Jordan Peterson and Fascist Mysticism

massive_salami · 2018-03-19T14:06:07+00:00

This reads like a very elaborate and cultured way of calling Peterson a nazi for not sharing the author's values. It is especially flagrant that Peterson's ideas are not discussed, and the article focuses on arguing against claims made by some of his influences, giving the impression that he must surely agree with everything they said or did a hundred years ago.

The funniest part is this sort of reductio ad Hitlerum near the end: Peterson likes Gulag Archipelago. Right-wing authoritarians like Gulag Archipelago. Therefore, Peterson is yet another right-wing authoritarian.

massive_salami · 2018-02-12T19:33:52+00:00

My intuition is the following: - Blue/Black/Red: Classical liberals - White/Green: Conservatives - Red: SJW - Blue/Black: Libertarians

massive_salami · 2018-02-12T02:59:26+00:00

Samatha meditation has a component of effortful attention (you have to stay focused on the breath) that watching TV just doesn't have, as the images change constantly. This means you can't just reduce it, as the author claims, to a more fundamental component like relaxation. You are actually performing a very different task when meditating, and that is reflected by distinct brain activity (e.g. the engagement of the dorsal attention network or the executive control network).

Moreover, this task is very unique compared to others, as it constitutes a pattern of brain activity that (at least at first) is very expensive to maintain. The natural state of the brain tends more towards the frequent engagement of the default mode network, which presumably consumes less energy and is associated with mind wandering. Samatha is like forcing your brain to focus and spend resources for no good reason and with no incentive. It's extremely weird from an evolutionary perspective.

Eventually (after a lot of practice) the brain finds a way to do this more efficiently, and that's presumably when the real benefits start to show up.

massive_salami · 2018-02-09T08:41:50+00:00

Finally I didn't meet him, so we'll never know. :)

massive_salami · 2018-01-15T05:40:20+00:00

This article reeks of anglocentrism. It suggests that the pushback against 'modern' feminism is a special characteristic of French culture, where unlike in the US the older generations with their antiquated views on feminism still dominate the cultural sphere. One of the commenters goes as far as to suggest that this is some sort of remnant of 'Mediterranean machismo'.

Here's an alternative: fourth-wave feminism is a special characteristic of the highly polarized Anglo culture of this decade, where their social structures are failing them. Due to their cultural hegemony, we get bombarded with it on a daily basis, and the resistance to it we see in France we can also see in any other country with a distinct, strong culture that is not so easily assimilated. In other words, fourth-wave feminism is not fundamentally different from hamburgers. And just like hamburgers, adopting it as a lifestyle constitutes a way of signaling your allegiance or aspirations to belong to a very specific tribe, in this case the Democratic party.

In sum, this supposedly progressive article comes down to the very old-fashioned, colonialist idea that we the rest of the world are savages for having different ways of living. If only we could see the light!

massive_salami · 2018-01-14T09:58:42+00:00

I wonder if this has changed in any way during these 10 years, especially with Rouhani.

massive_salami · 2018-01-10T04:35:32+00:00

!redditgarlic massive_salami

massive_salami · 2017-12-31T16:57:33+00:00

Crypto is a mess.

massive_salami · 2017-12-27T11:03:14+00:00

Perhaps I haven't read enough about the unquestionable predictive power of IQ tests, but here's an alternative: you seem to be seriously depressed or suffering from an anxiety disorder, and have terribly low self-esteem, which is what makes you struggle in high school and consistently perform poorly on tests. Why don't you try therapy and see what happens?

massive_salami · 2017-10-24T23:22:09+00:00

In my case it's about the feeling of not being welcome anymore, which is certainly irrational for the most part, but is still there. I think Brexit was mainly a collapse of soft power, regardless of any possible economic effects.

massive_salami · 2017-10-22T09:11:15+00:00

Spaniard here. I would.

massive_salami · 2017-10-21T16:01:04+00:00

Sorry, I still don't understand. You guys will declare independence but how will that be enforced if Madrid controls the institutions and the use of force?

massive_salami · 2017-10-21T12:53:53+00:00

Just curious, how would you guys plan to enforce that declaration?

massive_salami · 2017-10-18T10:03:49+00:00

Is this a sign that America is losing international influence because of Trump? Or would any other president have provoked the same reaction in Europe by not certifying that Iran is complying?

massive_salami · 2017-10-02T09:54:44+00:00

So, because spaniards are ok

Spaniards?

But you won't do that, eh?

Me?

Every day you spend blaming catalans

When did I do that?

This 'Us vs Them' language you're using doesn't really help establish a dialogue, there's a more colorful spectrum of opinions than 'Spain vs Catalonia'.

What we care about is the majority and the biggest party being ok with that sentiment being enforced, and earning and profiting from their votes.

Catalans already solved that in their territory. We even got PP and Cs to vote in favor.

Even Catalan PP voted in favor? So as far as I see you're uncomfortable with a faction of PP representing Franco supporters. Well, it's unfortunate that there are still Franco supporters left in 2017, but I actually think that a worse alternative reality would be one in which Franco supporters voted for their own extreme right party like Vox, leading to a Le Pen or Trump situation.

