A Dirge for the Troubling and the New
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day I: Apology is the most common way to weaponize humility—short of flattery and prayer.
Aphorism of the Day II: I hate patterns. Almost as much as I love habits.
.
A storm is coming.
Sometimes storms are good things. The world gets cluttered, contaminants build up, and a good scrub and rinse seems to be the very thing. The storm passes. The air has that chill edge, makes you feel like the first human to exhale. The streets are glazed black. The leaves click for being so turgid green.
Sometimes storms are bad, like the spinning finger of God, enough to turn history around.
But this one is different. This one, you see, has no end.
‘Storm’ is merely a ‘metaphor,’ of course, a way to connote turbulence, upheaval, chaotic transformation. A storm, you could say, is just more weather crowded into less time—concentrated change. And this is the storm that I’m talking about: the concentration of technological and social change.
As John von Neumann predicted over half a century ago, we are “approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” As the past decade has demonstrated more profoundly than any other, technological change means social change. Accelerating technological change, then, means accelerating social change. And this, I think, means big trouble.
Why? Simply because our capacity for social change is a product of the Pleistocene. As much as we love novelty, we humans tend to fear genuine social change—and when we fear, we hate.
If you check out websites like the Singularity Institute, you will find endless papers on the prospects and consequences of AI, the post-human, and so on. If you read someone like Ray Kurzweil, you will find a kind of Hegelian optimism, arguments that say good riddance to ‘human affairs as we know them.’ If you follow Three Pound Brain or read my novels you will find one, overriding question repeated in hundreds of different guises: Do humans have what it takes? Biologically? Culturally? Individually or collectively?
Because make no mistake, the storm is coming…
Last weekend National Geographic channel had a marathon day of Apocalypse: The Rise of Adolf Hitler, and I ended up getting sucked right in. The first question of the Holocaust really is a question of how? How could the most scientifically, culturally, and industrially advanced nation on the planet slip so effortlessly into the barbarity of Nazism? The second question is a question of that. What does it mean that the pinnacle of Western civilization could so quickly and so tragically become the gutter?
There really is something wrong with us. We’ve pretty much known all along, but we were always quick to project our flaws onto our precious ‘Others,’ perceived outgroup competitors, lest it interfere with the serious business of tribal/gender/racial/national self-glorification—a business that every totalitarian regime knows all too well. Now, after millennia of witless brilliance and folly, we have detailed scientific knowledge of our cognitive and affective flaws, or a good number of them anyway. Enough. We have a good sense of the kinds of mechanisms that predispose us to chauvinistic barbarism, to scapegoat the Other. And the picture is… well, ugly.
I’m the bad news guy. All my novels are bent on exploring the tangle of thematics that arise from this. Why, because fucking empty identity affirmation and belief confirmation has become the oxygen of our culture. Everywhere you turn, you are urged to celebrate who you are and to believe in yourself—or worse yet, simply ‘believe.’ Everywhere!
The problem is that you don’t know who you are, and you really are the last person you should be believing in! As the evolutionary product of ancestral social ecosystems, the brain is literally designed to defend and enhance your social standing: to self-promote. And it plays dirty. It edits, cherry-picks, fabricates, denigrates, insinuates, exculpates and more, even as it convinces you that you’re the most open and fair-minded monkey in the room.
So for instance, not one of you reading this thinks you could be verbally browbeaten into confessing to a murder you didn’t commit, or convinced by a unknown phone caller into sexually abusing one or your employees, or bullied by a lab technician into applying lethal electrical doses to another human being, or gulled by power and camaraderie into torturing those you have power over. Not one of you.
And yet, plant you in these social circumstances and there’s a very good chance you would. We are situational, anything but the strong-willed monads we take ourselves to be. And this is a fact, even though I would bet my royalty check that you think the notion preposterous. As David Dunning so wonderfully illustrates, one of our most pernicious cognitive shortcomings is our inability to acknowledge our cognitive shortcomings.
The Second Apocalypse began as an experimental exploration of fantasy as ‘scripture otherwise,’ as a form of ‘anti-modernism.’ Part of the idea was to exaggerate the very things that epic fantasies generally idealized, to show readers the ‘wages of their wonder.’ One of the things that makes epic fantasy so bizarre as a genre is its status as the most fictional of all fictions. It’s not just fictional, it’s fantastically so. The crazy thing is that the very thing that identifies it as super fictional, its prescientific, anthropomorphic ‘secondary world,’ is the very thing that it shares with traditional scripture. Structurally speaking, fantasy worlds are scriptural worlds.
And I don’t know how many of you still peruse your Illiads or your Bibles, but, man, those are some pretty scary worlds.
Daniel Abraham has recently argued against the Realism Defence of representations of sexism and racism in fantasy novels. He begins by taking a ‘It wasn’t as bad as all that,’ line, providing a brief list of historical facts that contradict the notion that the Middle Ages were characterized by chauvinistic brutality. The Middle Ages were a boisterous and exceedingly complicated period of human history. Given this, he claims, the Realism Defence amounts to cherry-picking. If ‘realism’ is what you’re after, then you had better make sure your representations are proportional.
But this doesn’t matter that much, simply because Abraham thinks it mistakes What Fantasy Is. Realism is irrelevant, because fantasy literature isn’t about the past at all; it’s about previous works of fantasy literature.
In other words, he shifts from a Middle Ages were more complicated than you know argument to a Fantasy Literature is more simple than you know argument.
The first argument has merit, and should certainly sting those who think women universally lived in conditions of abject misery and oppression. I just don’t know anyone who thinks that.
The second argument simply runs afoul of the first. It turns out that fantasy is more complicated than Abraham seems to know. Like all fiction, it is about many things. And like authors of other types of fiction, fantasy authors actually get to choose what their books are ‘about.’ That’s what makes each fantasy series so unique.
If I want to write a fantasy that replaces nostalgia, sentimentalism, and idealization with historical realism, I will.
Abraham presents the Realism Defence as an attempt to trump one form of ‘representational propriety’ with another. It boils down to pitting honesty against harm reduction. Cut the cord between fantasy and history (by arguing first, What History Is, and then second, What Fantasy Is), then honesty no longer seems proof against harm reduction. Politically correct representation seems to sweep the table.
Unconsciously we all understand the power of representations: we’re hardwired for censoriousness for damn good reason! Loose lips, as they say. This, paradoxically, is why we place such a premium both on honesty and on harm reduction—and why we find ourselves at such loggerheads when these two seem to conflict.
This conundrum is most frequently debated in television, where the sheer size of the audiences involved makes the issue of reinforcing negative stereotypes a pressing one. Here, the tendency is usually to see the Realism Defense as a little more than rhetorical fig-leaf when the show is deemed to be more commercially oriented than otherwise. Art actually has a claim to make in this debate, and few would dispute that saddling creators with representational obligations compromises their artistic integrity.
As Abraham acknowledges, “there are legitimate reasons for racism, sexism, and sexual violence to be part of a fantasy project,” he just doesn’t think that historical realism is one of them. But he’s wrong. The Realism Defence you might say, only rings true when it doesn’t stand alone, when the author actually has something to say about premodern history and our relation to it. Otherwise, it’s probably just a post hoc rationale.
How can you tell whether an author has a genuine artistic vision? Nowadays, you just check out their bloody blog. The more wank and contemplation you find, the more evidence you have of a genuine artistic vision. You may not like that vision, but nevertheless, you have wandered onto the intractable ground of trying to sort the ‘moral’ art from the ‘immoral.’ The further argument, that different rules should apply to each, is even more treacherous.
Despite what Abraham says, the Middle Ages were chauvinistic through and through. Research shows that our contemporary conception of morality in the West is very peculiar—and quite unnatural, in fact. The ‘live and let live’ logic that informs so much of our moral reasoning simply did not exist before the Enlightenment. Where most of us acknowledge a certain degree of moral uncertainty, our prescientific ancestors did not. Your ‘place’ was your place no matter how brutally unfair or oppressive it might seem to some disinterested observer. You played the role allotted, and if you refused out of some sense of outrage, well then, your goose was pretty much cooked.
As Abraham says, some of those roles were relatively commodious, but most of them quite simply were not.
The notion of ethics we inherited from the Greeks, the notion that moral problems could resolved by recourse to reason as opposed to tradition, was not something Medieval Europeans cared about, although there were exceptions, to be sure. Chauvinism was the foundation, plain and simple, the arbitrary valuation of certain groups and identities over others. Sometimes that chauvinism was benign, as Abraham points out, but it was chauvinism all the same.
And chauvinism has a peculiar relationship to meaning. The modernist paradigm typically depicts a protagonist struggling to hold onto meaning in an apparently meaningless world (and all too often, that meaning is found in some saccharine or occult notion of romantic love). What makes a fantasy world fantastic, however, is that the world is given as meaningful. Fantasy worlds are psychological worlds, where nothing is ‘dead’ and everything is animate, filled with agency and intent.
My big idea, way back when, was to simply turn the modernist paradigm upside down, to follow a protagonist struggling to find meaninglessness in a meaningful world. Anasurimbor Kellhus. The paradox I wanted to explore was and is nothing other than the paradox you and I are living this very moment, what might be called the Big Swap: emancipation from disease, poverty, and oppression for the ‘Death of God’—or the nihilism incipient in contemporary consumer culture.
I chose patriarchy to explore and critique premodern chauvinism because I knew it would continually cut against the reader’s own baseline moral appraisals. On the one hand, it would give them a taste of the very moral certainty under the narrative microscope. On the other hand, it would make the reader’s moral intuitions a component of Kellhus’s ‘revelations,’ and so put them into a curious double-bind. Since Kellhus invariably manipulates, emancipation, in his hands, simply becomes another tool. What does it mean, when the truth itself deceives? When justice becomes subreptive? (I had Marx on the mind back then: The women’s liberation movement, it so happens, also ‘liberated’ tremendous pools of labour for capital to rationalize. Is emancipation even possible in a society designed to systematically exploit its every human resource? Was the women’s liberation movement the product of mass moral enlightenment or the economic obsolescence of traditional female roles?)
What I wanted to show was the way the escape from traditional chauvinism that Serwe and Esmenet find via Kellhus was a form of false escape, that the nihilistic system that Kellhus erects over the ruins of traditional Three Seas society was every bit as exploitative as the system it replaced—a world where the waif could no longer survive, and the harlot had to follow the forking ways of an even more devious labyrinth. A world, I would argue, not so very unlike our own.
And in each case, I wanted to be true to situational psychology, the fact that we rarely see beyond the facts of our immediate circumstances. The only way to be honest to the insidious difficulty faced by anyone who finds themselves within exploitative social environments was to represent overcoming as something long-drawn and fraught with reversals.
I knew this would be controversial. But play time is almost over. Think of the madness in Washington: mass institutional dysfunction driven by the way cultural and institutional transformation have incentivized our cognitive flaws. By the fact that people now, just like people a thousand years ago, buy their own bullshit–unto catastrophe.
A storm is coming and we need to get our shit squared.
The notion that I should have provided another female character to discharge some extrinsic representational obligation, either to better reflect the reality of premodern societies or to provide ‘positive role models,’ strikes me as preposterous. This is the difficult story I elected to tell. And, it happens to be a kind of story no one has ever told before. This in itself, I think, makes the project worthwhile, even if in the end the critical consensus is that The Second Apocalypse is a disastrous failure. “The distance between the old and new,” Dewey writes, “is the measure of the range and depth of thought required.” The problem is that this distance is always invisible. We look at the new, the different, and we see only the old, the same. So many read my books and see the same old representations of exploited and disempowered women, and so assume that I must be ‘just another’ misogynistic fantasy writer.
The degree to which you should trust those voices is the degree to which they actually engage, as opposed to simply dismiss, what I’ve discussed here.
Three Pound Brain 
This is just the draft of what I hope to turn into a FAQ entry. I still have all the links to add…
I’m not sure if you’re looking for editing, but because it’s a draft I thought I’d try and help (you can ignore this post otherwise).
I found this sentence hard to parse:
“In other words, he shifts from a Middle Ages were more complicated than you know argument to a Fantasy Literature is more simple than you know argument.”
Maybe adding dashes would help?
Also, “What a fantasy world fantastic” is missing a “makes”, and “where nothing ‘dead’” is missing an “is”.
It’s taken a minute for me to formulate a reply. As always, your eloquence knocks me on my ass.
Early on you say “Why, because fucking empty identity affirmation and belief confirmation has become the oxygen of our culture.” and I rather tend to agree with the point despite how much it perplexes me.
The rise of simplistic narratives, trend-pandering, and (as noted in your article) ideological confirmation seems to cut against the natural human need to be stimulated. I would theorize that this is due to a shift in where the stimulation comes from. A brief examination of most content available through the different types of media accessible to consumers would exhibit that most of the visual mediums make use of presentation rather than content based stimuli. In short, lots of loud sounds, fast cuts, bright colors, and movement. Might it be that we’ve tricked our biology through our presentation to the extent that we no longer desire content?
If we have, then it may be entirely possible that the emptiness in our popular art and culture is an apt and accurate reflection of the majority. Doesn’t particularly bode well for the rest of us, does it?
I suppose I shouldn’t be all doom and gloom – the fact that people actually discuss such is heartening on its own.
Sometimes I think it’s the ‘new, new, new’ factor. A story can contain a certain sociological change point in it, a hinging point (a literature moment?) – and in the old days, the same stories would be repeated over and over. These days – how do you keep producing something new, continually and consistantly banging out a sociological change point each time? Answer; you don’t – you get alot of empty shows (or you get shows which stretch their bit of sociological change over alot of episodes, making them very thin soup). Worse, repeating the lessons of the old stories – well, it’s repeating. Who likes watching repeats?
I’d agree – this does seem to be a factor involved in the aforementioned process.
“I would theorize that this is due to a shift in where the stimulation comes from”
I would also theorize that the fact that we have multiple and rich sources of stimulation may precipitate a response from a population who have a low tolerance for novelty and stimulation in the form of a seeking out of simple narratives that confirm beliefs already held.
Scott wrote:
“Since Kellhus invariably manipulates, emancipation, in his hands, simply becomes another tool.”
ACM wrote (yesterday at ROTYH):
“These tactics, further, reduce women to tools: tools to boost the man’s feminist cred, tools to defend him against other women, tools in his rhetorical repertoire.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call juxtaposition.
Scott wrote:
“Was the women’s liberation movement the product of mass moral enlightenment or the economic obsolescence of traditional feminine roles?”
This is a very interesting (and obnoxiously compelling) notion. So much of our modern notions of morality might boil down to hidden pragmatic motives. We can still recognize that strong women (like Anthony) were in major agents of this change, even if the underlying distal causes remain hidden.
Scott wrote:
“The degree you should trust those voices is the degree to which they actually engage, as opposed to simply dismiss what I’ve discussed here.”
But the degree you will actually trust those voices will correlate very strongly to how much they already agree with your current opinion. Round and round we go!
These tactics, further, reduce women to tools: tools to boost the man’s feminist cred
A whole sentence without uttering neckbeard!
More claims from her with her apparently having no capacity to be wrong about them. I guess though on the other side we have ‘it’s art!’ as a similar incapacity to be wrong and they grind against each other. Mind you, art is kind of the stage prior to actual policy, not policy itself.
In the end I suspect she genuinely thinks it’s all about gathering ‘cred’ and Scott is simply a competitor in that (and indeed if you only think of it at that level, he is indeed a competitor). I doubt she’s ever thought of risking burning credibility, in the name of pursuing an actual cause/getting something done (heh, on the flip side, has Scott ever thought of not burning credibility for a few fucking seconds, atleast? >:) ).
Callan, I was actually not criticizing ACM in my post. Nor Scott. I was simply startled by the parallels!
ACM claims some of us turn the women who surround us into tools. By pointing at the women in our lives as people who tolerate us, we can legitimize our fem-cred. She then says that this usage, in turn, is a kind of sexism.
Bakker makes a very similar argument about Kellhus. He institutes reforms only to use the new status quo as an instrument to legitimize his power. This in turn undermines the idea that they were really reforms in the first place. (Scott then explains that this is an analogy to the modern world in which ’emancipation’ might be anything but.)
Callan, I was actually not criticizing ACM in my post.
I was!
By pointing at the women in our lives as people who tolerate us, we can legitimize our fem-cred.
From my estimation, it depends if what you do with that ‘fem-cred’ actually ties into why you were given the credibility by them in the first place – ie, forfilling some sort of cause the cred givers support. If you use it to feather your own nest, well then it’s Kellhus time. Does ACM gives some sort of criteria for whether it is or not? It seems to be “if it’s a ‘he’, then he’s doing this”.
I believe Daniel Abraham’s historical accuracy argument was aimed toward a reader’s defense of an author, more so than an argument against authorial intent. All the same, I thought that was a pretty compelling post. Well done.
“Was the women’s liberation movement the product of mass moral enlightenment or the economic obsolescence of traditional feminine roles?”
Perhaps capitalistic, secular morals are the morals that emancipate. Doing your share, being an asset to the company – ethics of market forces inform the ethics of modernity do they not?
I think the question is do you see a regression in women’s rights when shifts in products and production occur?
That should read “the morals that emancipate in certain circumstances and up to a point.”
I’d say no – to emancipate someone, you’d need that as an actual primary goal. To simply forfil the physical elements of emancipation merely as a side effect of doing something else – how is that emancipation? If you’re shackled by someone else, but the company that made the shackles was cheap in making them and they rust and fall off, did the company emancipate you? As much as if someone strode up and broke the shackles off you?
From the functional perspective, yes. The only difference that trying to build a friendly relationship with sloppy company on those grounds would be unwise (then again, when is being friends with a legal abstraction wise 😉 ?)
Before I get accused of being chauvinist in regards to companies, I was merely being descriptive :D. Humans are flesh machines, companies are legal abstractions 😉
Admittedly this is a somewhat systemic and rather coldly analytical way of looking at things but your comment made me ponder: If the institutions of power in a given socio-economic system must have viewpoints which grant freedoms for those freedoms to be obtained – then isn’t one answer rooted in altering the nature of the institutions so their goals align with providing the ultimately desired level and type of freedoms?
The “rub” as it were seems to be that institutions, at the level of control, are composed of typically like-minded individuals who see themselves as having common goals. It should follow then that these are the minds in need of persuading in order to initiate drastic systemic alteration for the better.
I believe most of what you have to say. On a noticeable level advertisements are used as a means of control in our society, at the least a distraction from our own lives(which if used correctly can be a form of control). And there are most likely many more aspects of it that are insidious. I can’t say for sure if this is intentional. Some part of me thinks so, at least from some individuals (perhaps not as a conspiracy).
Everyone it seems should take stock of the fallibility of ourselves. But its a hard sell, most likely for the reasons you list above. But also because there are so many ways to possibly see a situation.
I have been thinking about ‘willful ignorance’ or perhaps as I saw in a newspaper describing a report on Rupert Murdoch, ‘Willful blindness’. But this issue of willful ignorance seems to be at the heart of most of the problems I see. I understand this is purely my own formulation with no real scientific evidence to back it up. But from what you describe I feel like it fits into what you are saying. Simply that people do not truly look at the evidence before them, or ignore aspects that itch at the back of our mind.
I haven’t checked the links you posted, though I think I have heard of the test with electroshock, I believe you are referencing the experiment to see if Americans had the same capacity to inflict violence as the Germans did. But I look forward to reading some of the links with the evidence behind it all.
I really enjoyed your possible FAQ, I thought the introduction, or first half to really sum up in a simple way a lot of the things that you are describing. And the second half seemed to be a powerful defense, in my opinion. I have enjoyed your books, even though I didn’t get everything you were trying to do. Perhaps that is part of the problem you have created a really lively world. Often in those cases people take from it what they want. A cartoon would be much more obvious to the reader what you are trying to do. Not that you should change your writing styles to simplify, but simply that the most lifelike worlds make it harder to control the readers reading of it.
But still this storm, what to do about it. Perhaps there is nothing to be done about it, or just minute things that perhaps will add up to more.
“…even if in the end the critical consensus is that The Second Apocalypse is a disastrous failure.”
But seriously, who gives a shit about the ‘cricial consensus’?
I think Scotts wallet gives a shit :)! And when his wallet is happy, we get more books in The Second Apocalypse >.<
I came to the conclusion a little while ago that I never actually picked up on the feminist subtext in your books. I thought some of the female characters were cool and well-rendered (Esme! Serwa! I don’t actually like Mimara at all because I think side-quests are annoying but whatever!), but I never got the “subverting” thing.
I still really enjoyed the books, probably for reasons that you/(my representation of what your opinions would be) would consider bad or something. But I’m not really sure why it matters to you? I mean, part of being an artist is putting your stuff out there and then going “I feel like I succeeded with what I was trying to make, and if you don’t like it, okay.” I guess I just don’t really understand your apparent desire to argue with your critics is about.
Criticizing second-order claims doesn’t work, it just makes people think you’re calling them stupid for not understanding your point. Then, when you see their response, you claim they’re engaging in coalitional mindset building or something. As a fan of your work, it’s really frustrating to read what amounts to “no, fuck *you*” back and forth for like, what, six months now? It’s just really unclear to me what you’re trying to accomplish, given your own theories about coalitional thinking, etc.
Funny thing is, the whole thing hasn’t actually preoccupied off the web. But you are right. That’s basically what this post is about, putting something up on a FAQ page I can simply link in the future.
If you think about it, it’s kind of becoming my pattern on the blog generally, beating some horse past all tolerance, then waving the next trailer in!
There was a reason I posted the first thing, but I had actually forgotten it when I wrote it.
I remember it now though, there’s two parts:
1. ACM isn’t a troll, she’s just stylistically extremely aggressive. Sci or someone else over there at ROH talked about there being a performance aspect to it, and there was a bunch of stuff I skimmed about that, but the core point is this: her being mean to whatever dumb nerd culture I am a part of is pretty irrelevant to the actual points she makes, and it’s not for me to decide how she ought to express herself.
2. Essentially, ACM/Sady Doyle/feminist blogs have me sold on the idea that the circumstances in which a woman can be “wrong” in any significant way about a particular work/statement/piece of writing being sexist is significantly constrained. As a result of this, and ACM’s recent post on male “feminist supporters,” I think that it’s actually really unproductive and probably not at all useful to engage critiques like hers unless you’re going to actually engage the critique. What this means is, the rhetorical strategy you like, moving to second order claims, is something you should probably abandon. I think I generally get your point about the way people’s minds work, I’m much more interested in a genuine engagement with things (this post does that more, which I appreciate).
Really this position applies to your future blogging, I suppose. Having long arguments with people who aren’t talking about the same thing you are…I hope you can see how poisonous this discussion was to (some) people who like your work. There’s just toxicity everywhere around it, and it sucks to have to start trying to justify why you like something to yourself.
ACM describes herself as a troll.
As far as I can tell, the how of the point is the whole point. Trust me, shaming does no one any good, let alone when it’s indiscriminate. I thought you couldn’t stand the toxicity!
Feminism has faced tremendous problems regarding interpretative consensus. The subject matter, meaning, value, practices, is too semantically plastic not to admit innumerable interpretative angles, particularly regarding power and exploitation. Anything can be made misogynistic. This is simply a fact. They’re in the same straits as everyone else, and they need to know. The only way I can see that happening is to have a trickle of idiots like me reminding them when we can.
But again, you point regarding the toxicity is well taken. Like I say, a nice, tidy link…
But more often than not it’s really not a strategy.
I also would appreciate a more direct approach engaging the arguments. But in his view, quite often, the argument IS about the context and structure. It’s a way to engage the argument as directly as possible, it’s not evasion to “win” a discussion.
Who doesn’t know well his argument may superficially perceive this as convenient “tactics”, but it’s not. The arguments he’s using have been his main arguments since long before this specific debate spawned. ACM didn’t start anything, she’d just been sung, and there came the cacophony.
I absolutely hate when critics slip under the arguments. It happened even with Christopher Priest, where his critics about the Clarke were completely dismissed and he was suspected of being just butthurt because he didn’t got listed.
Based on the many responses I’ve seen here lately of “I just like your books and don’t want to see you argue about them with web personalities,” you might consider leading your FAQ with a big banner statement that says something to the effect of “Caveat Lector, if you feel strongly that authors shouldn’t engage in extended arguments with critics, look elsewhere for your Second Apocalypse discussions.” You could even provide a submission form if someone just wanted to say “Love your work, keep it up.”
Of course, when those same fans engage in extended discussions with you about these concerns, it may be hard to take such claims seriously!
The reply button doesn’t exist on your post, but here goes.
“But in his view, quite often, the argument IS about the context and structure. It’s a way to engage the argument as directly as possible, it’s not evasion to “win” a discussion.”
Well, okay, except that the only people who think this are Scott and the people on his side. I think there’s a problem with philosophically trained people that they tend to think that the “real” discussion to be had is whatever specific problems they’re interested in on a particular, not necessarily the subject being discussed in terms they don’t use.
“Who doesn’t know well his argument may superficially perceive this as convenient “tactics”, but it’s not. The arguments he’s using have been his main arguments since long before this specific debate spawned.”
I’m not sure this is true. Even if it is true in the sense of “he’s been arguing this position for a long time,” the shift from the direct topic to the discussion of neuroscience/evo-psych/etc and/or “deeper” philosophical themes is really problematic in terms of engaging with people. It’s because what philosophical training allows people to do is to use what is essentially jargon to shift the field of play without appearing to do so.
“ACM didn’t start anything, she’d just been sung, and there came the cacophony.”
Could you explain this? I don’t know what you’re saying here.
Essentially, ACM/Sady Doyle/feminist blogs have me sold on the idea that the circumstances in which a woman can be “wrong” in any significant way about a particular work/statement/piece of writing being sexist is significantly constrained.
What sold you? Further, what if you’re wrong? Or if something sells you, it’s just always right?
It’s because what philosophical training allows people to do is to use what is essentially jargon to shift the field of play without appearing to do so.
Always? 100% of the time?
“Or if something sells you, it’s just always right?”
No, it’s what I think the correct position to have is. That’s what ‘buying’ something in conceptual terms means, that you agree with it. I can’t speak to its truth value in the abstract because that’s an incredibly boring discussion to have and I don’t care.
“Always? 100% of the time?”
Are these genuine questions on your part? If they are, the answer is of course no. It’s not 100% of the time, it’s a tool available to people who have philosophical training, because, in my experience, that’s what advanced philosophy actually is, rhetorical ground-shifting.
If, on the other hand, this is a tactical question, can you read, and if so, did you read what I wrote?
No, it’s what I think the correct position to have is. That’s what ‘buying’ something in conceptual terms means, that you agree with it. I can’t speak to its truth value in the abstract because that’s an incredibly boring discussion to have and I don’t care.
Then there’s really no discussion to be had on it. All that could happen is you could advertise what to you is the correct position. I mean, pitch your slogan if you want, but it looked like you wanted a discussion before, but that would have been disengenous. Your never going to change your mind, after all.
It’s not 100% of the time, it’s a tool available to people who have philosophical training, because, in my experience, that’s what advanced philosophy actually is, rhetorical ground-shifting.
Well, are you saying they always use it to trick, 100% of the time? Or are you willing to concede that sometimes people don’t use it to shift goal posts and you may be wrong in asserting that’s what it’s being used as here and instead its genuine discussion? If your 100% certain, again, there’s no discussion available. What, somehow I can say something that’ll shift your utter certainty? No, so there’s nothing for me to say, is there?
“Well, okay, except that the only people who think this are Scott and the people on his side”
No. You see, people “on Scott side” are those who followed him well before ACM came up. So the real point isn’t that we are partisans, but that WE KNOW he always wrote about this stuff, and that this specific stuff is the core of all his books. It’s simply not part of impromptu tactics to win a debate.
“I’m not sure this is true. Even if it is true in the sense of “he’s been arguing this position for a long time,” the shift from the direct topic to the discussion of neuroscience/evo-psych/etc and/or “deeper” philosophical themes is really problematic in terms of engaging with people.”
It’s true. But that’s a side effect of Scott being radical. I know a discussion with him is hard. But you’re wrong if you think he’s doing this as a kind of strategic move.
But the point is this one: the books are about this stuff. “The subject being discussed”, in the books, is a subject that ACM didn’t engage at all.
Now you’re telling me that Scott should engage ACM’s arguments when ACM didn’t engage at all the books. That’s a convoluted pattern you have there.
A book is a proposal for a journey. You can decide to accept it or not. A complex journey requires a certain dedication. Careful listening. ACM refused it, YET she pretends to know what this journey is about, call it out and ridicule it. It’s legitimate to refuse the journey, but it’s not legitimate to pretend knowing better when you’re being just extremely superficial and careless.
That has always been the easy way. Judge before you understand. Erase the complexity and see everything black or white.
“So the real point isn’t that we are partisans, but that WE KNOW he always wrote about this stuff, and that this specific stuff is the core of all his books.”
Who are you talking about? The fact that he “always” wrote about this stuff doesn’t actually say anything about its tactical efficacy.
“But you’re wrong if you think he’s doing this as a kind of strategic move.”
This is rapidly becoming unproductive. It is a strategic move. It may also be an attempt by Scott to try to discuss what he thinks is really at hand or something, but it’s absolutely strategic. He’s philosophically trained, how could it not be? Shift the ground, engage the position on terms you control, win the debate.
“But the point is this one: the books are about this stuff.”
Fiction isn’t objectively “about” things, especially not about things it doesn’t explicitly discuss. There are multiple ways to interpret it. So, for example, I read these books and enjoyed them as a parallel to the Crusades with a really cool system of magic and some interesting philosophical musings about the nature of humanity. But I never got a feminist subtext. Does this mean the way I read it is “wrong?” If you answer yes, who determines what the “real” interpretation is?
“Now you’re telling me that Scott should engage ACM’s arguments when ACM didn’t engage at all the books.”
Well, I didn’t actually say this. If Scott is going to engage ACM’s arguments, which frankly, I don’t think he ever should have, then he ought to have not engaged in this weird ground-shifting thing. I don’t care that he’s been doing it forever, and neither do any of the people disagreeing with him.
“ACM refused it, YET she pretends to know what this journey is about, call it out and ridicule it.”
I’m not really trying to set myself out as the heroic defender of ACM here. I’m really making a more limited argument about what it’s productive to focus on, and what the limitations of the types of criticism of ACM Scott is making are.
He’s philosophically trained, how could it not be? Shift the ground, engage the position on terms you control, win the debate.
You have an original idea of “philosophically trained”. It’s not automatically a training in rhetoric. At least I perceive in Scott a genuine interest in what he speaks about, the same reason I’m here myself. I’m not a relative of Scott, but I’m interested in his books and in his ideas. If I found just rhetoric I wouldn’t be here wasting my time.
But why do YOU engage in a discussion when you think the other side isn’t saying anything worthwhile?
Fiction isn’t objectively “about” things, especially not about things it doesn’t explicitly discuss.
His books actively, explicitly discuss those arguments. It’s why you can find plenty of complaints that there’s too much philosophy in the books.
It’s even in the title: the darkness that comes before.
So, for example, I read these books and enjoyed them as a parallel to the Crusades with a really cool system of magic and some interesting philosophical musings about the nature of humanity. But I never got a feminist subtext. Does this mean the way I read it is “wrong?” If you answer yes, who determines what the “real” interpretation is?
You didn’t read it “wrong”. But you did read it shallow. No one can possibly get “everything” in a book. Communication is never perfect. No one, I think, ever pretends to know everything Joyce intended to put in the Ulysses. I don’t pretend to get everything when I read the Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.
You always, frequently find some other reader who noticed something in a book that you missed. As I said, a book requires care.
But there is ARROGANCE when you believe that your personal interpretation isn’t only legitimate, but ABSOLUTE. That if you didn’t notice anything else in a book, then NOTHING ELSE EXISTS.
What about some humility? A reader has to be devout.
“It’s because what philosophical training allows people to do is to use what is essentially jargon to shift the field of play without appearing to do so.”
This is not meant to be insulting or dismissive, but it’s going to kind of come off that way so I apologize.
Sady, ACM, and others will frequently – and correctly – cite that they aren’t any given commenter’s feminism teacher, and requests that they explain things like feminism, patriarchy, privilege and whatnot are ignored. This is a good thing.
I would venture to say that those of us with philosophical training (in the form of Master’s degrees, Ph.Ds, B.A.s, and so on) are in no way different from Sady and A Cracked Moon – if you’re not paying me to be your philosophy instructor at a University, then I’m not obligated to teach you philosophy. Sometimes I will, if I have time – but frequently I won’t.
What you view as jargon shift, someone trained in philosophy will recognize as a necessary and motivated move away from accidental details towards an actual discussion about things that matter (essential/necessary premises). It isn’t terribly useful to run through a thousand and one defenses of given characters (Serwe isn’t misogynist; Kellhus isn’t misogynist; and so on) when what’s really at stake is what constitutes misogyny. The problem is that not everyone is trained to see that this shift is necessary, nor will they understand the language one uses to discuss this with rigor.
Any number of people will be able to tell you that these shifts rely upon exclusionary language, and that participation in this discourse is a function of privilege. Them’s the breaks. Perhaps it speaks poorly of those of us who refuse to be your philosophy teacher. But Sady and ACM also participate in a discourse that relies upon exclusionary language, wherein participation within that discourse is a function of privilege (you have to have enough free time to read about the theoretical commitments), and this leaves people behind, too.
Someone could just as easily say any expert in any field uses jargon to shift the field of play – but typically, this says more about the commentor’s annoyance that they don’t have access to the discourse under which a discourse is occurring. In other words: the fault isn’t only with us – it’s the fact that none of us has the time to ensure that everyone who wants to understand a given discourse (particularly, in philosophy’s case, when that discourse matters so much more than what most people seem to think matters because it addresses actual problems rather than their symptoms) can understand it.
This isn’t an answer that makes people happy, of course. But it isn’t fair to say that philosophers use jargon to avoid real issues – rather, a given person’s unfamiliarity with philosophy prevents them from understanding the jargon used to motivate and discuss the real issues in a mutually-agreed upon and rational way.
“ACM describes herself as a troll.
As far as I can tell, the how of the point is the whole point. Trust me, shaming does no one any good, let alone when it’s indiscriminate. I thought you couldn’t stand the toxicity!”
She’s not quite a troll though, although there’s a significant “for the lulz” element to a lot of what she does, she’s actually invested in the positions she holds.
I generally dislike toxicity, but the thing is, with her, it’s actually directed at the right things. Maybe not the right people, and maybe her scope is too broad and her standards are too high, but I’m pretty okay with the toxicity from her in that regard. It’s probably a double standard, but I don’t care that much.
“Feminism has faced tremendous problems regarding interpretative consensus.”
I think there’s something to be said about the idea that websites like hers are used as evidence by people on the conservative/reactionary side of the equation, but so what? We’re never going to convince those people, and there probably should be places on the internet where self-identifying feminists can go and basically agree on things. If she wants to express herself with performance rage, all power to her, it’s not really okay for me to be like “well that’s not helping,” because honestly, I have no way to evaluate whether or not it’s helping. The issue of feminism in modern society is way too complex for me to render that kind of judgment without sounding entirely ridiculous. You may be better positioned to render it? I don’t know?
“They’re in the same straits as everyone else, and they need to know.”
That’s fine, but…honestly, you’re probably the wrong conduit. Too much poison in the water.
she’s actually invested in the positions she holds.
In terms of investment, what does she actually do? Does she raise funds for some womens refuge in a third world country or somthing like that?
No, invested in terms of “she actually cares about the discussion,” not invested in monetary terms. You are aware that words can have applications beyond their literal meanings, right?
Toxicity is fine so long as its your toxicity? This is chauvinism, of course. The big problem aside from this, though, is simply that toxicity blinds. Moral outrage dials the resolution way down, and almost always trades in caricatures as a result. So reading ACM, how could you ever know whether it’s the ‘right’ toxicity or not?
Anyone who questions sacralized values is punished with toxicity, are they not? I just see it as the cost of doing business.
“Toxicity is fine so long as its your toxicity?”
It’s not my toxicity. It’s toxicity that from certain perspectives has a purpose.
Look, you understand that by shifting this point from me saying “I can see where she’s coming from, and it’s okay with me,” to you implying I’m on her side is doing exactly what you claim to fighting, right? You’re othering me. It’s fine, because I’m not sure I want to have a dog in this fight, but it’s what you’re doing.
“The big problem aside from this, though, is simply that toxicity blinds.”
It can do that, of course. I’m a really bad spokesman for ACM’s position on this, as I am sure I don’t understand it entirely. I just don’t think it’s reasonable to claim that what she does is particularly bad or harmful to feminism.
“So reading ACM, how could you ever know whether it’s the ‘right’ toxicity or not?”
By paying attention to how she criticizes certain things, and how willing she is to go after even reasonably good, well-drawn portrayals of female characters. There actually granularity within her writing if you can get through the vitriol, and she’s saying things that are interesting about the standards we ought to have for female characters (and a lot of other stuff, again, I’m basically the wrong person to be arguing this). I’m not saying I agree with those standards, but she’s advancing a real position.
“Anyone who questions sacralized values is punished with toxicity, are they not? I just see it as the cost of doing business.”
