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My new favorite book of all time

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Re: My new favorite book of all time

#401

Post by renox »

zamalek wrote: post #174
rjkennedy98 wrote: post #92

This article/video explains why so many people have completely lost faith in our technocratic elite. The idea that "You’re 37 times less likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than you were at the turn of the century" makes a large difference in the happiness of people is ridiculous. Why are people pessimistic about the future? Maybe its because the rates of addiction (including to smart phones and other screens)…

> Maybe its because... Disclaimer: all of this is entirely unscientific, just observations. From the perspective of a South African, we didn't have people walking into a public place (church, concert or otherwise) and shoot up a crowd. In general, undeveloped countries seem to have fewer problems with psychopaths (disregarding the ones in charge). I find this immensely curious. One thing that Facebook has taught me i…

Uh? Your point about the church is weird: I live in France which has rejected (mostly) church a long time ago and this hasn't really created a 'slew of new problems'.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#402

Post by mar77i »

maxsilver wrote: post #295
ABCLAW wrote: post #213

I've read a lot of the discussions regarding Pinker's work in both books (but particularly his position in Better Angels), and I've always found his position to be slightly disconcerting. Pinker attempts to make a specific argument, that violence has decreased over time. Violence is not a first order phenomenon at a social scale - it's presence is predicated upon the existence of other key criteria, largely the exist…

> On the micro-scale, in law we've been faced with a tremendous crisis - that of Access to Justice. The response of most legal institutions has been to decry the issue, then do nothing substantive to solve it. This is a personal frustration of mine, and it happens in nearly every field. "Loudly talk about how terrible problem X is" and then go back to work everyday making X worse. Software Developers decry the immens…

Oh come on. npm isn't here to stay. There will be real programming languages to work productively with, if programmer wills it.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#403

Post by kleer001 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #396
kleer001 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exactly! Moral facts cannot be determined by empirical observation. I didn't say that at all. Moral facts can be (can only be) found by empirical observation. The observation of what PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO . Anything else is academic masturbation. Sure, you can ask people and take their answers with a grain of salt, but you'll be running around in tautological circle diving morals from ancient books or poetic 'truths'.

> I didn't say that at all. Moral facts can be (can only be) found by empirical observation. The observation of what PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO. That renders the “moral” part meaningless. What is moral is what people ought to do, irrespective of what they actually do. Now, you can argue that morality is a null concept, and thus “morsl facts” is necessarily an empty set (and if you start with a premise of strict materialism,…

I heartily disagree. You're chasing a ghost.

Morality is how people react to what is done, how they enforce the rules and such. That's the "doing" I'm pointing at. I'm sorry if that was unclear in my initial statement. It seems you may have thought I was assuming perfect moral behavior from all people. No, that's silly. People are cheating trash, lol. Not all the time, of course, but it's in the grain.

Morality is as fractal as truth is, entirely dependent on the depth of questions being asked, the edge of inside and outside determined on the number of iterations. And morality is certainly not something to be determined in the vacuum of thought, it's a gritty, dirty, and nasty thing with edges in the slow slime and quick muck, it's ornate and like the rest of reality.

> but you can't coherently argue that physical facts both exist and can be determined by empirical observation...

Heh-heh, gotcha! ;)

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#404

Post by dragonwriter »

kleer001 wrote: post #403
dragonwriter wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn't say that at all. Moral facts can be (can only be) found by empirical observation. The observation of what PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO. That renders the “moral” part meaningless. What is moral is what people ought to do, irrespective of what they actually do. Now, you can argue that morality is a null concept, and thus “morsl facts” is necessarily an empty set (and if you start with a premise of strict materialism,…

I heartily disagree. You're chasing a ghost. Morality is how people react to what is done, how they enforce the rules and such. That's the "doing" I'm pointing at. I'm sorry if that was unclear in my initial statement. It seems you may have thought I was assuming perfect moral behavior from all people. No, that's silly. People are cheating trash, lol. Not all the time, of course, but it's in the grain. Morality is as…

> Morality is how people react to what is done

That is a loose description of one sense of the word, but not the sense associated with “moral facts” in its usual use. “Morality” can refer to either “what ought to be done” or to “beliefs about what ought to be done”; the elements of the former (if they exist as facts, a point which is a matter of substantial dispute) are “moral facts”; the elements of the latter are “facts about morality” or, more clearly, “facts about moral sentiments”. The latter indisputably exist and are normal material facts subject to empirical inquiry, but they aren't the same thing as the former, nor (even assuming the former exist) do they have any necessary relationship to the former.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#405

Post by no_identd »

brucephillips wrote: post #331
no_identd wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The explanation for the decline of violence in the second half of the 20th century is obvious: The bomb. Sorry, but that sounds like a load of folk psychology. Leaded gasoline on the other hand, well, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis (see especially this section: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis#Evidence... , and the…

The violence in question is war, not crime.

