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Tradition is Smarter (2018)

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Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#161

Post by criley2 »

lelanthran wrote: post #158
criley2 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> I now posit that you do so to undercut the horrifying abuse done to women. Why you choose to do that, I'll leave to the readers imagination. Me calling male genital mutilation an amputation does not, in any way, venture any opinion on other types of mutilation.

In context of this discussion, it's classic Whataboutism, and it does implicitly offer an opinion that is heard loud and clear. Whenever we talk about FGM, there's always an army of men ready to Whatabout! the discussion to death.

I don't even think an imagination is required to understand why.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#162

Post by Slava_Propanei »

0134340 wrote: post #154
drekipus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty strawman. You've got to broaden the mind a bit. "We need change to have silly hat day and every one needs to scream at noon., if you don't understand the need for this change, maybe try to understand it first before trying to tear it down." - you can't understand it because I made it up, just then, nonsensically. It is a valid change that me and my supporters are pushing for. The difference with tradit…

If you want to call it strawmanning then I was mirroring the tactic of the author in the article. I thought it ignorant and pretentious to call tradition "smarter" as if changes, in general, are dumber; that's a strawman. And of course it's obvious, some things that are in place are in place because they're good, you should understand it first. And then you should likewise understand the need for changes; both are va…

No post body was provided.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#164

Post by msla »

drekipus wrote: post #148
msla wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware the Courtier's Response, which is using "You just don't understand" as a thought-terminating cliché on yourself and a rhetorical bludgeon on others. If nobody can cogently explain why the tradition matters, without falling back on muddled thinking or mere appeals to tradition, take it out and see what happens.

Is that acceptable for a potential death of millions? (Let's say) To use a cliche or overly simple examples, if no one can understand the importance of governance and economic coupling, then why not just try to make a Soviet union and see what happens? I'm not making a farce, I think that just removing things to see what happens can potentially be more negative than it is positive. We should be looking to tweak and c…

With government, we have heuristics honed over millennia for detecting things which are likely to end extremely badly, and we can explain them in logical terms. For example, resurrecting the USSR is bad because the USSR was an empire lead by a succession of dictators and oligarchies, and we have good, logical reasons founded on plenty of history telling us why empires, dictators, and oligarchies are all bad.

The illogical reasons are the ones which reduce to "It's bad because it's new" and "It's good because it's old" with no further content, just rhetorical smoke bombs and hand-waving.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#165

Post by lvxferre »

hoseja wrote: post #142
lvxferre wrote: post #127

Relevant detail about yucca/cassava/manioc: there are two varieties of the crop, "sweet" and "bitter". The bitter variety is mostly eaten in the Amazon, the Brazilian Northeast, and a chunk of the Gran Chaco; elsewhere - including the rest of South America - people stick mostly to the sweet variety. Why? Because the sweet variety can be safely eaten after boiled, just like that hypothetical Tukanoan mother wanted. (Y…

Maybe the bitter variety has better resistance to parasites, keeps longer, etc?

The bitter variety is a bit more drought-resistant. That's actually relevant in the Gran Chaco and the Brazilian Northeast, as both regions are rather arid and prone to drought. In the Amazon though? Not really - and yet most recipes that I've seen using bitter yucca (some using the leaves, that are heavy on cyanogens) are from the Amazon.

So the cultivation of the bitter variety itself is a tradition in all three places. In one of them, the tradition already lost the meaning to exist, but it's still there.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#166

Post by anonporridge »

slyall wrote: post #119
8note wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A modern constitutional monarch holds no real power This is not the case. The monarchy is extremely wealthy, and a large landowner over what should be public land. Powerwise, the queen had plenty of involvement in a coup in Australia.

I assume you are talking about the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam? The Queen's involvement seems to have been little or none. They is some suggestion that her advisors might have know that the Govenor General was contemplating it, but not much beyond that. Certainly she wasn't pulling this strings behind it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...

> The Queen's involvement seems to have been little or none.

Real power doesn't shout. It whispers.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#167

Post by tjs8rj »

8note wrote: post #94
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In short the Monarchy serve no real purpose in modern societies. Even as a symbol, it's a very bad symbol. TBH I'm sort of baffled by this stance given the events around Queen Elizabeth II's passing. To be clear, I'm not a monarchist, and I share the opinion that their continuation in modern society is, well, weird, to say the least. A modern constitutional monarch holds no real power, and often times holds less po…

> A modern constitutional monarch holds no real power This is not the case. The monarchy is extremely wealthy, and a large landowner over what should be public land. Powerwise, the queen had plenty of involvement in a coup in Australia.