Maybe. There’s an aspect to the way you do it online that seems to be really unattractive to a lot of people. Again, I’m not saying they’re right about you or your personality or whatever, but the perception of your persona by the people you’re arguing with means that your questioning of sacralized values isn’t ever going to land, it’s going to be dismissed. Which will, interestingly enough, make it harder for those values to be questioned by anyone, which seems to be the project you actually want to be advanced.
What else is there to be done? It might be my imagination, but it seems there’s a far greater consciousness of these things in the genre blogosphere now than even just a couple of years back. Being rejected, vilified, and all that is inescapable to some degree. Moral outrage is not an easy bear to poke without provoking… moral outrage.
That said, I’m certainly not going to say I’m the best spokesperson for these things! I’m not what you would call a ‘sales’ guy.
I’m puzzled though: How is you claiming that her toxicity doesn’t bother you when it’s the right toxicity amount to me ‘othering’ you? Is it my subsequent generalization, the claim that you are doing what everybody does? Who’s the ‘other’ of ‘everybody’? I laugh my ass off while watching Bill Maher! The only difference is that you don’t seem to be as suspicious of your (inevitable) participation as I am of my (inevitable) participation, and that seems to be slender grounds for invoking ‘othering’ as a criticism. Wouldn’t all distinctions period count as instances of ‘problematic othering’ given that standard? Given that ‘verbally abusing people for amusement’ probably counts as the paradigm for ‘othering,’ you seem to be suggesting that I’m othering you for uncritically othering people who you think deserve to be othered! How dare you other me for othering you for uncritically othering people!
Just joking, Zach. I see what you’re saying.
“It might be my imagination, but it seems there’s a far greater consciousness of these things in the genre blogosphere now than even just a couple of years back.”
Do you think that you spearheaded this? Or are you just happy that you were talking about it before it began breaking out.
“Moral outrage is not an easy bear to poke without provoking… moral outrage.”
There’s clearly better ways of doing it than the way you’re doing it. Actually, basically any way of doing it is better than the way you’re doing it, because you’re literally polarizing people against considering the idea that moral outrage polarizes. As someone who nominally is on board with the ideas you present, that is frustrating.
“How is you claiming that her toxicity doesn’t bother you when it’s the right toxicity amount to me ‘othering’ you? ”
To clarify, this->
“Toxicity is fine so long as its your toxicity?”
is what I was talking about. Now, it may be I misread this sentence, but by saying that ACM’s toxicity is “mine,” you implicitly place me in her “camp.” That’s all I was saying.
“I laugh my ass off while watching Bill Maher! ”
Really? That dude is kind of a prick. But I’m probably more conservative than you are.
“Just joking, Zach. I see what you’re saying.”
I chuckled at the joke, so good work.
I have no idea what my actual role is… only that I have one!
As for being proud about ‘being ahead of the curve’ that’s actually something I’ve been fretting about. I’ve been feeling very, very confirmed lately – as opposed to the lonely, lunatic loser I usually feel like! Reading The Righteous Mind actually left me with a feeling of gratitude. And that’s just weird. And now there’s the data in Coming Apart. Even when I troll the web and find all these blogs and message boards filled with people witlessly doing all the things I’m warning about…
To be honest, it makes me wonder if this is the way people like Vox feel all the time: confirmed at every turn.
It’s not what I would call a healthy psychological environment.
Zach, I wouldn’t bother too much with most of this. Callan’s questions about what Moon does for the cause are just derailment by credentials, you might as well ask for Scott’s resume and see how much volunteer work in the name of feminism appears.
The rest of it is a long standing lingual run around.
“Anyone who questions sacralized values is punished with toxicity, are they not? I just see it as the cost of doing business.”
Exactly. Controversial works cause controversy.
And links to derailment for dummies are a derailment method.
Saajan, if you think I’m trolling, say so. Otherwise your using a open dismissal method on someone you think is trying to be legit – making you a troll in doing so. I’m sure I could find categories in derailment for dummies that fit your posts – why don’t I? Because I think you’re trying to be legitimate. If it’s not mutual, please respect me by saying so.
Don’t think you’re a troll, but I do think you’ve made ACM your Moby Dick though.
A white whale? That’s racist… 😉
In the past on other forums, a bunch of people will reply to a single post I’ve made. I make alot of replies in return and then some start saying ‘why are you making so many posts?’. It was in reply.
I think narrowing the dialogue to any one blogger detracts from the larger question. It seems easy enough to extrapolate the questions morality and aesthetics.
As for post counts, I think 20% of the comments under this post are mine so that’d be the pot calling the kettle black…er…also racist. 😉
Yo! lol!
“If you follow Three Pound Brain or read my novels you will find one, overriding question repeated in hundreds of different guises: Do humans have what it takes? Biologically? Culturally? Individually or collectively?”
In terms of the singularity, it boils down to whether we will have the collective intellectual capacity to either create a new “us” or parent beings wise enough to cater to us, take care of us, wipe our asses and not find us so obnoxious it will want to kill us — because it will probably have the power to do so.
In a very real way, creating a new “us” also will entail terminating what we will have been up to then. It’s hard to imagine anyone will ever mourn the loss of that component of ourselves that allowed Nazism to rise, but then again I still haven’t gotten over how boys and girls cried on the last day of jr. high school and that was decades ago.
Everything else is a matter of timing and “escape velocity” type argument. Whether any of that is actually attractive to anyone is another question. I personally think there will come a time when we will be offered the choice, go the post-human route or muddle on with all our faults and foibles.
You’ve hit on the reason why I think the problem of the singularity and the problem of nihilism are one and the same. After we use technology to cull all the parochialisms from our soul, will anything ‘meaningful’ remain?
When you look at ACM, Vox, TPB, Mamatas, varied posters on Westeros & OF Blog & Fozmeadows & Valente’s blog, you begin to think the Semantic Apocalypse is approaching. 😉
You have TPB which generally is the liberal atheist sausage fest, the ACM supporters (RoHers) which are people very interested in challenging privilege, Vox’s Ilk, and a scattering of wanderers and people on different parts of the spectrum.
To your average TPB, seems like what matters is challenging status quo notions as well as modern liberal notions, with a foundation of science. Art is a medium of communication to tweak sensibilities, identity politics is of lower precedence. Outside of art, debate should be in accord with reason/logic.
To an RoHer, what matters is confronting privilege in varied forms. Art is evaluated under how it confronts privilege or provides representation for the historically disregarded. Dialogue is used to tweak sensibilities, specifically to force confrontation with the narratives that support privilege. When the other side asks someone to be “reasonable”, its an attempt to devalue attacks on privilege and derail.
So if you’re a TPBer, you think the important thing is to mount a defense for reason, for the works, and for the author along with condemning the language/tactics ACM uses. If you’re an RoHer, you think that tone policing amounts to telling historically marginalized persons to behave – what you want is for a TPBer to listen to women.
To a TPBer, an RoHer is unreasonable, and so the TPBer thinks it can’t be moral outrage that is a motivation, privilege can’t be at work among liberal Bakker fans, it must be something else. To an RoHer, a TPBer’s goal is first to control tone, then control the conversation and mount a derailment – the books certainly can’t have any valuable arguments nor can any point of Scott’s have merit.
Each side looks for cues that it considers warning signs the other side is disingenuous, and suddenly every conversation feels – to both sides I suspect – to be a mine field. Neither side genuinely believes the other is coming from a place of genuine moral outrage, because neither side really acknowledges the others’ moral foundations. And so it must be that Bakker is a closet misogynist to an RoHer, while to a TBPer ACM is a bully trolling for page views and attention.
And so on.
p.s. As for Vox’s Dread Ilk…errr…Imagine if Dr. Doom had the same ego but the scientific acumen of Tiger Shark or Juggernaut.
Giving reasoning is an old kind of compromise – reasoning given perhaps grants some capacity for the other party to point out contradiction in the reasoning.
Do you want to say those who frequent TPB haven’t given reasons (with perhaps opportunity to find contradiction in those reasons)?
I will say say that for ROH. All I’ve seen is personal assertion “This writing here IS X!” “Look how much this writing IS X!”. Maybe I’ve missed the reasoning given?
Without some reasoning, what else is there to work with? Somehow it’s determined that one side will sit still and listen for as long as the other says they need to to qualify as having listened? Yes, that shows up as disengenuous – the reason? Because I doubt they’d submit to such a set up. Would they?
On genuine moral outrage – do you have some method you use to check to see if it’s really there, or something else? Or do all people who appear morally outraged, are? I mean if it’s the latter, you can just say. Or if it’s not easy to say that, then you can partially see from this POV.
It’s not about giving up “reason”, but rather giving up a position that amounts to little more than claiming that one is being “reasonable”. It’s not about giving up logic, but giving up the idea that some book series by some author must be not be mocked on the internet in the way so many other things are spoofed and mocked.
Seems to me reading a page or two of RoH’s site before deciding it’s a “no reason zone” and reading six pages + interview employ the same methodology.
People make judgements on small sample sizes all the time, it’s how you navigate real life. People go on dates and rarely lose sleep about whether they gave the person a thorough enough examination. Authors and their fans shouldn’t expect more.
Unless, of course, the plan is to finish Moon and then go attack every one and two star review on Amazon.
As for moral outrage, it’s largely useless to try to determine the reality of someone’s emotional stances over the internet. Enough to accept a person is angered by something.
Isn’t it reasonable to take the facts of moral psychology into account when moralizing?
Isn’t it reasonable to acknowledge the possibility one might be mistaken?
Isn’t it reasonable to avoid modes of communication that are – as a matter of empirical fact – detrimental to rationality?
I think here we’re getting into the difference between a TPBer and an RoHer.
To a TPBer, the danger of accepting “abusive” language lies in the ways moral outrage curtails deeper examination of material.
To an RoHer, the danger of curtailing “abusive” language lies in the privilege setting up what constitutes proper behavior from the historically marginalized.
I suspect modes of communication done outside of formal structure are detrimental to rationality. For example, if you think the other person is talking over you or politely rationalizing away your concerns, your natural recourse is to tweak sensibilities via “abusive” language to get past those barriers.
I just can’t imagine that if ACM wrote a polite essay we’d have had so many discussion from so many sides across so many e-locations about so many topics.
At this moment, you likely have more people listening to you than you ever have before. Why I’d advise to present multiple posts detailing each facet of your position.
The big problem is facts is facts. The other problem is that we TPBers can actually say what will change our mind on the topic. Show me scientific evidence that shaming and verbal abuse actually facilitates rational debate and I will thank you for pointing out my mistake.
Christian evangelicals (who I have also debated at length online and elsewhere) seem to have their own version of the same tactics: the goal is to neutralize their skeptical interlocutor via some interpretation of what they are ‘really doing’ (the work of the Devil, or in ACM’s case, the work of ‘the Man’).
You find a similar move in arguments against secularism. Secularism, the position that the government should take no position regarding religious matters (Why? Because law is universal, and religious commitment is parochial, thus making religious commitment law is oppression, plain and simple), is cast as a competing position, a ‘religion.’ The commitment to suspending religious commitments is treated as a religious commitment. The admission of ignorance becomes a claim to knowledge!
You have to admit, it’s more than a little hinky.
But Scott, you have a number of running positions:
1) The Cause of Doubt
2) Whether RoH is shutting down mental faculties in the reader
3) How you end up being the bad guy and people focus on minor faux-pas to characterize you as a villian.
Most importantly though, for most people it’s no more than interesting gossip regarding an author they may have heard of who wrote books they weren’t likely to buy.
Which is why your protracted tone argument seems like proof of claims you try to defend yourself against.
If someone makes a movie, they and their friends will naturally feel more invested in the movie.
To others, watching the trailer is enough to make a decision.
If I say, “this movie is going to suck”, and you tell me all the good things you liked, I may go see it.
If you and your friends tell me how evil and judgmental I am for dismissing the movie, I’ll laugh and decide not only will I not see the movie I’ll tell my friends how the movie is even *more* likely to suck b/c the creators tried to guilt trip me instead of providing actual reasons to see the movie.
I don’t doubt that this is the way it works. I took what you were saying to mean that the stalemate is rational, rather than psychological. I apologize for the misread.
TPB has been getting a lot more traffic, and I’m sure if I wasn’t so bent on my ‘message’ I could take commercial advantage. The pimping stuff… Man. I just. Fucking. Hate. It.
My wife regularly gives me shit for running my books down when people we’ve just met ask me about them.
I doubt you have anything to apologize for. I think the stalemate is based on the break down of what people think is important and the likelihood of “dripping acid in the male gaze” being a tactic likely to succeed.
It goes back to the fact that first we have to examine the necessity of the tactic, then examine the efficacy of your particular books. It’s natural these will get conflated, which is why I think WordPress’s comment structure is abysmal for dialogue.
It’s not necessary for you to pimp outright. It’s more that at the moment it’s more about you as this guy with a blog than the guy with written+published books.
Sometimes I think a movie will suck (or does suck) but then hearing the director comment on what they were trying to do with specific scenes changes my opinion.
Right now people are wondering, “Do those books actually have any merit”, and deciding, “Well, if they did, someone – at minimum the *author* – would have made a case for them in all this mess.”
Plus breaking down scenes, analyzing what you were trying to do would be enjoyable for the actual fans of the series and help make the case for the books.
It’s not about giving up “reason”, but rather giving up a position that amounts to little more than claiming that one is being “reasonable”.
This is your hypothesis of her approach. Okay.
It’s not about giving up logic, but giving up the idea that some book series by some author must be not be mocked on the internet in the way so many other things are spoofed and mocked.
It isn’t. I spoke with my partner about this and she said you don’t make the accusation of mysogyny along with a bunch of name calling, it reduces the seriousness of mysogyny.
I really think you’re working from a different culture where it’s just part of the mockery lexicon, as is saying someone uses shit to lube masturbation (which actually ISN’T in so many other things that are spoofed and mocked in various media). If so, when do you get serious? What words do you use when it comes down to actually enforcing physical action?
It reminds me of crying wolf – what word do you use when the threat comes down that seems like a call for action rather than just more performance/no reason to do anything?
Seems to me reading a page or two of RoH’s site before deciding it’s a “no reason zone” and reading six pages + interview employ the same methodology.
Your expanding my claim to the whole of her site. These are your words, Saajan, not mine.
People make judgements on small sample sizes all the time, it’s how you navigate real life. People go on dates and rarely lose sleep about whether they gave the person a thorough enough examination. Authors and their fans shouldn’t expect more.
Unless, of course, the plan is to finish Moon and then go attack every one and two star review on Amazon.
Some sites talk about how nerds like ‘a game of thrones’ then feel attacked if someone critiques it.
I think you like ROH in a similar way, Saajan. Alot of your questions or points I could, as one approach, simply admit “Yes, I can understand you liking it somehow”. I just don’t want to be picking through a cavalcade of justifications, if it really just comes down to admitting that. I am not attacking the idea of how you could like it.
Pretty fair overview, save that my sausage is agnostic!
Speaking of sausages, I’m still gunning for the “The Future if becoming more Pornographic” post.
“Abraham presents the Realism Defence as an attempt to trump one form of ‘representational propriety’ with another. It boils down to pitting honesty against harm reduction. Cut the cord between fantasy and history (by arguing first, What History Is, and then second, What Fantasy Is), then honesty no longer seems proof against harm reduction. Politically correct representation seems to sweep the table.”
I like to say it, so I will say it again 🙂 There is no evidence that, under current media environment, reducing “questionable” depictions actually improves the IRL standing of subjects of depiction. The “harm reduction argument” is mostly bollocks and wishy-washy pure-hypothetical handwaving along the lines of BUT WHAT IF IT WORKS LIKE THAT, CAN YOU DISPROVE ?
I might even be willing to speculate that maybe, in some time long past, media really worked like that and you could cut down on racism by having more positive minority depictions, and dial it up by having more unpleasant minority depictions, but today, per evidence available, as far as “impact” is concerned, fictional depictions appear…what would be the polite and politically correct word…hm…I guess “epiphenomenal” fits.
“Unconsciously we all understand the power of representations: we’re hardwired for censoriousness for damn good reason! “
Scott, this is a typical “adaptation narrative” 😉 Hardly evidence exists to confirm hardwired nature of this attitude.
A simpler explanation is that raging against your alleged misogyny 😉 is way easier than helping out, oh I dunno, Thai women in constrained financial conditions, while winning, at the very least, comparable renown (I am being optimistic here. It is not unlikely that dissin’ a fantasy author wins you more renown than actually helping actual women in trouble).
It’s perfectly rational course of action, if you just realize that the goal is not actually reducing IRL misogyny but gathering “rhetorical XP” of sorts.
“(I had Marx on the mind back then: The women’s liberation movement, it so happens, also ‘liberated’ tremendous pools of labour for capital to rationalize. Is emancipation even possible in a society designed to systematically exploit its every human resource? Was the women’s liberation movement the product of mass moral enlightenment or the economic obsolescence of traditional female roles?”
Why does it matter?
Let’s say Mr. X is wandering down a parking lot, encounters a rape in progress, and chases the perp away through physical superiority, surprise factor and general badassery typical of imaginary Mr. X-es.
Does it really matter that much whether X did that because he thought that victim’s kinda cute and he might score “naughty things” due to gratitude and stuff, or out of pure kindness of his humanitarian heart ?
The victim’s condition has been improved either way.
If art has no power, then large chunks of the humanities are utterly worthless no?
First, that consideration does not change the utter lack of evidence which happens to surround “social impact” claims (and, mind you, not for lack of trying to find said evidence).
Second, I don’t think I can agree with such judgement. More than that, I think that judging works upon (hypothetical, extremely hard to verify) claims regarding their potential social impact is weird.
“Social impact” is not why we read (or perhaps at least not why I read 😉 )
I’d need to see the studies that fall into “lack of trying to find said evidence”.
That would be another relevant and interesting thing for TPB to explore.
@ Scott
“Marketing shouts otherwise, I fear. As do any number of studies probing the impact of priming”
Marketoids like to massively exaggerate their abilities – after all, their budgets come from convincing the folks in charge that they are powerful, not from being powerful.
Marketing is mostly concerned with directing existing paying-capable demand at a specific brand (think fire and moths). If marketing could indeed create demand de-novo, that would be…pretty catastrophic, but so far, I am not aware of such powers being demonstrated.
As to priming – it’s a fragile and elusive phenomenon actually – Third and Sheila on Watts’s blog have discussed this extensively (in a thread about your little kerfuffle, BTW), so I guess I’ll just link away
“The big revolution in marketing (before the neuroscientific one we’re witnessing now) was the realization that associative conditioning is a far more effective way to impact consumer populations than rational appeals.”
Or perhaps the kinds of goods that are being usually marked via extensive campaigns are literally impossible to push via rational appeals because both the subject of campaign and its competitor are so damn similar that they have little to no properties beyond price that could be used to establish a rational preference (and you absolutely don’t want to start a classical “race to the bottom” price competition clusterfuck because for you, as the producer of good in question, that would suck).
Anyway, your spam filter seems to hate Third’s ISP (she’s in China now, so I suspect it false-positives her as a botnet member), so I’d better go and help her get a decent proxy goin’ so she can post. She’s the one who has bookmarked studies as to effect of porn/literature/whatever on something-or-other in general public.
Praise be the Cenobites!
01, have you read Clive Barker’s Great and Secret Show or just his one-shot Seduth?
Well, we know that valuation arrives before deliberation, and that it’s part of every judgement we make. So the question is, Where does valuation come from?
I realize that my argument is abductive, but it is a very powerful one. And I see no reason to assume that the trickle of supporting empirical data will dry up any time soon. Why do you think people continue to buy Head & Shoulders when a generic brand that’s a fraction of the price contains the same ingredients? Do you really think familiarity bias has no impact?
Why would anyone have a warm, fuzzy feeling about any corporation?
We’re not born with these values. So where do they come from, if not culture?
Why do you think people continue to buy Head & Shoulders when a generic brand that’s a fraction of the price contains the same ingredients?
‘Cause we’re all idiots, right?
Wrong.
The reason is trust. Most of us don’t have labs in our homes, so we have no way of verifying whether the ingredient list is correct, or whether it’s effective. Now, who do you think loses more if caught cheating, P&G, or the no-name brand?
And what’s that trust based on? Rational grounds? No. Familiarity bias and social proof bias and associative conditioning. If the rational grounds had an impact, then commercials would make arguments, not associations. The really isn’t much doubt about any of this.
The trust is rational. The grounds on which it’s based may be irrational, but what works works. You can’t discount the results that such cognitive heuristics achieve by just saying that they are heuristics, or by citing no-stake studies that exploit their shortcomings. The shortcomings aren’t that easily exploitable in the real world, when real resources are at stake.
I keep having to back up the truck, I see. We’re at cross purposes simply because I’m making distinctions you’re not familiar with. You’re using terms like ‘right/wrong’ and ‘rational’ in their ambiguous vernacular senses. Trust can be either ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’ depending on the circumstances. Trust in Hitler, I’m sure you would agree, was entirely irrational.
Typically, ‘rational’ means ‘truth preserving’ in contexts dealing with meaning, and ‘beneficial’ in practical contexts, when dealing with conscious deliberation. There’s no doubt that unconscious cognitive heuristics are reliable in many contexts, like a Toyota, say, but calling them ‘rational’ is like calling a Toyota rational. Do you see what I’m saying?
The problem we humans seem to be facing is that our unconscious cognitive heuristics are the adaptive byproducts of ancient social and natural environments – a world so very different than the one we find ourselves stranded in. Take parochialism, for instance. The natural tendency to dislike/fear outgroups – the ‘intuition’ that the Nazis exploited to such horrific effect – may have paid reproductive dividends way back when, but is out and out destructive nowadays, especially given that nuclear armageddon is a possible consequence of escalating intergroup competition. The list goes on and on.
There’s no doubt that unconscious cognitive heuristics are reliable in many contexts, like a Toyota, say, but calling them ‘rational’ is like calling a Toyota rational. Do you see what I’m saying?
Maybe. In JTB terms, the cognitive heuristics aren’t J, because the person cannot produce a rational justification for the result of the heuristic (this however doesn’t mean that an observer cannot produce one). But it very much seemed to me that you were making the implication that they aren’t T. I can’t tell from your Toyota example whether you consider them reliable as in, often producing a true result, or reliable as in, one can rely on them to be there and work, regardless of the veracity of the outcome.
My opinion, as you may have already noticed, is that lack of J does not imply lack of T – the heuristics often produce a true answer. The rational brain is costly, slow, and not necessarily more reliable. In addition, it can be deceived as easily as, if not easier than, the heuristics. People are known to often come up with rational justifications for false beliefs.
This is the thesis that Gladwell pushes in Blink – but the domains to which it applies are quite limited (just check out Tetlock). If you ever get a chance to read Dan Kahneman’s new book, I heartily recommend it (in addition to Haidt’s). Back when I first started flogging this stuff you had to actually go wading through journals (the way I did researching Neuropath) but the field has exploded since, with tons of titles and tons of junk and some real gold.
In my own opinion, we’ve reached the point where we need to seriously reconsider ‘belief,’ let alone justification or truth! (This is one reason why I prefer to talk about epistemic and practical commitments). Cognitive science is a freaky-deaky world. So regarding the ‘rational brain,’ you have evidence from Ramachandran and Gazziniga of a ‘rationalization module’ (the ‘interpreter,’ Gazziniga calls it), a part of the brain that is dedicated to generating confabulatory responses for the purposes of social justification. It SEEMS to be the case that the part of the brain that answers when we are asked ‘why’ questions actually has little or no access to what the rest of the brain was doing to provoke the question, and so makes guesses. It paints a very troubling picture of the relationship between human discourse and human motivation, one APPARENTLY bourne out by research (like Haidt’s) from very different lines of research. People literally seem to be ‘rationalization machines.’
And this is simply one in a galaxy of troubling findings regarding many different dimensions of human cognition.
This is why doubt is so important. And why claims of ‘superintelligence’ are so tragically blinkered. And why when I tell you that I think the social transformation of values we’re witnessing are unprecedented, I’m literally only giving you crude ‘reasons’ why I prefer my guess over yours.
I’m not sure what your political orientation is, but Shermer’s new book covers much of this ground from a political libertarian’s perspective.
because the person cannot produce a rational justification for the result of the heuristic…
This should be “the rational justification”, not “a rational justification”. The person might well be able to produce a rational justification that has been entirely made up.
Marketing shouts otherwise, I fear. As do any number of studies probing the impact of priming. Generalizing from evidence like this to the power of representations in general is pretty safe. Thus the hundreds of billions spent on ads, thus the endless parade of media consultants, and so on. The big revolution in marketing (before the neuroscientific one we’re witnessing now) was the realization that associative conditioning is a far more effective way to impact consumer populations than rational appeals. The direct evidence you seek is difficult to ascertain simply because of the difficulty of establishing controls, let alone the interpretative ambiguities pertaining to ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ evaluations. Do you really think the astounding (by historical standards) retooling of modern norms regarding identity would have been possible in an age without mass media?
The difference between evopsych speculation and rational speculation is that the former is naturalistic and the latter is… ad hoc through and through. It’s all guesswork, sure – unavoidably so. There’s not much more you can do than pick the sturdiest point of departure that you can, then prepare to bite bullets.
Do you really think the astounding (by historical standards) retooling of modern norms regarding identity would have been possible in an age without mass media?
Have you read The Fate of Empires?
Click to access glubb.pdf
When I first read these contemporary
descriptions of tenth-century Baghdad, I
could scarcely believe my eyes. I told myself
that this must be a joke! The descriptions
might have been taken out of The Times
today. The resemblance of all the details was
especially breathtaking—the break-up of the
empire, the abandonment of sexual morality,
the ‘pop’ singers with their guitars, the entry
of women into the professions, the five-day
week.
Oof! Pdimov – tell me you have some appreciation of how horrible that paper is! There’s the almost comical, cherry-picking absurdity of its premise to begin with. Where, for instance, are all the other empires? But aside from that, periodization arguments in history have the same unhappy reputation as conceptual definition arguments in philosophy: there’s simply too much ambiguity NOT to game. Christ… I could a have a field day with the problems.
Well… OK, they may have been other empires. But do you not consider the general argument plausible, that all the societal changes we’re witnessing have already been observed, as a result of increased prosperity, not mass media or iPads?
I’m not saying that Glubb is necessarily right… but is he really that wrong?
Sure. I think its probable that any number of repeated patterns occur in human history. The problem is sorting the real ones from the ‘Virgin Mary in the waterstain’ ones. And it is tremendously difficult – not so much to convince oneself (we’re hardwired for that) – to find interpretations that command any kind of real consensus. Even on issues you would think are obvious!
Ooops, I wrong-buttoned the reply again, Scott. See response above (seriously, the way reply buttons work here is a mite on the painful side)
Yes but we were talking about how mass media is a necessary prerequisite for certain societal changes. And if such changes did tend to occur in the past without mass media, this is a good indication that mass media has nothing to do with them. No?
Sorry. Given the number of comments, I’m finding it hard to keep on top of the comments. The counter argument-by-analogy you’re making doesn’t strike me as that plausible, 1) because I doubt the credibility of your source; 2) because he only provides a mere handful of examples; and 3) because I know for a fact that in the case of Rome, for instance, these apparent ‘uncanny parallels’ only applied to the ruling classes (and to what degree we do not know) – which is probably why the social clock is reset as soon as this class is deposed. Do I really need to go on?
The broad-based revolution in a wide ranging spectrum egalitarian values we’ve witnessed is likely unprecedented because it likely turns on the way technological change forces social reevaluation.
We’re not likely to come to an understanding, because neither of us is willing to do the work and consult the primary sources. I’m willing to extend Glubb the benefit of the doubt and consider his summary of these primary sources adequate, and you aren’t. That’s your prerogative. But, if you’re going to claim that something is historically unprecedented, I think that you should at least cite some metric or trait which you think is unprecedented, and check that against the primary sources.
That said, I find the question of whether the unprecedented technological changes we enjoy bring about equally unprecedented societal changes as fascinating as you hopefully do. I’m just not yet as convinced of the answer as you are.
@ Scott
(I hope you find it here, lol)
The question I think is more subtle than whether media can instill valuation.
The question is whether media can do that coherently, predictably and reliably, and if so, whether it is an ability that needs special leetness to pull off. It seems to me that since our perception of media is under influence from both random-genetic and random-acquired properties that we happen to have had “before” the encounter with a given work, the result is not unlike XOR of a specific string with a strongly random string. The output will appear strongly random, in case anyone wonders 😉
It would take a certain degree of effort to engineer a campaign that slightly, oh so slightly affects even the most inconsequential of attitudes since you have to somehow deal with factors that are quite random and are able to strongly affect your message (hell, mood in which you watch an add can trivially turn cheerful message into one of scorn and sarcasm… but it’s not like the ad can do something about your current interpretation bias amrite 😉 ). And I think that we’re far from such engineering prowess.
You know those subliminal-thingie tests where fMRI detected alterations in the brain associated with exposure to “subliminal” pic, but no coherent, coordinated behavioral correlates are found? I am kinds of same opinion as to capacity of Atwood to change attitude towards women, nature and whatnot 😉
As to your shampoo example, first, the very existence of generic / mallbranded shampoos suggests that a significant portion of the market is at least as rational as you :). Second, there is nothing particularly irrational about choosing the first shampoo to draw your attention (LOUDEST FUCKING AD!) if the value of this decision is low for you (you aren’t desperately trying to add as much VOLUMINOUSNESS and GORGEOUS SHINE to your hair as possible) and you neither know nor can be bothered to ascertain the relative composition of shampoos. In fact, the most rational act under those constraints is to grab the closest one 😀
Almost missed it! Noise is da problem, fer sure – fer marketers. But this in no ways cuts against my argument. You don’t have to isolate a programmer to say we are programmed. Again, my argument is abductive, not empirical (where you do need to isolate the programmers – a devilishly difficult thing to convincingly do).
I was using ‘rational’ in its technical sense. Cognitive convenience is only rational if it truly leads to the most beneficial outcome (gorgeous curls). Most everything we do, purchase-wise, is irrational in that sense. We just grab shit and run, or walk, lazy fuckers that we are.
“Noise is da problem, fer sure – fer marketers. “
I disagree – it is a fundamental problem. Otherwise, we are kind of arguing about some pure-theory influence, that might hypothetically exist but its mechanics are too contrived and obscured by noise to decipher, let alone meaningfully leverage to, oh I dunno, fight misogyny or something. Not that such a discussion is fundamentally bad, it just has nothing to do with talk about social impact or “influence” or (specifically) a capacity to alter the status of imperilled social minorities. It’s a talk about effect in its most abstract sense.
Basically, I don’t have beef with abductively constructed hypothesis which claims that book A will have some (unpredictable, individually varied effect) on the reader (in fact, it would be trivial to demonstrate that neurons in the brains have undergone changes, accounting for memory of reading this stuff at the very least, lending some empirical support for a sufficiently permissive and flexible definition of “effect” )
What I have the beef with is when people make a kind of “not-quite-logic leap” and claim, you know, a serious directional effect, as opposed to largely abstract effect the direction, magnitude and rate of manifestation of which are pretty much unpredictable.
I hear your assertions, but I don’t get the argument. Surely you can talk about the agreggate influence of messaging. “Why are guns so popular in America? There’s a good chance that…”
All you have to do qualify your arguments accordingly. It’s like you’re saying I can’t talk about tying my shoes because I can’t isolate the nerve signals running to my hands.
Cognitive convenience is only rational if it truly leads to the most beneficial outcome (gorgeous curls).
Sure, if you only take the benefits into account and ignore the costs cognitive inconvenience would impose.
Oh, and as to the hair, you assume that the goal is gorgeous curls.
What if the goal is simply “remove contamination” ? Then methinks the closest would be the best, assuming that the effort of determining the cheapest and reaching for it is not worth money saved (per subjective judgement).
More like, Scott, it’s a case of “somebody tied the shoelaces. It might have been Scott or any one of 10 000 men and women who have passed by them from beginning of their existence to our current observation”
What I say is that there is no reason to claim, right now, that Scott is the one who tied them, and what interactions caused the mysterious shoe tying person to do what said person did.
Talking about aggregate messaging is fine, but for that talk to be meaningful, some kind of practical specific aggregate effect needs to be reliably detected. Otherwise it’s pretty much super-sneaky paleovampires kind of discussion (those are good for scifi though 😉 ).
Basically, claiming that computer games (let’s for this one time beat a different circus horsey 😉 ) “work towards facilitating” youth violence in the face of utter lack of in-the-field correlation between violent behavior and overall game prevalence, as well as violence and releases of individual “high-controversy” titles (as well as general declining trend for violent crime in youths) is silly, pointless, and completely unjustified.
Whether those games “really” contain a “violent” “message”…dunno, maybe those games have a violent message but humans don’t decode it properly, being stupid meatsacks and all 😉
I don’t think you realize how extreme your position is becoming, 01… I feel like waving Observer over here and saying, ‘See! This is scientism!’
You’re basically saying that abductive arguments are worthless – you realize that. And this means you could be backing yourself into a prickly logical corner, one easily demonstrated:
Where’s the empirical evidence backing your argument against abductive argument, 01?
Belief is obviously not an all or nothing game. I kind of believe many, many things. I understand where you’re coming from, debate-wise, but I think you’re whipping a battle-axe around killing friend and foe, when what you want is a rapier. The causal relationships between exposure to X and the propensity to commit X do not exist. Personally, after so many years, I think this is likely the empirical fact of the matter. I agree. But I think there are good grounds to worry that exposure to pornography, for instance, has other negative consequences.
Since it’s a worry, it’s not enough to trump the rights of those addicted to such exposure, but is enough, perhaps, to warrant ‘splitting the difference’ in other respects, such as limiting the age at which an individual can purchase pornography, etc.
This by the way underscores the difference between the liberal democratic approach and the extreme views espoused by Vox. On my view, if immigration troubles you (and for the record, I am pro-immigration), the most you can say is that it’s a warranted worry (not fact), and as such, can only warrant expression in policy in various ‘split the difference ways.’ My worry should not trump your right to live anywhere you damn well please, but perhaps it would warrant lowering the quota of new immigrants allowed into the country.
Oooh, triple post – I’m a bad person, I know. 😦
Just, in regards to your mention of gun culture in the USA, it’s kinda dying
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/11/columns-column-usa-guns-dc-idUSL099229120080111?sp=true
So, where does that leave us in terms of aggregate media effect on gun ownership ?
This by the way underscores the difference between the liberal democratic approach and the extreme views espoused by Vox.
Vox’s views are not extreme at all, they are simple common sense, backed by evidence. You’re not required to agree with them, but typically, painting someone as “extremist” is a tactic that allows one to avoid proving them wrong.
On my view, if immigration troubles you (and for the record, I am pro-immigration), the most you can say is that it’s a warranted worry (not fact), and as such, can only warrant expression in policy in various ‘split the difference ways.’
“Trouble” has nothing to do with it. Immigration into your country doesn’t trouble me in the slightest, but I can (and do) still hold the opinion that it is not in your interest as a person, as a nation, as a society.
The more interesting question here, at least for me, is why a self-professed skeptic would claim that immigration is good. Where is the rational justification? Where is the skepticism about this (irrational and unbacked by evidence, in my opinion) first-order belief?
(Actually, an even more interesting question for me is whether unchecked immigration is a cause for the disease or merely a symptom, but that’s another story and doesn’t seem very on-topic here.)
What counts as ‘extremist’ on your view?
Immigration is good here in Canada for a number of reasons, running from great restaurants to bolstering population (and economic) growth. We have one of the most peaceful, affluent societies on the planet – thanks to immigration. The vast majority of my friends are immigrants or descended from immigrants. I’m first generation myself.
Why is it against the interests of any individual or nation?
What counts as ‘extremist’ on your view?
The answer to that will open yet another sub-topic and there are too many already, so let’s leave it aside and just agree to talk about right and wrong, true and false, not extreme and moderate.
Immigration is good here in Canada for a number of reasons, running from great restaurants
Point.
to bolstering population (and economic) growth.
I wonder whether your arguments are based on logical inference or on empirical data.
It’s not a good idea to compensate for a low native total fertility rate via immigration. This doesn’t address the actual problem, it exacerbates it, and requires more and more immigrants down the line.
Immigration doesn’t cause economic growth (per capita). The reverse is true. Economic growth causes willingness to immigrate.
We have one of the most peaceful, affluent societies on the planet – thanks to immigration.
Japan has one of the most peaceful and affluent societies on the planet. Scratch that. It has the most peaceful and most affluent society on the planet. No real immigration to speak of. There is no causal connection except in the other direction, as I already noted – everyone wants to live in a peaceful, affluent society.
Why is it against the interests of any individual or nation?
Unchecked immigration is against the interests of the nation because it, quite simply, divides and destroys the nation earlier or later. Later, in Canada’s case.
It’s against the interests of an individual who believes in liberal democracy because first, most immigrants are typically not very liberal, and second, because once you have significant ethnic percentages, they turn into monolithic blocks that largely vote according to their ethnic interest and affiliation, and the politicians adapt accordingly.
