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The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
41–50 of 81 posts
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#42https://youtu.be/ermZKgG4htU >But what is most strikingly original about Wittgenstein’s account in the Tractatus is his drawing out of the implications – which are to a degree disturbing – of this conception. One implication is for values. If I think or claim that the car is in the garage, then, built into that claim is the idea that this may be true or false. But when I think that, say, slavery is morally wrong, I t…
Collective subjectivism does not lead to universal truth even closely. There is no universal truth, but only your personal experience and perception. This is true both for things which you see, and also for morality. In Wittgenstein’s world, your subjective morality is neither true nor false.
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#43I've been a big fan of Wittgenstein since college, and have at this point read just about all of his work. I might suggest that people new to Wittgenstein start neither with the Tractatus nor with Philosophical Investigations , but with the Blue and Brown Books (you want the Blue part). These are lecture notes toward what would later become the PI . They're way less systematic than the big two, but they'll give you a…
Yes philosophical admiration of Wittgenstein indicates a failure to take him seriously. If he was right, people should stop philosophising.
But they don't. Wittgenstein failing to end philosophy not once but twice in the Twentieth Century marks him out as a doubly spectacular failure on his own terms.
The problem may be that neither logic nor philology exhausts philosophy in ways simpler than philosophy itself. Wittgenstein's domineering charisma and conceptual purity make his attempts to do so dazzling in ways that the flounders of the analytic tradition don't have access to.
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#44I've noticed Wittgenstein is mentioned quite a lot on HN threads about philosophy. I suspect he's a favorite of engineer types because his conceptions nullify large swaths of philosophical activity and thinking. This conclusion allows the untrained student to feel as if they've entered a cheat code to reach the end of the discourse -- it's all a language game, so I need not waste my time with further inquiry.
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#45I've been a big fan of Wittgenstein since college, and have at this point read just about all of his work. I might suggest that people new to Wittgenstein start neither with the Tractatus nor with Philosophical Investigations , but with the Blue and Brown Books (you want the Blue part). These are lecture notes toward what would later become the PI . They're way less systematic than the big two, but they'll give you a…
Yes philosophical admiration of Wittgenstein indicates a failure to take him seriously. If he was right, people should stop philosophising. But they don't. Wittgenstein failing to end philosophy not once but twice in the Twentieth Century marks him out as a doubly spectacular failure on his own terms. The problem may be that neither logic nor philology exhausts philosophy in ways simpler than philosophy itself. Wittg…
> If he was right, people should stop philosophising.
Slight asterisk-- if he was right, philosophers would be employed as counselors, to help people realize that the deep problems they are wondering about are probably just problems with language, or the limits of vague, abstract terminology.
> But they don't.
Ha, I don't know-- which way is "philosophers per capita" actually trending?
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
You didn't contribute to the talk about Wittgenstein, but exclusively talked about yourself and things you do. In addition, instead of explaining the relationship of your activities with Wittgenstein (that could have been an on-topic contribution), you ask the reader to watch recordings.
How would recommend explaining the relationship of my activities W? Honest question, I’d love to not come across as such a moron. Thanks for the feedback.
Let me start by saying that it is great to see how you deal with the feedback you get, this is not an easy feat.
Some more preliminaries: When I write a comment on HN, I first ask myself: what is the message I want to send to potential readers? And then I put some effort into expressing it as good as I can. After reading your comment, I had a hard time identifying any message, and I think the reason is that you employed the method of giving us your raw thoughts without considering which message you would like to send. When I first read your comment, I didn't even bother to dig deep enough to decipher the content; if you don't spend effort in writing, why should I spend so much effort in reading? Now, after having watched the first video and read your comment five times, I understand the structure, but still only fragments of the content.
Let me give one example what I think you could explain, based on the partial understanding I gained: it seems that you consider it very important for people to capture and communicate their thoughts 'unfiltered', as they happen. If you could relate that to Wittgenstein's philosophy, that would be an on-topic comment. (I am not very familiar with Wittgensteins philosophy and don't see how that would obviously follow from his philosophy, maybe Wittgenstein experts immediately see it).