As I understand it, the monarchy doesn't own otherwise public lands, in fact it's exactly the opposite - they lease their private lands to the government to be used as public lands[0]. In other words: this is entirely private land that has been granted to the public.

"Historically, Crown Estate properties were administered by the reigning monarch to help fund the business of governing the country. However, in 1760, George III surrendered control over the Estate's revenues to the Treasury,[5] thus relieving him of the responsibility of paying for the costs of the civil service, defence costs, the national debt, and his own personal debts. In return, he received an annual grant known as the Civil List."

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Estate

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#168

Post by tjs8rj »

xani_ wrote: post #31

Tradition was a mean to preserve knowledge over decades, I don't think it's relevant now where we can actually do that directly and also attach the research about whether it works, how it works, and how to employ a given technique directly. Nowadays it's just a convenient method to make people do something without questioning it or asking why.

“Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was.” ― Donald Kingsbury

Maybe you take a very narrow view of what constitutes a tradition as you rely on so many in your daily life that you couldn't possibly believe this view.

Why do you brush 2x a day, once in the morning and evening? You didn't learn that yourself or read any academic literature, it's because someone told you to.

Why do you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner - 3 separate meals, and all at a consistent time? You didn't learn that yourself or read any academic literature, there's a good chance you're not even all that hungry when you grab a meal sometimes, it's because someone told you to.

Why do you say please and thank you? Or hold the door? Or tip? You didn't learn that yourself, and they're pretty arbitrary generosities in the big picture, it's because someone told you to.

Why do you wish others luck? Why do you wear socks with your shoes? Why tie those shoes with the same bunny ears knot everyone else does? Why do you take a date to dinner? Why get married at all? Why don't you do drugs? Why don't you eat cat meat?

All of these and so much of your existence is following rituals you didn't invent and don't even question - that's one of the most significant values of traditions in all their forms: removing problems others have already solved from your attention. You don't need to reinvent shoe-tying, or what constitutes a good date, or when to eat meals or how many or what is reasonable to eat, or how to maintain your teeth and hygiene, and so on.

Instead, you can just learn how to live by copying the mundane rituals others do and focus your attention on more interesting things. Preserving knowledge doesn't just mean folk stories, it's more fundamental things like taking care of yourself, how to find a partner, and so on that if you stopped to try and build from the ground up yourself (or by reading all the research) you'd just be completely lost and miserable.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#169

Post by tjs8rj »

77pt77 wrote: post #11
trention wrote: post #6

Generally you should assume that tradition/status quo is always right until proven otherwise (=a logically compelling argument against, backed empirically).

Experimental evidence shows that tradition and common sense are almost invariably wrong.

Tradition and common sense are so fundamental that you're really going to have a hard time with this statement, and what does "wrong" mean exactly?

Brushing your teeth 2x a day is a tradition and common sense. You do it not because you've studied the literature and know for sure it's the most optimal way to maintain dental health, but because you we're taught to do it that way, it seems to work well enough, and everyone else does it too.

Does that make it wrong? Does that mean the vast majority of your daily life, as riddled with tradition and common sense as it is, is wrong? I don't think so.

Re: Tradition is Smarter (2018)

#170

Post by drekipus »

msla wrote: post #164
drekipus wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that acceptable for a potential death of millions? (Let's say) To use a cliche or overly simple examples, if no one can understand the importance of governance and economic coupling, then why not just try to make a Soviet union and see what happens? I'm not making a farce, I think that just removing things to see what happens can potentially be more negative than it is positive. We should be looking to tweak and c…

With government, we have heuristics honed over millennia for detecting things which are likely to end extremely badly, and we can explain them in logical terms. For example, resurrecting the USSR is bad because the USSR was an empire lead by a succession of dictators and oligarchies, and we have good, logical reasons founded on plenty of history telling us why empires, dictators, and oligarchies are all bad. The illo…

Most, if not all forms of government end up extremely badly. Society is just difficult to manage. The reasoning why it's bad is usually after the fact, no one willingly chooses the bad option.

But yes, I agree with you that saying "it's good because it's old, bad because it's new" is illogical.

I don't think many people are saying that though. If people are convinced that a new thing is good, the change happens. I think people are much more likely to suggest that change is good simply because it is new, which is also dangerously illogical.

People were convinced that the new USSR was good, so it happened. Dictators will undoubtedly happen again, and they don't get there by keeping things the same.

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