Of course, there are various degrees of “pro-immigration”. Last time I checked, Canada had a pretty strict point system of deciding eligibility to immigrate, and I don’t know how wide the “refugee” loophole is. This might have changed.
Looking at it from the point of view of the immigrants themselves, it’s still not clear cut. Accepting the best and brightest from a particular country decapitates this country (a country’s success depends very much on its smart fraction, the individuals with an IQ of approx. 106 and above). Of course, from my own point of view, I’d very much like Canada to accept me should I choose to live there, but what we’re talking about transcends my selfish desires. 🙂
” I don’t think you realize how extreme your position is becoming, 01… I feel like waving Observer over here and saying, ‘See! This is scientism!’”
I am a servant of nascent Machine God 😉 of course I am prone to scientism 😉
” You’re basically saying that abductive arguments are worthless – you realize that. ”
My claim was weaker than renouncing all abduction forever. Specifically, I said that ” I don’t have beef with abductively constructed hypothesis which claims that book A will have some (unpredictable, individually varied effect) on the reader”
At this point, it’s fine and dandy.
It is later, when very specific claims (of empirical nature, I might add) start getting piled on that, that I “rebel”.
Those claims have exactly the form of “Media A with content X will (or at the very least is likely to) induce an increase of Y phenomena in population. I consider those claims to be profoundly pushing the envelope of a mere abductive argument and being, you know, sorta-kinda empirical in their nature.
I don’t think that such claims should be made in absence of empirical evidence. Those are explicit cause-effect claims about a natural, empirically testable matter.
” But I think there are good grounds to worry that exposure to pornography, for instance, has other negative consequences. ”
I don’t mind people being worried 😉 though at this point the argument seems to be “I’m Scott Bakker and this is my least favorite industry/expression form on planet Earth”.
Effects of pornography have been scrutinized to a ridiculous degree. The findings are… unimpressive.
I might entertain the possibility that there might be a super-sneaky noxious effect somewhere there, hiding from inquiry, but I would need something better than a rather abstract abductive argument to consider it anything other than pure mental gymnastics (which are great, BTW)
Like, I dunno, people going bonkers. Crime rates (specifically sex crime rates) rising.
” Since it’s a worry, it’s not enough to trump the rights of those addicted to such exposure, but is enough, perhaps, to warrant ‘splitting the difference’ in other respects, such as limiting the age at which an individual can purchase pornography, etc.”
On one hand, I don’t have much beef with that.
On the other, I want to see the provably causal links to exposure in younger demographics, especially since, you know, between you and me, it kind of happens (I don’t know if any of the studies have tried to do good controls for associated parenting anomalies variables and generally tried to untangle C&E though)
On third 🙂 hand, I find your “etc” vaguely worrisome, but that’s probably the effect of talking to fledgling lawyer-entities too much during “sensitive” age :D.
@ Saajan
We’ve always been here 🙂
Unfortunately, I have not yet got my hands on Seduth.
Great and Secret Show I did read.
They’re thinking about something similar over at the Daily Mash:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-%26-technology/hurry-up%2c-evolution-told-201205025185/
heh, I do want to say this may be the best bit of fiction to come out of this:
after RSB got caught sock-puppeting here, i think he revised his marketing strategy and went deeper undercover as ACM and has thereafter carried out a vicious ersatz dialogue between ROH and TPB in order to pimp his shit. it wins this year’s Stanek Prize.
the worms are the spice! the spice is the worms! &c.
I don’t know. Bakker is a sneaky, tricksy hobbit.
Beale is real though. *shudder*
I think Theo just likes fucking with you guys and most other liberals attempting to juggle competing ideals.
I suspect more liberals will adopt his ideas on immigration to an extent, if the institution of amnesty policies leads to major upswing in conservative values voters.
But then I find the saying that Democrats are good at “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” to incredibly apt.
There’s some cultural pathology afoot in the USA at the moment. As easy as it is to poke holes in and lampoon Vox’s ideas, I get to take a look at the incoming numbers on a regular basis. I know it feels like TPB and ROH are on the ‘inside’ of the ‘real world,’ but the numbers shout otherwise. Vox Day traffic still dwarfs any other single source.
This is what makes compartmentalization such a big problem. When it comes to issues like sexism and racism I always assume that the relatively egalitarian discourse that dominates ‘official culture’ is actually the minority position. The elephants are too big and the riders too small not to expect traditional chauvinistic messaging to resonate, and the internet has allowed the extremist fringe back onto the stage – big time. This is part of the reason why I think shaming tactics, for all their power back when sexism and racism where actually explicitly institutionalized, are almost entirely counterproductive now. Back then, the inequities were explicit enough and the media were monolithic enough that these tactics could guilt and intimidate broadcasters to tow the ideological line. No longer. Now it’s another me-great-you-scum ingroup providing a whole generation of economically disenfranchised, culturally defensive white males with evidence of liberal identity excess and feminist ‘male oppression.’
Just because something feels empowering doesn’t mean that it is. Pseudo-empowerment is the soma of the modern age.
These are rank guesses, of course, like all macro-social claims. But its worth watching to see the way things trend over the next few years.
One thing watching that Apocalypse marathon reminded me of was the way the Nazis actually needed the Communists to come to power. Extremism begets extremism. Vox and ACM could be simply moments in a far larger sociological game.
And the child-star of The Goonies, as it so happens…
When it comes to issues like sexism and racism I always assume that the relatively egalitarian discourse that dominates ‘official culture’ is actually the minority position.
Try openly expressing a non-egalitarian position in public and you’ll see pretty quickly in which direction the wind blows.
I have a hard time not taking this as an example of the way certain people need me to be ‘bad.’ I wasn’t ‘caught’ sock-puppeting, I admitted it after a very short time because I felt like a goof.
I’m such a bad guy I can’t even bring myself to sock puppet! What an asshole…
ACM is too precious to be a product of my meagre imagination.
Meh. Everyone has likely been a sock puppet at some point, if only to necro threads they want discussed.
It’s more the idea that both of you spilled so many pixels going at it there had to be an underlying motivation.
The more important thing to take away is this is a good opportunity to pimp your shit, so to speak, by tying TPB posts back to the books more.
Scott wrote:
“meagre imagination”
False modesty! A great example of weaponizing humility.
I don’t really believe that ACM is ‘in cahoots’ or anything even remotely similar.
I also wanted to let you know that your initial post was very helpful in clarifying some issues I had while trying to understand how Kellhus fits into the second trilogy.
I think Theo just likes fucking with you guys and most other liberals attempting to juggle competing ideals.
Perspicacious indeed. I cannot even begin to describe how much fun it has been going through Delavagus’s skepticism posts and counting the knots into which he ties himself. At times, it almost seems as if he hasn’t even read Sextus Empiricus.
I suspect more liberals will adopt his ideas on immigration to an extent, if the institution of amnesty policies leads to major upswing in conservative values voters.
The historical pattern suggests they will, but it’s much more likely the jobs and crime issues than the horror of seeing blacks, Muslims, and Hispanics voting against gay marriage. The Greeks are generally more left-wing than most folks here, and they’re rapidly turning towards the Golden Dawn. Europe has already seen violent armed attacks on immigrant settlements everywhere from Hungary to the south of Italy; I’ve even heard of non-German speakers being beaten up in Zurich.
As easy as it is to poke holes in and lampoon Vox’s ideas
Sure, Scott. You’ve been doing so very effectively in that debate that you ducked.
I think shaming tactics, for all their power back when sexism and racism where actually explicitly institutionalized, are almost entirely counterproductive now.
I agree, although less so with your explanation. The main reason is that when a generation has been subject to shaming for their entire lives, often for their mere existence, a powerful immunity is built up. Now the would-be shamers get openly mocked and laughed at. And, of course, it’s always going to be a challenge to successfully shame anyone in a society where celebrities become famous by having vibrant Americans urinate on them. Which leads to the inevitable question: is it raciss for a woman to refuse to let a black man urinate on her?
But the legacy media’s loss of central communication control surely has played a role too, that is true.
Which debate is that? The one where you use questionable theoretical claims to immunize your questionable theoretical claims from basic questions? Or the one where you rely on the superiority of your method to argue the superiority of your method to scientific method?
I don’t think you need my help. My argument is simply that you’re talking out of your ass like the rest of us. All you have to do is keep talking.
My argument is simply that you’re talking out of your ass like the rest of us.
But if all that comes out is truth, what’s the problem?
The reliability of any given ass is inversely proportional to the degree it thinks it shits truth.
It is an uncomfortable fact of life that we need to deal with truth when we find it. We can’t simply wish it away because it comes from a despicable person we hate. It is incumbent upon us to judge the veracity of each belief on its merits, without reference to where it came from. It’s wrong to dismiss a belief merely because the person who offers it thinks highly of himself. You seem to be using human fallibility to justify holding onto your current positions.
You also don’t seem to think that I or Vox or anyone else in the world accepts that they could be wrong. Of course I accept that I could be wrong. In fact, I take my fallibility seriously and look to undermine my own beliefs to make sure they are valid. If you present me with a compelling argument that refutes what I believe, of course I will change my beliefs. Nothing would make me happier than to move closer to truth. But the fact is you have not yet done anything of the sort. Arguing that any of my beliefs could be wrong is not an argument that any particular one is wrong. As for Vox, there is a big difference between saying “I will not accept a sound refutation of my beliefs” and “I predict that you will not be able to offer a sound refutation of my beliefs” Vox’s point is always the latter, never the former.
Further, I do accept that I could sexually abuse, torture or murder given the right circumstances. I am not ignorant of the copious examples in current scientific research and throughout history of humans like me doing exactly that. But I do everything I can to prevent that from happening and hope it never does. That’s the correct response to fallibility, not to throw up our hands and wallow in self-pity
I’m sorry. Where was it that Vox bit the cognitive psychological bullet? As soon as he acknowledges the science of human cognition (which forced me to exhaustively rethink my old socialist dogmatism), then we are off to the races, debate-wise.
Are you arguing that learning about the science of human cognition will inevitably force one to exhaustively rethink one’s old dogmatism? And that, further, not finding this science mind-blowing is evidence that you haven’t really understood it?
“Mind blowing”? Not at all. It actually makes tragic sense. Why do you think humanity has failed to come up with anything approaching the kind of consensus you find in the sciences regarding metaphysical and moral issues?
I’m not sure what metaphysical consensus has to do with what we are talking about. For that matter, I’m not sure why acknowledging the science of cognition is relevant either.
There’s no consensus on these issues because no one agrees. Now why is that?
I take my fallibility seriously and look to undermine my own beliefs to make sure they are valid.
Do you think your attempts to undermine them will prove them valid, whenever you make such attempts?
Only when I’m doing mathematics.
Of course in many cases it’s impossible to deductively prove my beliefs, but I can assess whether a multitude of objections actually refute them and whether they remain consistent with the evidence. In particular, I can anticipate your arguments and see I’d they hold water.
But saying a belief could be wrong is completely uninformative as to whether it actually is right or wrong.
Further, just because humans are often wrong, does not imply that they are always wrong. Sometimes, people really are correct and you will make a fool of yourself preening about how human cognition invalidates their conclusions, somehow turning truth into falsity.
I can assess whether…
Have you tried assessing this belief that you can assess? Indeed, is that possible?
It’s like a forked road, I guess – one way is a rabbit hole, the other is ‘of course I can!’
But saying a belief could be wrong is completely uninformative as to whether it actually is right or wrong.
Aye. Leaves us in an uncomfortable position, doesn’t it?
Sometimes, people really are correct and you will make a fool of yourself preening about…
I like how there’s this slipping moment where we go from intellectual articulations about examining any stated belief, to ‘make a fool of yourself‘.
I’m not sure human cognition invalidates various conclusions. I think it does. I could be wrong. There, now I’m doubtful about that you can’t, just as a hypothetical, use a certainty to ascribe to me to distract from a certainty on your part. Is that a potential truth worth examining, regardless your views on the other person?
Leaves us in an uncomfortable position, doesn’t it?
No, it makes you uncomfortable. I’m perfectly comfortable admitting that some of my beliefs may be wrong. I’m willing to be held accountable for my wrong beliefs. I’m comfortable having “knowledge in a weak sense” as some have put it. My goal is to accumulate true beliefs, whether or not I can “really know” them according to your intuition of knowledge.
It is you who have an overly restrictive concept of knowledge and then assume that others constrict themselves in the same way. It’s you who find uncertainty discomforting and probably fear it. But fear is not an argument.
Huh? Why should I assume that you are any more exempt from known biases (let alone those yet to be discovered) than anyone else? Why should you assume you are? Should we not take what science has learned regarding human bias and irrationality into account when assessing our beliefs and others?
When it comes to theoretical knowledge, the human track record outside the sciences is pretty dismal: do you not agree? Everybody can’t be right!
Bakker, your point is a non sequitur. I never claimed to ignore my bias and I don’t believe I am exempt from bias. I just take that into account by continually stopping to reconsider my beliefs, knowing that sometimes my TPB surreptitiously adds some wrong ones. But my biases don’t incapacitate me in my goal to find truth, or to put it another way, to be “less wrong” over time.
You are concerned with “moral certainty”. But the problem isn’t certainty, it’s being wrong. Hitler’s problem wasn’t his certainty, it’s that he wanted to murder millions of people . On the flip side, there are situations where we are right but uncertain and let terrible things happen; we need more conviction in those situations.
I agree that we should match our certainty to the strength of our conclusions and perhaps we are prone to always overestimate. But the answer is to point out exactly when this happens, so that we can correct the error. You approach does not help us identify specific errors as they occur at all, and so it does not help us be “less wrong”
You seem to be equivocating ‘being wrong,’ here. Hitler’s desire is not factually wrong about anything, though it is clearly morally wrong. I’m assuming what you wanted to say was that he thought that it was a fact that Jews deserve to be exterminated, and that the real problem was that he was factually wrong (as well as morally wrong). Being certain wasn’t the problem: being certain about something false was the problem.
Is this what you’re trying to say?
Being certain wasn’t the problem: being certain about something false was the problem. Is this what you’re trying to say?
No, murdering millions of people is wrong no matter whether you feel very confident in yourself that it’s justified or whether you do it reluctantly because you are unsure. Your certainty has no impact on whether what you are doing is right or wrong.
So you were equivocating between the moral and the epistemic sense of wrong. I’m not sure I can make much sense of your argument, then.
Let’s try a different tack: Does belief (implicit or explicit) have anything to do with your actions (regardless of whether they are morally right or wrong)?
Hitler’s desire is not factually wrong about anything, though it is clearly morally wrong.
It depends on what you believe Hitler was right/wrong about. If you think, as some people do, that Hitler was motivated to do what he did by his conviction that the international Jewry was bent on destroying Germany… then you either have to admit that Hitler was wrong in this belief of his, or you have to admit that he acted in legitimate self defense.
Desire has no propositional content.
I think by and large, subtracting the rhetoric around race as a causal factor, Vox offers a proposition to the risk -averse. Limit immigration as a cautionary measure.
The issue is that the liberal (as used in the US) position doesn’t seem to offer a viable counterclaim until you get to the rhetoric about deporting all immigrants to prevent some sort of race war.
Even the multicultural liberal position attempting to unite people of different races begins to walk on thin ice. Why should immigrants that have traditionally been accepted side with groups that don’t like them either and thus risk their own positions?
This again is why aspects of Vox’s rhetoric have so much weight, they speak to real goal of security for way of life and physical safety, whereas extremely liberal persons dismissive of belief yet advocating multiculturalism actually poison the well for those on the left seeking some kind of genuine political inroads.
Liberalism rooted in principles rather than practicality, IMO, plays into Vox’s hands far more than a woman reviewing SFF books does.
Appealing to some pie-in-the-sky ideas about tolerance and expanding the American/Western dream won’t win moderates and center-rightists, in fact it possibly encourages assimilated immigrants to protect their stake against backlash.
However, the removal of women’s suffrage is one of those things I suspect gets championed by men not using their real names on the internet nursing wounds of rejection while jerking off to wish-fulfillment porn. I suppose that’s ad hominem but I’m calling it like I see it.
You know, there’s a morbid part of me that actually wishes I had time to follow your ‘dissections’ of my posts. I read the first two. I can only imagine what nonsense you’re saying now, to conclude that ‘it’s as though I’ve never read Sextus’ — unlike you, who (as I see from other posts made here) have been boning up on Wikipedia articles and an obscure, out-of-date (but free online!) commentary from 1899! (And yet somehow, despite consulting such impeccable secondary sources, you still can’t distinguish Pyrrhonism and negative dogmatism. Shocking!)
Sigh. All of this would be amusing if it weren’t so depressing, and depressing if it weren’t so amusing. As it is, it’s just… lame.
“The reliability of any given ass is inversely proportional to the degree it thinks it shits truth.”
BWAHAHAHAHAH! Aphorism of the Day number 3.
I just recently got a Twitter account and started following Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yesterday he tweeted something that I chuckled at and could imagine as an Aphorism of the Day.
“FYI: Who’s in charge? More bacteria live & work in one centimeter of your lower colon than the sum of all humans ever born. To those bacteria, humans are simply an anaerobic vessel of fecal matter. Disturb them & they’ll remind you who you work for.”
I love Tyson… He’s probably my favourite nerd! And a crazy good communicator.
Which debate is that? The one where you use questionable theoretical claims to immunize your questionable theoretical claims from basic questions? Or the one where you rely on the superiority of your method to argue the superiority of your method to scientific method?
And yet still logically sounder and more convincing than your faux skepticism, which you quite clearly don’t even properly grasp. I was, of course, referring to the debate that you cowardly ducked. As I said previously, you’re not even in the game.
My argument is simply that you’re talking out of your ass like the rest of us.
Yes, I know. And your argument is not only wrong, but reveals that you don’t even understand skepticism.
As for Vox, there is a big difference between saying “I will not accept a sound refutation of my beliefs” and “I predict that you will not be able to offer a sound refutation of my beliefs” Vox’s point is always the latter, never the former.
Precisely. Scott and others can’t even offer a sound basis for their own beliefs. I’m not at all concerned about them being able to refute mine, especially being able to do so while exclusively utilizing my beliefs, convictions, and assumptions. That’s why I don’t accuse you of hypocrisy, Scott. You’re not the hypocrite you profess to be, you’re actually a charlatan.
Liberalism rooted in principles rather than practicality, IMO, plays into Vox’s hands far more than a woman reviewing SFF books does.
Yes, very much so, especially liberalism rooted in intrinsically contradictory principles. It’s amusing to whack liberals heads around by getting them to agree with the fundamental right to free association, then with the vital need to ban discrimination. Or at least, it would be amusing if it wasn’t so ludicrously easy.
And what is ‘faux’ about my skepticism?
so, there’s this:
“I chose patriarchy to explore and critique premodern chauvinism because I knew it would continually cut against the reader’s own baseline moral appraisals.”
let’s imagine instead that Bakker had chosen racism, rather than patriarchy.
in this world, there is no High Holy Zeum because it was so easily overthrown because the Zeumi never developed sorcery comparable to that of the Three Seas and were thus easily eradicated and/or enslaved, but hey, no muss, no fuss, since the Zeumi in this Earwa are also spiritually inferior to the Ketyai and Norsirai.
(the fact that they look like Africans in our world is just for, ahem, “historical accuracy”).
something tells me that patriarchy was the easy choice as a Narrative Vehicle for the Big Ideas, given this alternative, no? such shameless narrative cowardice….tsk tsk.
moving on…
i think the funny thing about the notion of “historical accuracy” and the debates concerning it is the absence of the issue of the “belief suspension”, and what that means for various readers.
people wonder why fictive women must suffer for the sake of “realism”. i think it has less to do with “historical” realism, per se, and more with the demands of under-the-hood wargaming, particularly given the origins of Earwa noted by Bakker himself.
i think the realism that fundamentally matters has to do with violence, and that’s what’s essential to “genre”, and explains much of the “quasi-medieval” choices for fantasy – it’s “physical/physiological” realism.
generally speaking, fantasy promises a certain kind of violence (i.e., the swords and sorcery kind). for fantasy to be “dark” or “gritty”, there also has to be a certain primacy of violence. to the extent that violence has primacy, the relative agency of women, relative to men, will also suffer, unless the fantasy world rewrites the actual physiological differences between men and women in terms of physical strength. but then it’s not humans, as we know them, merely subject to different material laws (i.e., those allowing sorcery).
of course, it’s possible to introduce or reverse precisely this dynamic in fantasy, with the obvious example being the (inhuman) Drow. but if the commitment to realism has violence at its heart, a 12 year old girl successfully fighting off trained adults has a different resonance. in most ‘hard’ fantasy, harry potter would have been gutted like a fish very early on, and for not much money.
so, i think many of the issues of “realism” really turn on the extent to which readers can predict the outcomes of violent conflicts in the context of the narrative.
for many (and i suspect, for men in particular), having to suspend belief about differences in physical strength between male and female characters would be a bridge too far. it would seem “unrealistic” in a very fundamental way. for proof of the general idea that predicting fight outcomes matters, i submit every conversation ever about “who could beat who in a fight” when the fighters are based on a work of fiction.
anyone who finds this aspect of the Malazan Book of the Fallen (i.e., the inability to assess how physical danger should inform dramatic tension) disconcerting will be familiar with this idea.
of course, some will (and have) argue(d) that this is the essence of neckbeardedness. perhaps. “it’s FANTASY. it’s not our world.” but still, the reader has to have some sense of what is or isn’t possible, and the rules can’t seem to change too freely. one could and should ask to what extent real misogyny and gender discrimination derive from or are permitted by the ineradicable physical facts related to gender. i recommend pandagon.net for feminist discussions of the appeal of ‘grimdarkness’ in fiction, given the fact that in an ideal world, physical disparities between genders would matter less and less as the likelihood of actual violence decreases in society.
back to the hacking and slashing, though, similar conditions apply to technology – it’s critical that there’s only a single Heron Spear. otherwise, it’d be, “well, much as we hate the rape aliens, lasers beat swords anyday and everyday, and besides, the Quya have turned on us and started ranting about how they can’t remember shit, so…game over.” likewise, if Kellhus lacked his Dunyain fighting prowess, none of his “truths” would matter because eventually someone stronger would knock all the teeth out of his pretty mouth. “smart guy, sure, but kind of a pussy, amirite?” guns and equalizing, but distancing in the context of violence (think indiana jones nonchalantly shooting the guy with the whip). if Cnaiur could have killed Kellhus at any time, it would have been a vastly different series.
of course, metaphysics is warped in service of violence (e.g., Gnostic shop-wrecking). physics can be bent in the proper service of genre (responses to “that dragon is far too big too fly” are more or less “SHUT. UP. NOW.”).
will a world view conditioned on the primacy of physical violence (and all that entails) select for a male readership? evidently. i understand the Big Ideas, and have no trouble identifying them in the text, so i am more likely to take Bakker at his word when he says what his project is, since that’s what i would have said absent having ever read this blog. really – the critique is there, and (i had thought) hard to miss. i enjoyed the original post because it confirmed that i’m “getting it”.
however, if i’m being honest, that’s not really what i like most about PON and T2ndA. i genuinely like Bakker’s take on spectacular, otherworldly violence. the philosophical gloss makes it more ‘intellectually defensible’, let’s say (and Bakker seems consumed by the need to defend his works in this regard). it adds to the enjoyment, and i do like some characters, blah blah blah. but if i want to read Haidt or Kahneman (and i do), i buy their books, and not because i heard about them on TPB.
still, the pleasure of narrative and genre (THIS genre) is different.
so, if i’m being honest, i’m here for the Gnosis, not the Gnostics.
‘Cuz Drusas Achamian makes Gandalf look like fucking Orko.
(and so does Serwa, btw).
(the fact that they look like Africans in our world is just for, ahem, “historical accuracy”).
something tells me that patriarchy was the easy choice as a Narrative Vehicle for the Big Ideas, given this alternative, no?
i think the funny thing about the notion of “historical accuracy” and the debates concerning it is the absence of the issue of the “belief suspension”, and what that means for various readers.
people wonder why fictive women must suffer for the sake of “realism”. i don’t think it has anything to do with “historical” realism, per se, as some people claim.
i think the realism that fundamentally matters has to do with violence, and that’s what’s essential to “genre”, and explains much of the “quasi-medieval” choices for fantasy.
it’s “physical/physiological” realism. generally speaking, fantasy promises a certain kind of violence (i.e., the swords and sorcery kind). for fantasy to be “dark” or “gritty”, there has to be a certain primacy of violence. to the extent that violence has primacy, the relative agency of women, relative to men, will also suffer, unless the fantasy world rewrites the actual physiological differences between men and women in terms of physical strength. but then it’s not humans, as we know them, subject to different material laws (i.e., those allowing sorcery).
so, i think many of the issues of “realism” really turn on the extent to which readers can predict the outcomes of violent conflicts, and for many, having to suspend belief about differences in physical strength between male and female characters would be a bridge too far. it would seem “unrealistic” in a very fundamental way. for proof of the general idea that predicting fight outcomes matters, i submit every conversation ever about “who could beat who in a fight” when the fighters are based on a work of fiction.
similar conditions apply to technology – it’s critical that there’s only a single Heron Spear. otherwise, it’d be, “well, much as we hate the rape aliens, lasers beat swords anyday and everyday, and besides, the Quya have turned on us and started ranting about how they can’t remember shit, so…game over.” likewise, if Kellhus lacked his Dunyain fighting prowess, none of his “truths” would matter because eventually someone stronger would knock all the teeth out of his pretty mouth. “smart guy, sure, but kind of a pussy, amirite?”
that’s bedrock. metaphysics is warped in service of violence (e.g., Gnostic shop-wrecking). physics can be bent in the service of genre (responses to “that dragon is far too big too fly” are more or less “SHUT. UP. NOW.”), but only so far. will that emphasis select for a male readership? evidently.
i understand the Big Ideas, and have no trouble identifying them in the text, so i am more likely to take Bakker at his word when he says what his project is, since that’s what i would have said absent this blog.
but the critical thing, for me, about genre is what is promises the reader and whether it delivers.
Patriarchy was the obvious choice on a number of different levels. The series is all about the darknesses that come before. What kind of knob would I be writing a series based on the ways our agency is compromised by desire and not actually engaging that desire. If I had used race rather than gender as my primary vehicle my ass probably would be in jail right now!
Very cool post, ohlo. You should give in to the will to rant more often!
heh.
i was just teasing about your “cowardice” vis a vis the swapping racism for patriarchy idea – though i will say that having framed it that way, it does help me understand the reactions of some readers better, and to empathize. i certainly take your point about desire and its function in PON/T2ndA. you joke about committing commercial suicide, but given the obvious alternative, you’re half-assing it.
i do think that it’s interesting trying to clarify what is essential to our notions of gender, and what is essential to the “realism” of different types of fantasy with respect to gender.
i would also add that your defense that you think women are generally more competent/virtuous/etc. than men is doomed to failure, since many feminists are such adamant Blank Slatists that they will reject any notion that men and women differ in any essential way other than who can probably carry more slates. ironically, however, talent for slate-carrying and mace-wielding are not unrelated, which creates the odd tension for ‘realistic’ fantasy i was trying to highlight.
there’s also the issue of social respectability – Tolkien is an ‘acceptable’ antecedent in popular culture (particularly due to the commercial success of the film franchise), and often cited, but it’s insane to pretend that D&D is not the beating black heart of much fantasy. for example, i first heard about Glen Cook while reading a review of The Black Company in Dragon magazine. so, credit where credit is due (i.e., i fucking love that series; c.f. Goblin).
finally, i didn’t think that i was ranting (at least, not THIS time). i’ve been thinking about these issues since they keep cropping up (in popular media, largely due to HBO’s Game of Thrones). the urge to tell the people heaping white (male) guilt on what is already a guilty pleasure to fuck right off is strong, whether or not its justified.
i also felt that the points being made about ‘historical accuracy’ missed the mark, at least for me as a reader, but that there was a point to be made somewhere. a very, very nerdy point, as it happens.
“‘Cuz Drusas Achamian makes Gandalf look like fucking Orko. ”
That’s awesome.
With the exception of the encouter with the Balrog, I never really got the impression that Gandalf was any kind of threat.
I remebmer having fantasy deathmatch discussions with friends (you know the who would win in a fight) and since I was (and still am) a fan of David & Leigh Eddings, I would always want to pit Gandalf against Belgarath or Polgara. In my mind, Belgarath or Polgara would wipe the floor with Gandalf.
“if i want to read Haidt or Kahneman (and i do), i buy their books, and not because i heard about them on TPB. ”
This does not generalize well to the rest of us.
Just sayin’.
fair point.
oops – copy and paste error. previous post is doubled up.
why no Preview, eh?
DORP. sorry.
Just thought I’d let you guys know that Jonathan Haidt is going to be the guest on the Colbert Report tonight.
Ochlo, you know, I just had this weird idea (Scott, feel free to borrow it, since I can only write code anyway 😉 ) for a fantasy setting – the twist being that “srs magick” is only available to women, yet only through, how to put this in a politically correct manner…cough-cough…participating in highly unconventional sexual activities as submissives. On one hand, she has to go through stuff that would make kink.com folks raise an eyebrow, on the other hand, for a limited time, she essentially becomes something like D&D high-level necromancer, but with a serious Lovecraft bend, because everybody likes a Lovecraft bend to magical stuff (think a cupful of any epic necromancer mixed with two tablespoons of some fancy alienist-stuff… and half-cup of HPL’s Asenath Waite Derby/Ephraim Waite, because Waite is teh awesome ;)).
Now that should take gender and power dynamics and tie them into a really, really fucked up knot.
Watching critics untangle that knot and argue about whether it is a misogynistic knot, misandrystic knot, or a clever metaphor for how patriarchy comes back to haunt men or something, would be absolutely hilarious. It’s worth writing for “ze lulz” alone (too bad I have literary skills of a dead snail)
“Ochlo, you know, I just had this weird idea (Scott, feel free to borrow it, since I can only write code anyway ) for a fantasy setting – the twist being that “srs magick” is only available to women, yet only through, how to put this in a politically correct manner…cough-cough…participating in highly unconventional sexual activities as submissives.”
This somewhat reminds me of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series of books. You read them?
Nope, didn’t read them, but now I probably will.
Too cool for me to even think of stealing! Fuck the code, write the bitch, then take the heat off me for a while.
Too cool for me to even think of stealing! Fuck the code, write the bitch, then take the heat off me for a while.
Hahahaha
That will be extremely hard. I cannot into good prose and barely grok characterization.
Come on Scott, “steal” this, but hmmm…perhaps you should take a female co-author for this one, preferably someone kinky…then you’ll be able to, you know ;), go exploring in the further regions of experience 😉 while completely honestly telling your wife that “you are merely doing research for a book” (if this joke was too crass and tasteless, I preemptively beg pardon)
And what is ‘faux’ about my skepticism?
That’s a fair question. I can count seven reasons right off the bat, but it’s hardly a comprehensive list.
1. Your skepticism predominantly runs in one direction. This indicates that you aren’t actually a skeptic, you are merely using skeptical tactics as a tool in service to your dogma, your very conventional left-liberal dogma. When you talk about the “need” to challenge those who are certain of various things and the danger their certainty presents, you openly demonstrate your anti-skepticism.
2. You do not construct your arguments on the basis of what other people hold to be true. For example, when you have taken exception to what I have written, you do not exclusively utilize my beliefs, convictions, and assumptions, but instead attempt to criticize them on the basis of your own first-order beliefs. Again, you’re showing that you are a dogmatist, using dogmatic dialectic, not a skeptic using skeptical dialectic.
3. You make absolutely no attempt to reach suspension of judgment. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact, you repeatedly attempt to judge your interlocutors and place yourself in an assumed position of superiority vis-a-vis them. I presume this is why you fear to engage in an actual debate, as opposed to your usual sniping and posturing.
4. You do not place competing dogmas in opposition to each other, but rather, attempt to change the discussion to a nonsensical one concerning second-order beliefs. You don’t seem to understand that simply asking “why?” and “but how do you know that you know?” is a childish tactic, not a skeptical one.
5. You observably possess little imperturbability or tranquility. By this metric, even I am far more of a skeptic than you will ever be. I can only think of a few authors who are more sensitive and more prone to getting butthurt than you are.
6. You assent to many things that are unknown. Your confessed faith in science, for example, is profoundly unskeptical.
7. You do not pay any observable heed to nature or the tradition of laws and customs. In fact, you even use your faux skepticism as an excuse to attack traditional laws and customs as well as those who hold to them.
Pardone moi, but could you expand on No 7 ? Are skeptics really obliged to respect “nature” ? ~__^
I’m a skeptical naturalist. Have been for quite some time now.
Here’s a snippet from an old post, intentionally meant to minimize the wank:
This summary suggests to me a different way to frame some of your disagreements with Vox. You appear to be a scientific empiricist, whereas Vox, if I am reading between the lines correctly, is a kind of pragmatist.
Vox is ultimately not as concerned as to whether his claims are precisely, empirically verifiable, but cares first and foremost about whether they function effectively, i.e. whether they are ‘what it is better to believe,’ in the pragmatist’s sense of truth. Even his justification for Christianity seems to follow this line of argument. You, on the other hand, are committed to accepting empirically, scientifically confirmed conclusions and those alone as knowledge, even if this puts you at a strategic disadvantage. That is, even if the resulting beliefs prove harmful in practice. The mere fact that a belief ‘works’ means nothing to you at all, and may in a social context even be a sign of its falsehood (because of our ever-present cognitive biases) whereas to Vox, its efficacy is the main thing.
So in Vox’s realm, your elaborate, but very specific, skepticism comes off as self-defeating and even nonsensical. In your realm, his attempt to justify his beliefs in part on the basis of his own personal success seems equally nonsensical–both pompous and beside the point. Because of this disconnect, the two of you are constantly talking past each other. However I do think you are wrong to write off Vox as dogmatic. He’s opposed to you in a much more interesting fashion.
Also, I think calling yourself a skeptic can be somewhat misleading given your above summary. Correct me if I’ve misinterpreted one of you…
Not in any philosophical sense of pragmatism that I’m familiar with! I’d be amazed if he had any theory of meaning, let alone a pragmatic one.
He doesn’t have the foggiest idea of my position so far, so I’m not sure how I could appear one way or the other. Self-defeating? He doesn’t even understand the traditional counterarguments against skepticism, let alone my mitigated version. For me the question is quite simply what kinds of claims should we commit to in what way. Pragmatic considerations predominate the less scientific those claims become.
I actually have a genuine critic of skepticism lined up for a guest blog in a few weeks time – one of the smartest guys I know, and he disagrees with me on just about everything philosophically. Trust me, you’ll see the difference pretty damn quick. This isn’t to say that Vox can’t master the arguments or the literature – I’m sure he can – only that right now the disjunct between what he thinks he understands and what he actually understands is… well, embarrassing.
It is so obvious as hardly to require mentioning (one would think!) that the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus is not the only philosophical (or metaphilosophical) view that falls under the category ‘skepticism’!
Scott has never claimed to be a Pyrrhonian in the ancient mode. That doesn’t mean he’s not a ‘skeptic.’ Was Hume a skeptic? Was Montaigne? How about Nietzsche? Or for that matter, were the Academic skeptics skeptics? What about the Socrates of the early dialogues? Or the Sophists? Or Pyrrho himself, who was evidently NOT a Sextan skeptic?
Again, Vox, you seem to have made absolutely no effort whatsoever to understand the position you’re denouncing. That, or you’re just not very bright. I think Socrates, via Katja Vogt, has diagnosed you perfectly: you suffer from the ignorance that is borne of self-aggrandizing modes of thought.
It is so obvious as hardly to require mentioning (one would think!) that the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus is not the only philosophical (or metaphilosophical) view that falls under the category ‘skepticism’!
Obviously. I never claimed otherwise. That’s precisely why I was distinguishing between the terms “Sceptic” and “skeptic” in my critiques of your two posts.
Scott has never claimed to be a Pyrrhonian in the ancient mode. That doesn’t mean he’s not a ‘skeptic.’ Was Hume a skeptic? Was Montaigne? How about Nietzsche? Or for that matter, were the Academic skeptics skeptics? What about the Socrates of the early dialogues? Or the Sophists? Or Pyrrho himself, who was evidently NOT a Sextan skeptic?
I’m a little surprised that after seeing the degree of detail into which I am willing to go in analyzing your two posts on ancient skepticism, you still haven’t understood the slow brutality of my method. All we have established so far is that Scott is not a Pyrrhonian Sceptic, which you apparently are quite willing to admit. While my contention is that he is not a skeptic at all, I don’t pretend to have proven that… yet. We could certainly examine whether he is a skeptic in the mode of Hume, Nietzsche, the Academy skeptics, the early Socrates, or the Sophists, but based on Scott’s statement of his dogma here in this thread, we no longer need to.
However, it is probably appropriate to mention that eight months ago, in our discussion on Scott’s literary moralblindness, I did note the distinct stench of Nietzsche in his “assumption of the superiority of his own sophistication and moral courage.”
Again, Vox, you seem to have made absolutely no effort whatsoever to understand the position you’re denouncing.
