How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by sprout » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 11:27 PM UTC

knieveltech wrote: post #60

michael_dorfman wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Assuming there is a point to this sort of recursive thought exercise, the largely impenetrable nature of the material by definition guarantees no benefit to society at large or other academic fields. So other than providing a private game preserve for a peculiar flavor of intellectuals that aren't interested in a day job and can't be bothered to gravitate to fields with demonstrable intrinsic value what, exactly, is…

You never know. Smart people being smart for smart's sake often create unexpected benefits. Trying to direct them to things with 'demonstrable intrinsic value' mostly pisses them off and makes them less likely to come up with truly revolutionary ideas.

And so long as these people are teaching 300-level classes to undergrads they're definitely doing something of value, even if it's only creating individuals as jaded as yourself (which who knows, may have some value.)

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

#102

Post by Rob-Goodier » Tue, Jul 06, 2010, 11:47 PM UTC

elblanco wrote: post #86

michael_dorfman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has actually studies Continental Philosophy, I can tell you that it's not nonsense. Your "looks like a duck, walks like a duck" test would just as easily apply to nuclear physics or non-Euclidean geometry, if you are not already familiar with the terms of art of those fields. And the pressure for greater clarity and simpler exposition is admirable, so far as it goes-- but (as many mathematics texts dem…

His point still stands though. In most fields, no matter how complex, it is possible to generalize and explain things at a fairly superficial level, in terms a layman would understand. -"In physics, a particle can have different properties at once!" -"Some people think that the language you speak defines what you can think! There's even languages without numbers, and those people have trouble counting!" -"There are p…

About #2: It's impossible that it's nonsense. To be nonsense, it would require a conspiracy among the field's thousands of practitioners and most of their students and admirers. The alternative is that the practitioners - the content creators - are the conspirators and the consumers are dupes, but the odds are against maintaining a long-running scam on such otherwise smart people (I hope).

It seems much more likely that outsiders looking in on an obscure field resent the work it would take to understand the field, so they bash it. Unlike other complex fields, including any of the sciences (except astrobiology, which clearly is bogus. And maybe evolutionary psychology, which is borderline), lit crit doesn't do much work in the world and most people wouldn't miss it if it were gone. So, that compounds our resentment of having to work to understand it. In other words, it's tough to understand, there's not an obvious payoff for understanding it, so it's easier just to write it off.

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

#103

Post by calcnerd256 » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 4:35 AM UTC

Rob-Goodier wrote: post #102

elblanco wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point still stands though. In most fields, no matter how complex, it is possible to generalize and explain things at a fairly superficial level, in terms a layman would understand. -"In physics, a particle can have different properties at once!" -"Some people think that the language you speak defines what you can think! There's even languages without numbers, and those people have trouble counting!" -"There are p…

About #2: It's impossible that it's nonsense. To be nonsense, it would require a conspiracy among the field's thousands of practitioners and most of their students and admirers. The alternative is that the practitioners - the content creators - are the conspirators and the consumers are dupes, but the odds are against maintaining a long-running scam on such otherwise smart people (I hope). It seems much more likely t…

It doesn't have to be a conscious conspiracy.

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

#104

Post by Terretta » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 7:06 AM UTC

Rob-Goodier wrote: post #102

elblanco wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point still stands though. In most fields, no matter how complex, it is possible to generalize and explain things at a fairly superficial level, in terms a layman would understand. -"In physics, a particle can have different properties at once!" -"Some people think that the language you speak defines what you can think! There's even languages without numbers, and those people have trouble counting!" -"There are p…

About #2: It's impossible that it's nonsense. To be nonsense, it would require a conspiracy among the field's thousands of practitioners and most of their students and admirers. The alternative is that the practitioners - the content creators - are the conspirators and the consumers are dupes, but the odds are against maintaining a long-running scam on such otherwise smart people (I hope). It seems much more likely t…

> "It's impossible that it's nonsense. To be nonsense, it would require a conspiracy among the field's thousands of practitioners and most of their students and admirers."

This doesn't follow. There are many other ways it could be nonsense, as demonstrated by countless erudite groups from Nebuchadnezzar's astrologers to the Inquisition. None wants to be the one who "doesn't get it".

Moreover, the participants you list--practitioners, students, admirers--are hardly impartial.

Their interests in the emperor's clothes are well vested.

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

#105

Post by shadowsun7 » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 7:10 AM UTC

michael_dorfman wrote: post #81

decode wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a fun game, though I don't have any opinions on Continental Philosophy. I don't speak French well enough to do it in the original, so I'll have to try in translation: "And even if one wished to keep sonority on the side of the sensible and contingent signifier which would be strictly speaking impossible, since formal identities isolated within a sensible mass are already idealities that are not purely…

That's not a terribly felicitous translation, but it is by no means impenetrable. Of course, we can't take that sentence in isolation-- it is the middle sentence of a short paragraph, so you need to read a bit of context, too. The paragraph also presumes that you are familiar with the opposition (familiar since Kant, at least) between the sensible and the intelligible, and Saussure's division of the sign into a signi…

Explain it to us.

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

#106

Post by bitwize » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 2:34 PM UTC

This dawned on me the other day.

Michael Dorfman is right. Deconstruction is not a single method or mechanical process.

Deconstruction is perhaps best understood if you think of Derrida as an elaborate troll. It is a general strategy for trolling philosophers. All the biographies of Derrida I've read have used words like "playful" to describe him, like he's fucking Loki or something. He says "That work of Plato you're so fond of quoting doesn't really mean what you think it means!" and comes up with a convincing argument for why this is so. (The best trolls sound believable, even to those with well-trained and sensitive BS detectors.) It also explains why deconstruction can only be understood within the context of the philosophical tradition: trolling only works if it's tailored to the traditions and preconceptions of its audience.

The beautiful part is that philosophers who've been trolled are surreptitiously recruited into practicing the same trolling technique themselves.

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

#107

Post by Rob-Goodier » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 8:49 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #104

Rob-Goodier wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About #2: It's impossible that it's nonsense. To be nonsense, it would require a conspiracy among the field's thousands of practitioners and most of their students and admirers. The alternative is that the practitioners - the content creators - are the conspirators and the consumers are dupes, but the odds are against maintaining a long-running scam on such otherwise smart people (I hope). It seems much more likely t…

> "It's impossible that it's nonsense. To be nonsense, it would require a conspiracy among the field's thousands of practitioners and most of their students and admirers." This doesn't follow. There are many other ways it could be nonsense, as demonstrated by countless erudite groups from Nebuchadnezzar's astrologers to the Inquisition. None wants to be the one who "doesn't get it". Moreover, the participants you lis…

The Emperor was outed on day one, which sort of underlines my point. The new clothes story could also reflect the intelligence of crowds. Or the inability to dupe a crowd for very long. Life isn't beholden to the story, obviously, but I have some faith in the intelligence of groups of people. Too much faith to believe that we can be tricked outright for decades. There's no incentive to keep quiet about a conspiracy in the field of lit crit. There's little money in it, and little power. If there were a conspiracy, there would be plenty of whistle blowers within the fold of lit critics who would lose interest in the farce and call out their peers. Since that's not happening, it seems much more likely that there's less BS in the field than us outsiders would like to believe.