You almost, but only almost, make it sound like there exists a difference.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#406

Post by pas »

pron wrote: post #243
benbreen wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're not being charitable to Pinker here - he's not in my view "nefarious," and he's arguing his points in good faith. That said, I agree with you. I read Better Angels in its entirety and thought parts of it were very convincing. Others were deeply, provably wrong to anyone who is a professional historian (for instance, he let a bunch of Harvard RA's loose on some non-peer reviewed books purporting to stat…

Maybe he's arguing in good faith, but his conservative views are so deeply entrenched that even he fails to see how conservative he is. Such an extreme ideology that you yourself cannot distinguish from what you perceive to be neutral reasoning is the primary sign of a weak critical mind. I find Pinker to be one of the weakest public minds of our times for that reason, and for that I find him terribly boring. A write…

Could you expand on what do you mean conservative here?

Also, could you recommend some public minds whom you consider strong?

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#407

Post by pas »

pron wrote: post #236
mseebach wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a certain rather loud, rather fashionable kind of "activist" who are if not directly claiming that everything is awful, then strongly evoking symbolism and imagery to that effect. To fix this, they want to take broad, radical action, basically to affect revolution. This approach is indefensible given the actual state of the world, and these activists are either confused about the facts, or cynically manipula…

> This approach is indefensible given the actual state of the world, and these activists are either confused about the facts, or cynically manipulating their followers for personal power. Except that, as any student of history knows, the current state of the world is what it is thanks almost entirely to people just like that (although historians generally view them in a better light than you do because of what they'v…

My technophile bias is showing, but I'm not convinced that any, all, and every past and present student of history thinks that progress is due to violent/radical revolutionaries, and that they are/were the good guys (gals) - even if revolutions were necessary for change.

However, it's seems very evident that to extract even some minuscule progress from a conservative power structure a very strong anti-conservative force is usually a must, and that is usually not a moderate progressive force, but a very blunt radical one.

Again, however, that doesn't mean that the best course of action is a violent tabula rasa, even if things are currently shit.

But, it can be argued that a moderate force simply bounces back without much effect, but even the recent events of the last decade make that argument very unconvincing. (As big changes are easily usurped by blind populism, leaving no room to critical evaluation of possible policy proposals.)

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#408

Post by zamalek »

renox wrote: post #401
zamalek wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe its because... Disclaimer: all of this is entirely unscientific, just observations. From the perspective of a South African, we didn't have people walking into a public place (church, concert or otherwise) and shoot up a crowd. In general, undeveloped countries seem to have fewer problems with psychopaths (disregarding the ones in charge). I find this immensely curious. One thing that Facebook has taught me i…

Uh? Your point about the church is weird: I live in France which has rejected (mostly) church a long time ago and this hasn't really created a 'slew of new problems'.

Not all churches require monogamy, but I will use that as an example. This remains a global problem irrespective of how it affects you: institutionalized monogamy did prevent, or at least limit, the STD epidemic. That's one objective problem off the top of my head, there are other subjective problems.

That's not to say that institutionalized religion didn't have problems, it had many, we simply now have to find other ways to solve the problems that it did.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#409

Post by dragonwriter »

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #92

This article/video explains why so many people have completely lost faith in our technocratic elite. The idea that "You’re 37 times less likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than you were at the turn of the century" makes a large difference in the happiness of people is ridiculous. Why are people pessimistic about the future? Maybe its because the rates of addiction (including to smart phones and other screens)…

> Why are people pessimistic about the future?

Maybe it's because of widening economic inequality and the fact that peoples’s sure jective feeling about their life condition is driven more by relative than absolute material position.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#410

Post by danieltillett »

simonh wrote: post #390
danieltillett wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitler was an experienced soldier and had been gassed a few times in the Great War. He ruled out using gas.

That's a popular theory, but not supported by the testimony of those involved at the time. For example Hitler ordered that tabun production be continued as the highest priority even though the precursor chemicals were in high demand and very short supply. https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-Hitler-use-his-extensive-sto...

Well he certainly didn’t enjoy the experience of being gassed and he never ordered it used on the battle field.
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