First, this is amusing considering that we’re discussing someone whose massive misunderstandings of me and my positions is so far off-base that even people here, who are not VP readers, have begun to comment on them. Second, it’s absolutely absurd to say that I have made no effort whatsoever to understand the positions being expressed here. I not only understand your positions on ancient skepticism very well, I have identified no less than eight easily confirmed errors you made in your defense of Pyrrhonism.
Since Scott only answers questions with great reluctance, of course my understanding of his position is imperfect. So far, we know he is, unlike you and Montaigne, not a Pyrrhonian Sceptic. And, in fact, my suspicions were correct and despite his constant posturing about uncertainty, Scott is a dogmatist despite his affectations of uncertainty. He is precisely, admittedly, the faux skeptic I accused him of being.
“The fact is, I am dogmatic. I do have unwavering faith in a set of claims. I may affect suspicion of them, but FAPP, I use them as apodictic truths.”
Are skeptics really obliged to respect “nature” ?
Yes, in their daily lives. I’ll quote the summary from the edition on Gutenberg as it is more straightforward than Sextus’s own words, but you can find both here.
Phenomena are the criteria according to which the Sceptic orders his daily life, as he cannot be entirely inactive, and they affect life in four different ways. They constitute the guidance of nature, the impulse of feeling; they give rise to the traditions of customs and laws, and make the teaching of the arts important. According to the tradition of laws and customs, piety is a good in daily life, but it is not in itself an abstract good…. the Sceptic tried to avoid inconsistency in this respect, by separating his philosophy from his theory of life. His philosophy controlled his opinions, and his life was governed by phenomena.
Scott abuses the skeptical philosophy by applying it inappropriately. He openly embraces his inconsistency as he attempts to remove the separation between his philosophy and his theory of life in order to attack phenomena, such as traditions of customs and laws, using his philosophy as a weapon. A true skeptic would never say that the traditional custom of female genital mutilation was evil and must be stopped, but would rather respect it as a good in daily life while refusing to regard it as an abstract good.
Moreover, in considering his own opinion on it, he would EXCLUSIVELY utilize the beliefs and assumptions of the genital mutilators, he would not make use of competing first order beliefs in forming his own opinion, much less use them to attack the custom.
Wait, we’re still going on about Pyrronism and the Greek Skeptics ? I’m not sure Scott ever claimed to be one of those (though I admittedly I didn’t backtrack though the entirety of argument history strewn across no less than two blogs)
All of Vox’s comments here are an object lesson: a little philosophy is a dangerous thing!
The link to SEXTUS EMPIRICUS AND GREEK SCEPTICISM on Gutenberg.
Oh my. Patrick’s book from 1899. How cute.
Oh my. Patrick’s book from 1899. How cute.
Not only are you an intellectually dishonest and inept defender of Pyrrhonism, you’re simply a bad Sceptic.
It is not fitting for the Sceptic to dispute about words….
Besides, you were already busted on your attempt to pull a fast one on “tranquility of soul” by people who know ancient Greek much better than you do.
Wait, we’re still going on about Pyrronism and the Greek Skeptics ? I’m not sure Scott ever claimed to be one of those
Whether he claims to be a Pyrrhonian or not, the tropes of the Sceptical School is the foundation of most of his writing on the subject of certainty. This Wikipedia entry on philosophical skepticism should sound familiar.
“We are all skeptical of some things, especially since doubt and opposition are not always clearly distinguished. Philosophical skepticism, however, is an old movement with many variations, and contrasts with the view that at least one thing is certain, but if by being certain we mean absolute or unconditional certainty, then it is doubtful if it is rational to claim to be certain about anything….
Philosophical skepticism is distinguished from methodological skepticism in that philosophical skepticism is an approach that denies the possibility of certainty in knowledge, whereas methodological skepticism is an approach that subjects all knowledge claims to scrutiny with the goal of sorting out true from false claims.”
It should be abundantly clear that Scott attempts to posture as a philosophical skeptic, but completely fails to abide by most of the constraints intrinsically required of one. I am a methodological skeptic. Scott, on the other hand, is a pretend philosophical skeptic.
I don’t know of anyone here who has used skepticism in such a way as “we cannot know for sure that water boils at 100 deg.” If that is actually true, nobody here really gives a damn. As far as I now it’s usually limited to categories of moral certainty and things like that, where skepticism may really could have an impact for the better. There’s the Hitler example and the Breivik example. What good might have come if these men had continued to second guess themselves and not convinced themselves they were sure of what they believed?
Maybe you’re generalizing a little too much, in which case I can see why a lot of what’s been said might seem hypocritical. True, a lot of people here are probably to the left of center, which by Phrrhonism standards is probably an off limits opinion. Oh well.
There’s the Hitler example and the Breivik example. What good might have come if these men had continued to second guess themselves and not convinced themselves they were sure of what they believed?
There’s also the transatlantic slave trade, ending of, example. What might have happened if the British weren’t so sure of its immorality?
You’re assuming that, on balance, inaction is good and action is evil.
But the present society, which is, I presume, more or less in accordance with your beliefs, has required quite an amount of action to bring about. It’s also a very fragile enterprise and requires constant action to maintain.
You’re assuming that, on balance, inaction is good and action is evil.
It’s funny just how far that maxim can get you, although a discussion like this does require a certain amount of bilateral charity. I think we can all agree that torturing small animals is wrong and that we should all be certain about it. But getting back to the point, there would have never been a need to end slavery had it never started, and the same type of observation can be applied to all manner of human evil. To reiterate, it’s an interesting hypothetical to think just how much better the world would have been (and of course, would be) had we walked back a lot of certainty.
Yes, in principle, but you’re still assuming. You’re assuming that the natural state of the world is good (by your measures). And it isn’t. Action is required to make it good. Inaction will leave it evil (again, by your measures.)
These positive examples of certainty always seem to require, to be positive, some prior example of negative certainty. Eg, Hitler being certain about his actions. Dudes being certain slavery is cool to enact.
Your certainty is only hot when – someone has had some very nasty (from our perspective) certainty under their belt.
It reminds me of lions in a pride – they don’t hunt, they just take from the females kills. All they do is ostensibly fend off males, solitary ones or from other prides. Just a circular logic. Utterly pointless except under the pretence of ‘the exterior threat’. Perhaps nature slipping into monomania. More so.
You’re assuming that the natural state of the world is good (by your measures). And it isn’t.
Really? Do saber tooth tigers leap out at people at every corner? Immunologically I’d agree there are issues (and really do we need some certain leader to fight that battle, or nerds in a lab?). But otherwise no, the world doesn’t seem bad – what seems bad is us. The goal of getting rid of that is the goal of taking few actions, not more.
These positive examples of certainty always seem to require, to be positive, some prior example of negative certainty.
No. Saving someone’s life doesn’t need to involve prior certainty. It can involve prior uncertainty on that someone’s part, or it can involve nothing at all in the (un)certainty department. The primary cause of death is not other people.
Do saber tooth tigers leap out at people at every corner?
No, and not because of inaction.
But otherwise no, the world doesn’t seem bad…
It doesn’t seem bad at all. I admitted it:
But the present society, which is, I presume, more or less in accordance with your beliefs, has required quite an amount of action to bring about. It’s also a very fragile enterprise and requires constant action to maintain.
Quoting Wikipedia. Wow. You’re really doing your homework, huh? lol
The ‘philosophical skepticism’ described in that passage is NOT Pyrrhonism. In the very first sections of Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus characterizes Pyrrhonism in OPPOSITION to the view “that denies the possibility of certainty in knowledge.” Any such view is a form of negative dogmatism, not genuine (i.e., Pyrrhonian) skepticism.
Basically, those definitions boil down to this: ‘the philosophical skeptic is the fictional character who actually doubts all the things Descartes calls into question in the first two Meditations; the methodological skeptic is Descartes himself, who uses skepticism as a means to reveal the ‘indubitable foundations’ of knowledge (or anyone who uses skepticism as a dogmatic propadeutic).”
This ‘philosophical skeptic,’ then, is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER, the philosopher’s invented alter ego. Of course Scott isn’t one! No one is, or ever has been! But neither does he claim to be.
You simply don’t understand what you’re talking about, Vox.
I don’t know of anyone here who has used skepticism in such a way as “we cannot know for sure that water boils at 100 deg.” If that is actually true, nobody here really gives a damn.
That may be true. It’s also why you’re not a philosophical skeptic at all.
As far as I now it’s usually limited to categories of moral certainty and things like that, where skepticism may really could have an impact for the better.
That is precisely why I am both mocking you for your intellectual incoherence and condemning you for your intellectual dishonesty. There is absolutely no basis in skeptical philosophy for you to attempt to limit it to the realm of morality; the very idea that “skepticism may really have an impact for the better” on phenomena is itself intrinsically anti-skeptical! You’re admitting exactly what I accused Scott of doing: utilizing the pretense of skepticism in service of your own dogma.
There’s the Hitler example and the Breivik example. What good might have come if these men had continued to second guess themselves and not convinced themselves they were sure of what they believed?
Conversely, what if the Wehrmacht generals possessed more certainty, stopped second guessing themselves, and deposed Hitler before the Austrian Anschluss? That would have brought about precisely the same hypothetical good… never mind that preventing World War II and the Holocaust cannot be considered an abstract good in the first place. Now, do you see what I did there? That’s actual skepticism at work. Balancing two things opposed to each other and thus reaching suspension of judgment.
Philosophical skepticism isn’t something that you can simply apply here and there as you want to attack someone else’s beliefs. It’s a system, even an agōgē, if we are to believe Delavagus. What you and Scott are advocating here isn’t merely dogmatic, anti-skeptical, and incoherent, it’s dishonest and intellectually reprehensible.
Note, I responded to this on the post Vox made of this on his blog. Doubtless he won’t find my response satisfactory.
Young Zemo’s satisfaction is no easily earned. It sits on a peak, an obsidian spike rising like a middle finger from the center of an active volcano.
Doubtless he won’t find my response satisfactory.
I don’t. Nor should any self-professing skeptic. Or any individual conversant with the historical timeline of WWII-era events, for that matter. X simply cannot be contingent upon Y when X predates Y.
But the real problem is that you neither know nor understand the skeptical method, even though you profess to be a skeptic with regards to moral certainty. Your position is entirely unviable.
Tachyons refute causality young Zemo.
In most important news, some dude has been working on a Earwa wiki rather diligently:
http://princeofnothing.wikia.com/wiki/Special:WikiActivity
*an Earwa wiki….fuck, now Vox will claim my immigrant nature is harming both English and the interwebs….
Holy shit. You’re not kidding!
Toni Morrison: A retrospective.
“Still, even at 81, sporting both a new novel and a new hip, Morrison is as grand as she’s ever been. When we meet in her many-gabled house in the aptly named village of Grand View-on-Hudson, about 25 miles north of Manhattan, that bountiful woolen hair matches the lower half of a soft, enveloping sweater. Her face is polished in places and fissured in others, like the weathered stone of Mount Rushmore: the first black woman Nobelist, who’s lived long enough to speak to the first black president. Born only two years after Martin Luther King Jr., she’s a great-grandmother of assimilation—and she looks the part….”
Another mention of assimilation….hmmmm…..Perhaps Young Zemo comes from Earth 617 or 618, and is unfamiliar with the realities of 616? ;-P
Sorry, forgot link: http://nymag.com/news/features/toni-morrison-2012-5/
I’m already worked up into a fanboy frenzy over Avengers and you keep throwing out these awesome Marvel references…curse you….just don’t talk about Joss Whedon or I migh explode…. 🙂
Don’t worry -> Heh, beyond Bakker being Reed and Vox as Young Zemo I got nothing.
I also liked:
“p.s. As for Vox’s Dread Ilk…errr…Imagine if Dr. Doom had the same ego but the scientific acumen of Tiger Shark or Juggernaut.”
between you & me, i felt like i was a little hard on Tiger Shark. 😉
Discussion on Bakker’s reply to Abraham starting here:
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/65321-daniel-abraham-debunks-the-idea-of-historically-accurate-epic-fantasy/page__st__260#entry3172793
I was reading Joss Whedon’s interview with Wired and found an interesting exchane towards the end of the interview when the interviwer starts to ask him about gender studies:
Great snippet. Thanks for this, Dharm…
rsbakker: “Not in any philosophical sense of pragmatism that I’m familiar with!”
I am referring to the following idea from James’ _Pragmatism_.
“But in this world, just as certain foods are not only agreeable to our taste, but good for our teeth, our stomach and our tissues; so certain ideas are not only agreeable to think about, or agreeable as supporting other ideas that we are fond of, but they are also helpful in life’s practical struggles. If there be any life that it is really better we should lead, and if there be any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life, then it would be really BETTER FOR US to believe in that idea, UNLESS, INDEED, BELIEF IN IT INCIDENTALLY CLASHED WITH OTHER GREATER VITAL BENEFITS. ‘What would be better for us to believe’! This sounds very like a definition of truth.”
My point is that Vox appears to emphasize the efficacy of his beliefs when he wants to justify them. This is the pragmatic idea of truth taken to an extreme. If, e.g., belief in Christianity leads us to live more effectively, then it is, by this definition, true. If an economic theory consistently leads to profit, then it is, by definition, true.
I am not sure that Vox would endorse my characterization here, but I think you are dismissing him too simply. In order to understand even a madman, it is necessary to take him seriously far enough that you can understand the logic of his delusion. And so even if you think Vox is as dead wrong as a madman, I think your ‘diagnosis’ is too flippant. Why not consider him a case study rather than dismissing him as ‘a sad case’? If you are going to keep bringing him up as an example in your blog, you ought at least to make him a thoroughly understood example. Or so it seems to me.
Can’t resist – the food analogy? Seriously when were all primed to love salt and fatty foods, that was a great desire back when those were scarce. But now??? Obesity and heart desease are epidemic. It’s a great example of what were primed for can really, really screw us over! That certain certainties are missplaced in the current circumstances.
and if there be any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life
What difference does ‘believed in’ make? If there’s some button that’s sign says it will dispence food if pressed (and indeed there is a mechanism), one could go ‘Ah, I don’t believe that, just gunna press it for lulz’ and the button will still work. Even after that one could go ‘Well, how long could it last for – it probably wont work this time’ and the button (for purposes of this example) will still work. No belief required, unless you want to ascribe belief existing somewhere in there?
Can you describe a button, which if you stopped believing in it, it would cease working (purely because of that)?
If, e.g., belief in Christianity leads us to live more effectively, then it is, by this definition, true.
You’ve set up your hypothetical if scenario to force that belief to somehow be the source. I could just as much rewrite it to
If, e.g., belief in the flying spagetti monster leads us to live more effectively, then it is, by this definition, true.
Both are definitionally true.
You could atleast imply that the action of your belief begets certain actions and then imply those actions lead to a better life. Ie, the belief begets some sort of ‘love thy neighbour’ action or such. Atleast that puts some bullets in the gun!
If an economic theory consistently leads to profit, then it is, by definition, true.
Economic theories don’t care if you believe or not, in order to work*. It’s just a matter of whether you push the button or not.
* or not work, or appear to work but actually did not contribute at all. See various psychology tests on people who thought a button controlled a light turning on or off (it didn’t, it was random). Those in financial/investing work were the most prone to believe they controlled the light.
Seriously?
Take all the time you need.
James position in Pragmatism (which extends far beyond the quote you give) is actually far closer to mine than Vox’s, believe it or not! And I’m most definitely NOT a pragmatist. I just think our ignorance and stupidity regular forces us to take a ‘pragmatic stance’ toward a variety of theoretical issues.
Everybody thinks their view of things is ‘better’ – Vox, intensely so. I highly doubt that he would define ‘true’ as ‘more effective’ as opposed to ‘what is the case.’ Do you really think if you asked him, “Is it the case there is a God?” he would answer, “The issue isn’t whether there is a God so much as it is whether we would be better off believing there was a God”?
Pragmatism is a form of contextualism, and as such quite friendly to the kinds of pluralistic and relativistic claims that Vox has no stomach for.
I am not sure how he would answer if posed this question point blank (though he does seem to agree with the pragmatic view of knowledge in his response below), but the fact is that when called on to support his core beliefs, Vox pretty consistently offers pragmatic justifications. If you look again at some of the central pillars of his arguments, I think you will see that this is the case. For instance, arguing that his own personal success strongly suggests the veracity of his beliefs is a pragmatic argument, not in any way a religious one. I think his argument for Christianity follows similar lines, and doesn’t stand on the basis of faith. Of course, that doesn’t mean you need to agree with it. I’m just pointing out the character of his argument, regardless of its truth or falsehood.
It’s also worth noting that, from a pragmatic perspective, contextualism is essentially irrelevant for any context that remains consistent in all scenarios that are relevant to us.
The reason that I find it particularly interesting to see this pragmatic line in Vox’s thinking is that it runs so contrary to your own, as a kind of other to it, if you will. This is because your own obsession with weeding out and rejecting cognitive biases is explicitly anti-pragmatic, or at least, reflects a kind of anti-pragmatic paranoia: the very fact that an idea works to our personal or group benefit, the fact that it is ‘better for us to believe’ is already reason to doubt it, from your perspective, because this suggests that it may be the product of our own biases rather than of science. In other words, benefit is already cause for suspicion.
The one thing that’s being missed is that “personal or group benefit” often lead to disaster in the long run even for the person or group, and often immediately for “the other.” So I think it’s quite prudent to be wary of cognitive bias, or the things we’re programmed to do. All you really need to do is look at the world to realize that “doing what’s natural” leads to things being pretty fucked up. So how do you jump from that observation to the pragmatic conclusion, no, we’re not doing what’s natural, enough?
Thought this was an interesting snippet on pornography from a female perspective. Assuming we can jump back and forth on subjects a bit! 🙂
I’m always wary of morality that benefits the consumer without concern for those involved in production. Call it a harkening back to a youth of protesting sweat shop labor.
As such, I’m more curious about work standards, physical + mental health in porn. Couple that with separating the people who watch porn (and/or pay for sex) from the people who would get involved with a porn star (and/or sex worker) and you have, I suspect, a new Western “untouchable” caste.
Not that it’s a solution, more an intermediate ablation to some problems, but I’ve wondered that like you have freerange eggs, you could have some sort of ethical standards stamp on porn. Someone actually checks the conditions of workers. Even have content conditionals, treating certain stuff as over the line and doesn’t get the stamp.
I think it’s a demand side problem – the coupling of sex and degradation+violence, the virgin/whore dichotomy, and so on.
Problem being that when you decouple things from being sacred, you leave the door open for commodification.
Note that talking about sex as a means to sell you things is good, trying to talk about sex with the added complexity of body image (or even “alternative” beauty like no make up or larger body sizes) and sexual abuse is not.
It ties back to what Scott’s been saying – how much of our liberal values are tied to the acceptance of buying/selling a product?
I saw a documentary awhile back, I think on a little village in Africa, but it might have been somewhere else. Basically though, it had a massive swinger culture. Come sun down, it was one (hey, no TV!). They showed one guy who was against it and was annoyed how his wife would go off and play with other men. After the missionaries got there – his position became part of a majority and it ain’t no swinger village no more.
So, what is sacred and being decoupled? Or simply made into a complex? Or even just a toggle, that flicks back and forth every so often? Thing is, atleast they’d actually know each other – it was social. Here in the commercial sector, once again the ‘supplier’ is socially seperated from the ‘end user’. How much of liberal values are subverted by commercialisation?
Saajan, everything is a product, and what is not for sale, is for rent.
You could even rent a philosophy (though it is probably a bad idea, see Mitt Romney).
If minds and skills and knowledge can be for rent (and they were since….hm…at least since the times a big muscular person discovered that, in order to have one’s injuries more-or-less competently treated, one could give nice things to the small scrawny person who spent his life figuring out how to treat broken bones), what is exactly so uncanny about renting out certain isolated components of a sexual relationship ?
As to sex workers being untouchable, I dunno. There’s a (horrible and totally unscientific, but who cares, it’s not like shitty-sample studies of “college students who were motivated by extra credit” at sample size 100 aren’t published or something 😉 ) which boils down to “would you date a Sasha Grey – like pornstar” and the “yes, under any circumstances” and “no nevah” were pretty steadily broken down evenly as two major group, with some spillover to other options (I recall there was something like “only if she quits pron” or something).
Yeah, it’s a pretty shitty poll somewhere on the internet (I can find it for you if interested tho) but it does suggest that pornstars are far from untouchables.
I wonder what the poll results for NY Sewage Treatment Plant worker would be 😀
There is this… general odd assumption that sex is, among human activities, so special that it can not -should not – be ever provided in exchange for money or any other perks. I find this notion…silly, but it seems to me this notion is, at its core, a statement about inherent moral value of a thing, and thus is problematic to rationally discuss.
what is exactly so uncanny about renting out certain isolated components of a sexual relationship ?
01, for awhile there I thought you were arguing for Saajan’s apparent position via sarcasm – you certainly scored a good punch on my chin?
You know how you walk along and people for some survey or such will ask you how your going? Or the ones one the phone who, by wrote ask ‘how are you’ quickly after their initial speal? They sorta hyjack the human connection of asking this? Cause if they weren’t being paid, would they give a fuck about asking you how you are? Would they call you? Would they want to know how the fuck you are?
I think that’s what’s lost. But now I’m adding to the argument against my own case. Clearly I don’t get debating*.
“01, for awhile there I thought you were arguing for Saajan’s apparent position via sarcasm – you certainly scored a good punch on my chin?”
LOL, seriously, the fact that you interpreted that as sarcasm indicates that we’re so used to renting others (and renting out ourselves) that we no longer even perceive those transactions as such. Seriously, what exactly is me hiring a lawyer if not renting someone’s special knowledge and skills to improve my own existence ? Service provision is, in essence, pretty much indistinguishable from rent, with the sole distinction being that it is human time, knowledge, skills and in some cases physical performance that are being subject of the transaction.
All is fine and well (who wouldn’t want to hire a lawyer!) until we reach that strange place when A tries to solicit consensual sex from B using monetary reward as motivation. Somehow, sex is specialcased and our generally accepting attitude toward service provision aka human rent is supposed to disappear.
I don’t like specialcasing. It unnerves me like an itch. I want to find out whether someone can find a reason for it beyond “a skymonster told an ancient dude that it is so”.
” You know how you walk along and people for some survey or such will ask you how your going? Or the ones one the phone who, by wrote ask ‘how are you’ quickly after their initial speal? They sorta hyjack the human connection of asking this? Cause if they weren’t being paid, would they give a fuck about asking you how you are? Would they call you? Would they want to know how the fuck you are? “
They wouldn’t. But that does not bother me – it’s not their job to care about my precious comfort, it’s their job to be polite and efficient at (futile) attempts to solicit scientific data about my attitudes.
” I think that’s what’s lost. “
Well, I never claimed that monetarily augmented relationship == relationship without monetary augmentation 😉
I propose that it is a service. A risky service not best fit for those psychologically fragile, but not fundamentally different from any number of other high risk and/or psychologically straining jobs.
” . But now I’m adding to the argument against my own case “
LOL 😉
Apropos of that Whedon interview: Yesterday, while working at the cafe, there was a group of feminist activists strategizing over the ongoing furore here in Canada regarding prostitution. They were very pro-prostitution, seeing it as another example of the State dictating what women are and are not allowed to do with their bodies. But they were very conflicted as well, given the kinds of harm that seem to follow from prostitution. You have the tyranny of the State on the one hand, and the tyranny of the Market on the other. It made me think of the way some feminists are inclined to demonize male desire tout court, simply because of the way it places women in this social catch-22.
And that made me think of a story idea where the tyranny of the State is focussed on male desire – think of Sweden’s prostitution laws, only across a full-spectrum of sexual activities.
Scott, to keep it simple (“Omar likes it Simple” is my new approach to TPB) -> Write that shit yo.
01 – It’s about worker exploitation, not the morality of porn or sex work – I have friends who’ve had sex with prostitutes.
The question is the psychological ramifications of the work. Can sex work be just another job?
I’m willing to admit it’s an open question, but it’s also not one that is easily answered. I actually think stars like Sasha Grey obfuscate the problem – the treatment of people in pornography can’t be judged by the highest earners.
Would you be fine with having a kid with a porn star, working or retired? Callan?
evasive reply button strikes again. Why they hate me so 🙂 ?
It’s about worker exploitation, not the morality of porn or sex work – I have friends who’ve had sex with prostitutes.
The question is the psychological ramifications of the work.
No, it’s a question of morality, but not from the inside of it. If the sex work was to the participant no more significant than a leaf falling from a tree, why would the psychology part come up?
It’s the stresses of ‘carrying’ a morality that leads to the psychological issues.
Would you be fine with having a kid with a porn star, working or retired? Callan?
Well, this lass (NWFW) has been married for 20 years, but it’s an entirely open relationship and she fucks alot of guys. How are you with an open relationship? Really that’s what it is, it’s not the porn part.
I think some people, psychologically, fit right into bonking alot. The problem is demand wayyyy outstrips supply! And women who do not psychologically fit the job requirements by fiscal pressure/survival pressure (despite how ‘civilised’ we call ourselves) being pressed into these ‘jobs’.
“I think some people, psychologically, fit right into bonking alot. The problem is demand wayyyy outstrips supply! And women who do not psychologically fit the job requirements by fiscal pressure/survival pressure (despite how ‘civilised’ we call ourselves) being pressed into these ‘jobs’.
First, it’s clearly jobs, not ‘jobs’ 😉
Second, how is that different from people not quite fit (psychologically) for a given (nonsexual) job facing a fiscal necessity to enter said (nonsexual) job because no one else is hiring ?
It would be nice if had exactly as many “fit humans” as we have jobs that need them.
It would be also nice if I was a Vingean superintelligent posthuman demigod or (definitely even better!) a lvl 40 D&D demilich.
Unfortunately, neither technology for ensuring that we have a match between human inclinations and available jobs, nor technology for turning me into a demilich (or a Vingean superintelligence, which actually is nearly the same thing) are currently available, so some people will have to do jobs that do not entirely appeal to their inclinations (which is definitely not limited to sex work) and I will likely have to continue living as a mere human for the entirety of my existence.
Hard cheese, eh ?
Oh, Saajan replied while I was typing.
” 01 – It’s about worker exploitation, not the morality of porn or sex work – I have friends who’ve had sex with prostitutes.”
I think at this point we need to define exploitation. Because the word seems to imply unfair compensation, “unreasonably” dangerous work conditions, as well as an unnecessarily hostile working environment, as well as a kind of not-quite-consent.
None of that is provably inherent to transaction of “give money – receive sexual intercourse” (though “fair compensation” is exceedingly subjective). In fact at least as far as my locale goes, in the >600 USD/hr price segment, conditions are kinda ok-ish.
“The question is the psychological ramifications of the work.”
Those vary with individuals and with specific conditions (I’d endeavor to speculate that both working conditions and client types differ notably between 600+ USD/hr and 50 USD/hr prostitutes). As to possibility (quite likely) of inherently unfavorable condition-independent effects, well, different people have different susceptibility, and…well, not to put too fine a dot on it, it’s not like other, more accepted lines of works do not have an unusual psychological effect on a significant portion of workers involved.
” I actually think stars like Sasha Grey obfuscate the problem – the treatment of people in pornography can’t be judged by the highest earners. “
Well, Kink.com for one have a pretty open policy regarding responsibility, I think the contract template they use is available somewhere. I vaguely recall looking through it out of curiosity and finding it okay-ish (admittedly, I did it lawyerless – I’m not going into pronz as long as there isn’t a human-level AI around 😉 )
“Would you be fine with having a kid with a porn star, working or retired?”
Me ? I have the problem with the “kid” part (not fond of them), not with the pornstar part. Well, there’s also the fact that me and Third are in an open relationship and 03 tends to spook people quite some, so a lot of things will need careful negotiation and consideration (none of those, however, have any relation to the fact that one of the people involved works in porn)
Just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about banning pornography or making sure prostitution necessarily stays illegal in the greater part of the Western World. That actually exacerbates exploitation from everything I’ve seen/read.
It may come down to faith, but that – unlike the stereotypical TPBer – is something I don’t have a problem with. The days are too short to be forever falling down the rabbit hole of uncertainty.
Well, then we’re probably disagreeing over semantics of exploitation or something equally pedantic.
I am all for increasing prostitute’s workplace safety and whatnot. Usually that happens to correlate with formal legalization and regulation.
I’m a skeptical naturalist. Have been for quite some time now.
Which means you’re not a skeptic at all, your constant affectations of uncertainty and criticism of others’ supposed certainty notwithstanding.
Not in any philosophical sense of pragmatism that I’m familiar with! I’d be amazed if he had any theory of meaning, let alone a pragmatic one.
Not being a navel-gazing wanker prone to contorting straightforward definitions, I don’t have a philosophical sense of anything. And yet, Observer had no problem correctly identifying my probability and predictive model approach to truth and action: Vox appears to emphasize the efficacy of his beliefs when he wants to justify them. This is the pragmatic idea of truth taken to an extreme.
The thing that is so stupid about your insistence that Christians must be dogmatic certaintists is that “now we see as though through a glass, darkly” has been a central theme of Christian thought for two thousand years. How has that managed to escape you?
He doesn’t have the foggiest idea of my position so far, so I’m not sure how I could appear one way or the other.
And yet I still managed to correctly show that you’re not a Pyrrhonian Sceptic. Perhaps if you would consider answering questions in a timely manner and communicating less evasively, people would have a better understanding of your position. And it’s no mystery why you appear to be claiming to be a skeptic, considering how you constantly preach against the supposed evils of certainty and dogma.
Self-defeating? He doesn’t even understand the traditional counterarguments against skepticism, let alone my mitigated version. For me the question is quite simply what kinds of claims should we commit to in what way. Pragmatic considerations predominate the less scientific those claims become.
This is obviously false, as anyone who has read my critiques of Delavagus’s defense of ancient skepticism well knows. The fact that I have independently recreated several of those traditional counterarguments – as Delavagus himself has noted – suffices to prove that I understand those with which I am familiar. However, I don’t pretend to know all the traditional counterarguments against skepticism, so obviously I can’t claim to understand them. But I tend to doubt that they’re beyond my capacity to understand.
Anyhow, given Scott’s admission about choices between claims, he can’t be any kind of philosophical skeptic, but at most a methodological one. But, of course, he’s not even that, by his own admission.
This ‘philosophical skeptic,’ then, is a FICTIONAL CHARACTER, the philosopher’s invented alter ego. Of course Scott isn’t one! No one is, or ever has been! But neither does he claim to be. You simply don’t understand what you’re talking about, Vox.
Sure I don’t, little college boy. It really doesn’t matter how many holes you fall in, you just don’t hesitate to leap into the next, don’t you! Scott doesn’t explicitly claim to be one, but he feigns to be one with all of his posturing and condemning of dogmatists and dangerous certaintists. That’s why I’ve been saying he was a charlatan from the very start. Scott attempts, with all of his handwaving, evasiveness, and special pleading, to confuse people into accepting his first order beliefs by constantly babbling about second order ones. His arguments aren’t merely self-defeating, they are obviously self-defeating. And it’s worth noting that you guys switch between rhetoric and dialectic as it suits you at the moment, rather like Jon Stewart hiding behind his clown nose whenever someone pins him down on his political commentary.
But it’s not Scott’s claimed hypocrisy that is the problem, it is his reprehensible intellectual dishonesty.
“The thing that is so stupid about your insistence that Christians must be dogmatic certaintists is that “now we see as though through a glass, darkly” has been a central theme of Christian thought for two thousand years. How has that managed to escape you?”
If only Christians had been as speculative about the nature of Man as they were nature of God, which is what the passage is about. These days a good fundamentalist will still proudly plead ignorance about the nature of God, but they sure as Hell know gay marriage is a sin.
Never mind the cunning way you manouvered him into saying he was a skeptical naturalist and showed him up!
Never mind the cunning way you manouvered him into saying he was a skeptical naturalist and showed him up!
Never underestimate a superintelligence. But as Observer has observed, it’s not about his self-definition of himself, but rather his misleading presentation of himself as a skeptic and champion of uncertainty. Even calling himself a “skeptical naturalist” is a stretch, since he shows no skepticism beyond that of the common science fetishist.
In the end, he’s asserting very little that Sam Harris doesn’t claim without ever even pretending to dip his toe into the sea of philosophy.
Never underestimate a superintelligence.
Not a problem!
Holy Moly. You know, you really, really remind me of this student I once had – a communist, go figure! It didn’t matter how little he understood he was always convinced he understood it better than anybody else – like some kind of pathology or something. Anytime I began with, “You do realize you’re misunderstanding x,” he would pop back with “I think you misunderstand!” It was so mechanical I gave up eventually…
I’m sure you’ll chalk all this up to me being intimidated by your insights or what have you – and that’s fine. I just don’t know how to proceed when it comes to someone who seems to religiously misinterpret every word I write – and with comic confidence, no less!
I wonder if in some cases high “measured intelligence” only augments the strength of DK effect…
Vox is ultimately not as concerned as to whether his claims are precisely, empirically verifiable, but cares first and foremost about whether they function effectively, i.e. whether they are ‘what it is better to believe,’ in the pragmatist’s sense of truth.
Of course not. No Austrian School economist is, as per Rothbard: “Suppose a theory asserts that a certain policy will cure a depression. The government, obedient to the theory, puts the policy into effect. The depression is not cured. The critics and advocates of the theory now leap to the fore with interpretations. The critics say that failure proves the theory incorrect. The advocates say that the government erred in not pursuing the theory boldly enough, and that what is needed is stronger measures in the same direction. Now the point is that empirically there is no possible way of deciding between them. Where is the empirical “test” to resolve the debate? How can the government rationally decide upon its next step? Clearly, the only possible way of resolving the issue is in the realm of pure theory—by examining the conflicting premises and chains of reasoning.
Empiricists are, by and large, full of it. They seldom stand by their own empirical metrics, but rather come up with a million and one excuses for why their empirical models failed and cling to them despite their failure as predictive models. By way of example, Scott will almost surely cling to his belief in the intrinsic good of immigration even if Genghis II arises among the Vancouver immigrant community and slaughters every white Canadian west of Edmonton, just as no amount of economic depression will ever convince the empirical economists at the Federal Reserve and the Wall Street Journal that mass immigration has been bad for the US economy.
I have to sympathize with Vox here. I think he’s correct to say that Mr. Bakker isn’t really a skeptic in the philosophical sense. He may personally think of himself as a skeptic, but his own summary of his views indicates that he is some kind of empiricist/naturalist and really has nothing much to do with skepticism at all.
An empiricist/naturalist essentially thinks that empirically, scientifically verified claims do indeed constitute knowledge (at least provisionally, for they can always potentially be disproven or revised by later experiments). Claims made on any other basis can’t necessarily be called false, but they can also never rise to the level of knowledge in the strict sense; they remain in the realm of opinion.
The confusing aspect of Mr. Bakker’s presentation is that he consistently refers to his exclusion of non-scientific claims from the realm of knowledge as ‘skepticism.’ I don’t really understand why he wants to put it this way, because it would be clearer and more to the point if he simply said that empirical science gives us knowledge and everything else gives us only unjustified opinion. Sorry, but that’s not skepticism, and it only resembles skepticism in the most superficial way.
Look at Mr. Bakker’s seven point ‘dogma.’ Point 6 is saying that science gives us knowledge, while point 7 as well as all of points 1-5 (!!) are ‘explaining’ that non-science only gives us opinion. Again, this is a very confusing and even misleading way of presenting what is in fact an extremely straightforward scientism.
Again, this is a very confusing and even misleading way of presenting what is in fact an extremely straightforward scientism.
Simple scientism is a bit problematic, because science is amoral and as such, does sometimes produce results that, if adopted into one’s world view, would make one morally reprehensible in one’s own eyes.
In principle, if universal morality exists and is in accordance with the universality of science, science will never come up with an immoral result, and everything will be fine.
However… this doesn’t quite seem to be the case for the moral systems today.
Therefore, one needs selective scientism. For consistency, the selectiveness needs to be justified in terms of the scientism itself. All this adds complexity.
Interesting. I do think this is a good partial summary of Scott’s position, though I think Scott’s said numerous times that he can’t shake the idea that there’s more than science.
I find Vox aka Young Zemo to simply offer propositions to the risk averse along with the equivalent of blow jobs for the ego. The former is actually interesting from a fiscal conservative position, the latter part is why the racist nonsense in the comments never seems to be made by anyone using a traceable handle ->
“Dread Ilk, of course you’d have a hot wife and a great job if not for feminism and multiculturalism! It’s affirmative action that kept you out of Harvard, and only because of feminism that hotties no longer talk to you at the bar! Damn those coloreds and whores!!!”
Odd. Either you’re gaming the concept ‘skepticism’ or you don’t genuinely understand how it’s used in philosophical contexts. Are you saying Hume, for instance, was a ‘pretend skeptic’? Because he’s perhaps the most famous ‘mitigated skeptic’ there is, and I am more skeptical than him – by a longshot!
There’s many, many forms of skepticism out there. What distinguishes me from naturalists more broadly is that I think that, given what we now know about human cognition, they hold too many unwarranted metaphysical commitments (like physicalism or materialism). I am also a ‘meaning skeptic,’ but only on those days where my pessimism gets the best of me.