I see the dilemma you are in: you want to exemplify the style, and I ask you for something which is impossible to do in this style: polishing and refining a message until it is easy to read and understand. However, I also would say that your experiment - convincing the reader by exemplifying the approach - has failed, so it seems you anyway need to reconsider your approach.
Finally - and I hope it doesn't come over as patronizing - I think only few exceptional people have such clear thoughts that conveying them without any editing is a win for a large readership. I know for sure that my thoughts are initially much too chaotic. Maybe Wittgenstein was able to do it. You and me are far away from that level.
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the other comment points out, people aren’t willing to challenge themselves but also feign a confidence about themselves due to various factors such as economic and societal pressures. Admitting you have no idea most of the time is probably more accurate (estimate is obviously a reasonably afauirable skill) but that’s not what boss man is looking for. I think this also evidences itself in the prevalence of imposte…
No, not really. It's still rather vague to me. Could you give me a concrete example?
Sure!
If you look at the levels of reported 'imposter syndrome', there is a noted rise over the last few years.
I'm assuming here that you are aware of imposter syndrome and perhaps have felt it at times yourself. I certainly have.
To our peers, we pretend we know more than we do to feign this confidence that has almost emerged as necessary since there are so many that can do our jobs as programmers.
This feigned confidence manifests as imposter syndrome. Since we can't be honest (and risk management firing us because we're incompetent), we never quite feel like we're 'good enough' for our jobs.
Does that help?
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope you don’t take offense, but I would imagine some people are turned off by your self-promotion, the length of your post, and a tone that could be interpreted as pompous.
Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.
Can I ask what your background is and how old are you?
You seem actually quite genuine and to have good faith-in-discussion, and if that is correct I really implore you to value that about yourself. They are good and rare qualities that the world needs more of.
Also, I hope you do not take offense to this, but I can't help but recommend that if you haven't already, to see a professional about potential social disorders. Your comments consistently read with a naievity of social skills. I'm sorry and I dislike to compartmentalize anyone has disordered, but I think it could possibly help. I could also be completely wrong: after all, all I know of you is a few internet comments.
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#49https://youtu.be/ermZKgG4htU >But what is most strikingly original about Wittgenstein’s account in the Tractatus is his drawing out of the implications – which are to a degree disturbing – of this conception. One implication is for values. If I think or claim that the car is in the garage, then, built into that claim is the idea that this may be true or false. But when I think that, say, slavery is morally wrong, I t…
Collective subjectivism does not lead to universal truth even closely. There is no universal truth, but only your personal experience and perception. This is true both for things which you see, and also for morality. In Wittgenstein’s world, your subjective morality is neither true nor false.
What would you say of a hypothetical claim that was ideally translated to all languages that everyone, when asked, unforced, agreed that it was an accurate description of their subjective experience?
I'm digging underneath Wittgenstein's ideas of subjective morality a little bit. Humor me here and let me know what you think. I'm truly curious.
Re: The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.
Can I ask what your background is and how old are you? You seem actually quite genuine and to have good faith-in-discussion, and if that is correct I really implore you to value that about yourself. They are good and rare qualities that the world needs more of. Also, I hope you do not take offense to this, but I can't help but recommend that if you haven't already, to see a professional about potential social disorde…
I’m 26 (or 27 I can’t remember) and I’m just a guy trying to do a bunch of good in a digital age that seems to care more and more about short term benefits and appeasing low attention spans than using technology to better humanity.
I’m a shitty Android (now attempting web / react / react native to build knophy.com) developer that’s been fired from every job I’ve had (besides being a soccer referee in high school) and I like to think outside the box. I don’t like being like everyone else. I don’t take offense very easily, and I don’t have a very easy time finding people to discuss these deep ideas with.
I do my best, and have actually found a couple from this very thread, but I don’t think the current landscape of the Internet is set up to value the kinds of contributions I’d like to bring. I’m designing knophy.com to hopefully help fix my personal problem.
Here’s some reading on that system if you’re interested and would like to help spread the idea:
overview: https://medium.com/@michaellustig/knophy-or-how-were-going-t...
benefits off use: https://medium.com/@michaellustig/step-by-step-explanation-o...