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How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

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Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#71

Post by shadowsun7 »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #57
shadowsun7 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact remains that somebody can explain Perelman's proof of the Poincare Conjecture to Paul McCartney, if McCartney was so interested. Whereas you aren't likely to find people who're able to so explain deconstruction of something or the like in a manner that's clean and simple and easy to understand. This either suggest that a) the person doesn't understand it, fully, himself; or b) deconstruction/humanities is so…

I could explain deconstruction to an interested party, and I imagine I could do so in slightly less time than it would take to explain Perelman's proof of the Poincare Conjecture to McCartney. If the interested party is already well read in the philosophical works of Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud and Levinas, I could probably do it in a weekend.

Ooh, that would be interesting. Let's start with the first: what is the point of deconstruction?

(Or as Chomsky argues - why is deconstruction necessary when the conclusions it reaches can be simply divined by ordinary laypersons, without all the verbosity and the pretentiousness of language?)

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#72

Post by btilly »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #55
jcromartie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, I don't think that any amount of study lets you understand lit crit. It just lets you produce it and nod in agreement at other regurgitations.

Speaking as one who actually understands it, I don't know what makes you think you are qualified to claim otherwise. I don't understand a lot of high-level physics, but that doesn't lead me to imagine that physicists just sit around bullshitting each other all day.

I don't understand a lot of high-level physics, but that doesn't lead me to imagine that physicists just sit around bullshitting each other all day.

I'm guessing you aren't familiar with string theory then. :-P

/duck

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#73

Post by sophacles »

cschwarm wrote: post #14
muhfuhkuh wrote: post #4

While I should just shrug it off and say "haha, you got us, we're certainly stuffy", look at the things we often are trying to discuss in Literature. Now, it's one thing to question the artistic merits of literature studied in academia, such as the almost impenetrable "Finnegan's Wake". It's not all because of its vernacular (I can't really read too much of it at a time because it blurs into almost gibberish after aw…

Sorry, but that does not make sense to me. A discipline either establishes common criteria to distinguish good stuff from bad stuff or it doesn't. And these should not be arbitrary otherwise the judgment remains subjective and therefore worthless. Since you admit that "there's alot of hacks", it seems literary criticism has no criteria or they are mostly subjective. Otherwise, you wouldn't have such a lot of hacks, b…

Are you kidding? Compare to software: There is a lot of bad code in the word. This code was written by hacks, who in my experience, seem to have no idea why their code is bad -- to the point of justifying it beyond absurdity\. Showing these people beautiful, well factored, well commented code frequently has no impact on them, they say "Oh, that is nice", but don't understand what makes it different than their hacky version.

This is within the field. From the outside, this is even more dense and impenetrable, and probably looks almost masturbatory. Despite this, there is a fairly strong correlation of "good style" and "good software" so there is at least some objective measure there.

Of course, since there are hacks in the software world (arguably the majority of them, since very few HNers run in the circles of bank software engineer or .Net programmer, and those people are the majority of programmers), the discussions on what makes good software probably don't result in anything worth knowing, or barely anyway.

I am not commenting on your overall conclusion, I don't know if lit. crit. is a worthy pursuit, but your argument is definitely lacking a sound basis.

\ I worked with a guy who would copy and paste program, with many many repetitions of blocks. After of getting a barely working result, would seemingly decide "oh functions are important in programming" and randomly break the code into a few functions, which each took 10+ arguments to carry state over from chunk to chunk. Since these were essentially just chaining the calls, none of the functions would be called elsewhere, no repetition was avoided, and extra cognitive load was added to reading the results. When this was done, the original author could not understand how it was different, let alone better.

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#74

Post by Goladus »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #54
tptacek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not commenting on the lack of available tutors; he's observing that masters of e.g. topology and quantum physics are capable of rendering their fields comprehensible, because of an internal structure, consistency, truth, etc that postmodernism might lack.

Comprehensible to whom? Masters of continental philosophy have no problem rendering their fields comprehensible to, say, graduate students in the field. Some (easier) texts are comprehensible to undergrads. Any "lack of an internal structure, consistency, truth" is imagined by Chomsky. Really.

Incidentally, Chomsky is a linguist. His primary field is understanding language, for example the effect of context on a word like "drug."

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#75

Post by btilly »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #34
Robin_Message wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On page 8 of that book Geoff Bennington says "It is, of course, impossible to write a book of this sort about Derrida." (Unfortunately the conclusion of that thought is on the next page, which Amazon isn't showing me, but I'm assuming he means what he says here.) If you can't explain something, you don't understand it. If no-one can explain it, no-one understands it and it doesn't mean anything. A theory with no pred…

On page 8 of that book Geoff Bennington says "It is, of course, impossible to write a book of this sort about Derrida." And, then, of course, he goes on to do the impossible. This notion of "the impossible" is, in itself, a key concept in Derrida's thought, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. If you can't explain something, you don't understand it. If no-one can explain it, no-one understands it and it doesn't mean…

Has anybody explained Kant, or Einstein, or Descartes or Newton or any other difficult thinker in words of four letters or less?

Four letters? No. Not even this sentence has only words of four letters or less.

However many major contributions of Newton, Descartes, and Einstein to mathematics and science have been broken down and simplified until they both can be and are routinely taught to high school students. Seriously, when I graduated from grade 12 I understood the basic coordinate system (Descartes), simple Calculus (Newton), conservation of momentum (Newton again), the Newtonian theory of gravity (Newton again) and the Special Theory of Relativity (Einstein).