I have never heard of Hume referred to as a skeptic before. In fact, if you search the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which in my experience generally gives a good basic presentation of the prevailing interpretation of philosophers, the word ‘skeptic’ appears not a single time in the entry on Hume. Virtually everyone thinks of him as an empiricist, do they not?
Certainly, though, I agree that there is a skeptical moment in his philosophy. I don’t really care to argue over semantics, I am just pointing out that if you want to call yourself a skeptic, fine, but I think you risk misleading your audience.
This semantic question aside, I think I have still given a fair characterization of your position. It’s pretty close to garden variety scientism, you just like to make a bigger deal about the unreliability of knowledge claims that fall outside the realm of science. I find this odd, because it’s almost as if you told me that 1+1 was equal to two, and nothing else, but then proceeded to devote most of your energy to pointing out that it didn’t equal 3, 4, 5, 6,…. etc.
That just speaks to the focus of the SEP article. Just google Hume and skepticism. Or better yet, just google “mitigated skepticism.”
It’s a mistake to think all the different positional monikers you find in philosophy are mutually exclusive. Empiricism is a kind of mitigated skepticism, for instance, a reaction against the excesses of rationalism, which is itself a form of mitigated skepticism, a reaction against the adequacy of tradition. Descartes is probably the most famous skeptic of all. There many, many ‘skepticisms’ out there!
Delavegas is actually the expert – he can tell you. But someone should tell Vox that, as far as the philosophical community is concerned, he’s doing little more than providing entertainment. He literally does not understand what he’s talking about, and it shows – painfully!
By your definition of scientism, all forms of naturalism are just ‘garden varieties.’ It just smacks of a weak ‘guilt by association’ argument. Scientism is a pejorative term, so you equivocate it to mean naturalism, then dismiss me with a word.
The standard, accepted definition of scientism stems from logical positivism, a time when the excesses of Hegelianism led many philosophers to adopt some pretty extreme views. Since most (drunk on predicate logic) bought into bivalence, claims were seen as a either true or false, leading to obviously absurd (in retrospect) positions like those espoused by the early Wittgenstein and AJ Ayers. Now it’s primarily applied to people who have naive, overly optimistic views of science and (most importantly) its range of applicability.
Naturalism is a different beast, and is very critical of science, while remaining committed to the view that ‘scientific fact,’ despite its myriad shortcomings, should guide ‘armchair theory’ simply because its shortcomings are far more myriad. Why wouldn’t you look that up on Wikipedia!
A growing body of those scientific facts happens to suggest that humans, for all their conceits and vanities, are nowhere the geniuses they tend to take themselves to be!
Just to be clear, Scott’s also offering ego-oral, just for a different set of people.
“Dread Ilk, of course you’d have a hot wife and a great job if not for feminism and multiculturalism! It’s affirmative action that kept you out of Harvard, and only because of feminism that hotties no longer talk to you at the bar! Damn those coloreds and whores!!!”
Never mind that the U.S. Employment Population Ratio is down to 58.4 from 63.2 in 1990. That can’t have anything to do with the 60 MILLION increase in the population… a increase larger than the ENTIRE UNITED KINGDOM. And yet, you clueless morons want even more immigration and a higher percentage of women working… because you aren’t sufficiently skeptical about the claims that it is good for the economy!
How many people at TPB actually work for a living? And I mean real wealth-creating work, not collecting a government check for wanking about uncertainty. How many of you will still preach about the wonders of immigration and the importance of women in the workforce when your wages are cut in half or you can’t find a job? If you’re married, will your wife really appreciate losing the chance to choose if she works or not because you can’t make ends meet with one wage earner?
You little college boys have no idea how hard life is going to hit you in the face soon, especially when the next wave of the global economic contraction starts rolling. Half of all recent college graduates are unemployed now, and that number is only going to rise. I hope you enjoy it… this is the world you wanted.
“Never mind that the U.S. Employment Population Ratio is down to 58.4 from 63.2 in 1990. That can’t have anything to do with the 60 MILLION increase in the population… a increase larger than the ENTIRE UNITED KINGDOM. And yet, you clueless morons want even more immigration and a higher percentage of women working… because you aren’t sufficiently skeptical about the claims that it is good for the economy!”
Cough cough… I think that *some* might just want to keep folks poor and underemployed so they can hire a bucketful for a buck if a need arises, and will fear being laid off like the proverbial apocalypse. Terrible job market = happy employer.
How many people at TPB actually work for a living? And I mean real wealth-creating work, not collecting a government check for wanking about uncertainty.
Well, define “wealth-creating”. Do IT folks in large and dodgy financial organizations count ?
Young Zemo, I think you missed the part where I said some of your ideas – including limiting immigration – has merit from a fiscal conservative stand point. I’ve even said the idea of mass importing voting blocks antithetical to a secular Western democracy needs to be considered seriously rather than simply derided as “racism”.
In short, I’ve at least said some of your points deserve consideration, something few others have done here. I suspect you’re more correct than most liberals would want to admit, but I can’t weight too heavily on them because I lack the data.
I just don’t buy the racial hierarchies you at least seem to espouse. I’m not even sure what make of “black rule doesn’t work” or “hispanics get into lots of crashes”.
But hey – it’s nice to see you’re as easy to tweak as the rest of us. ;-P
I just don’t buy the racial hierarchies you at least seem to espouse.
These racial “hierarchies” are, I think, entirely of your own invention. For example, Ashkenazi Jews enjoy a ten point mean IQ advantage over Germans, and I don’t see how you can fit that into your preconceived notions of how evil racists rank races hierarchically.
Interesting stuff Fixer. I’m sure one day we’ll have an conversation on IQ and what it means regarding racial cateogrizing.
More super fun times with you and Young Zemo, maybe some other Masters of Evil, but hopefully not in this abysmal commenting structure.
Well, Mr. Bakker, if you want to take every philosophy that contains a moment of doubt and call it skepticism, that’s fine I suppose, I’m just saying I find it misleading, or at least I find that you need to make your meaning explicit instead of assuming it’s immediately clear.
And if you want to quibble about whether we call your view scientism or naturalism, I’m happy to call it naturalism. I still think my characterization of your epistemology is fair. You’re a pretty typical naturalist who likes to spend a lot of time writing about how non-science is just the realm of opinion. That doesn’t necessarily make your view different from naturalists who don’t like to spend so much time denouncing non-science.
It’s not me doing anything other than explaining to you the accepted usages of ‘skepticism’ in philosophy. If you’re unhappy with them, there’s not much I can do. The fact is, Ob, this is the first time anyone has ever made it an issue!
Otherwise, given that scientism is a pejorative term and naturalism is not, I assure you it’s no ‘quibble,’ which is to say, argument over an irrelevant distinction. Pejoratives are certainly relevant.
You do agree that all claims are not equal, right? So how do you grade the reliability of claims?
I’d rather avoid taking a position here, I’m just trying to get a clear picture of the claims that you and Vox are making.
My point about skepticism is that, if you want to call any philosophy that contains a moment of doubt a form of skepticism, then you need to call quite a few philosophers skeptics who aren’t conventionally thought of in that light. Even Hegel is a skeptic, because he doubts doubt itself. But I don’t want to belabor that point because I just don’t see it as being particularly important. The reasons I made an issue of it are that, first, Vox took you for a Skeptic in the strong sense of the ancient skeptical philosophers. In my opinion this was an honest mistake. Secondly, when your position is conventional naturalism, I don’t see that is adds anything to call it skeptical (in your sense) naturalism. I mean, you can if you want to, but why bother? It’s like calling yourself a mammalian human. True but pointless.
What it comes down to as I see it is that Vox’s justifications are pragmatic, whereas yours are naturalistic. For this reason it’s a matter of course that you two would be talking past each other. Your foundations are different enough that they don’t offer any common ground.
So skepticism isn’t a monolithic position. I assure you I’m entirely in keeping with convention.
My position isn’t ‘conventional naturalism’ at all! I’m far more skeptical. Ergo, ‘skeptical naturalism.’
Vox’s justifications are not pragmatic in any sense worthy of the term. By the criterion you give (they are better for x) pretty much everyone’s justifications would count as pragmatic. Tell me who doesn’t think their moral positions are ‘for the best.’ As someone who spent years studying the problem of ‘incommensurability’ I assure that isn’t the problem. The best way I can think of describing Vox’s position is as a hodgepodge of flattering, exceptionlist intuitions nested within a largely opportunistic network of rationalizations. Not much different than my own, minus the ‘flattering exceptionalism’ and plus the willingness to conditionally defer to scientific consensus. I actually think he’s just an ad hoc egoist: science (which I’m sure you’ll agree hasn’t revolutionized everything it’s touched for no reason) is a good yardstick for sussing these kinds of positions out. Any time you bump into someone who waves science as a flag when it agrees with him, and tears it down as not credible (!) when it disagrees, you have good reason to smell a rat.
I understand that you’re trying to paint a kind of ‘rational standoff’ picture, but I’m afraid the route you’ve taken is a nonstarter. You seem to want things to be simpler than they are. Look. As a professional hack I’ve been in your position many, many times. You have a claim you want to press, that feels right, then the specialists start picking you apart for your inevitable naivetes. You could be right, but you have to accept that you’ve chosen the wrong path. Take a different tack. Acknowledge that you could be wrong.
Criticizing philosophers for their use of philosophical taxonomies and concepts is… well, asking to be wrong.
Unrelated random crap I want to rant about:
I’m going to bring up Whedon again, since I saw The Avengers last night. (Nothing that wouldn’t be spoiled in the first 5 minutes of the movie will be posted)
Loki, the main antagonist, uses a scepter to mind control several characters. This mind control was uncharacteristic in that it was fast, absolute, and the affected character didn’t really struggle. There was no “contest of will”. This is significant because Whedon previously worked on Dollhouse, a show that explored (eh…) some of the implications of materialistic reductionism.
Later in the movie, the scepter is used in a more insidious way, but at no point can its influence be fought. (Minor spoiler: indeed the only character to resist its effect has a physical barrier that prevents contact.)
My hope is that these ideas continue to infiltrate the collective unconscious, as the implications run deep.
Also, blanket attack on Republicans notwithstanding, this is an interesting article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/inside-the-political-brain/256483/
This article is an adapted excerpt from The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality (Wiley).
Don’t you find it interesting that it’s always the Republicans that are irrational?
Why is it that, even though a lot less partisanship and a lot more compromise would be good for the country, nobody can seem to get us there?
It’s pretty easy to show that more compromise is not good. If you have a rational/sane group and an irrational/insane group, the rational group updates its opinion to track the prevailing consensus (“to split the difference”), and the irrational group does not. Given enough time, the consensus drifts toward the views of the irrational group. If you couple that with an irrational group (an elite) that needs to differentiate itself from the consensus (the masses), you get a consensus that gradually drifts more and more into madness.
what i recall is that the focus of the research seems to be that conservatives are not “irrational” so much as they are, relative to liberals, abnormally fearful, and more fixated on the things that scare and/or disgust them:
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/03/republican_fear_factor_salpart/
whether or not this is “rational” depends on how you define what is “rational” in terms of responding to a photograph. i suppose one could argue that any reaction is “irrational” – it’s just a photo, after all, so there can be no genuine threat.
one can see, however, how a “quick and dirty” defensive module would have evolutionary advantages in some contexts, but not in others, depending on the overall level of genuine threats and the importance of reacting decisively and immediately to them.
To define normal, you need a reference. It might well be that liberals are abnormally fearless or naive. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that it’s mostly liberals that get into trouble in dangerous foreign countries or dangerous wild areas, but this could just be my confirmation bias showing through.
Like I said in my original post “blanket attack on Republicans notwithstanding”.
That said, from my admittedly biased point of view, it is generally the Republicans that have a problem with science. Anyone that rejects evolution by natural selection I literally can’t take seriously. You want to criticize Dawkins because he’s a jackass? Fine. But the science he wrote about in The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker is fundamental and supported by literally mountains of evidence. And I’m not misusing the word literal there.
It’s a fundamental theory, proven by unrelated lines of evidence, accepted by all the luminaries in the field (including the “inventor” of DNA, ahem) whose explanatory power is deep. It informs major healthcare related fields such as microbiology and oncology.
Climate change I’m more “iffy” on, but only because of the deep, DEEP political interest than run through that discourse. When both parties have so MUCH vested socioeconomic interest the truth is only going to be seen, not derived from the research. Climate is also a very complex system, and you can’t run experiments! That said, in the interest of the very real danger drastic climate change implies for humanity, I think it would be wise to be on the side of caution.
+1.
That said, from my admittedly biased point of view, it is generally the Republicans that have a problem with science.
Well. Imagine that you are a Republican and you observe the recent increase in scientific studies scientifically proving that you’re an ignorant and irrational moron. Would you still trust science? What political affiliation and what motivations would you associate with science as a whole?
As for the rest, evolution: right, CO2-caused climate change: wrong on almost every count.
including the “inventor” of DNA, ahem
Cut this non-native speaker some slack. You already had your fun.
“To define normal, you need a reference. ”
exactly – that’s what “relative to liberals” means in the context of “relative to liberals, conservatives are abnormally…”
but if you prefer, “relative to conservatives, liberals are abnormally fearless…”
“naive” would seem less appropriate since the amygdala is implicated in the processing of emotions related to fear, not naivete.
“Well. Imagine that you are a Republican and you observe the recent increase in scientific studies scientifically proving that you’re an ignorant and irrational moron. Would you still trust science? ”
i would, unless i were, in fact, an ignorant and irrational moron (c.f. baby, bathwater). i would think one might welcome knowing that there is less to fear than one had feared.
and, as i tried to make clear, the appropriate level of…caution, let’s say, cannot be determined independent of one’s circumstances.
as the article i cited makes clear, the problem for many conservatives relates to epistemic closure, and their preference for it. a steady diet of Vox’s doomsday dipshittery is unhealthy for anyone, “neural” conservatives especially.
“What political affiliation and what motivations would you associate with science as a whole?”
scientists as a whole tend to be democrats, and very few are republicans (in a recent poll, roughly 6% were republicans, with 55% democrats and the rest independent or other).
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/12/lab_politics.html
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c7/c7s3.htm
this is to be expected, given the stances taken by republicans on various scientific matters, and perhaps also the fact that scientists must be very comfortable with a lack of epistemic closure to be effective as scientists.
This actually isn’t Haidt’s position, by the way. He says he actually moved to the right over the course of his research. Intermissions over… Fuck. More on this later!
“Well. Imagine that you are a Republican and you observe the recent increase in scientific studies scientifically proving that you’re an ignorant and irrational moron. Would you still trust science? ”
i would, unless i were, in fact, an ignorant and irrational moron (c.f. baby, bathwater).
Maybe, but I doubt it. Perhaps we need to find an actual live Republican and ask. 🙂
And to clarify, by “science” above I meant the official institution, not the general notion of science.
The Slate article puts it well:
Think about it: The results of climate science, delivered by scientists who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are used over a period of decades to advance a political agenda that happens to align precisely with the ideological preferences of Democrats. Coincidence—or causation?
this is to be expected, given the stances taken by republicans on various scientific matters, and perhaps also the fact that scientists must be very comfortable with a lack of epistemic closure to be effective as scientists.
I find a 55-6 split highly unexpected, “epistemic closure” notwithstanding. I suspect a significant fraction of “hold nose and vote Republican” hidden inside the remaining 39. Independent? Don’t know their affiliation? Come on.
pdimov wrote:
“Imagine that you are a Republican and you observe the recent increase in scientific studies scientifically proving that you’re an ignorant and irrational moron. Would you still trust science?”
AH! Excellent retort. +1 for you sir. The only thing I can say is that I draw very deep line between the 3 hard sciences (physics, chemistry, biology and their derivative fields including geology) and social sciences, even though I do think some of the most recent research on cognitive biases is fairly robust.
As someone who loves science very deeply, I agree that it is disturbing that the dialogue internally seems to be becoming increasingly politicized. In a way this is to be expected however: as science becomes a stronger social force, major political forces will mobilize to control it. Unfortunately for conservatives, the liberals have had 40 years worth of head start since it was always them who supported free thought and inquiry.
We don’t hate Republicans though (a major asymmetry IMHO). When me and my GF were watching the West Wing ( a decidedly liberally biased show) we both agreed that John Goodman played an excellent Republican president. Alan Alda’s character was also fantastic, and he played a Republican (indeed we both wanted Alda’s character to win!)
Holy Moly. You know, you really, really remind me of this student I once had – a communist, go figure! It didn’t matter how little he understood he was always convinced he understood it better than anybody else – like some kind of pathology or something. Anytime I began with, “You do realize you’re misunderstanding x,” he would pop back with “I think you misunderstand!” It was so mechanical I gave up eventually…
And you remind me of my Econ 101 professor, who literally wrote the textbook. One day, he pontificated in front of class: “You plan your day, you plan your week, so how can you not plan something as important as a national economy?” I raised my hand and pointed out Hayek’s refinement of Mises’s explication of the impossibility of socialist calculation, with which he was completely unfamiliar. He quickly changed the subject and never dared raise it again… which shows that he had considerably more sense than you. You’re still babbling about uncertainty despite the fact that you’re not a skeptic of any kind and have provided absolutely no basis for preferring certainty to uncertainty. Of course he’s an actual PhD who has written actual textbooks and understands intellectual accountability. You’re just a charlatan.
I’m sure you’ll chalk all this up to me being intimidated by your insights or what have you – and that’s fine. I just don’t know how to proceed when it comes to someone who seems to religiously misinterpret every word I write – and with comic confidence, no less!
Not at all. If you had any respect or regard for my intellect, you’d stop making such a prodigious ass of yourself, and at the very least, ask serious questions of me and answer the questions I ask of you. I chalk this all up to you being an intellectual fraud and a coward who is terrified of being exposed as one. I strongly suspect you have a stronger fear of failure than the average. Now, perhaps I am misinterpreting every word you write… whose fault could that be? It could be my fault, but then, it could also be the fault of the writer’s inability to communicate his thoughts in a clear and effective manner.
For example, you’re clearly not an ancient sceptic, you declare yourself to be a skeptical naturalist, but you also declare yourself to be striving to be “a cynic in the ancient sense”. And, you show absolutely no skepticism about science itself, despite the fact that science is a demonstrably corrupt institution for which there is considerable historical evidence that its past consensuses were incorrect and an a fair amount of material evidence that its present conclusions are based on unreplicable papers. Even if you are not skeptical about the method, how can you possibly not be skeptical about the people necessarily involved?
Vox’s justifications are not pragmatic in any sense worthy of the term. By the criterion you give (they are better for x) pretty much everyone’s justifications would count as pragmatic.
Pure and unmitigated horseshit. You’re completely leaving out the “predictive model” aspect. Unlike you, I’m perfectly willing to be held accountable. My justifications have been empirically tested and my confidence in them stems from more than 10 years of being reliably proven publicly correct by events. You, on the other hand, for all your faux skepticism, are not even willing to enter into a debate on one of your core beliefs for fear it will be shown false.
That said, from my admittedly biased point of view, it is generally the Republicans that have a problem with science. Anyone that rejects evolution by natural selection I literally can’t take seriously.
This is amusing, considering how so many science fetishists here get the willies over the scientific discussion of race. As for evolution by natural selection, even Dawkins now admits that there is next to no scientific evidence for it. Evolution by natural selection is an intrinsically logical argument, it’s not even based on science nor is it established by science… as many professional biologists have agreed. That doesn’t mean the logic isn’t correct, only that it is logic, not science.
And I’m not a Republican, for what it’s worth.
Criticizing philosophers for their use of philosophical taxonomies and concepts is… well, asking to be wrong.
Not when they are using them improperly and applying them to areas that have been specifically ruled out of their scope. For example, Delavagus provided a highly specific philosophical definition of knowledge and then proceeded to erroneously conclude that everyone knows nothing and are idiots on the basis of that definition… even though he made no attempt to show they do not possess the sort of knowledge that every non-philosopher holds himself to possess as per the eight relevant dictionary definitions. Philosophers absolutely merit criticism when they, as you do, attempt to pull these sorts of shameless bait-and-switches.
Beale: “science is a demonstrably corrupt institution for which there is considerable historical evidence that its past consensuses were incorrect and an a fair amount of material evidence that its present conclusions are based on unreplicable papers. Even if you are not skeptical about the method, how can you possibly not be skeptical about the people necessarily involved?”
Not to mention that we don’t even need the historical evidence to question the method. An understanding of experimental procedure in general is enough to cast doubt on the discipline. The criticism directed at the people themselves is also well-placed.
“have provided absolutely no basis for preferring certainty to uncertainty.”
This is true, but beside the point. More importantly, you have provided absolutely no basis for preferring UNCERTAINTY to certainty.
Certainty fulfills one of the mythical requirement of “the hero,” and so everyone tends to attribute it positive qualities, and for sure (certainly?) the stammering dolt with bovine complacency doesn’t seem to be a very attractive human figure. Historically, there has always been conflict between the warrior and the saint and sometimes the two are combined in the warrior-saint.
At this point I’m beating a dead horse, but Anders Breivik has provided almost poster boy example of the perils of certainty. But let’s face it, we aren’t going to erase the human tendency toward obsessive certainty. You can only increase general education and intelligence, as provided by awareness and compassion. The true problem that we face with people like Breivik is that they’re moral cretins, the old but descriptive name for psychopaths.
Two points (that cancel each other). First, psychopaths are amoral and as such, have no need for moral certainty. Second, it’s not likely that Breivik is a psychopath.
Good point, if you go by the ideal definition of psychopath as someone who can’t intuit right from wrong in all contexts. However, there are more restricted ways to view psychopathy which probably accounts for all real world examples, like a person who feels absolutely no compassion for other and is able to dispassionately massacre them as Breivik did. I’d say it’s not likely that Breivik is not some type of psychopath.
I don’t see why a person feeling absolutely no compassion and able to dispassionately massacre would need moral certainty in order to do that.
Breivik has explained (at the trial if I’m not mistaken) that he had to desensitize himself in order to be able to kill. His behaviour at the trial wasn’t very consistent with that of a psychopath. He may still be one, of course, but then he’d no longer be the poster child of the evils of moral certainty.
I’ve read that about him too, though I don’t know if he desensitized himself to the pangs of guilt or to the fact that he expected to die. If I’m not wrong, a young boy convinced him not to shoot him, so perhaps there was a small flicker of guilt left in him. Either way, in my opinion you need a certain predisposition toward callous murder to do what he did. I don’t think massacre requires moral certain any more than serial killing does, but in the case of Breivik I think it was the operative motivation.
Either you’re gaming the concept ‘skepticism’ or you don’t genuinely understand how it’s used in philosophical contexts. Are you saying Hume, for instance, was a ‘pretend skeptic’? Because he’s perhaps the most famous ‘mitigated skeptic’ there is, and I am more skeptical than him – by a longshot!
Interesting. You see, my impression is that you’re the one gaming the various definition(s) and switching between them as it suits you at the moment. For example, you say you are more skeptical than Hume by a longshot… which appears to be a rather dubious claim given “his conclusion that belief in an external world is rationally unjustifiable”.
So, when you say you are more skeptical than Hume, are you stating that you, too, conclude that belief in an external world is rationally unjustifiable? Are you also saying that you don’t believe an external world exists at all?
Or are you simply being incoherent and blowing more smoke again? Precisely what it is that Hume dogmatically accepts and you regard with suspicion?
“My position isn’t ‘conventional naturalism’ at all! I’m far more skeptical. Ergo, ‘skeptical naturalism.’”
Would you mind differentiating your ‘skeptical’ position from conventional naturalism specifically? I haven’t been able to see any difference that isn’t merely one of emphasis.
“So skepticism isn’t a monolithic position. I assure you I’m entirely in keeping with convention.”
I have to disagree. According to your view of skepticism–any philosophy which contains an important moment of doubt–virtually every philosopher after Descartes has to be considered a skeptic of some kind. That’s just not conventional usage of the word. There is an important moment of doubt in Husserl’s philosophy, insofar as it derives from Descartes, but I’ve never heard him referred to as a skeptic–because nobody thinks that this moment of doubt is really the most essential and unique part of his thinking, Nobody calls Plato a skeptic because he doubts the reality of the shadows on the cave wall. But whatever.
It looks to me like you just want to wave Vox’s name around like a flag that you’re about to burn, rather than actually engaging with him. Honestly, why bother…
It does seem like it’s time to stop mentioning Young Zemo until you can engage him fully. I’ve been wanting to go through his data supporting varied claims but honestly don’t think it’s good to half-ass an argument.
Simple stating you’re holding the reason card, while it is likely true (haven’t read anything Zemo or Roger wrote on skepticism), doesn’t serve much purpose.
Return to this after Unholy Consult comes out. It’ll keep.
In the anglo-american tradition, the convention is to look at philosophy in terms of different problematics and philosopher’s positions regarding them. What distinguishes me from mainstream naturalism is my emphasis on cognitive shortcomings and my meaning skepticism. But I’ve stated this already.
I have to say, ob, the fact that I can’t even convince you of the various ways philosophers do in fact use the term ‘skepticism’ makes me think you’re really not capable of being convinced, once you’ve come to a conclusion.
I’ve already acknowledged your difference of emphasis. Perhaps you could elaborate on your meaning skepticism and how this distinguishes you from mainstream naturalism. What do you mean by saying that you’re a meaning skeptic, and what do you mean by saying that mainstream naturalists aren’t?
I don’t think you’ve actually made any argument against my point that a majority of major philosophers could be considered ‘skeptics’ under your understanding of the term. So, in the absence of an argument, I’m not sure how you would have convinced me. There are as yet no grounds to conclude that I’m either capable or incapable of being convinced.
From my perspective I’m giving you an opportunity to clarify some aspects of your thought that might be unclear to the average observer. That you seem to perceive me as hostile or intractable strikes me as decidedly odd. All I’ve really said is that I have a hard time understanding what your word ‘skepticism’ actually adds to your self definition as a naturalist. And along the same lines, I’ve pointed out that if you can apply the word ‘skeptical’ to the majority of major philosophers, then the value of the word seems to me to be quite watered down. These just seem like perfectly reasonable questions to me. They are not hostile to your position but rather give you an opportunity to expand and clarify.
Can any of your followers help to clarify this issue? Do they even agree amongst themselves how skeptical naturalism differs from mainstream naturalism? If not, it’s possible that you’re failing to communicate effectively, not that I’m failing to be convinceable.
Theodore Beale wrote:
“Evolution by natural selection is an intrinsically logical argument, it’s not even based on science nor is it established by science”
You’re talking completely out of your ass about biology and it really shows. Is this how Delavagus feels when trying to talk to you about philosophy?
There are infinite papers QUANTIFYING (not just showing) the effects of natural selection and artificial selection. In fact, showing such a thing nowadays wouldn’t be special, it would be boring. Most research now focuses on what sequences undergo changes during evolution, so for example: what gene sequences were under positive selection to shape an elephant’s trunk would be interesting to know. There has been a long standing debate as to whether protein coding changes were more important, or regulatory sequence. Support for importance of regulatory sequence (at least for major phenotypic change) has been building up. Comparative analysis of genomes has even revealed the genes under positive selection between humans and chimpanzees.
Dude, there was even a paper (Canadian, btw) published this week in Science where the researchers managed to recapitulate the intermediate forms of organs involved in mating in an insect by using RNAi. They showed that each intermediate was more strongly selected for than the less developed form.
You really have no clue, do you?
(This is pointless. Surely you have been an internet pundit for a while now, I feel someone would have tried to convince you on this point. If they have not succeeded, then it is very likely you have 0 interest in being persuaded, you just want to attack the position you disagree with without real respect for counterarguments.)
I don’t much follow the anti-evolutionary arguments, but this looks like a good summary:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/04/two-kinds-of-human-anti-evolutionism.html
Speciation is being questioned, not natural or artificial selection; whether evolution can create “new forms”, whatever that is.
Darwin’s assertion was that adaptation may, indeed does, progress to speciation; that a form may undergo adaptation to the point that it changes form. This is used a metaphysical assumption, outside of science and framing science – but it is not a discovery made by science.
You’re talking completely out of your ass about biology and it really shows. Is this how Delavagus feels when trying to talk to you about philosophy?
No, Jorge, I’m really not. And yes, most likely that is how Delavagus feels, and for similarly mistaken reasons. Ironically, I appear to know rather more about the subject than you do. Even Richard Dawkins has recently backed down from his earlier position and wrote in his latest book that natural selection is “very probably” the mechanism for evolution… because all the inept butterfly collectors simply assumed that because they could more or less demonstrate the end result, the mechanism must be the one assumed. I noticed this, and was writing about it publicly, before any of the recent reports that have cast, if not doubts, at least some questions on natural selection.
As Masatoshi Nei at Penn State showed in 2009, most of the work that purports to support natural selection is based on false positives caused by statistical incompetence on the part of biologists. If you were truly up on the current state of evolutionary science, Jorge, then you would know that the idea of natural selection as the core mechanism of evolution is being questioned more seriously by more true believing evolutionists with biology PhDs than any time in the last 100 years. That’s precisely why I now refer to TENS (the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection) as TE(p)NSBMGDaGF: the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow.
“Scientists at Penn State and the National Institute of Genetics in Japan have demonstrated that several statistical methods commonly used by biologists to detect natural selection at the molecular level tend to produce incorrect results…. Nei said that to obtain a more realistic picture of natural selection, biologists should pair experimental data with their statistical data whenever possible. Scientists usually do not use experimental data because such experiments can be difficult to conduct and because they are very time-consuming.“
And, of course, it should not escape your attention that the very reason that there are so many studies being performed to attempt to provide evidence for natural selection now is because no one had previously bothered to do it.
… there are so many studies being performed to attempt to provide evidence for natural selection now …
I must be missing something. Is it not obvious that individuals who reproduce (and protect their offspring) pass their genes on? What else is there to prove?
Science as a claim-making institution is flawed… Compared to what other institution, Vox?
Masatoshi Nei at Penn State
Surely there must be a bunch of these guys looking to get in on the prestige of it? Just the one?
What method does he use to show how he could be wrong? Or he doesn’t use that kind of science? Or did he apparently prove this with engineering?
Surely you have been an internet pundit for a while now, I feel someone would have tried to convince you on this point.
Yes, and ironically enough, I ended up convincing them that my doubts were perfectly legitimate. Based on the developments over the last ten years, I’m increasingly confident that genetic science will eventually disprove a considerable amount of the current evolutionary consensus, probably even enough to kill off its connection to the Darwinian aspects of the theory.
And there’s yet another seemingly outrageous prediction for you to track. Of course, if I turn out to be correct, again, Scott and others here would likely argue that means nothing….
I’m not pretending that this refutes anything Young Zemo or Pdimov said, or that anything they’ve said has a definitive scientific basis, but it’s worth a read:
IQ scores reflect motivation as well as ‘intelligence’
A theory in which low IQ is one’s own fault (for not being sufficiently motivated) is, I suppose, an improvement over a theory in which it’s the fault of the society (for stereotyping), but it’s a bit cruel. Sounds… Republican, if I might say so.
It’s more independent than undecided. There’s also work, probably just as if not more important than this study, that links IQ and malnutrition.
None of this research linking race and intelligence, at first glance, seems very cut and dry and what information there is seems very politically motivated.
*independent [politically neutral] than Republican.
I think that the general increase of IQ effected by the elimination of malnutrition was a major driving factor behind the nurture theory.
When I said, half-jokingly, Republican, I meant in the sense of the Puritan work ethic, in which if you don’t succeed in life, it’s your own fault for not trying hard enough.
Science as a claim-making institution is flawed… Compared to what other institution, Vox?
In general, its reality compared to its hypothetical ideal and also to engineering. I have far more confidence in engineers than scientists; they have to operate to higher standards with more serious material consequences for being incorrect. And before anyone sidetracks this, despite the two-way relationship between the two disciplines, science is not engineering.
Various specific sciences are also less reliable than other claim-making institutions. I find logic to be more reliable than economic science and find the Bible to be more reliable than child psychology; it has also historically proven much more reliable than the archeological consensus.
And frankly, the sad state of current science and the ongoing debacle of anthropogenic global warming/climate change, simple human doubt is more reliable than what presently passes for climate science.
I assume you are aware of the irony that I, the supposed certaintist, happen to be the one defending the concept of being skeptical of scientific claims to people who consider themselves skeptics. But even setting that aside, how can anyone be aware of the history of science and its huge historical collection of erroneous consensuses and outright frauds, yet simply assume none of that applies today?
Whether you agree with Vox or not, I’d like to point out that all of these arguments are very consistent with the extremely thorough form of pragmatism I perceive in Vox’s thinking. In fact, from that standpoint I think he could hardly argue otherwise.
A totally thorough pragmatism also thoroughly accounts for human fallibility, and so it would recognize the value in a system that produces amazing results even under the conditions of routine human failure. I think I’d be much more suspicious of it if science had a perfect track record. Do you put your money in the bank whose alarms continually go off, or the one that appears entirely quiescent? Well, to an extent it’s a judgment call. Maybe the noisy bank is poorly designed and has bungled management, or maybe the quiet bank is getting robbed blind and doesn’t know any better. In other words, you need pragmatic pragmatism–damn, another regress!
I am skeptical of scientific claims. I am far more skeptical of nonscientific speculation, primarily because it so reliably confirms what individuals want to believe. The thing I personally find so remarkable about science is that generates claims that so many people HATE.
And the mathematics and experimentation that makes engineering possible? That’s not scientific? The Standard Model of Particle Physics that made the semiconductor revolution possible, just for instance. Or how about the research underwriting modern medicine? Or those guys with chalk who realized nuclear weapons? Or virology? Or meteorology? Or geology? All of this is just what? Hokum?
And DNA evidence, and all other forms of scientific evidence should be barred from courtrooms I’m guessing.
It might be helpful if you could rephrase this series of rhetorical questions as an actual argument. This response of yours is basically just saying “I’m right and you’re wrong” in a particularly florid way. You may well be right, but you’re not really doing yourself any favors with this kind of response. It makes one wonder if you can actually back up your claims.
Engineering is a claim making institution?
Vox wrote:
“I’m increasingly confident that genetic science will eventually disprove a considerable amount of the current evolutionary consensus, probably even enough to kill off its connection to the Darwinian aspects of the theory.”
Dude, I’m a geneticist. You’re completely off your rocker. Evolution informs everything we do. Shit, half of our protocols involve a step called “selection” in which you use brutal sieving of cells to enrich cultures with transformants.
Why do people experience cancer remission? It’s because that very force SELECTS for cancer cells that are resistant to whatever therapy you used. Sure, you kill 99.99% of the BRCA1 -/- cells but then some small subpopulation with additional genetic alterations kills your wife (which would itself be a kind of selection). And this is just a simple pragmatic example of its short-term effect.
You’re not just living in Disney World, you’re smoking hashish on the monorail.
“I find logic to be more reliable than economic science and find the Bible to be more reliable than child psychology; it has also historically proven much more reliable than the archeological consensus.”
so…are you all done humoring him, now? really – read that again.
it’s just an endless refrain of Bush’s classic “You forgot Poland!” where “Poland” can be replaced with Sextus, Diocletian, Masatoshi Nei, etc. it’s a rhetorical shell game – there’s no pea. there never was.
the best case scenario is that Vox simply returns to his core function of providing a veneer of intellectual cover for his bigoted, sky-wizard saluting Ilk (Vibrancy is their strength, you see…)
Shorter version: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/353hi3/
You’re right, Vox is crazy. I agree. So–it should be easy for you to explain why economic science is more reliable than logic. Please do so, I would appreciate it…
Those things aren’t even in the same category. You can’t logically deduct everything in economics and certainly (there’s that word again) not in science. You can’t induct very much in math and count on getting it right. Truth in every category is derived and tested by a specific set of tools that aren’t universal.
How do you propose to compare logic and economics? And by the way, what type of logic?
You see, I’d like to know if you’ve concluded that he’s wrong by your own intuition–which could be cognitively biased–or if you have some other, more reliable way of knowing that he’s wrong.
Same question could be pitched to vox. Or yourself. Seriously.
In all seriousness, wrong about what? Evolution? Immigration? Economics? Philosophy?
Because Theo has claims that one can debate. It’s just that when we start getting into the support for those claims that I, at least, become increasingly suspicious.
Your argument seems to hinge on the idea that we won’t be able to cope with the changes you see coming.
To which my response is “speak for yourself”.
When my parents were born TV was in black and white and had a microscopic number of channels, computers were the size of large rooms and telephones were certainly not mobile. When my grandparents were born nuclear weapons, computers, helicopters and fascism didn’t exist. When my great-grandparents were born electricity was a luxury, heavier than air flying machines an ambition, radio a theory and communism an eccentricity. And so on back through the ages.
In my own lifespan, the Internet has gone from being something academics and DARPA played with to being utterly ubiquitous, to the point where it’s totally normal to me and everyone else of my generation. The extent to which even quite radical changes to society suddenly become normal is pretty breathtaking.
