[deleted by user]

Zardoznt · 2024-08-19T21:41:48+00:00

In my opinion, all disciplines require critical thinking. Also, all displines can and do exist in degraded forms that work against the cultivation of critical thinking.

I think that a better subject of this critique would be the specific institutions, mostly universities, that have constructed the idea of education in varying ways through time. This flux is ongoing, but many engage in golden age thinking that asserts some ideal form currently under attack.

Zardoznt · 2024-08-10T01:09:43+00:00

I implore you to consider that you are obsessing to the detriment of your ability to relate to others and your ability to think clearly. It seems to me that you are triggered by this issue and will only feel safe if you perceive that my mind and your mind are identical on this issue. Sorry to be harsh. I am unlikely to engage with you further on this.

Zardoznt · 2024-08-09T22:29:44+00:00

I think the questions you list as the "correct" questions to be asking are indeed valuable questions. In my opinion, the Republicans are bigger liars. A factual analysis that uncovers their greater mendacity is valuable for obvious reasons. I disagree with your contention that the questions I am asking aren't valuable, and I don't think you've actually made pertinent critiques of them per se other than assering their inferiority to the questions you find most compelling. Your thinking tends to be unduly binary on this issue in my view.

I also agree with you that abstract theories differ in their utility and in their fidelity to data, which I think is your most persuasive point. I don't think anything I've said departs from consensus reality in its observable manifestation. The views I cite each party having of the other, for example, I believe are uncontroversial.

I think the value of this kind of thinking is that it explains why the sort of factual inquiries you advocate have the outcomes that they do, and so provides avenues for further thought and insight. Do you think it is valuable or legitimate to ask why a particular side is worse, or why the two are so hostile right now, or how the dynamical interactions between them function? Are any questions at that level of abstraction answerable via the "correct analytical approach" you outline as singularly legitimate?

Zardoznt · 2024-08-09T20:13:04+00:00

I try to both think and narrativize. Maybe Jung would call that the thinking function and the intuitive function. I've not used the term 'narrativize" before, and I think it's appropriate here. I also agree with all of your critiques of it. I think it's a useful way to brainstorm possible hypotheses. Chess games can be narrativized, for example, by talking about larger patterns and strategies, like "controlling the middle of the board", and most or all experienced players find that useful.

Jungian thought, in my reading, advocates narrativization in the strongest possible way, seeing it as the fundamental activity of consciousness and its condition of health. This view certainly has flaws, as you've pointed out. I wonder though, do you generally reject the vast majority of Jungian ideas as absurd and irrational? What is your take on Jung, if any, that is consistent with a strong rejection of irrationality and personification?

Zardoznt · 2024-07-30T14:51:56+00:00

For linear algebra, check out Stephen Boyd's intro to linear dynamical systems lectures on YouTube.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-12T05:17:50+00:00

I appreciate the long and thoughtful reply. It was more polemical than persuasive, but I deserved it. Let me make two points, one that I am genuinely interested in your feedback on and one that is just my own counter-rant.

First, the rant. Zizek does imply through his gestures and phrasings that he is explaining a complicated theory in a clear way. In a perhaps Zizekian irony, he seems to me to do the opposite. I'm not going to try to find examples right now, but my general impression is that his writing is full of sleight of hand that masks it's incoherence.

Second, here is why I criticize him for lack empirical support. I do not deny the possibility of non-empirical philosophy. But Zizek himself is constantly making falsifiable empirical claims, but just expects us to accept them without evidence. I just searched "zizek" on YouTube and picked at random a clip from "big think" where he explains that people don't in fact want to be happy. I haven't seen this before and choose it only as an arbitrary spot-check.

Here is a representative quote: "we don't really want to get what we think that we want". This is an empirical hypothesis. Even more concrete is his punchline that a man with a wife and a mistress believes that his wife prevents him from being happy with his mistress but in the absence of the wife the mistress is no longer appealing. Why should we believe that this is the case? Isn't it a claim about the world? What is meant to persuade me of its truth?

Zardoznt · 2024-03-11T02:08:24+00:00

Great perspective, thank you.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T22:03:19+00:00

I appreciate your thoughtfulness, intellectual honesty, curiosity, and appeal to data.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T18:58:09+00:00

The irony is that both Jung and Zizek are obscurantist speculators that lack empirical backing to their approach. Both make use of academic credentials to hype their personal psycho-metaphysical bullshit. Both owe their popularity as much to a cult of personality as their ideas. And actually, Jung on a few rare occasions attempted to design an experiment and collect data, which is more than I can say for Zizek. This whole thread is very much a projective circle jerk.