Furthermore if you pick up The Feynman Lectures on Physics you will find understandable expositions of all of these, and plenty more. All are covered, along with a great many other things, in the first half of the first book alone. Often a major concept, such as basic Calculus, is explained in just a few pages.

Given that that's what scientists tend to do with their theories, are you surprised that they would look for something similar with other people's theories?

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#76

Post by philwelch »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #29
Robin_Message wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my disagreement with you is that I don't believe the original author was trying to make fun of deconstruction, only to make an attempt to understand and explain it as an outsider. He certainly wrote in an amusing way, but I felt he was trying to get somewhere. Looking at the errors you illustrated: > "points are awarded on the basis of style and wit rather than substance," This is a cheap shot, and is mostly…

I guess my disagreement with you is that I don't believe the original author was trying to make fun of deconstruction, only to make an attempt to understand and explain it as an outsider. Well, we certainly disagree there. I don't think the piece was written as a good-faith attempt to explain deconstruction, but rather, as an attempt to ridicule and dismiss it, for the most part. But is it possible that writing in a…

"In order to properly understand Derrida's philosophy, you need a solid understanding of the philosophies of Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Freud, Nietzsche and Levinas."

If I already perceived half of those guys as going in the wrong direction entirely, is there any value to reading what is essentially a commentary on them?

I must say, a long exposure to the analytic tradition has, to me, evaporated all these excuses. When you're saying something about morality or the nature of knowledge, you can state it directly, even at the risk of restating some elements that others have stated. This is true even if you're directly responding to them (in which case you restate the points you are responding to). The main prerequisite is a training in logic, simply because many statements in analytic philosophy are most clearly expressed in variously-formal logical forms.

On the other hand, if you're only offering a commentary on past philosophers, perhaps some novel technique of reading their texts (which, judging by your posts, seems to be Derrida's primary innovation) is enough of an innovation.

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#77

Post by Retric »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #55
jcromartie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, I don't think that any amount of study lets you understand lit crit. It just lets you produce it and nod in agreement at other regurgitations.

Speaking as one who actually understands it, I don't know what makes you think you are qualified to claim otherwise. I don't understand a lot of high-level physics, but that doesn't lead me to imagine that physicists just sit around bullshitting each other all day.

There is an easy test to see if a subject has inherent meaning or not. Just submit a randomly constructed article to the related journal and see if they publish it.

PS: Guess which side won?

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#78

Post by Retric »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #68
cschwarm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that does not make sense to me. A discipline either establishes common criteria to distinguish good stuff from bad stuff or it doesn't. And these should not be arbitrary otherwise the judgment remains subjective and therefore worthless. Since you admit that "there's alot of hacks", it seems literary criticism has no criteria or they are mostly subjective. Otherwise, you wouldn't have such a lot of hacks, b…

Oh, there is structure. Criticism comes in the following best practice, and you'll see this construct throughout most all litcrit (except for, you guessed it, the page-padding hacks who talk around the topic rather than about it): 1) Establish the "text" in question as well as the "context" of the text (certain themes, symbolism, diction, universality, etc.) 2) apply culturual congruity (whether you are applying the…

I have spent a ridicules amount of time reading everything from trash to the classics and most well respected works are terrible. I blame the form of "Criticism” you just described because it does nothing of the sort. Then again I might be the only person who morns all the interesting works never created because the echo chamber effect that infects the literary world. Everyone is to afraid say anything of substance lest they be accused of “not getting it”.

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#79

Post by decode »

Retric wrote: post #78
muhfuhkuh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, there is structure. Criticism comes in the following best practice, and you'll see this construct throughout most all litcrit (except for, you guessed it, the page-padding hacks who talk around the topic rather than about it): 1) Establish the "text" in question as well as the "context" of the text (certain themes, symbolism, diction, universality, etc.) 2) apply culturual congruity (whether you are applying the…

I have spent a ridicules amount of time reading everything from trash to the classics and most well respected works are terrible. I blame the form of "Criticism” you just described because it does nothing of the sort. Then again I might be the only person who morns all the interesting works never created because the echo chamber effect that infects the literary world. Everyone is to afraid say anything of substance l…

"There is no great literature, there is old literature and moving literature, but they are not the same thing."

And when most people talk about great literature, they aren't talking about either thing. Most people mean something like Adler's Great Books criteria when they talk about great literature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_books

Re: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer

#80

Post by three14 »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #16
lionhearted wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Deconstruction is not a method, and does not follow a formula, and pointing out the (numerous, outrageous) errors in this piece would take more time than I have. C'mon, this is Hacker News, we don't say "This is wrong, but I won't tell you why" here. For what it's worth, I'd actually like to hear your perspective if you take the time. The article provided a coherent explanation of deconstruction that jives with wha…

OK, I'll try to do this, but honestly, I don't have the kind of time it deserves. Deconstruction is, roughly speaking (and believe, me, I'm speaking schematically here) for the purposes of this discussion, the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, and his followers. (We'll ignore, for the moment, the more literary analysis of Paul De Man, which often go under the name of deconstruction as well.) Derrida makes it very clear…

Not only does it help, but it helps even those of us without the prerequisites. Never underestimate the power of good writing.

Thanks.

(Mind you, I'm still not convinced this is worthwhile, since it appears that the point could be made more clearly without the linguistic exercise, but I haven't made any attempt to read the original so I know that's not entirely fair.)

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