I think you will find that human beings can adapt to all kinds of strangeness. Of course, a few people – those particularly conservative in personal philosophy, or who simply lack the necessary cognitive flexibility to catch up to the rest of us – will be left behind. Such people have always existed. We read in Dickens of Mr Turveydrop, a resident of Victorian London who pines for the old-school dandyism of the Prince Regent’s time, an era long-since passed. He’s a comical figure, unable to really adapt to the new fashions and ideas, but he gets by. If you find you can’t wrap your head around whatever the next thirty years brings, I hope at least you’re able to get by too. You’ve already made yourself a figure of fun so perhaps the life of a potty eccentric suits you.
You understand the kind of change entailed by the singularity, don’t you?
Well, firstly I don’t believe in the singularity; I think the concept is based on some dodgy statistics and a fundamental misunderstanding of how technical and scientific progress works.
But accepting the proposition that the singularity will in fact occur: no, I don’t fully comprehend the sort of change it entails. Nor do you. We can make our best guesses, but we can’t know.
Medieval scholars would have had no concept of how the printing press would have changed things.
Victorian scientists could barely imagine what radio (and TV, radar, and all its other offspring) would do to the world.
DARPA had no idea what its creation of the Internet would result in.
Drastic, revolutionary change is something we’re far better at as a species than you allow for, Mr Bakker.
To quote Videodrome, a movie which went over this sort of territory decades ago (you see, the ideas you’re playing with really aren’t that new or revolutionary): “You’ll have to learn to live in a very strange world.” Most people will learn. A few will find they are too stuck in their ways to learn. A very few will grumpily refuse to learn. I guess you’d consider yourself to be in the third category?
It’s an empirical possibility that technological progress will level off – sure. But the very example you give of DARPA and the internet suggests the likelihood that it will accelerate while generating wildly unpredictable side-effects. I certainly don’t buy Kurzweil’s prognosis, but I think it’s obvious that technology and biology will inevitably merge, and that the consequences of this are too radical to imagine, let alone assume that we will ‘find some way to adapt.’ History is replete with civilizations that haven’t been able to adapt to radical change: given we are talking about the most radical transformation conceivable (the post-human) why should you presume that we’ll ‘manage somehow’?
Information technology is nothing like the printing press or radio or microwave: it’s not a ‘niche technology,’ something that sits on your counter and does its job, it’s UNIVERSAL. Think of all the ‘apps’ on your smartphone. Keep in mind the difference between the wax phonograph and the Blue-ray, and ask yourself what the Blue-ray version of a ‘smartphone’ will be in 100 years. As Marvin Minsky likes to say, we’ll be lucky if our machines keep us as pets!
Drastic, revolutionary change is something we’re far better at as a species than you allow for
Bald, raw assertion is one of the old ways as well.
Care to unpack that a bit Callan? I’ve cited numerous cases where technological progress has changed the very basis of society to an extent which past generations would have considered unimaginable. Unless you have any compelling counterpoints you think I’m missing, I think what I’m presenting is the opposite of a bald assertion.
What would it take for an example of non adaption? Extinction?
But I retract the raw assertion part – you were tending evidence with your claim, it just didn’t read as relevant to me at the time. Still doesn’t – It hardly seems like society adapts in your examples, merely that it does not collapse. People can take a bullet in their body without dying – it’s hardly adaption to being shot, for example. So what is an example of non adaption? Development of weaponry that could have made man extinct? Something like that?
Are you saying that the development of the printing press didn’t revolutionise and reshape society? Are you saying that the development of electricity or radio didn’t revolutionise and reshape society? Are you saying that society isn’t being utterly transformed right now as we get to grips with this whole internet thing?
The atom bomb is a troubling development but, again, society seems to have reshaped itself to cope with its existence. MAD worked for decades despite the USA and USSR harbouring some of the hawkiest hawks you could dream of. Sure, the possibility of smaller countries or terrorists getting their hands on nukes is troubling, but you’re not looking at an extinction-level event there.
Examples of non-adaptation? Well, the Western Roman Empire fell to pieces once it became transparently obvious to everyone that it was no longer fit for the job. Then again the feudal system and the Germanic Kingdoms were already in place to pick up the pieces. Global society never falls; individual societies might fall, but there’s always someone else who steps in and picks up the pieces.
Are you saying that the development of the…
I think your using lines for someone elses argument. Everything you raise doesn’t indicate adaption. If suddenly aliens landed on earth and started living everywhere and humans (and your global society) still continued, that’s not adaption – that’s just being in the same place without extinction occuring.
Sure, the possibility of smaller countries or terrorists getting their hands on nukes is troubling, but you’re not looking at an extinction-level event there.
So only extinction is a qualifier of failure to adapt? So a few thousand people killed, others suffering horribly, generations of mutated births, that’s still counted as adaption?
You seem to want to hold onto no particular standards beyond there being a few heartbeats still going – as long as a handfull of people are living in holes in the ground like cockroaches, you’d call that adaption?
I’m not too jiggy with having no standards beyond heartbeat, and I rather suspect you currently enjoy qualities of life that would not be there if certain beyond the basics standards were not held between men.
I’m wondering if your currently pre having a family of your own and in a workaholic stage, dedicating yourself to a workplace (or study place) as if that were family and will somehow reciprocate.
Examples of non-adaptation? Well, the Western Roman Empire fell to pieces once it became transparently obvious to everyone that it was no longer fit for the job. Then again the feudal system and the Germanic Kingdoms were already in place to pick up the pieces. Global society never falls; individual societies might fall, but there’s always someone else who steps in and picks up the pieces.
I wonder because I was asking for an example of how humans adapt, but then you give me an example of a system not adapting. As if the system comes ahead of people in importance? Along with ‘As long as Global society survives, even as I watch those close to me suffer or die in riots, I’ll say weve adapted!’
I mean hell, you even say ‘global society never falls’. So there is never a failure to adapt, in your mind. It’s quite missleading to anyone who doesn’t share your definition of adaption, to argue this. In the end your definition is that global society comes ahead of individual humans. While when you argue adaption would occur, for anyone who thinks of individual humans coming first in their definiton of adaption, you’re just missleading them.
Oh, doubtless in the individual scale there’s always tragedies and failures and people flat-out being trampled on. But I thought the conversation wasn’t about the individual level? I thought we were talking about the singularity, and widespread social change, not the discrete circumstances of individual people?
And again, I maintain that the majority of people adapt to new sociological and technological paradigms just fine. Most people can cope with a world with a printing press, or an Internet, or an atom bomb, or Communism, or whatever. They learn to get by. They change their habits. Some of them even thrive! This doesn’t mean it’s not a tragedy when people don’t make it. The millions who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to demonstrate to the rest of us the power of the atom bomb didn’t deserve what happened to them at all, and to take a less extreme example, its always distressing when the buggy whip factory goes out of business.
But what Bakker is saying goes beyond individuals suffering the negative consequences of the new. Bakker’s using terms like “apocalypse” with a straight face here! If that isn’t a clear direction to look at the big picture, to consider whether hearts are going to keep beating and all that jazz before pondering the individual tragedies, I don’t know what is.
What makes the singularity the singularity is that it’s no longer a matter of ‘people adapting to new technological environments’ it’s people becoming technology – which is to say, something other than ‘people’ as we know them. The optimistic induction that you seem to think is so obvious: People have always adapted before, therefore people always will adapt, literally misunderstands the singularity insofar as it assumes the continuous identity of ‘people.’
Mr Bakker, you talk as though we are not products of technology, living in an existence sustained more or less exclusively by technology and completely dependent on our technology to accomplish anything in the world. Nothing could be further from the case. Humanity are the pre-eminent tool-using animals, and if the distinction between human and tool becomes impossible to discern, well, that just takes things to its logical conclusion.
Oh, and to highlight this, because I think it fell by the wayside:
“History is replete with civilizations that haven’t been able to adapt to radical change:”
History is replete with civilisations that were *displaced by other civilisations* due to being unable to adapt to radical change. As far as cultures which outright failed without an external push go, you’re talking about isolated examples which usually entail a very limited population dealing with very limited resources, like Easter Island. Again, on the macro scale society has never collapsed all over the world simultaneously – hell, there were reasonably substantial parts of the world which stayed out of the World Wars entirely. That isn’t to say global extinction events are impossible, but the singularity you’re talking about isn’t really a global extinction event.
When my parents were born TV was in black and white and had a microscopic number of channels, computers were the size of large rooms and telephones were certainly not mobile. When my grandparents were born nuclear weapons, computers, helicopters and fascism didn’t exist. When my great-grandparents were born electricity was a luxury, heavier than air flying machines an ambition, radio a theory and communism an eccentricity. And so on back through the ages.
Incorrect.
Through the ages, at historical scales, rate of progress was far slower, both technologically and culturally.
Dude from 100 BC would be kinda ok in 300 AD if you were to somehow compensate for religious and linguistic differences, since pretty much all technology civvie and military alike, remained quite (though of course not entirely) similar. He could join the army, or go farming, or in some (rare) cases perhaps work his way into adjacency to elites on account of witty insight and flamboyant stories of the past.
Dude from, oh, 1800 AD would have far more trouble finding any meaningful employment in 2012 even if we somehow account for changes in language and general social attitude (though he might try joining, I dunno, some luddite commune, assuming he can master the skills necessary to find it on Google Maps 😉 ).
Well, we’ve had 200 years or so of increasingly rapid change which most people have been able to process perfectly adequately. Why should that change?
Bakker talks a fine talk but when you strip away his philosophical veil all he’s peddling is the neophobia of the stodgy and inflexible.
I wouldn’t say that most people are handling stuff adequately – I mean come on, look at teabaggers and fucking social conservatives. To me it seems that capacity to handle social change is stretched rather…thin.
But I don’t consider that a problem as long as those retrograde humans can be somehow pushed out of the way.
Teabaggers are hardly the majority, and there’s two distinctive things about social conservatives: they’ve always been with us, and they always *fail* because society continues to move on and change whether they like it or not.
The thing I personally find so remarkable about science is that generates claims that so many people HATE.
Then obviously you must be even less skeptical about the Bible… your metric is downright retarded.
And the mathematics and experimentation that makes engineering possible? That’s not scientific? The Standard Model of Particle Physics that made the semiconductor revolution possible, just for instance. Or how about the research underwriting modern medicine? Or those guys with chalk who realized nuclear weapons? Or virology? Or meteorology? Or geology? All of this is just what? Hokum?
You think MATH is SCIENCE? Seriously? No, it is absolutely not science. It only preceded the existence of science by a few thousand years. And while science certainly does produce some interesting engineering possibilities as well as ideas for new technologies, the causation usually works the other way around. Science is far more dependent upon engineering and technological development than they are dependent upon science. Look at Galileo. He made his big astronomical discoveries for one very non-scientific reason: he designed a better telescope than anyone else at the time. Even “the father of modern science” was an engineer first.
And DNA evidence, and all other forms of scientific evidence should be barred from courtrooms I’m guessing.
Absolutely. Apparently you’re not up on the latest science about this either. First, the National Academy of Sciences has already declared that only DNA evidence is potentially reliable enough to be used in courtrooms. Second, the problems of missing and mixed DNA, insufficient sample sizes, erroneous data entry, and prosecutorial bias mean that even the statistically trustworthy 13 loci standard can be doubted. And the 9 loci standard that experts claim is trustworthy enough for court quite clearly isn’t. Looking at the results of a study of the Arizona state DNA database, 577,465 other people in the USA would match your DNA at 9 loci. That’s well beyond a reasonable doubt.
Evolution informs everything we do. Shit, half of our protocols involve a step called “selection” in which you use brutal sieving of cells to enrich cultures with transformants.
It is always highly amusing when people attempt to utilize human-directed artificial selection to either a) disprove intelligent design or b) prove natural selection. You have managed to completely miss the point. Shit, 100 percent of my wife’s shopping involves a step called “selection” and that doesn’t prove TE(p)NSBMGDaGF either.
How do you propose to compare logic and economics?
Easy. GDP rates. Housing prices. Gold prices. There are literally hundreds of applicable metrics. Pick one. Pick ten. And the state of economic science is so bad that logic wins nearly every time. You quite clearly have never read any Austrian School economics, which openly rejects Keynesian empiricism and econometrics alike. If you’re actually interested in getting into this in serious depth, read my book entitled The Return of the Great Depression.
It’s just that when we start getting into the support for those claims that I, at least, become increasingly suspicious.
Which is amusing, since I am the only one who offers any support for my claims. Scott certainly doesn’t. None of the rest of you do. Do you seriously think I’m providing any substantive detail here? I’ve already offered a serious and substantive debate to Scott on the issue of the danger of certainty. He prefers to run away.
None of you are willing to be held to the intellectual standard to which I submit voluntarily. You’re all afraid to put your reputations on the line. And that is the primary reason why I am so confident that I am right and you are wrong. Want to prove me wrong? Go ahead and try. I’ll give you all the space on my blog you want.
I’ve already offered a serious and substantive debate to Scott on the issue of the danger of certainty. He prefers to run away.
Doesn’t that date from when you mistakenly thought he was a Pyrrhonian?
Hm. I thought the Bible was completed a long, long time ago. It’s not a metric. It’s a rule of thumb. People you see, like to think they’re the centre of the universe.
So. You think science is shit as a theoretical claim-making institution compared to… engineering, is that it?
What big theoretical claims has engineering made?
There’s a big difference between laughing your ass off and running away, Vox!
Well, that about says it all, doesn’t it.
“Which is amusing, since I am the only one who offers any support for my claims.”
Suspicion isn’t the same thing as saying you’re wrong Vox. You’ve obviously amassed a great deal of information and knowledge to defend your views.
To refute you would require checking your claims in multiple fields. Which is why I told Scott to let this sit until TUC is done.
After that, he can debate you at his leisure. Until then, unless he is going to debate you about something, anything, I agree it isn’t fair to mock you.
@Observer: I’ve already said Vox has points to be made when he talks about immigration. They aren’t points I, a liberal at heart, want to accept outright, but they are worth debating and from a position of risk aversion they are worth considering.
Even his point about assimilation and what is necessary for that to happen. But none of this requires casually mocking other cultures and religions.
Quite frankly there are people to debate those points with who don’t toss in little “gems” like Africans and Hispanics being genetically inferior barbarians.
It’s hard to even fully grasp anyone’s position and the information that informs it from this comment structure. I remain suspicious of his claims but I recognize it would take at minimum hours to “check his references”.
I agree it isn’t fair to mock you.
Hae, just is part of the performance, bro! 😉
Look, I disagree with Vox about quite a few things. But the fact is that he’s making arguments here and mostly no one else is. And on the economics issue in particular I really think he’s saying something worth paying attention to. I’m going to try to state it from a different angle.
A few months ago, Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winner but probably Vox’s arch enemy in economics, made an interesting point on his blog. First, he said that he didn’t think the science of economics would ever be as reliable as physics or even biology. Second, he went further than this, and said that it couldn’t now, and would probably never be able to reliably predict the market better than an experienced trader relying on his accumulated wisdom and intuition. Think about this for a second: the idea is that if you asked Warren Buffett whether to buy or sell, you’re always going to be better off trusting him than trusting the microeconomist at your local university, who is relying on the latest science.
If ‘folk wisdom’ of this kind consistently outpredicts science, then how is it at all reasonable to say that scientific conclusions are knowledge and whatever Warren Buffett has isn’t knowledge? Are you still going to keep saying that when Buffett keeps making correct predictions, which he can explain, and the microeconomist keeps making the wrong predictions? And if you trust Buffett over the scientist here, the natural implication would appear to be that science isn’t the ultimate yardstick for determining what counts as knowledge and what doesn’t. Instead, you would have to conclude, as I think Vox does, that knowledge is really consistent success plus explanatory power. (Incidentally, I think this view of knowledge is too limiting as well, but that’s another issue.)
When Vox, along similar lines, says that logic is more trustworthy than the science of economics, he’s not talking nonsense. I mean, nobody seriously thinks that the latest papers from the IMF, or whatever, are more trustworthy than even the most questionable claims in your logic textbook. Look, I think he’s completely mistaken to be skeptical about evolution–from a theological perspective as well as a naturalistic one–but that doesn’t mean that he’s just goofing off and talking nonsense.
Here’s another question: if you were raising your kid in 1920, would you trust your own intuition about how to do so, or would you trust the latest child psychology? What about in 1950? The present? At what date did child psychology become more reliable than your own intuitions? Certainly well after it became a ‘science.’ Therefore merely being ‘scientific’ is not sufficient reason to say that a claim constitutes knowledge. And being unscientific is not sufficient reason to say that a claim constitutes mere opinion.
Once more, I don’t fully agree with this view, but you can at least take it seriously and come up with an argument against it instead of plugging your ears and chanting ‘Vox is an idiot’ over and over.
But the fact is that he’s making arguments here and mostly no one else is.
I end up reading you in this ‘perfectly reasonable’ tone as you just decide things. As if your evaluation of who is pitching arguments is beyond question in terms of accuracy.
I mean, that’s the process isn’t it – you check if your right by whether you are being perfectly reasonable…by checking with yourself. And when you check with yourself, it turns out you are! I mean, by who else’s measure are you checking your reasonableness by? It’s your own.
Cornucopia: “Truth in every category is derived and tested by a specific set of tools that aren’t universal.”
I agree completely! But that isn’t a naturalist view. In fact I think Vox might even agree with this position, and that in the economics case, you’re just misinterpreting his argument.
The issue with logic and economics is that if you do an empirical study, plot data points, and come up with a conclusion based on a best-fit curve, you’re not necessarily going to do better than if you think through the problem logically and non-empirically, because the level of noise in the system you’re analyzing is extremely high. So comparing logic and empiricism and asking which is more trustworthy actually makes a lot of sense. At least I think Vox would argue this way–correct me if I’m wrong. Personally I don’t know enough about economics to decide if he’s correct or not, but again, it’s an argument that makes sense.
If you’re talking about deductive logic, it doesn’t create any new information; it only makes conclusions from what its assumptions imply. I suppose that is genuine new knowledge; however, it’s always knowledge constrained by the assumptions fed to it. The constraint of its assumptions make it a closed system, while empirical science is open in the sense that new information is fed to it in the form of observed data. This is why it verges on incoherence to compare science with logic. Logic is rule based. Science is based on observation, which can subsequently be worked with logic. It’s apples and oranges, although one can definitely use the other.
Hm, something I’d like to ask on behalf of 03 (who still can’t post here… or perhaps is screwing up proxy settings I sent her 😉 ):
Why are creationists so upset about natural selection ? Their “intelligent design” is unfalsifiable by design, so no amount of information on natural selection will affect its viability.
You think science is shit as a theoretical claim-making institution compared to… engineering, is that it? What big theoretical claims has engineering made?
This is yet more proof of your shameless intellectual dishonesty, Scott. Do you seriously think I wouldn’t catch you out, again, on such a blatant bait-and-switch? You didn’t ask about any “theoretical claim-making institution”, you asked this: “Science as a claim-making institution is flawed… Compared to what other institution, Vox? Not all claims are theoretical, Scott.
There’s a big difference between laughing your ass off and running away, Vox!
Sure, Scott. Keep telling yourself that. Trust me, there are a lot more people laughing at your cowardice than at me. I can back up my claims. You, it would appear, cannot. As a matter of fact, you still haven’t provided a relevant answer to my very first question … even though I keep answering yours without evasion.
Why are creationists so upset about natural selection ? Their “intelligent design” is unfalsifiable by design, so no amount of information on natural selection will affect its viability.
Who is upset? Pointing out the absence of scientific evidence for it is not tantamount to being upset. I’m not an ID guy myself, never read a single book on it, but one can readily observe it is no more unfalsifiable than we’ve seen TENS to be in practice for the last 150 years. And in my observation, the only people who are upset are those who get their panties in a bunch because a bunch of kids who are barely learning to read, write, and do math might not be sufficiently indoctrinated into the unquestionable faith of Darwin. I myself totally support the public schools teaching evolution along with Wicca, Aztec sacrifice, homosexuality, pedophilia, and devil worship.
I think Vox might even agree with this position, and that in the economics case, you’re just misinterpreting his argument.
He is. And you’ve hit part of it, but not all of it. The other part is that when the predictive models provided by economic science fail empirically, as they inevitably do, it ends up as a logical debate anyhow. For one example, see Paul Krugman and his argument on behalf of a $600 billion stimulus package that was $187 billion smaller than the actual one he later criticized as having been too small to fix the crisis.
This is why people with a background in economics are often extremely skeptical of academic and scientific authority. We not only see an inordinate amount of bullshit, but see it get exposed as such very quickly in real time. I believe Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, has written about this at some length.
This is yet more proof of your shameless intellectual dishonesty, Scott. Do you seriously think I wouldn’t catch you out, again, on such a blatant bait-and-switch? You didn’t ask about any “theoretical claim-making institution”, you asked this: “Science as a claim-making institution is flawed… Compared to what other institution, Vox? Not all claims are theoretical, Scott.
Wow, the most incredibly uncharitable reading by you and you think it’s evidence of someone elses short fall? What, when someone says “Hey, I feel like a burger. Know a place to eat?” you point them to a pizza shop or something because hell, they didn’t ASK for a burger joint? That’s a sit com characters script! A bad sit com!
even though I keep answering yours without evasion.
*Cue bad situational comedy canned laughter*
Not dishonesty, just too charitable. What other kind of claim-making institution could I be referring to? Which makes this reek of a dodge. So you are you tacitly acknowledging that science, as a theoretical claim-making institution, has no peer?
If you say so. All I know is that you really don’t have a clue what you’re talking about – that you misunderstand – but are for some reason incapable of seeing as much. Like I say, delavagus is doing his fucking philosophy PhD on skepticism and you *literally* think you understand skepticism better than he does! Fucking. Hilarious. You’re one of these guys who is constantly amazing yourself with your eloquence and intelligence. You’ve cornered the market on your own bullshit! Which explains the miraculous way your beliefs fall over themselves in their eagerness to confirm your bigotries.
Mr. Bakker, anyone can look at your reply here and see that you’re not making a reasoned argument. Whether you’re running away or laughing, you’re only making your own side look bad by resorting to rhetoric, bluster, and appeal to authority. You need to decide if you’re going to engage Vox honestly and rationally, otherwise you should just stop referring to him on your blog. I am not the only one reading this who thinks so, as you can see from some of the comments above.
Because I side with your views far more than Vox’s, it makes me sad to see you continue in this way. If you are going to go on writing for years about science and reason and how important it is that we be wary of our cognitive biases, then you ought to hold yourself to this same high standard when it comes to engaging in a debate with your enemies, and show that you, at least, are a man of reason, and that whatever rhetorical tricks your opponent resorts to, you are going to keep a cool head and remain above them. To do anything less is hypocrisy, plain and simple–even if you’re certain that your conclusions are truer than your opponents’. Moreover, falling short of your own standard in such a way indicates to Vox’s partisans on the right that they need not take you seriously, that Vox is in fact correct to call you a charlatan; and they can therefore assume that own erroneous beliefs are therefore likely to be true.
You’re the Dude who argued that skeptics don’t understand the term ‘skepticism,’ aren’t you? Every single time I’ve thrown something serious at Vox, he’s gone barking the other way. I just don’t find him a credible interlocutor, and given how little time I’ve had as of late, I just don’t see the point.
Believe what you want. The fact is you will no matter what I say, so why should I bother saying anything at all? Keep hiding behind ersatz definitions of certainty. Keep waving that xenophobic flag. Keep believing that Vox is the real life winner of the Magical Belief Lottery!
And we’ll keep laughing… Because the sad fact is, there’s nothing else to be done. You boyz are locked in.
Oh, and speaking of Krugman’s ex post facto to call for a bigger stimulus package, I correctly and publicly predicted he would do precisely what he did. How? Because a) I knew the stimulus would fail because it didn’t matter how big it was, b) Krugman doesn’t abandon his Neo-Keynesian models no matter how often they fail, and c) Keynesians of all stripes always claim that the reason for their models’ failures is either the stimulus wasn’t big enough or the monetary policy wasn’t loose enough. And interest rates were already at historic lows….
After that, he can debate you at his leisure. Until then, unless he is going to debate you about something, anything, I agree it isn’t fair to mock you.
I don’t mind getting mocked at all. You can’t write political op/ed and have a thin skin; you should have seen how crazy the Republicans went after I write How to Argue like a Conservative a few years ago. And it’s perfectly reasonable to decide that one is too busy to deal with a debate at the moment. I’m wrapping up my own attempt at epic fantasy right now, so I can certainly sympathize. But Scott hasn’t done anything except posture as yet.
Quite frankly there are people to debate those points with who don’t toss in little “gems” like Africans and Hispanics being genetically inferior barbarians.
Correction: genetically different barbarians. And I would say that Hispanics are semi-civilized rather than full barbarians, although the jury is still out on that one. Let’s see what they do with southern California over the next 50 years before pronouncing judgment.
But I think you’re leaving out the point that it is Scott who was pointing out the importance of challenging people like me. I’m saying, fine, bring it on. And it appears that the minute it became apparent I was prepared to be challenged, he lost his appetite for it.
I remain suspicious of his claims but I recognize it would take at minimum hours to “check his references”.
Suspicion is entirely reasonable. I would merely point out that it would be remarkably stupid of me to make any claims based on dubious or fictitious references considering how many people are reading my blog and columns and waiting for me to slip up in any way. I may be wrong with regards to some of my conclusions, and if that can be conclusively demonstrated then I will change my position without hesitation. I merely hope you’ll find that I’m neither dishonest nor intellectually shady.
I should mention, given your interest in the issue, that I used to be very pro-open immigration. It wasn’t until I began rethinking Ricardian free trade a few years ago that I changed my mind about immigration as well. After all, from an economics perspective, immigration is simply free labor, one of the various aspects of free trade.
I meant “check references” as in examine the pros and cons of a claim.
I doubt you care if anyone mocks you. But employing half-measures in countering anyone’s claims – yours or others – only bolsters them, regardless of their validity.
No evidence for natural selection ? How do you explain Luria–Delbrück experiment’s result in whatever model you are using ? How do you explain formation of new strains of bacteria ?
Also, isn’t classical Darwinean evolution kinda deprecated anyway since it doesn’t account for drifts, horizontal transfer events and whatnot ?
Seems like you have a pet peeve with Darwin specifically, Vox 🙂
both mooney and haidt were on up with chris hayes this weekend:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/vp/47304976#47304976
Seems like you have a pet peeve with Darwin specifically, Vox
To a certain extent. But not for the reason you probably assume. Very few understand the connection between Darwin and economics; natural selection was inspired by Malthus’s ideas about political economy, which of course were eventually seen to be false. That doesn’t mean that Darwin’s ideas are necessarily wrong on that basis, of course, but these faux sciences are often very tightly related in ways that very few but the sufficiently sophisticated understand. For example, Keynesian theory is little more than Freud applied to economics, but since almost no one reads the General Theory these days, no one realizes what a foundation of utter horseshit supports the Samuelsonian quantification that presently passes for mainstream economics.
Given that TENS is Malthus applied to biology, you should probably be able to understand the source of my skepticism.
But employing half-measures in countering anyone’s claims – yours or others – only bolsters them, regardless of their validity.
True, that’s why I like substantive written debates. It tends to clarify the matter in ways that blog comments don’t.
No evidence for natural selection ? How do you explain Luria–Delbrück experiment’s result in whatever model you are using ? How do you explain formation of new strains of bacteria ?
Yes. Never read the paper. The same way I explain new strains of dogs. Look, any biologist worth his salt will admit that even the simple definition of “species” is problematic. Given that, it’s simply absurd to claim that our knowledge of how one species transforms into an entirely different species is conclusively settled.
So much of it is fairy tales. No one has ever established that white polar bears have a reproductive advantage being white, it’s just assumed and repeated ad infinitum. Paint some polar bears pink and show that they’re 50 percent less likely to reproduce over a generation than white ones, now you’re actually talking scientific evidence for natural selection. As it stands, it’s a circular argument, as Fodor has noted.
There have been a few, a very few, experiments of this kind, but as the report on Nei’s 2009 study pointed out, most of them are statistical, and incompetently performed.
but these faux sciences are often very tightly related in ways that very few but the sufficiently sophisticated understand.
Genetic fallacy, FWIW.
Paint some polar bears pink and show that they’re 50 percent less likely to reproduce over a generation than white ones, now you’re actually talking scientific evidence for natural selection.
Peppered moths or any other case of industrial melanism and subsequent reversion upon mitigation. The experiments have already been done, unwittingly.
How do you explain Luria–Delbrück experiment’s result in whatever model you are using ?
Okay, read through it. Very confused by one of the ways it is being commonly interpreted, which appears to be precisely opposite to what the experiment actually shows. Will discuss on the blog soon.
Would you please expand your critique of position on Malthus, cause it would be very sad if your position gets misinterpreted (I for one don’t think you claim that Malthusian checks “are not a thing”, but merely that they occur under a number of rather constraining conditions which so far have not been encountered by real-world systems, but I am not quite sure this is indeed what you intend to convey)
“The same way I explain new strains of dogs. “
I get a distinct vibe that you aggressively separate cases of selection induced by human pressure from cases of “natural” pressure. Is that so ?
” Given that, it’s simply absurd to claim that our knowledge of how one species transforms into an entirely different species is conclusively settled.”
And who claimed that ?
For that matter, I don’t think modern idea of speciation is “raw darwinean” speciation, given various discoveries regarding, for instance, horizontal gene transfer.
I think you’re fighting a kind of strawman here, based on your (apparently, for lack of better term, “heuristic” antipathy toward one lone facet of modern evolutionary theory)
Would you please expand your critique of position on Malthus
No, because it’s not my critique. He was flat out wrong about geometric versus arithmetic progressions. Neither populations nor food supplies follow such patterns. The Iron Law of Wages, also based upon his thoughts, isn’t true either.
The Tolstoy quote on Wikipedia sums Malthus up nicely: “It would seem as though they were scientific deductions, which had nothing in common with the instincts of the masses. But this can only appear so for the man who believes that science, like the Church, is something self contained, liable to no errors, and not simply the imaginings of weak and erring folk, who merely substitute the imposing word ‘science,’ in place for the thoughts and words of people, for the sake of impressiveness.”
I get a distinct vibe that you aggressively separate cases of selection induced by human pressure from cases of “natural” pressure.
I would think it is entirely obvious that artificial selection is not natural selection. And even decades of intense artificial selection hasn’t managed to produce speciation as yet.
I don’t think modern idea of speciation is “raw darwinean” speciation, given various discoveries regarding, for instance, horizontal gene transfer.
It’s not. That’s the point I made earlier. There is no one modern idea of speciation. And I’m not fighting a strawman, I’m not fighting anything, I’m simply pointing out the obvious and overlooked.
So, it appears you maintain that capacity of scientific progress to prevent a Malthusian Check (which is, according to wikipedia, is the main coherent criticism of malthusian/neo-malthusian theories) is essentially unlimited? (also, of all anti-Malthus quotes on wiki, Tolstoy’s is the most content-free and pointlessly preachy…like pretty much everything he wrote, IMHO)
Hm. I guess the jury is still out on whether progress can indefinitely support growing population, isn’t it ?
As to artificial/natural selection, how is artificial selection different from natural selection, except by what factors are culling certain genotypes ? It doesn’t matter whether it is peculiarities of climate (or any other environmental factor), your favorite god, my favorite god, some space aliens or us mere humans who are “smiting” creatures with certain heritable characteristics, the core of the process is still the same.
It seems to me that, given that the key process of both natural and artificial selection is pretty much “creatures with certain heritable features breed less or outright die without breeding” and that both operate against a random background of mutations, you would need a distinction that isn’t so hollowly pedantic if you seek to draw those two apart.
Also, painting white bears pink would be, per your model, a case of artificial selection, not an experiment in natural selection, amrite ? 😉
“And even decades of intense artificial selection hasn’t managed to produce speciation as yet.”
A remarkably strong claim. It intrigues me. Would you care to source it, preferably in a way that also indicates which definition of species is used?
OK, now I’m on the floor rolling.
The ‘Super Intelligence’ can’t figure out Luria and Delbruck and thinks that biologists have been interpreting it BACKWARDS for the last 50 years! This is a fucking riot. You do realize they got a fucking Nobel prize for this, right? And not some crappy “peace” prize, the prize in Physiology and Medicine. This is a prize that is given out by their colleagues across fields… vast quantities of the finest minds the world has at any given time.
Come on buddy. A hybrid mongrel idiot savage Latino can grok this nonsense… why can’t you?
Maybe you should just go out back, think about it for a while, and then shoot yourself in the face.
Oh man… this hate stuff… It’s addicting!
Love,
Jorge
this sword is on fire, ergo your argument is invalid.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_c8hGP_Vc8nA/Rssw8TByBEI/AAAAAAAAAHE/BZkYzaa-CQg/s400/Vox.jpe
you also forgot freud, malthus, and bunsen honeydew.
True.
This is particularly precious:
“these faux sciences are often very tightly related in ways that very few but the sufficiently sophisticated understand”
VoxyWoxy wrote:
“any biologist worth his salt will admit that even the simple definition of “species” is problematic”
For bacteria. Indeed, the word “species” probably should never be applied to prokaryotes which recombine or exchange plasmids readily (basically all of them). For eukaryotes, it usually works very well (the fluctuation test also works on yeast, I’ve done several myself). Prezyogotic and post-zygotic genetic isolation barriers which prevent recombination of two lineages is sufficient to call them a new species.
VoxyWoxy wrote:
“it’s simply absurd to claim that our knowledge of how one species transforms into an entirely different species is conclusively settled.”
No one said anything about conclusive. We’re shaky on some pesky molecular details, such as how chromosome numbers change as lineages evolve, and how exactly isolation starts to cause breeding incompatibility (feel free, however, to google “reinforcement” and “Dobzhansky-Muller model”).
The problem, of course, is that you think a chimp had to turn into a human. The reality is that chimps and humans share a common ancestor, which were isolated by geography and stopped exchanging genes and recombining. This led to a series of still-unclear molecular events driven by natural selection or neutral evolution which eventually gave the two lineages distinct phenotypes. It’s possible that the common ancestors looks more like a chimp than a human, but it’s also possible it looks different and distinct.
Your mind is stuck on Platonic forms. Let it go Woxypoo.
this sword is on fire
There are creams you can get from the chemist for that.
This is probably an oversimplification, but wasn’t the most radical transformation the fusion of chromosome 2, which probably gave rise to some weird ass looking SOB’s. So, either geographic isolation, or rather appropriate to this discussion, repulsion of one group by another.
Don’t consider this an informed opinion, ’cause it’s not.
I get a distinct feeling that the thread is now over.
Time for Bakker to throw out some fresh chum.
That’s a lye! 😉
Hehe, good observation!
Bakker, we’re summing you to the lists. Forget Vox, take down OSC:
http://greensboro.rhinotimes.com/hc.e.211703.lasso
*summoning
I think that this sack of bones isn’t worth taking down – gravity will eventually suffice.
Also, I kinda like A-1. It’s so poorly designed it is unlikely to stand in court, and it’s so much more joy if it passes, then falls apart mid-flight so to say.
The worst enemy of a social conservative seems to be that thing they see in the mirror every morning 😉
So, it appears you maintain that capacity of scientific progress to prevent a Malthusian Check (which is, according to wikipedia, is the main coherent criticism of malthusian/neo-malthusian theories) is essentially unlimited?
Technological progress, not scientific progress. Your turn: what structural limits on technological progress do you believe will slow that progress down considering that it has, by any reasonable measure, been speeding up over the last 100 years?
OK, now I’m on the floor rolling.
That’s because you’re not very intelligent, probably due to your inferior genetics. But it’s not your fault if your inferiority is merely the result of natural selection.
The ‘Super Intelligence’ can’t figure out Luria and Delbruck and thinks that biologists have been interpreting it BACKWARDS for the last 50 years!
No, I understand the experiment. That’s not difficult. And I understand how it applies to a certain definition of one step in the proposed natural selection process. What I don’t understand is how it can be interpreted as supporting various broad definitions of natural selection to which it can’t possibly apply, if that is indeed the case. Of course, this may be another example of the evolution fans not understanding the professional biologists.
This is a fucking riot. You do realize they got a fucking Nobel prize for this, right? And not some crappy “peace” prize, the prize in Physiology and Medicine. This is a prize that is given out by their colleagues across fields… vast quantities of the finest minds the world has at any given time.
Irrelevant. So did Paul Krugman and I kick him around without breaking a sweat.
Come on buddy. A hybrid mongrel idiot savage Latino can grok this nonsense… why can’t you? Maybe you should just go out back, think about it for a while, and then shoot yourself in the face.
You don’t even understand what I’m talking about. I don’t know if it’s because of your Latino limitations or simply because you didn’t bother reading closely enough, but it’s not a concern of mine either way. But you certainly do a nice job of illustrating your semi-civilized status.
The problem, of course, is that you think a chimp had to turn into a human.
You really are an idiot. I guarantee you, I’ve read more Dawkins than you have.
I guess the jury is still out on whether progress can indefinitely support growing population, isn’t it ?
Not really. You really think that’s not settled after 8,000 years of observation, but TENS is despite no one ever observing it?
As to artificial/natural selection, how is artificial selection different from natural selection, except by what factors are culling certain genotypes ?
