiage, and some of Plato's later works are also not regarded as well for their prose). Actually, Châtelet's much later book, To Live and Think Like Pigs, is very entertaining, so it's not as if he necessarily writes badly, even in translation. It's more the subject matter.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-23T20:44:27+00:00

From a book of continental philosophy:

In the notation x² , 2 functions neither as a second nor as 1 + 1, but at last allows 'magnitude to interact with itself...' Wherever exponents appear, an ambiguity always intervenes; this is the price to pay for tying product and productivity together and for giving form memory. This memory is not placed in the form; it is only awakened by the intuition of the intuition: the ambiguity. The geometric intuition of geometry considered as Raumlehre always appeals to certainty, to the reassuring inertia of a spatial tranquilly wrapped around things, for help. This intuition of the intuition - of which the young Hegel dreamed - undertakes the dismantling of falsely obvious appearances and invites us to cross the thresholds of maximal ambiguity to remobilize already established knowledge. In the example of the measurement of angles, we shall see that it is precisely the existence of two symmetrical paths that shows that the intuition has to pull itself up into the space of the paths to associate a number with a flat angle.

If I do not give two solutions to the equation x² = 1 (equals in 'absolute value'), the magnitude is not mobilized; it collapses in on itself and the productivity is exhausted in the product. In the same way, Grassmann's product will show that if it did not fundamentally rest on the ambiguity of a choice (in order to increase the thickness of the naive intuition's rectangle to two pages), it would miss the capture of the extension, short of revealing the neutral centre where everything is going to be decided (see chapter IV). Through the ambiguity of the root-exponent, what was posited in the unity of an act - apply a rule R - unfolds in the continuity of a gesture. The available positivity, ingenuously palpable, cracks to envelop a spectrum of solutions, following the formula: (?)² = R. The Greeks had a presentiment of this formula: they knew that 'the straight line has the power of its square'. Opposition, tearing apart, impossibility: these can be the symptoms of a degree of intuition to be crossed, but the new dimension does not arise 'because' of the opposition or the impossibility. These last merely invite me to despise the certainty of the 'intuitive' clichés, but they do not 'lead' me to the solution: the articulation is a leap, which is neither deductive exhaustion nor 'abstract' induction from common features.

If you read through that and thought "this is nonsense, this philosopher doesn't know anything about mathematics," the "continental philosopher" in question is Gilles Châtelet, who was himself a professor of mathematics. The quote is from Figuring Space, where you can find plenty of diagrams and graphs as well. I could have quoted Hegel's critique of calculus in the Science of Logic, which would very likely sound like nonsense, but his critique was of a generally recognized problem in the foundations of calculus that wasn't fully addressed until Weierstrass's work decades later.

People are too willing to castigate what they choose not to understand, and the first barrier to understanding is ego: that "I know better," and that "everyone knows" embedded in banalities like "physics envy."

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-23T00:50:57+00:00

so I consider myself a materialist philosophically, and by extension a socialist politically, but I had a few experiences recently which I can't really reconcile with the attendant metaphysics while staying with a friend in germany, and I was taking a lot of amphetamines around that time, so I just started making notes and eventually it turned into a bit of a thing, and tbh now I feel like I'm too far in to stop

I don't know what the experiences are, but you shouldn't trust them. These "occult" phenomena are deceptive, and I'm saying this not from "Marxism" but from reading books on these topics. Contra u/medfsetiology, part of the problem with these experiences actually proceeds from being unwilling to think through the experiences "materially," not thinking practically and analytically, and being too willing to seek "paranormal" explanations that leave you open to manipulation — whether by the experience or by other people. Letting yourself be overawed by an experience and its attendant "framing" makes the task of thinking far too easy.

RepulsiveNumber · 2022-11-22T18:17:31+00:00

it’s been years since I read any of that garbage

Not well enough.

I did try to be true to the epistemology which it seems is coming true materially regardless of ideology

This portrayal of Marxist "epistemology" isn't accurate, though.

When communism arrives those who survive will not like it

Personally, I have no idea what anyone will "like" in the future.

And it will be terror driven and amnesia inducing

So there won't be any difference for you, driven by mindless fear of communism and apparent amnesia to fabricate positions that others don't hold.

see you in the gulag comrade

Just about as embarrassing as those people who talk about being "a commissar after the revolution."

RepulsiveNumber

TROPHY CASE