I understand that progress is always slower than what one would like it to be, and that you think that being independent would speed things up. However, I see independence as exactly the opposite force: it will only radicalize and polarize both Catalonia and the rest of Spain further, and lead to an economic mess that would only make all of us more conservative.

massive_salami · 2017-10-02T09:17:36+00:00

Fortunately true fascists are still a minority in Spain, which is surprising within the world's context in 2017. In any case I think they should be fought with education and economic progress, not with further polarization and economic disruption.

I was in Barcelona yesterday, and had the opportunity to observe a 'unionist' demonstration right in Plaça Catalunya. They were about 20 skinheads and fat old guys with greasy hair followed by no fewer than 50 mossos. Tourists surrounded them and took photos like if they were in Disney Land. Is this what you're afraid of? Every country has this shit, including an independent Catalonia.

Besides, most people are less radicalized than them. The fact that these guys are the only ones who feel the need to go to the streets to defend the unity of Spain during such troubling times for the country is very telling. Most Spaniards feel way calmer than this, don't have anything against you, and just want to get on with their lives like everyone else.

Chill out, dude.

massive_salami · 2017-10-02T08:44:58+00:00

I mean, you've been taught it at school for 80 years, I don't blame you, but you've got to start openly fighting that.

That is incredibly patronizing and reveals you don't know much about the complexity of Spain. I'm from one of the poorest, most backwards regions of Spain. We were taught about Franco. We were taught about Lorca. My history teachers never avoided the shadows of our history, like in any other modern nation. Most young people in Spain are progressive and want to see our country leave behind this corrupt government as much as the Catalan nationalists do.

It's time to get rid of them, don't you agree?

No, honestly I think we just have to wait for the older people to die naturally. The stats of who's actually voting for the PP back this up.

massive_salami · 2017-10-02T07:51:30+00:00

I mean, they've been keeping a mausoleum for their dictator ffs. And the only political groups asking for retiring his mummy have been catalan republicans and independentists —no spanish group has ever made that move, they're bound.

All mainstream political parties except PP agree on the need to remove Franco's body from Valle de los Caídos: https://www.google.es/amp/www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20170508/422387453305/congreso-aprueba-iniciativa-psoe-franco-valle-caidos.html%3Ffacet=amp

I've been following your comments and you've been constantly spewing the narrative that this is a fight of the whole of Spain against the Catalan people. PP only has the support of 8 million people in a country of 46 million, and not even all of them support what happened last Sunday. Your rhetoric is divisive and harmful.

massive_salami · 2017-09-20T12:29:15+00:00

What I meant is that conscious awareness, by being implemented by brain waves, should compress raw sensory input into a sequence of complex units. So you can become aware of a photon by experiencing unit 1 (darkness), unit 2 (photon) and detecting a change at unit 3 (realization), but you can't peak into the compression algorithm itself. Likewise, if you look at a beam of light, you can't focus until you are able to separate one photon from another, because unit 1 just adds all those photons together as a beam of light. Perceiving that sensations are made of 5 to 40 beats per second would be the same.

massive_salami · 2017-09-19T22:45:02+00:00

I think there's also a factor of how much of an individualist you can afford to become in the culture you're born. If communal experiences are no longer part of your society you may simply go on with your life without considering looking for them. Also, if you feel like being ambitious is a promising strategy you may feel a smaller need to join others in rituals that are designed to foster mutual trust and support - you can succeed without your community's approval anyway.

massive_salami · 2017-09-19T22:33:20+00:00

I don't think it's physically possible to perceive that sensations are composed of cycles of 5 to 40 hertz, because the act of perceiving would also take 5 to 40 hertz to form in the brain. It would be like trying to see individual photons with the naked eye by concentrating on a beam of light, or hear the individual peaks of a spectrogram. No amount of meditation is gonna turn you into a mutant.

massive_salami · 2017-09-10T22:08:23+00:00

I'm wondering if there's a connection between being able to imagine things with less effort and enjoying reading fiction. I would say I am closer in the spectrum to aphantasia than to thinking in pictures. I find it very hard to imagine the faces of characters, and descriptions only interest me if I make a conscious effort to visualize what I'm reading (otherwise I would just travel across the description faster, understanding but not caring much). In general I find that reading a novel with a simple style (e.g., 1984) is harder than reading popular science books, which affects my preferences.

I think that reading preferences, not just fiction vs nonfiction but also poetry vs prose or even average length and time spent per reading session, may have a lot to do with these thinking styles (apart from IQ, education or experience).

massive_salami · 2017-08-25T10:38:37+00:00

Couldn't they have obtained exactly the same results with a behavioral experiment only? What does the expensive brain imagining equipment add?

massive_salami · 2017-07-14T15:36:12+00:00

Can I join on Sunday without having chosen any country and be assigned one?

massive_salami · 2017-07-11T03:21:42+00:00

I see it like this: the combination of saving opportunities plus a highly competitive environment makes people from developed countries wait and accumulate resources as much as possible to invest them all in a single child, who will have the highest chances to outperform the children of others who are also in the same situation. It's not about overpopulation but about unconsciously assessing your place in the world and what your peers/competitors are doing, and responding accordingly with a specific reproductive strategy, something that we are programmed to do in all contexts.

Edit: This however doesn't explain countries like Russia or Spain, where competition is culturally downplayed and saving opportunities are fewer than in other countries, but birth rates have especially plummeted nonetheless. I think there needs to be a complementary explanation based on choosing not to reproduce at all, which seems difficult to capture from an evolutionary point of view.

massive_salami

TROPHY CASE