Speed and consistency.
Also, painting white bears pink would be, per your model, a case of artificial selection, not an experiment in natural selection, amrite ? 😉
Yes, but it would test if one of the assumptions involved in the natural selection process was correct. Does the presumption of fitness advantage actually exist? Biologists aren’t trained in logic, for the most part, and they tend not to realize how much circular reasoning they utilize. How do we know x was more fit? Because it survived and reproduced. How did it survive and reproduce? Because x made it more fit. Fodor and an Italian, I believe, wrote a book on this, it’s sort of a Chomskyesque attack on natural selection.
A remarkably strong claim. It intrigues me. Would you care to source it, preferably in a way that also indicates which definition of species is used?
1. Richard Lenski’s study on e. coli evolution, now over 50,000 generations. Changes in size and shape, but not much else of interest except an ability to utilize citrate.
2. English bacteriologist Alan Linton: “But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms.”
3. Burke study referenced in Nature: 600 fruit fly generations not only produced no speciation, but little difference in the DNA sequences of the flies.
Endosymbiosis is evidence that eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes, but really endosymbiote should be the one telling you that 🙂
That’s because you’re not very intelligent, probably due to your inferior genetics.
That’s different genetics, remember? Ah, how soon they forget.
Biologists aren’t trained in logic, for the most part, and they tend not to realize how much circular reasoning they utilize. How do we know x was more fit? Because it survived and reproduced. How did it survive and reproduce? Because x made it more fit.
Garbage sentence. Replace X with a creature ‘Because bird made it more fit’ it’s garbage. Replace X with a trait ‘How do we know wings was more fit?’ it’s garbage.
But as a semantic shell game, it’s a sublime construct. Ironically an example of what happens in terms of communication when no fitness requirement is enforced. Or can be.
I guesstimate about 80% of field of philosophy is like that. Basically, “weaponized semantics” 🙂
It depends I guess if the person involved is trying to hard convert you to another way of thinking, rather than trying to provide an ‘on the other hand’ alternate viewpoint of thinking. I kind of suspect Beale sees, due to what’s happened to him in the past, it as a hard conversion process. As if he must be snapped over (like he was snapped over in the past).
Still waiting…
I should mention, by the way, that I have completed my review of Delavagus’s two posts, To Know Our Unknowing and To Unknow Our Knowing. It’s only eight parts, the first of which is here.
I have, as requested, given Delavagus’s posts a fair and detailed reading. I have considered his attempt to defend Pyrrhonism against the charge of peritropē and found it wanting, I have identified no less than 10 specific errors in the arguments he presented, and finally, I have demonstrated that he has either not understood Pyrrhonism or has shamelessly misrepresented it for his own purposes. I leave it to the reader to determine the validity of those four observations.
It was a rather surreal experience, in the end, given that the central message of Pyrrhonism is no more that second-order belief in justified first-order belief is bad by nature than the central message of Buddhism is every man for himself.
“Technological progress, not scientific progress. Your turn: what structural limits on technological progress do you believe will slow that progress down considering that it has, by any reasonable measure, been speeding up over the last 100 years?”
Why, the limits of human mental and, perhaps more importantly, organizational ability (I think you, of all people, will readily agree that recently, human achievements in organizing political and economical systems were rather…uninspiring 😉 already, and there is no particular reason to believe that organizational side of thing is going to improve). While they are problematic to quantify, I don’t think that a claim that no limits exist on human capacity in terms of “general” intelligence and activity organization can be substantiated.
Generally, to me, a claim of “inexhaustible” human capacity for “creativity” and “technical progress” is generally indistinguishable from your average Singularitarian proclamation. NB! This of course does not mean that Singularitarians are wrong – it might of course be that we invent mighty intelligence augmentation and profoundly superhuman AIs, but such claims can not be readily investigated beyond “wait and see” and thus rest firmly in realms of scifi/fantasy.
My personal highly subjective opinion – barring some Kurzweilian (Kurzweily ? Kurzweilesque?) outrageousness, mankind will start running out of “progress steam” in about a hundred years technologically, and a few decades organizationally/socially (and I’m being optimistic, cause I’d rather not live to see the “technological plateau”)
“Speed and consistency.”
Care to elaborate ? And source ? Because, you know, there is hardly any reasons to believe that humans, especially early on, were all too consistent, and speed seems limited in both cases.
” Yes, but it would test if one of the assumptions involved in the natural selection process was correct. “
You’d still dismiss it as “not natural enough” though 😀
” Fodor and an Italian, I believe, wrote a book on this, it’s sort of a Chomskyesque attack on natural selection. ”
Google suggests it was quite thoroughly demolished and was indeed a pedantic Chomsky-like semantic shenanigan, dealing as far as I understand not so much with circularity as with claim that “free-rider” problem somehow fatally compromises the theoretical foundations of natural selection. I see no problem with free-rider problem, so it’s probably some kind of pedantic semantic warfare best left to tenured individuals who enjoy waging semantic warfare while Glorious Engineers equipped with “modern evolutionary synthesis” theory (natural selection necessary, but not sufficient) and cleverly hijacked viruses to “forge” better beef and potatoes, so we can keep mocking that old fart Malthus 😉
” 1. Richard Lenski’s study on e. coli evolution, now over 50,000 generations. Changes in size and shape, but not much else of interest except an ability to utilize citrate.
2. English bacteriologist Alan Linton: “But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms.”
3. Burke study referenced in Nature: 600 fruit fly generations not only produced no speciation, but little difference in the DNA sequences of the flies. ”
Nice
But…
Meanwhile… 😉
… reproductive isolation has been successfully induced in fruit flies (Rice, W.R. and G.W. Salt (1988). “Speciation via disruptive selection on habitat preference: experimental evidence”. ) and observed in nature in a species of mosquito that preferentially dwells in the subways of cities (currently a subspecies, IIRC it has a fairly unique mating pattern in regards to progenitor species).
As to bacteria, as far as I understand, speciation is iffy in those bastards anyway, since it’s problematic to assess what “reproductive isolation” would be for them, and because of the whole plasmid business.
Meanwhile, you seem to be downplaying the importance of citrate result, which for those bacteria appears to be a profound breakthrough mutation and perfectly consistent with predictions of natural selection part of modern synthesis.
keh keh keh, should read and observed in nature in a subspecies of mosquito that preferentially dwells in the subways of cities (currently a subspecies, IIRC it has a fairly unique mating pattern in regards to progenitor species).
It’s currently an ongoing speciation event. Studies show that hybridization rate is dropping in some populations of those buggers (BTW, a fellow epidemiologist thinks that those mosquitoes are a pandemic waiting to happen, but that’s another story)
Oh, and, Scott, could you please make a timed edit button, like Peter Watts did ? I can help, BTW 😉
A timed edit would be a mercy!
In case anyone missed the Fodor thingie: Here’s the great battle of philosopher kings http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/darwin_exchange.php
Sorry I am joining the conversation so late but Pox…
6. You assent to many things that are unknown. Your confessed faith in science, for example, is profoundly unskeptical.
Vox, science is skeptical by nature is it not? a theory cannot be law unless its proven, and only laws are accepted. Any scientific law is not unknown, its completely true in all matters of the universe. A law has passed all the skeptical tests as a theory and was deemed true by scientific method. Is a scientific law unknown?
Do you believe that the world is only 5 thousand years old? Or the jonah really lived in a whales belly? Or that snakes could speak whichever language adam and eve spoke? If any of those are true, skepticism or not aside, you are bat shit crazy.
7. You do not pay any observable heed to nature or the tradition of laws and customs. In fact, you even use your faux skepticism as an excuse to attack traditional laws and customs as well as those who hold to them. —- Nature has been beating our brains into submission for 100,000 + years, watch brain games and see how fooled you are by shading just because of the thousands of years we’ve all spent holding shadows as necessary clues to survival.. traditional laws and customs weren’t the traditional laws and customs 1000 years ago, be glad someone attacked them and changed the world view and remember that will happen over and over again. Dont sit comfortably knowing that history shows us when we think we are right, we just need to wait a few hundred years and everyone then knows we were wrong.
science is skeptical by nature is it not?
No, it is not. It is profoundly unskeptical, because it rests on many base assumptions. It assumes the scientist is honest, it assumes the experiment can be replicated even if no one makes the attempt, it assumes that the sample size is relevant, etc.
traditional laws and customs weren’t the traditional laws and customs 1000 years ago, be glad someone attacked them and changed the world view and remember that will happen over and over again.
Totally irrelevant. You clearly haven’t read any Sextus and don’t understand the first thing about Pyrrhonism. It concerns tranquility, imperturbability and suspension of judgment, which is why accepting the customs and traditions of the day as phenomena and living by them are integral to the philosophy.
Google suggests it was quite thoroughly demolished and was indeed a pedantic Chomsky-like semantic shenanigan, dealing as far as I understand not so much with circularity as with claim that “free-rider” problem somehow fatally compromises the theoretical foundations of natural selection.
Ah, Google says so… you are certainly a fine example of the modern skeptic indeed, dismissing things you’ve never even made any attempt to read. Sweet Sextus, but you guys are really amusingly and incoherently certain for a collection of self-professed uncertaintists.
Man. You are the king of gaming definitions aren’t you? A rationalization machine. Anything gives you trouble, you misrepresent it, then jump up and down declaring how you demolished this or that, while people who spend their lives studying these issues simply…
Tell me, Vox, what’s the difference between rationalizing and reasoning? And where does science lie on this divide?
My dear friend! Please remind me where I claimed to be the paragon of skepticism – modern, Pyrrhonean or whatever other kind thereof happens to exist in vast figurative depths of philosophy.
As all human beings, I have my little preferences, and when dealing with convoluted linguistic trickery and weaponized semantics, I prefer to have third parties provide arguments from which to choose.
Finding such through google is most definitely efficient. I even provided links to the battle of philosopher kings, so people present on this page may familiarize themselves with arguments in question.
RSBakker: “Believe what you want. The fact is you will no matter what I say, so why should I bother saying anything at all? Keep hiding behind ersatz definitions of certainty. Keep waving that xenophobic flag. Keep believing that Vox is the real life winner of the Magical Belief Lottery! And we’ll keep laughing… Because the sad fact is, there’s nothing else to be done. You boyz are locked in.”
Mr. Bakker, I’ll say it one last time for the benefit of whoever else might be reading these responses of yours. Whatever you believe, I am not Vox. I do not side with Vox. I haven’t waved any xenophobic flag–quite the reverse. I think he’s wrong on many things, from evolution to politics. I voted for Obama and will do so again. I support the new Keynesians. I believe in Darwin. I would rather not reveal my academic credentials in philosophy, but you would be quite wrong to assume that they do not surpass your own.
However, I think you have failed to explain yourself well and to argue your own case convincingly. And I think you have instead resorted to rhetoric, appeals to authority, distractions, and generally sidestepped argument in a way that reflects poorly on your side. That Vox himself is possibly unconvinceable is completely beside the point.
The fact that you have misinterpreted me so heroically, beginning by assuming from my very first post that I was Vox’s sock puppet–completely false–indicates to me that you are reacting defensively and that if you are indeed capable in other circumstances of explaining yourself and arguing your case, emotion and instinctual reaction have got the better of you here. It is worth pointing out that this reaction is strictly contrary to, though predicted by, your own professed beliefs about cognitive bias, as well as your own assertion that you intended to reach out to ‘the other side,’ while academically sanctioned literature contented itself with preaching to the converted.
I am still waiting to know how skeptical naturalism differs from conventional naturalism apart from its emphasis. But I do not expect I will ever find out, as there is so little to be gained from conversation with you in these circumstances that I am going to withdraw from your little corner of the internet.
I answered your question regarding naturalism TWICE – which is the point. I heartily apologize if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe your claims to impartiality. You started with this ‘Vox is the only one with arguments here’ line from the very beginning and have taken every opportunity you could to repeat it. You reek of plant.
You said that you were a meaning skeptic, and then did not follow up my request to explain what you meant, and how that distinguishes you from conventional naturalists. I am genuinely curious.
You may continue to believe I am a plant if you so desire. I am here anonymously and solely for my own amusement, not for prestige points.
I said I was a meaning skeptic and that I drew heavily from cognitive psychology. A meaning skeptic is someone who thinks intentional phenomena may not exist.
” I believe in Darwin. I would rather not reveal my academic credentials in philosophy, but you would be quite wrong to assume that they do not surpass your own. “
As I have repeatedly indicated here and elsewhere, I am a sentient hiveminded murder of ravens (now also including some other corvids)
Don’t worry Pinhead, you’re my favorite poster on TPB. 😉
However, I think you have failed to explain yourself well and to argue your own case convincingly.
Exactly what philosophical qualifications do you assert you have? ‘Convincingly’ by what metric? The one true galactic standard of convincing? Which you happen to have grasped? I’m sure you have sheets of paper with wax seals, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve learnt anything in regards to the basics refering to your own asserted benchmark with a little skepticism in regard to it.
Never mind that the person who says this
anyone can look at your reply here and see that you’re not making a reasoned argument. Whether you’re running away or laughing, you’re only making your own side look bad by resorting to rhetoric, bluster, and appeal to authority.
Treats a reply of ‘Seriously?‘ as a valid responce, which touches on all all three.
Man. You are the king of gaming definitions aren’t you? A rationalization machine. Anything gives you trouble, you misrepresent it, then jump up and down declaring how you demolished this or that, while people who spend their lives studying these issues simply…
Au contraire, Scott. I did not game any definition and I could not have as I made no arguments based on definitions. I merely highlighted the way in which Delavagus switched back between the philosophical definition of knowledge, “justified true belief”, and the vulgar definition of knowledge as “everyday beliefs” depending upon what he wanted to assert at the moment. I misrepresented nothing. Delavagus, on the other hand, shamelessly misrepresented Pyrrhonism and I caught him doing it. Consider the following contrast:
Delavagus: “Pyrrhonians, in other words, will live adoxastōs—free of the second-order belief that their first-order beliefs are (ultimately) justified.”
That is totally false. Sextus didn’t distinguish between first-order belief and second-order belief, but between phenomena and opinion. And adoxastōs, tranquility, doesn’t come from holding first-order beliefs while being open to them being wrong, but rather “suspension of judgment” concerning first-order beliefs.
Anyone who reads my eight posts will readily see that I misrepresented nothing. I note that you haven’t even attempted to claim that any of the ten errors I identified were not, in fact, errors. The sad thing is that this gave me no trouble at all, and if Delavagus has spent his life studying these issues, then he should be absolutely humiliated that his errors are so easily spotted by a complete neophyte.
Of course, I am a superintelligence, so the fact that he’s been studying it for years whereas I read Sextus once on an airplane meant that it really wasn’t a fair contest.
Tell me, Vox, what’s the difference between rationalizing and reasoning? And where does science lie on this divide?
I’ll continue answering your questions when you start answering mine. You still haven’t provided the ten examples of certainty causing material harm for which I asked you eight months ago. Ten SPECIFIC examples, and note that I asked for CAUSAL examples, not cases where it was INVOLVED.
You reek of plant.
You’re wrong. I don’t do sockpuppets and I don’t plant anyone. I speak only for myself. If I wanted the Dread Ilk to overrun this place, they would have done so… and absolutely none of them would ever claim to be a New Keynesian on any account.
My dear friend! Please remind me where I claimed to be the paragon of skepticism – modern, Pyrrhonean or whatever other kind thereof happens to exist in vast figurative depths of philosophy.
True, you didn’t. I assumed you were a TPB Uncertaintist. If that’s not the case, I apologize and retract the comment.
That’s different genetics, remember?
Hey, I’m just practicing my Pyrrhonism and utilizing the terms of my interlocutor.
Finding such through google is most definitely efficient. I even provided links to the battle of philosopher kings, so people present on this page may familiarize themselves with arguments in question.
In general, be wary of such claims that lack specifics. I remember when similar empty claims were being made about Lott’s comprehensive gun study and the reports that Michael Bellesiles had committed academic fraud. That being said, I haven’t read the book myself and have no opinion on it.
I’ll continue answering your questions when you start answering mine.
That’s just not answering questions. If you don’t wanna, don’t. There will be no toxic responce if you don’t. But making up playground rules wont change that it’s simply that you don’t want to.
Ten SPECIFIC examples, and note that I asked for CAUSAL examples, not cases where it was INVOLVED.
And how will it be judged which one an example is? By what explicit method? This semantic akido move is a little old and stodgy – why you of course! You’ll decide! Declaring the intellectual dishonesty of it all, as you state how clearly it was merely broken caps lock INVOLVED.
It’s really funny how often the structure of english merely throws the judgement cap over to the other person, utterly. Maybe that worked way back when, before the apocalypse began.
Anyway, enough flair. What explicitly stated metric will be used? Semantically ambiguous words or dead ended procedure wont be accepted, though what constitutes those will be up to the listener.
I’m curious, Vox. For a superintelligence, how you do you feel you compare to, say, neurodegenerative savants as a class? And how do you account for the very real cognitive biases and metabiases within your own experience and the ways they seem to exist in and undermine what psychology would call our explanatory style?
Of course, I am a superintelligence, so the fact that he’s been studying it for years whereas I read Sextus once on an airplane meant that it really wasn’t a fair contest.
Of course Observer doesn’t see this as the original appeal to authority and then others references to PhD is simply working within the boundaries set by the original claimant.
Scott, I realize that there won’t be any Atrocity Tales until TUC is finished, but maybe we could just get details that haven’t been in any Appendices?
For example, a post on the Well of the Aborted, even if it were a two paragraphs, would be sweet. Another cool thing would be expanding on the “Angelic” Ciphrang.
Can skin-spies have vaginas? Do they have to start off with penises?
Inquiring fans want to know!
Sci
Can skin-spies have vaginas? Do they have to start off with penises?
What they do is they inhale sharply and……. …
Of course Observer doesn’t see this as the original appeal to authority and then others references to PhD is simply working within the boundaries set by the original claimant.
An appeal to a legitimate authority such as the original text is logically valid and is entirely different than the logically fallacious one that Scott made to academic authority. While one might reasonably expect someone who has studied a subject his entire life to understand it better and portray it more accurately than someone who has not, this expectation does not account for the possibility that the academic authority is intellectually dishonest.
Which, of course, is exactly what I showed Delavagus to be, repeatedly, in my critique of his two posts. Were he not a self-proclaimed expert on the subject, he might be able to claim that his errors were innocent. But, if he really is an expert, then he cannot.
It’s actually quite common for experts and academics to attempt to snow those they know are non-experts. They never expect the non-expert to go to the source and check their claims concerning it; I suspect Delavagus regretted asking me to look at his posts the moment he learned I had previously read Sextus. Note that in his responses to my first two posts, he claimed that my readings were “uncharitable”. In other words, he knew perfectly well that I was right, he just didn’t like that I had caught him out.
An appeal to a legitimate authority such as the original text is logically valid and is entirely different than the logically fallacious one that Scott made to academic authority.
No, they are identical. You read the book as much as delavagus did. You’re appealing to the original text as much as he is. Your both claiming the same academic authority. Just that one of you read a book on a plane and are claiming it.
this expectation does not account for the possibility that the academic authority is intellectually dishonest.
And oh yes, this really is an issue with an authority call. And by gosh, it applies as a potential problem with you as much as with him.
I’m guessing the step after having your authority call made explicit will be to make another authority call to cancel the validity of this identification. Disappearing – the authoritive invocation to the elephant, yet unseen by the rider.
So Darwin wasn’t skeptical of people who said the the world being 5000 years old and the belief that we were created by god? It seems to me science moved forward due to people who didn’t accept the answers the receive. When I don’t accept the answers I hear, I consider myself skeptical of the current explanation. Is Jacob Barnett (who is smarter then you, but with the added gift of not being an asshole) not skeptical of the big bag theory when he says it couldn’t have happened like it is currently explained? Scientific discovery happens due to a skepticism on the current accepted views of the day. Elsewise the world would still be flat, and man could never fly. Im glad that people who make advances in the world don’t hold your viewpoint. A scientific law smashes skepticism, but skepticism is a trait that helps turn a theory into a law. Or a commonly held belief into smoke.
“Look at Galileo. He made his big astronomical discoveries for one very non-scientific reason”
One has to understand science to see how things work, engineers know science otherwise how would they make a telescope in the first place? There is no science in magnification? Science is used to properly engineer everything, sometimes when the science inst correctly understood the engineering goes wrong and doesn’t work. Are you saying that no scientific knowledge went in to the launching or creation of the hubble telescope?
Im only deep enough to realize that im shallow, and you vox are a vast, endless ocean of bullshit. You attack grammar, definition and the way people say things. Instead of arguing the substance of anyone’s argument. You are a child of convenience.
You’re appealing to the original text as much as he is. Your both claiming the same academic authority.
No, he’s not appealing to the text at all. That’s why he doesn’t quote Sextus once in either of his two posts. In fact, he even said in a comment that he was defending his own view of Pyrrhonism rather than Pyrrhonism proper.
You clearly don’t understand the nature of logical fallacies. An appeal to a legitimate authority is not a logical fallacy by simple virtue of being a literal appeal to authority.
And by gosh, it applies as a potential problem with you as much as with him.
You really are quite stupid. You’re seriously going to attempt to claim I am committing a logical fallacy by asserting that the text says what it says? It’s no fallacy to claim X = X, but rather X = Not X. Also, you don’t even realize who has committed the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority. Delavagus may have been intellectually dishonest and provably wrong, but at least he never appealed to his own academic authority. Scott was the one who did that.
I’m guessing the step after having your authority call made explicit will be to make another authority call to cancel the validity of this identification.
And you’re wrong again. I absolutely did appeal to the the authority of the text written by Sextus Empiricus in order to define Pyrrhonian Scepticism.
One has to understand science to see how things work, engineers know science otherwise how would they make a telescope in the first place?
No, they don’t. Telescopes were made before science even existed, you historically ignorant twit, which you should realize given that we’re discussing Galileo here. Trial and error is not science.
Im only deep enough to realize that im shallow, and you vox are a vast, endless ocean of bullshit. You attack grammar, definition and the way people say things. Instead of arguing the substance of anyone’s argument.
Words mean things. How people define things usually dictates the substance of their arguments. That’s not bullshit, that’s intellectual precision. You have it backwards, as it is the bullshit artists who are constantly switching their definitions and claiming that X = X before claiming that X = Not X.
No, he’s not appealing to the text at all. That’s why he doesn’t quote Sextus once in either of his two posts.
That’s your measure? He has to quote the book? If you think he hasn’t read the book/it’s not part of his education, then say it. If you don’t think a book informs a post on the general subject unless it’s quoted through and through, say so.
An appeal to a legitimate authority is not a logical fallacy by simple virtue of being a literal appeal to authority.
And boom, there’s the second call to authority. Who decides what is a legitimate authority? Why the authority you appeal to does. And that ones a legitimate authority as well because another authority you call to…
You really are quite stupid. You’re seriously going to attempt to claim I am committing a logical fallacy by asserting that the text says what it says?
No, I’m asserting you’re quite capable of being intellectually dishonest. That’s not a logical fallacy – it’s just plain intellectual dishonesty. I thought I made that clear, even if I didn’t underline and bold it.
In turn with your stupid remark, actually I think you’re borderline retarded. In the clinical sense rather than derogitory sense. I have to wonder if you were to look at a young woman/old woman optical illusion whether you’d be perpetually stuck on the first image you saw. Because you seem unable to grasp the ambiguity in various texts, leading to two or more interpretations as much as the image. But you read your own interpretation as the only one possible and are seemingly perpetually stuck on it.
Go on – I bet you’ve never read an unclear definition of something in your life (maybe it took a moment, but then it all became clear to you) – and I bet you take that as evidence of a supermario intellect.
When was the last time a novel had a subtext for you? Seemingly promoting one idea, but the very same words can be read to actually undercut the idea?
What was the Voight-Kampff test, the one with a turtle on it’s back, in Blade Runner? What was it about? It was about…a turtle on it’s back?
I’m hoping the answer to the last one is no.
Also, you don’t even realize who has committed the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority. Delavagus may have been intellectually dishonest and provably wrong, but at least he never appealed to his own academic authority. Scott was the one who did that.
Where’d I mention delavagus in this?
And oh yes, this really is an issue with an authority call. And by gosh, it applies as a potential problem with you as much as with him.
…speaking of text that can be read two ways but you did not.
I’m not sure whether I should even bother here, but I’m the kind of person who has difficulty abandoning an argument, which I why I should have perhaps not engaged in the first place.
The fact that anyone here brought up academic authority in philosophy at all is already an indication that real argument is not taking place. Whether I or Mr. Bakker or anyone else has academic authority should be a non issue. I am not going to go waving around credentials because they have no place here, and neither should anyone else.
I am thankful that Mr. Bakker has at least partly elaborated on what he means by his skepticism. He says that he can call himself a skeptical naturalist because he is a ‘meaning skeptic,’ as well as a naturalist, and he is a meaning skeptic because he does not think we know whether intentional phenomena actually exist. If I am interpreting him correctly–and I may not be–this would align him in some respects with the general tradition of Cartesian epistemology. Including, as I pointed out earlier, Husserl, who is not normally thought of as a skeptic, although he would be under this definition, but also Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, etc.
This is all well and good, but there is still one small thing that bothers me. Mr. Bakker’s ‘meaning skepticism,’ even if I am partially misinterpreting it here, doesn’t have much, if anything, to do with the ‘skeptical’ points 1-5 and point 7 of his dogma summary. Those points to my mind are still a red herring as far as his core beliefs are concerned. In other words, his core belief is ‘meaning skepticism’ but his statement of dogma is focused, on six of seven points, on a much more simplistic and secondary kind of skepticism, which I have called a mere ‘skeptical emphasis’ that is really just a corollary of conventional naturalism. ‘Meaning skepticism’ is not even indicated in his dogma. This is why I take that dogma to be misleading: it puts in the foreground a secondary skepticism of emphasis, while the real justification for the ‘skeptical’ in skeptical naturalism lies in a different kind of skepticism entirely, namely, ‘meaning skepticism.’
To put it in even simpler terms, the dogma claims to be E-skeptical, while Mr. Bakker, in his final explanation, ends up claiming to be M-skeptical.
To be clear, I am not saying that Mr. Bakker is wrong in any of these points, only that I find the presentation misleading, probably unintentionally so. I am sure in his own mind he keeps these two forms of skepticism quite clear and distinct.
I’d like to make a point as well about Vox’s anti-science arguments here.
Now, as I see it, almost everyone here believes Vox to be wrong in his anti-science stance, but no one has actually succeeded in cornering him and showing him to be outright wrong on any particular point. And my way of resolving this is to say that you ought be arguing that Vox is ‘mistaken’ or ‘unconvincing’ or ‘lacking in judgment’ but it’s not clear that he is wrong outright.
Let me give an example. Supposing that you argued in the year 1900 that the leading theories in physics were not worthy of trust. You went so far as to say that Newton was wrong, and pointed out the anomalous orbit of Mercury. You pointed out all of the physical phenomena that you thought a physics ought to be able to explain, but couldn’t, and argued that any theory that had so many gaps in it did not deserve our certain belief in it.
Are you right to argue this way, or wrong? Well, a few decades later you would be proven right–by Einstein. And what if you were making a similar argument in the space of time between Ptolemy and Copernicus?
All of these questions are discussed at length in Kuhn, of course. And if you want still to take a pro-science stance, you have to argue against Vox that _his position is excessively skeptical_, that the most reasonable position–despite historical evidence to the contrary–is to accept that current scientific theory is a ‘pretty good approximation of the truth’ and that as a ‘pretty good approximation,’ we might as well just call it knowledge. Now personally, I’m not sure I would go that far. The gap in data explanation between Ptolemy and Copernicus is small, but the theoretical leap overturned an entire concept of our place in the universe. So does it really make any sense to say ‘we might as well call Ptolemaic astronomy knowledge’?
At any rate, my own decision to side with Darwin is ultimately one of judgment based on only partial ‘knowledge.’ I say to Vox that our current explanation may indeed change in the coming years, but I prefer nevertheless not to take his hard skeptical line, and I assume that the refinements in Darwin’s theory will not produce so great a reversal as the one between Ptolemy and Copernicus.
How ironic that this debate is pitting ‘skeptics’ of one kind against a hardline skeptic of another kind! Please admit who is really being more skeptical!
This explanation I’ve given doesn’t sum up all of Vox’s anti-science arguments, but I think in the other points he’s making as well, you would have to argue that he’s being excessively skeptical, that he’s making an error of judgment, not that he’s outright wrong. Which opens the door for him to say: perhaps I’m pushing my science skepticism very far here, but even so I find engineering to have proven itself more trustworthy, less vulnerable to overreaching, than scientific theory, and so I rank it above science.
I think the argument about science is less important that what Vox chooses to believe in its place.
In the end, I suspect to most people here whether evolution is true matters less than the removal of Biblical authority.
Yes, and what about the Bible? Can you really be a “hard skeptic” and think the Bible is a great guide to child psychology, let alone true and the word of God?
I think the challenge in examining religious beliefs is that they lie in the category of instinctual, and IMO incommunicable truths.
One cannot prove faith, one just feels it. The best one can do is attempt to guide others to that same feeling. In some ways, feeling this truth is more comparable to athletic ability than it is to mathematical proofs.
This is perhaps the great challenge in political discourse, because morality falls under this sense of something being right. Heck, I think it is the most important thing communicated in Scott’s works, that there are so many important things we feel rather than know.
This then gums up the works, so to speak, when one considers political discourse. The obvious example is gay rights, where the opposition to marriage equality seems to spring almost completely from the religious as far as justification is concerned. But even of the traditionally liberal (US usage) side, many ideas of doing what is right are based on similar feelings.
We liberals get to laugh only because we don’t have a book, or at least not a single one.
Once you understand his commitments, his formula for skepticism becomes critique of that which challenges his commitments. Science threatens Biblical origins story, libertarian ideology (global warming, public funding…etc.) Vox’s skepticism is best explained as purely reactionary.
I see him making a great number of claims, often with raw assertion. Maybe that’s your kind of ‘skeptic’, observer.
“One has to understand science to see how things work, engineers know science otherwise how would they make a telescope in the first place?”
“No, they don’t. Telescopes were made before science even existed, you historically ignorant twit, which you should realize given that we’re discussing Galileo here. Trial and error is not science.”
It’s quite clear that the word `science` is used in very different ways by DLR and Vox.
For the discussion it would be helpful to define ‘science’ in order to stop talking past each other.
Saying that science began with Galileo makes for some great rhetorical points, unfortunately it’s not true. You’re conflating modern science with all science. There was extensive ancient science:
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/09/books-on-ancient-science.html
But I agree with your final point. Take a step back and ask what it is that is actually begin contested here. Our capacity to discover facts empirically about the world?
For me it looked like this became: Sciene vs Engineering. But how can these things be compared? You could compare the results scientists and those engineers made and decide would have had the bigger impact on society/the world. But comparing the method of science or science as a whole with engineering would be like comparing apples with their own trees.
Sorry, the first part of that was directed at Vox, the second to the suggestion about defining science.
I’ve run across the “everything before 1500 wasn’t science” argument before, and it’s wrong.
How ironic that this debate is pitting ‘skeptics’ of one kind against a hardline skeptic of another kind! Please admit who is really being more skeptical!
You have pin-pointed the central irony here.
I say to Vox that our current explanation may indeed change in the coming years, but I prefer nevertheless not to take his hard skeptical line, and I assume that the refinements in Darwin’s theory will not produce so great a reversal as the one between Ptolemy and Copernicus.
I think if you look at the history of science, I think you’ll see that the various explanatory gaps we see with regards to evolution by natural selection are very similar to those that have caused eventual overturnings of the scientific consensus. The Neo-Darwinian synthesis with Mendelian genetics was just the first nail in the coffin and the final one will be the one that shows that there are hard limits to functional DNA mutations and that the assumed extrapolation of microevolution to macroevolution and definitive speciation events are no longer justified.
The current biological consensus simply assumes that the gaps will eventually be filled in. My contention is that the history of science indicates that they will not be filled in, but rather, serve as red flags concerning the theory’s intrinsic flaws. Could I be wrong? Of course. I seldom see similar willingness to be uncertain on the other side… they simply jump and down, pointing and shrieking “batshit crazy”!
I find that even less convincing than they find a Southern Baptist pointing and shrieking “you’re going to burn in Hell!”
What are the “theory’s intrinsic flaws”? Sorry, if you already poited them out here, but, I quess, it would take me very long to find them.
@Vox: I believe in most things you are arguing against, but unlike others I’m really willing to throw it all overboard, given I find a better alternative. So what is YOUR explaination? Why are there so many different species on this world? How did they evolve (if they did)?
And still waiting…
“It’s quite clear that the word `science` is used in very different ways by DLR and Vox.”
it’s even more clear to actual scientists that the word science is used in very different ways by scientists and by Vox.
“Telescopes were made before science even existed, you historically ignorant twit…”
classic.
The problem is, that he could be totally right with his observation, that science hasn’t existed, if he meant science as an institution of scientist like it exists today. I know it can be very frustrating to “know” to be right, but everybodys just treating you like a halfwit, because you use the words in a differnt way. So a definition would be really helpful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
Vox must have meant something differnt with ‘science’. Saying science didn’t exist, when they invented the telescope, with this definition from the wiki page in mind, wouldn’t be something a “super-intelligence” would say. Come on, give him a chance!
Actually it takes both sides giving each other a chance, not just one (well, unless we are to act like his parents or something). The whole ‘you historically ignorant twit’ seems to indicate no chance given by him.
Perhaps first argue with Beale about giving a chance instead of thinking the lack of charity starts here? If it’s given I’m pretty sure you’ll see a chance returned.
If noone ever starts giving chances there will never be a meaningful discussion.
I think it is a very good idea to look at it like we are his parents. He often acts like one if you mind all the insults and the “not so smart things” he posted.
I think we did already give a chance. Or at the very least it wasn’t started with a ‘you ignorant twit’
He often acts like one
Acts like a what?
I think it is a very good idea to look at it like we are his parents.
Once you hand over the powers of a parent over their child to me in regards to him, I’ll consider the option. Otherwise no such option exists, unless you intend to treat him like a spoiled brat.
Sorry.
I meant like a child.
Don’t take this post too serious. I was just being sardonic 🙂
Although some of the things I really meant.
Science = systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
Science = knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.
Systematic study can’t be trial and error?
Just because the word wasnt around doesnt mean that what galileo did was not science. Given these definitions of science Vox how did Galileo not use (even if it was without knowing it) science to build a telescope? Building a telescope wasnt an experiment?
If definitions are so important Vox why dont you define every word you say so there will be no confusion, since you seem to require it from others.
“Words mean things. How people define things usually dictates the substance of their arguments. That’s not bullshit, that’s intellectual precision. You have it backwards, as it is the bullshit artists who are constantly switching their definitions and claiming that X = X before claiming that X = Not X.”
By dictates you could mean: to say or read aloud something to be written down by a person or recorded by a machine. Or you could mean: to prescribe or lay down authoritatively or peremptorily; command unconditionally. I know which way you meant it but I could be like you and argue that a definition does not make someone read aloud something to be written down by a person or recorded by a machine. Believing that makes you an idiot. I couldnt do that though because im smart enough to get context which must just slip by you most of the time since you think your always right, the definition you choose must then always be the right definition. Your contexts and definitions you choose to hold true are not always the definitions and contexts others meant. You are just blind by the superintelligence view you have of yourself. You act as though you won the mega magical belief lottery and can answer every question as if you are god and know what definitions people meant, and understand where people are wrong based on these misdiagnosed definitions. Your stuck in your brain like everyone else Vox, Its your cubicle and you will never think outside it.
“At first glance, it may seem crazy that a computer game designer, one whose only significant intellectual accomplishment of note is to have once convinced Michelle Malkin to skip an opportunity to promote herself, should dare to dispute an Oxford don, a respected university professor…”
– ‘The Irrational Atheist’ by Vox Day
despite having set the bar for “significant intellectual accomplishment” laughably low, he’s been clotheslining himself with it all over the internet since.
Bonus round: How could there be ENGINEers before there were ENGINEs, twits?
I see that everyone here has finally gotten around to complaining that Vox sticks very closely to precise definitions. This is certainly annoying for an interlocutor, because it seems petty and tedious. But there is value in taking care with one’s definitions and sticking to them.
We often, in every day parlance, use one word like “science” or “knowledge” to denote a conflation of various ideas and associated arguments and facts. Being precise helps us separate out the various strands of thought that we have weaved together in our minds. It sheds light on various inferential errors we may have made; a conclusion may apply only to knowledge in one sense and not another and precision helps prevent us from assuming our arguments prove more than they really do. Searching for good definitions is important intellectual work and also often very hard.
Precise definitions also help us accommodate lots of subtlety in our arguments: we can talk about one specific aspect of a phenomenon or object in isolation from everything else. Steamrolling over definitional debates often contributes to imprecise, limited and ultimately useless thinking.
Finally, precise definitions help us communicate effectively. There is no reason to expect that we will mean exactly the same thing when we both use the same term and so it’s important to make it clear from the outset exactly what we are referring to and then to stick to it . When were are done discussing according to the current definition, you can submit a new definition that we can argue with reference to.