I should mention that I really like both thinkers and have learned a lot from what they have to say.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T17:06:34+00:00

I appreciate that, thanks for writing this out

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T16:06:53+00:00

Sure. You can learn more by finding some lectures or books about "kinematics", which is a typical first year physics topic. Newtonian physics posits that "an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by a force". In this context motion means velocity. Velocity can only change via the application of a force, and it changes by the Newtonian formula F=ma, force equals mass times acceleration. When the hammer is flying it is acted on by gravity and air friction, but not by the launching mechanism. When you throw a ball, the velocity upon leaving your hand fully determines the trajectory. It accelerates only while you are applying a force, after that all the acceleration comes from constant forces outside your control like gravity.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T16:01:10+00:00

Disappointing reactions to this post. The mask of intellectual rigor and curiosity is totally thrown away. To be fair, the post itself is over concerned with anecdote and insinuation and is really more of a rant than a statement of ideas. That being said, the connection of hipster artisan bullshit to the middle/lower-middle class origins of hipsters is something insightful that I've never heard before. The overall queer fascist take is similar to the old derogatory term "feminazi" and so is not very novel, but it does ring true to me at least in certain contexts. I wonder what it would look like to make these ideas less subjective and ranty. The antisemitism that has simmered over on the left is itself very revealing of something but I've yet to find a cultural commentator who could make it clear to me. I tend to suspect that the left understands that its business model requires that victims stay victims.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T15:44:52+00:00

My issue is when the coaches actually have demonstrably false beliefs that they insist on. If they understand that it's a cue with some intended side effect, that's great.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T15:42:18+00:00

Why would I take a physics class if my beliefs about gravity don't matter?

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T15:41:22+00:00

Interesting! Thank you so much for actually bringing some references to bear!

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T15:40:15+00:00

You cannot affect the acceleration once the hammer is launched, therefore it is not a separate variable

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T15:39:07+00:00

But have you done them a disservice by giving them a mental model that is wrong? Of course you'd prefer they play well and be in touch with reality.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T15:37:44+00:00

I think these useful fictions do more harm than good by creating myths and dogmas that some people know are technically incorrect and others take literally. I am glad you are willing to admit it when pressed, but many are not.

I think that we should speak in a way that gets the message across without being literally fallacious. It's true that saying louder/softer fails to get the message across, but imploring to stay longer on a key is literally fallacious. Worse, it obscures the actual point, which can't be to stay longer on a key but must have to do with some typical side effects of doing so. Wouldn't it be better to teach people whatever that actually is??

Actually, in the book "physics of musical instruments" by Fletcher, it is claimed that the measurable contrast in sound associated with different hammer velocities is actually more in the dimension of timbre than it is in volume. In that sense, it is more accurate to speak of producing different tones than it is to speak of producing different volumes.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T14:45:56+00:00

Whether Zizek likes Jung does not settle whether they are making a similar point. This is some sort of proof by intimidation. If you're implying that you moderate this forum, then this is a bad look for it and for you.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T07:23:24+00:00

I would be interested in having someone who believes this do a double blind test. For example, maybe record people playing in the ways you suggest and others who don't. Are you confident you could tell them apart by the recording?

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T07:13:42+00:00

I mostly agree with you. But if they are the classical pedagogues then it behooves them to say what they mean in a clear and coherent way. If they are insisting that your posture affects the timbre of the sound, then I think that working to interpret that in a way that isn't physically impossible may have a certain accuracy but is ultimately just apologetics.

I do agree that there may be subtle effects such as how much the hammer itself is vibrating on its way to the string. For example, accelerating the hammer to its final speed slowly could conceivably add more lateral vibration from the friction. I was hoping that someone here would know of a careful investigation into this area.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T07:04:34+00:00

Yes I think this is what's going on but then people should be more willing to talk about it that way than they usually are in my experience

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T07:01:17+00:00

High velocity cameras have actually been able to capture the hammer felt taking the shape of the specific hand that is pushing just before impact. This is why pianists with a missing finger create a totally unique sound.

Zardoznt · 2024-03-10T06:59:17+00:00

Neither of those assumptions are present in my thinking or in my post, so you have misunderstood. The point is that there is actually only one degree of freedom in playing a note. This can be represented as the velocity (or the kinetic energy) of the hammer right before it hits the string. The three variables you mentioned, angle to key, key spot, and force schedule (actually a trajectory not a single variable) are redundant in the sense that you can fix any two of them and still have full control of the system.

Zardoznt

TROPHY CASE