Having read Vox’s blog for several years, I know that there is a strong point mixed up in his general disagreeableness and total disregard for anyone else’s feelings. In particular, if we are careful with our definitions and make useful contrasts, such as between science and technology or between science as it is currently practiced and science as it would ideally be practiced, then a lot of arguments and conclusions unravel; we realize we are referring to science in only one sense and not another. The need to stick tightly to agreed upon definitions is crucial to Vox’s point.
He doesn’t use precise definitions – he reads a set of words that could be interpreted in two or more ways as only being interpretable one and only one way (his). He, and perhaps yourself, aren’t capable of thinking a definition can be semantically ambiguous in it’s wording – as soon as you think you see what it means, you don’t think the words could actually be read any other way than your own. So you put no effort into trying to actually work out with the other side a definition both parties will agree they can use in the same way. He just dictates his reading, which itself containts further semantic ambiguities, which he then interpret his way, and such interpretation will in turn have more ambiguities and so on.
What’s his pattern? Does he try and work out a definition both parties agree they use the same way? Or does he read out the dictionary, dictating his particular interpretation of the dictionaries wording, along with his own particular set of ambiguous wording in that interpretation?
Seriously, you think just one side can have full interpretor rights and that’ll work out? Sure as hell VD isn’t going to hand full interpretor rights over to us now, is he? Ask yourself if actually your cool with that and inside, you want him to be the only interpretor. Then you can realise your not giving some even handed argument.
Engineering = the art or SCIENCE of making practical application of the knowledge of pure SCIENCES, as physics or chemistry, as in the construction of engines, bridges, buildings, mines, ships, and chemical plants.
There is no science in engineering though. Vox is super intelligent and his defintions are always right. The way he understands a word is supreme and overrides the knowledge of the person using the word, and even the dictionary.
I would never go so far as to say that im right Vox, Only that I know your wrong. When you choose to throw aside the argument as it is and argue defintions everyone then can be wrong I guess. I propose Vox makes a Voxctionary in which every word has only one definition and get rid of all this confusion caused by language. You are a “superintelligence” after all right?
I propose You get over definitions, you use the right definition as based on context (not on your self serving bias), and then everyone can actually discuss the real issues everyone is here to debate..
It is not surprising that people might believe engineering to be more reliable than science given the nature of these disparate (if related) endeavors.
The American Engineers’ Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of ABET)[1] has defined “engineering” as:
The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.
In modern use, “science” generally refers to a way of pursuing knowledge, not only the knowledge itself. Science requires the pursuit of speculative ideas and necessarily concerns itself with that which is unknown.
Notice that engineering is concerned with the application of scientific principles and not in their discovery. This is a far less error prone enterprise than that of constantly pushing beyond the boundaries of knowledge in pursuit of ever better explanations. The field of engineering is not forever teetering on the slippery edges of the unknown. It confines itself to working within the fortified boundaries of established principles.
If engineering is primarily involved with creative and practical ways of applying what is already known and science is largely concerned with exploring what is unknown, is it any wonder that engineering proves to be the more error free of the two pursuits? This does not render engineering superior to science. The two should not be compared using infallibility as a criterion. To do so is to stack the deck in favor of engineering. This is no more defensible than stacking the deck in favor of science by pointing to the number principles arrived at through science as compared to those discovered by engineering.
Another thing about the books – I’d love to see some explanation of the magical types, by which I mean your inspiration for the Gnostic/Agnostic/Aporos/Pushke/Daimos.
Something still feels off to me, the idea that the Gnosis can be used for summoning. Perhaps I’m looking at it incorrectly, but I’m thinking of the idea in Dante’s Paradiso that some things – essentially the Outside – can only be approached by simile and metaphor. As such, it seems the Agnosis would provide a way to grasp, almost by intuitive appeal, the bridle necessary to manipulate Ciphrang.
But if we look at the Agnosis as poetry – IMO justified by the Dragon Head and Fire Sparrow spells – then I would think the Aporos wouldn’t be so effective if Chorae were designed to counter mathematical magic.
All this makes me wonder if you are rooting all magic, including the Pushke in some ideas you have about linguistics. I suppose the Pushke, as recollection of the Whole, could be touching Chomsky’s “language acquisition device” but admittedly I haven’t really put much effort into unifying the magic of Earwa under these ideas.
-Sci
You know what struck me the other day? ‘Can Sranc talk?’. I mean, a nonman refers to one as ‘his book’ early on. But do we ever see Sranc talk? Skin spies, sure, but what about Sranc?
There you go – that’s a good book question! 🙂
I suspect Sranc have their own language, or some derivative of either men or Nonmen tongues.
“I see that everyone here has finally gotten around to complaining that Vox sticks very closely to precise definitions. This is certainly annoying for an interlocutor, because it seems petty and tedious. But there is value in taking care with one’s definitions and sticking to them.”
So its vox who makes a definition real or correct? How are his definitions precise and other peoples are vague or incorrect? Does each comment truly need a list of definitions for every word written in each sentence? before a comment can be posted, because some people dont understand context or cant rule out the definitions that couldnt or wouldnt apply to the speakers choice of words?
On to news about books and the inner-working of earwa Scott. Most of us are here because we love your books. Not because we love arguing with superintelligent idiots. Though some of us have adapted to it by now.
I personally agree with a lot of what you say philosophically in paticular the self serving bias AKA magical belief lottery (Which we all think we’ve won), but in the end its like putting every religious cult in the same room and asking “who is god?”. Only I dont think we would sharpen spears and poke each other in the end as religions would. Vox is probably smart (though not as smart as he claims), but hes ignorant. So is everyone else though.
WE want EARWA. Just scan some pages of the world building process that we might drool over for the time being, while you write the second apocalypse before the apocalypse really happens!
+1…no, +100.
And still waiting…
I’ve been waiting eight months for you to provide the ten specific examples of certainty causing material harm. As I already told you, I will not answer any more of your questions until you answer mine… which you already know long preceded yours. Nor have you responded to my offer to debate you on the topic of certainty, which also predated your question.
Just because the word wasnt around doesnt mean that what galileo did was not science. Given these definitions of science Vox how did Galileo not use (even if it was without knowing it) science to build a telescope? Building a telescope wasnt an experiment?
Of course it does! I find it amusing that you guys can’t figure out that The Father of Modern Science was not, in fact, using any science when he constructed his telescope, or that his telescope was not the first one. Unless you’re going to accept that theology is the queen of the sciences and the most reliable of claim-making institutions, you can’t play the definitional switcheroo of which some people here are so fond.
How do I define science? I follow PZ Myers lead in dividing it into three distinct parts. As I wrote in TIA:
“What we understand as science consists of three separate and distinct aspects, a dynamic body of knowledge (scientage), a process (scientody), and a profession (scientistry). This three-in-one works together in a unified manner that should be recognizable to the sufficiently educated, wherein the body of knowledge reigns supreme, the process offers the only way to the body of knowledge, and those who blaspheme against the profession will not be forgiven. And, as this analogy suggests, it is the process that is the significant aspect insofar as humanity is concerned.”
Neither the process nor the profession existed before telescopes. The word “scientist” wasn’t even coined until 1834.
If engineering is primarily involved with creative and practical ways of applying what is already known and science is largely concerned with exploring what is unknown, is it any wonder that engineering proves to be the more error free of the two pursuits? This does not render engineering superior to science.
Superior? It depends upon the purpose. More reliable? Absolutely. As I have previously pointed out, science can only be considered reliable at the point it becomes engineering and material results are provided. But, as I have also pointed out, science is more dependent upon engineering than engineering is dependent upon science.
How are his definitions precise and other peoples are vague or incorrect?
Because I stick to dictionary definitions and make it very clear when I am departing from them. I also stick to one definition throughout the course of an argument. This is quite clearly not true of certain TPBers. In fact, catching definitional switches is my favorite way of simultaneously destroying people’s arguments and credibility because it is so easy to do and convincing to third parties.
Does each comment truly need a list of definitions for every word written in each sentence?
No, but people need to stick to their implied definitions and clarify them if there is reason to believe one might be easily confused for another.
“The Father of Modern Science was not, in fact, using any science when he constructed his telescope”
“a dynamic body of knowledge (scientage), a process (scientody), and a profession (scientistry).”
So The Father of Modern science didn’t have a dynamic body of knowledge?
Could you please explain how this definition makes sense in this context?
As I already told you, I will not answer any more of your questions until you answer mine
It’s funny how you stopped answering at just that point, right after you’re uncharitable reading of ‘Science as a claim-making institution is flawed… Compared to what other institution, Vox?’ where you treated the second as if that wasn’t also a reference to a claim making institution.
With your uncharitable interpretation you answer, but suddenly you’re slamming on the breaks right after the question can’t be semantically dodged? Funny how it happened at just that point. You were keen to answer your own prefered interpretation, after all.
And I’ve told you – at least two or three times now – define it for me, and I’ll show you how it plugs into my argument. If you have done this and I’ve missed it (which is entirely possible), then just copy and past or give me the comment number. But I don’t think you have, because I’m pretty sure you don’t want to, simply because it’s not the way you like to play your game – which almost entirely turns on the intractability of conceptual arguments. On my side, STIPULATING definitions is fine by me. You stipulate, then I give you the version you’re asking for.
In the meantime, I’m just going to assume your refusal to answer has nothing to do with quid pro quo, and everything to do with how little you like the answer.
So you diverge from the dictionary when it is useful to you like you claim everyone else does? Good for you..? The definition you gave for science is not in the dictionary, you did not make it clear you were diverging from the dictionary definition as you just said you do make it clear (you suddenly were using a certain definition you choose to define after once the dictionary definition had you trapped in a corner). According to your definition Galileo could not have been the father of science because the word ‘science’ did not predate him, science had to be defined before it existed according to you. So there could be no father of science older then someone living in 1864. Which is just ignorance made into a statement of smoke. and I prefer smoke only to get me high.
I have switched no definitions while you choose to use an uncommon definition of science to make your point, which just points out that if your right galileo was the father of nothing, he was kellhus’s real dad.
And if engineering didnt use the laws or theories created by science it would not work. science must come before engineering. and btw the definition im using of engineering is.. Engineering = the art or SCIENCE of making practical application of the knowledge of pure SCIENCES, as physics or chemistry, as in the construction of engines, bridges, buildings, mines, ships, and chemical plants.
Since it used the application of pure sciences. One must know science in order to apply it. Egyptians used science all the time, but since the word didnt exist they couldnt have, nor the romans.. How did they create all that they did? They couldnt have engineered it because that requires that they understand certain sciences and science didnt exist according to you.
To VD, there are no semantically ambiguous words. When he sees a word or phrase which could be interpreted in two or more ways, he sees only one interpretation (his). Seriously I’m betting he couldn’t give any example of a ambigous sentence – to him everything is ‘obvious’ and ‘clear cut’. How long is a piece of string? VD will tell you. You can’t even appeal to ambiguity in words and try to establish between parties a definition both use in the same way – because he doesn’t recognise ambiguity occuring in the first place. It’s like one of those optical illusions where a few lines make it look like a triangle is there, because your mind completes the form of a triangle. But you’re aware you’re doing it. VD isn’t. Indeed I wonder if, even over that image he’d be going “For gods sake, it’s a triangle!”.
He then ‘catches out’ others ‘switching’ use of a definition. When it’s just a matter of them not using his definition, to which is like that idea of him being a slave of his interpreter, unable to see the wording could be interpreted another way.
Even that ‘catching out’ isn’t that big a deal or bad boo boo if the second party recognises alternative interpretations and will work with the first party towards a definition they both use the same way.
But we’re stuck at the rediculous ‘switching’ stage, where he treats his own interpretation as some sort of wonderful revelation of how the other person is wrong. Like someone looking at the woman illusion and cackling about how the other person is wrong and switching their definition in the age of the lady they saw.
Of course if just a handful of examples of ambiguously worded sentences that could be interpreted in two ways or more were given, that’d put a hole in my hypothesis. Hopefully we’ll get such an example
science must come before engineering
Nay! An engineer just got up one morning, unrolled a blueprint for a telescope (we’re not sure how he got the blueprint) and made a telescope! lol
It’s funny, isn’t it? Have you ever heard that story about a lady who says the earth is on the back of a giant turtle…and before anyone can ask what it’s on, she says ‘It’s turtles all the way down!’. To VD, it’s engineering all the way down.
I’ve been waiting eight months for you to provide the ten specific examples of certainty causing material harm.. Just look up religious wars, im sure there were more than 10. the crusades, the beginning of Catholicism, the war on terrorism. The fights in my middle school when skaters fought cowboys for no reason but the certainty that it had to be so. The push of democracy into Muslim nations because of our certainty that the whole world needs democracy, when a man is certain his wife cheated on him so he kills his wife and kids. When Zimmerman was certain Trayvon Martin was up to no good with his skittles and mountain dew so he shoots him.. Are those not examples of material harm? Or is there a certain type of material harm you have defined previously that I missed?
What is your view on certainty and what view are you hoping to argue against?
When Zimmerman was certain Trayvon Martin was up to no good with his skittles and mountain dew so he shoots him..
Zimmerman was suspicious of Trayvon Martin, not certain. He also shot him not because of suspicion or certainty, but because Martin was banging his head into the ground, after having punched him.
If zimmerman got beat up by a little kid, maybe he wasnt fit to be a neighborhood watch. I beleive the weight and size difference was substantial. and I will take no sides on the argument. Only the facts. Zimmerman was a minor with no weapons on him, zimmerman was a chubby grown adult with a gun. Zimmerman should have taken pictures of his injuries because ive not seen one picture of any injury he sustained (he looked fine when questioned by police).. suspicion should not be enough to cause him to go out and confront a minor with a gun (even though the cops told him he couldnt carry a gun in events such as that), though certainty could cause that. but ok a different example of certainty causing material harm. My friend was in his house, some kids knocked on the door. When he opened it they swung a cast iron pipe at him breaking his arm, he was certain they were going to kill him so he pulled out a gun which he had been carrying around (because of that certainty) and killed one. Left him charged with possession of a weapon by a felon, and the Mexican kid dead. He lost his kids, while the Mexican family lost a family member.
I will also add to that list manifest destiny and all the harm that came to the indians because if the certainty of certain people that they were to own all land from sea to shining sea.
Zimmerman was suspicious of Trayvon Martin, not certain.
So he suspiciously pulled the trigger? Was he unaware that it’s a binary situation – you can’t shoot someone, but take it back latter if your suspicion was incorrect?
I’m rather wondering if for you there are no examples in the whole world of people being certain, ever. But then the word just becomes a strawman your beating on, as ‘certainty’ doesn’t exist for you.
He also shot him not because of suspicion or certainty, but because Martin was banging his head into the ground, after having punched him.
And?
See, this is where your own certainty shows up, but it’s just the world to you so it doesn’t seem to be any different. ‘Martin was banging his head into the ground, after having punched him‘ and after you get this input, then to you the immediate output is a pulled trigger.
It’s such an immediate output, I suspect, you can’t see it occuring. It’s just ‘Martin was banging his head into the ground, after having punched him‘ bang!
When there’s such a direct, hard wire from that to a trigger pull, we’re kinda treating that as certainty. I know, why do we call it that when it’s so unquestionable that you’d shoot at that point? Crazy, I know.
See, this is where your own certainty shows up, but it’s just the world to you so it doesn’t seem to be any different. ‘Martin was banging his head into the ground, after having punched him‘ and after you get this input, then to you the immediate output is a pulled trigger.
Sure. Certainty is always so conveniently available to apply to an opponent, isn’t it?
To recap, what I was responding to was:
When Zimmerman was certain Trayvon Martin was up to no good with his skittles and mountain dew so he shoots him..
This is not just incorrect, it is intentionally, deliberately distorted to suit a thesis.
Sure. Certainty is always so conveniently available to apply to an opponent, isn’t it?
Sure. As is suspicion conveniently available to apply.
It’s just that what is it when someone is suspicious, but does not pull the trigger. Is that a different kind of suspicion to when the trigger is pulled? Does it warrant a different name?
If you wanted to pitch he went briefly crazy with fear, I could take that on. But otherwise I think a name other than ‘suspicion’ is warrented when the trigger is pulled. Would you call it suspicion in either case, whether the trigger is pulled or not? ‘I peered at the man suspiciously’ ‘I fired at the man suspiciously’?
This is not just incorrect, it is intentionally, deliberately distorted to suit a thesis.
It’s an exageration bent on the emotive side. But the distortion only matters if you have a certain line at which firing is permitted without further consideration. Because the distortion ostensibly pushes the situation away from that line. So you might want to talk about that line.
“Superior? It depends upon the purpose. More reliable? Absolutely. As I have previously pointed out, science can only be considered reliable at the point it becomes engineering and material results are provided. But, as I have also pointed out, science is more dependent upon engineering than engineering is dependent upon science.”
When science becomes engineering? They are different pursuits. Engineering uses the results of science. And, yes, engineering is more reliable for the reasons I pointed out previously. This in no way diminishes the validity of scientific exploration. Without principles arrived at through the scientific enterprise engineering would have little to work with. True, science depends on the products of engineering but engineering relies on the discoveries of science in order to produce anything at all. These endeavors are best seen as complimentary aspects of the larger pursuit of the continuous advancement of human knowledge. There is no point in pitting one against the other.
Engineering uses the results of science.
Engineering uses the correct results of science, as opposed to the politically correct results of science. It also doesn’t care whether the correct results were properly peer-reviewed and published in a respectable journal by a respectable scientist. That’s because its goal is for the engineered things to work.
That’s kind of oversimplified. Engineering can also use the wrong results of science or it can misapply them, and for legal reasons, the intellectual raw material for engineering matters. The goal is for things to work, but it’s naive to think engineers don’t want to cover their asses when things go wrong.
Engineering can also use the wrong results of science or it can misapply them…
It can, but usually there’s (more or less immediate) feedback in that the engineered things refuse to work. The “scientific enterprise” lacks this immediate and unavoidable fact-check performed by reality itself.
So you’re saying science has no fact checking process? (I’ll ignore for now how on earth there is a 11% reproducability stat without any fact checking process) How are experiments conducted? Purely theoretically? Or as soon as you get out a bunsen burner, it’s engineering?
Does math work this way as well? As soon as you bring out 1+1 it equals engineering? Or is it still math?
Is there any correspondence between the claim making of science, claiming certain products are possible and the sudden appearance of engineered products, products that are remarkably similar to the scientific claim?
So you’re saying science has no fact checking process?
It does, but the differences should be plain. Science’s results are mostly checked by other scientists, if those other scientists decide to do it and can obtain the resources for doing so. It is up to the scientific enterprise to devise a process that predominantly yields correct results and to apply it rigorously.
For the record, this is indeed an oversimplification, as cornucopia correctly observed; and I am aware that an oversimplification can create the impression of overt certainty. Still, it’s an effective way to advance the argument, without spilling too much ink.
It is up to the scientific enterprise to devise a process that predominantly yields correct results and to apply it rigorously.
Whereas what do engineers do? Do they bother spending money on testing the result, or do they pick the results that other scientists have checked and rechecked already?
The difference isn’t plain to me in what you’re saying? Scientists results are mostly checked by other scientists? Well no – the physical qualities of the test are written up and need to physically occur. If the experiment can’t occur – that’s reality checking the result?
It seems like your attributing a theoretical checking system to scientists?
Whereas what do engineers do? Do they bother spending money on testing the result, or do they pick the results that other scientists have checked and rechecked already?
Both.
Scientists results are mostly checked by other scientists?
I think so, nowadays. It obviously depends on the specific branch.
If the experiment can’t occur – that’s reality checking the result?
It is, but somebody (usually a scientist) needs to attempt the experiment and see that it doesn’t occur. This is optional in science’s case, whereas the output of engineering is tested daily, often by the general public.
This is optional in science’s case, whereas the output of engineering is tested daily, often by the general public.
Of course, some scientific output is also tested daily by the general public.
whereas the output of engineering is tested daily, often by the general public.
Uh, no? No testing is done by the general public – no one says ‘Hae, we’re not sure if this thing will collapse! Hae general public, go walk on it and see if you die or not!’ or ‘Hae, we’ve invented this new medicine just now – hey, general public, have some and see if you die’
Engineers do not run tests on the general public and such would be ethically reprehensible!
It is, but somebody (usually a scientist) needs to attempt the experiment and see that it doesn’t occur. This is optional in science’s case,
You seem to be willfully ignoring the millions of physical tests they do run? It’s optional – but yet clearly they do run tests, vast numbers of them. If your leery about theory only tests, okay. But just say that then. You seem to be lumping in all the physical experiment scientists in with the very few theory only scientific efforts?
Atleast say something like ‘I don’t think scientists bother running physical tests’ (I don’t agree at all, but atleast your statement would correlate with what you think if you state you think that), because otherwise you seem to accept they do, but are trying to dodge by using words like ‘optional’ like it adds up to anything? It’s optional for engineers to test anything as well. Oh but a bunch of factors means they will test? But there are no factors that lead to scientists testing a hypothesis thousands of times? No, it’s as optional in either case.
Engineers do not run tests on the general public and such would be ethically reprehensible!
The general public tests the engineer’s output by using it; or, stated differently, the engineer can’t get away with something that doesn’t work, because the public will tend to notice.
You seem to be willfully ignoring the millions of physical tests they do run?
Not really. The output of science consists of publications, and the question is, who performs independent tests on this output, to see if it’s correct? Who prevents a scientist getting away with publishing something that’s not correct? Is it the general public, as in the above? Or is it other scientists? Hence, process, peer review, reproducibility, and so on.
The general public fact-checks engineering; science fact-checks itself (if the process works).
I should add that engineering might naturally appeal to those who are attracted to certainty and are uncomfortable with ambiguity. Science on the other hand might appeal to those who are suspicious of certainty and are comfortable with ambiguity.
Also the distinction between discovery and creation. By and large, science is a process of discovery and engineering creation, although there is creation is discovery and discovery in creation.
I dont think vox will be back, at least to this post. thats what ignorance would do as opposed to admitting incorrectness, either that or come back to argue over the skin and not the meat once again. If definitions were so important to him I dont see why he would back himself into a corner with definitions if hes the king of them. he himself said he uses dictionary definitions, except in the case of ‘science’ where it would make him wrong so he choose an uncommon definition, which in turn made him wrong about Galileo because Galileo couldnt have been the father of science since the word wasnt made until hundreds of years after his death… And I agree with the certainty point Callan, Zimmerman at some point became certain and someone died as a result. I feel like vox should move on from wanting proof of certainty causing material harm because its obviously such a sad fact of life. He should get to the part where he admits hes wrong, and has the capacity to be wrong in many things. Then I will accept that he is human and might have a valid argument about anything but grammatical correctness and definitions, trying to avoid real philosophical debates..
But really as i said before.. We all just want EARWA Scott.
PS Anyone claiming to be a superintelligence should take note that if you have to claim you are, you probably arent.. Hawking is a superintelligence not because he says he is, but because others say he is. Vox is a horn tooting nerd. And im just a stoner who hates cocky people.
So The Father of Modern science didn’t have a dynamic body of knowledge? Could you please explain how this definition makes sense in this context?
No more than anyone else. Certainly. If you’re only going to utilize “science” in its pure aspect of a body of knowledge, then there is no room for claiming that it is “self-correcting”, superior, or even distinct from any other intellectual discipline or activity. This is why definitional precision is important. If we utilize the word science only in its ancient sense of knowledge, it is not distinguished from theology, astrology, or many other things that Scott and others claim are inferior to science in its modern form, which is the conflation of the process, the profession, and the knowledge base that is now severely constricted by those two other aspects. Science, in the sense that Scott asserts is the ultimate claim-making institution, did not exist prior to telescopes.
It’s funny how you stopped answering at just that point, right after you’re uncharitable reading of ‘Science as a claim-making institution is flawed… Compared to what other institution, Vox?’ where you treated the second as if that wasn’t also a reference to a claim making institution.
You have no idea how many people have fallen into the same trap you did. The question is easily answered, I’m just tired of Scott’s constant intellectual dishonesty. As I’ve pointed out before, he’s an intellectual snake, constantly moving the goal posts and refusing to answer straightforward questions. If you think it’s “funny” that I stopped answering his questions, don’t you find it even more curious that he hasn’t answered mine from the beginning?
The fact that you and Delavagus desire more “charitable” readings only underlines the fundamental problem of imprecision here. Of course, Scott and Delavagus need to be imprecise because it masks their habitual dishonesty.
So you diverge from the dictionary when it is useful to you like you claim everyone else does? Good for you..? The definition you gave for science is not in the dictionary, you did not make it clear you were diverging from the dictionary definition as you just said you do make it clear (you suddenly were using a certain definition you choose to define after once the dictionary definition had you trapped in a corner).
I only diverge from the dictionary when the dictionary definitions are totally inadequate. And in the case of science, I never, ever use the dictionary definition because, as I’ve already pointed out, the term covers multiple concepts. Nor did I define the term as a result of the comments here, I did not define the three aspects of science, I only gave them names. It seems to have escaped your notice that the quote was from a book I published four years ago.
I have switched no definitions while you choose to use an uncommon definition of science to make your point, which just points out that if your right galileo was the father of nothing, he was kellhus’s real dad.
You have it backwards. If I’m right, Galileo was the father of scientody, and, to a lesser extent, scientistry. Or, if you prefer, “modern science”. Only if you’re right was he the father of nothing, since “science” would then be nothing more than the first knowledge dating back to the dawn of homo sapiens.
And if engineering didnt use the laws or theories created by science it would not work. science must come before engineering.
Sure, because no one ever engineered anything before Galileo. You’re just sticking your head right back in the same trap. Unless you’re willing to agree that theology and astrology are science, you can’t claim engineering has to use the laws and theories created by science… much less by scientists.
I dont think vox will be back, at least to this post. thats what ignorance would do as opposed to admitting incorrectness, either that or come back to argue over the skin and not the meat once again. If definitions were so important to him I dont see why he would back himself into a corner with definitions if hes the king of them. he himself said he uses dictionary definitions, except in the case of ‘science’ where it would make him wrong so he choose an uncommon definition, which in turn made him wrong about Galileo because Galileo couldnt have been the father of science since the word wasnt made until hundreds of years after his death…
First, even in ENGLISH, the word predated Galileo by centuries. Second, my definition isn’t uncommon at all, it merely breaks apart the relevant aspects of the dictionary definition.
1. the systematic study of the nature and behaviour of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these facts in general terms [SCIENTODY]
2. the knowledge so obtained or the practice of obtaining it [SCIENTAGE or SCIENTISTRY]
3. any particular branch of this knowledge: the pure and applied sciences [SCIENTAGE]
4. any body of knowledge organized in a systematic manner [SCIENTAGE +]
5. skill or technique [SCIENTODY +]
6. archaic knowledge [THE SENSE SOME ARE TRYING TO PUSH]
“If we utilize the word science only in its ancient sense of knowledge, it is not distinguished from theology, astrology, or many other things that Scott and others claim are inferior to science in its modern form, ”
That’s not the way I look at it. (For the record, I don’t claim theology, astrology ect. are inferior to science in its modern form)
But those disciplines can easily be distinguished:
Theology is about gaining knowledge about god. If a theologist writes about philosophy its philosophy (just to make it clear, that the profession has notthing to do with the result)
Astrology is about gainning knowledge from the stars. This WAS science some time ago, but the rules got stricter. In the modern form of science you need evidence. Astrology comes down to groundless interpretation.
So for me, science in its basic form, is all about gaining knowledge.
And since (I know you don’t like this) knowledge is considered as justified, true, believe,
Theology ect. is TODAY not considered as science, because it is not considered as justified if you have no empirical evidence or it isn’t logically true (don’t know if this is the correct term; I’m speaking of tautologies ect.)
wikipedia:
“Learned societies for the communication and promotion of scientific thought and experimentation have existed since the Renaissance period.The oldest surviving institution is the Italian Accademia dei Lincei which was established in 1603. The respective National Academies of Science are distinguished institutions that exist in a number of countries, beginning with the British Royal Society in 1660and the French Académie des Sciences in 1666.”
Could this be what you are referring to, when you say science has not existed before the telescope?
Sorry for making three posts, but I more the step-by-step kind of writer.
Even with you definition I wouldn’t use the word ‘science’ in this context, because it is very confusing (it wouldn’t be difficult do make it more exact: instead of ‘science’ you could say ‘claim-making institution’ or something like that and everybody would be happy) and it seem you are using this confusion as a rhetoric tool, right before you insult people. I don’t say you make it on purpose, but it REALLY REALLY looks that way.
“The Neo-Darwinian synthesis with Mendelian genetics was just the first nail in the coffin and the final one will be the one that shows that there are hard limits to functional DNA mutations and that the assumed extrapolation of microevolution to macroevolution and definitive speciation events are no longer justified.”
The claim that Mendelian inheritance component has rendered modern evolutionary theory weaker is just so fucking alien that it approaches Time Cube stuff. Modern evolutionary theory does not consist of natural selection model alone. That does not mean that natural selection does not happen – merely that it is not the only process guiding evolution of life (something that was acknowledged since approximately the day term “natural selection” was coined, long before genetic drift, gene flow and other such tricks were conceived of)
As to future discovery of a hard “functional mutation limit”, well, that would be a fun thing, but at this point it barely qualifies as a hypothesis. It’s on par with “maybe we could eventually upload humans into computers” or “maybe human mind is a hyperturing machine”.
Fantasies about becoming a cyborg superman or discovery of “smart” evolutionary factors might feel very nice indeed, but I think one would be wise not to become too invested in them.
So for me, science in its basic form, is all about gaining knowledge.
That’s fine. You’re using the term in its literally archaic form and you can certainly do so. But knowledge is not clearly considered “justified true belief”, the definition is not in any standard dictionary, and of the very small number of philosophers who use it as a standard, at least some of them claim no such thing is possible. You can’t define science as knowledge and then change the definition of knowledge in order to exclude all non-scientific forms of knowledge. You might as reasonably attempt to prove that science is defined as justified true belief. Good luck with that considering the long and sordid history of errors, corruption, and fraud in science.
The oldest surviving institution is the Italian Accademia dei Lincei which was established in 1603. The respective National Academies of Science are distinguished institutions that exist in a number of countries, beginning with the British Royal Society in 1660 and the French Académie des Sciences in 1666. Could this be what you are referring to, when you say science has not existed before the telescope?
Of course. “The earliest recorded working telescopes were the refracting telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in 1608. Their development is credited to three individuals: Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, who were spectacle makers in Middelburg, and Jacob Metius of Alkmaar. Galileo greatly improved upon these designs the following year.”
I look forward to hearing how spectacle makers are actually scientists utilizing theoretical knowledge produced by the scientific method and published by scientific societies that didn’t exist for another 52 years. Are we also to believe that government patent applications are now peer-reviewed papers?
“You can’t define science as knowledge and then change the definition of knowledge in order to exclude all non-scientific forms of knowledge.”
I didn’t define ‘science’ as knowledge. I said that science is ABOUT GAINING knowledge. It seems you’re either misinterprtiing me, because you don’t understand exactly what I’m talking about or you do it, because you want to put words in my mouth. That’s what I meant with the rhetoric tools you are using.
I think a lot of problems come into being, because you don’t WANT to use words like ‘science’ and ‘knowledge’ like others do, because you couldn’t argue with them anymore. You LIKE the confusion you are producing. Am I worng? (You don’t have to answer, but ask YOUSELF)
Also, theology may very well be a science on par with at least psychology.
Theology is, after all, “systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary”, intended to:
*understand more truly his or her own religious tradition,
*understand more truly another religious tradition,
*make comparisons among religious traditions,
*defend or justify a religious tradition,
*facilitate reform of a particular tradition,
*assist in the propagation of a religious tradition,
*draw on the resources of a tradition to address some present situation or need
*draw on the resources of a tradition to explore possible ways of interpreting the world
*explore the nature of divinity without reference to any specific tradition
*challenge (ex. biblical criticism) or oppose (ex. irreligion) a religious tradition or the religious world-view.
Methinks significantly more than half of those goals could be addressed through “systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths” in accordance with any conceivable definition of science.
In fact, claim “there is no (benevolent :p) god” can be considered a theological claim 😉
Astrology is a different matter (nice job lumping it with theology there, Vox), cause it is a hodge-podge of beliefs and claims that are either provably wrong or inherently unfalsifiable and unverifiable. It’s like “idealized engineering”, but with no “pragmatic feedback” (then again, if the goal is to “fool plebes” not to “predict future”, then astrology is a fine example of, I guess, some form of “delusion engineering”. Folks who write horoscopes are getting paid after all)
Another thing relating to the books – If you’ve got any snippets in your head about the rituals for the various gods Scott, and perhaps even times in history they’ve manifested themselves, feel free to share. 🙂
Still trying to decide what the gods are, holding on to my domain-related thoughts+events stretched across time theory…
not sure how much cross-pollination occurs, but the hot topics on Westeros are “What is sorcery?”, “How will Kellhus prevail at Golgotterath?”, and “How do skin spies fuck?”:
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/65932-white-luck-warrior-ix/
You know, I kinda can’t help remarking how fucking incompetent Inchoroi are. I mean, okay, these folks can engineer new lifeforms… And they can’t do a convincing sex change on a bunch of skin-spies to make them pass better as women ? For the love of everything, we can now make operations that makes subjects pretty much indistinguishable from a post-hysterectomy woman under gynecological investigation, and we’re nowhere near bio-forging dragons ( 😦 ).
Also, Inchoroi want to radically drive the amount of “ensouled” beings down so god will GTFO, and the best they can come up with is roving bands of rapekill humanoids and dragons (both of which count towards “ensouled”, IIRC)? Come on, no cyanide-spewing, ebola-spreading, omnivorous super-locusts to completely decimate the entire ecosystem ?
While I realize that if the invading rape-monsters were competent, there would have been no story (all food chains crash, everybody starves), inchies are still a bit of disappoint, frankly.
Well, keep in mind the Inchie brothers aren’t necessarily the best and brightest of their species, they are just the ones who survived the grafting necessary to use magic.
I don’t think the Tekne is exactly the same as mastery over genetics, even assuming that making a disease doesn’t immediately put it in the hands of the relevant god.
I mention the Inchie Brothers in the next post BTW.
Well, it is surely sufficiently close to “mastery of genetics” to engineer several distinct species, and if you can engineer something like Srancs, you sure should be able to engineer something a-la locusts on steroids, which are more bang for buck and aren’t ensouled (which seems kinda important for their gambit of decimating “people”)
Inchoroi could use some more imagination when designing their toys 😉
I don’t think dragons and Sranc have souls. I also think Inchies can only twist extant species. Even Wutteat, I believe, was made from something already in existence.
The Tekne, I suspect, isn’t just advanced biology. There’s something else going on, akin to Saruman and his Uruk-Hai.
Hm, I might be misremembering, but I think of all their tinkertoys only skin-spies were stated to lack a soul (I wonder if there is some deep philosophical point in them lacking a “soul” and failing at paradoxes, or if it is just a kind of nod to “soulless automata” tropes in sci-fi)
Also, even if they can’t create species de-novo, Eärwa’s biome should have a lot of horrible things to twist into even more terrifying things.
You know, it’s a kind of “standard computer game opponent cast” kind of thing (computer games have an excuse though, since animating a really diverse set of opponents with unusual behaviors and body plans is a mite of an ordeal ;))
01,
Ummm, we invented nuclear weapons – but look at the stupid shit we still do. Were kinda cartoon villains as well. And they are a race of lovers – the race of ‘efficients’ are the Dunyain. They probably still think of themselves as having ‘standards’ to hold up – so they use the no god to stop children being born, which is even more efficient than mutant grasshoppers (never mind how the mutant grasshoppers will spoil the world – do you shit in the cradle you intend to conquer? Never mind if you screw up the grasshoppers kill switch and they kill you indirectly as well) and also adheres to their ‘standards’. They also seem to have fucked up in their technology and lost alot of it, because they just fuck around all the time. Sranc are just messed up non-men, not exactly amazing new creations.
It doesn’t seem that huge a twist in order to fit the story as is, but if anyone thinks there’s some small amount twisting (ie, convenient outcomes) of what could occur to fit story, I’d agree.
Ragh! Argue about book! Yes! Much more entertaining to do, that’s for sure! 🙂
Saajan,
The Tekne, I suspect, isn’t just advanced biology. There’s something else going on, akin to Saruman and his Uruk-Hai.
I would suspect, given the idea of ‘the search for meaninglessness’ (this is the shit I would not get if I didn’t hang around this blog and hear it here) means there isn’t more – it’s less. Souls, absence or presence, is merely a mechanical choice/a button press.
Well, I guess being a race of “lovers” might indeed come with not being very good at “exterminate everything” game
And Sranc are hardly are bad design, just…uninspired… as a certain character would have said, “such limited imagination!” (no offense, Scott 😀 )
“I look forward to hearing how spectacle makers are actually scientists utilizing theoretical knowledge produced by the scientific method and published by scientific societies that didn’t exist for another 52 years.”
Google Alhazen’s Book of Optics.