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Talkin’ about a Revolution

drb.ie

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Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#41

Post by nonrandomstring »

keiferski wrote: post #30

Good article. The point about contemporary philosophers not having grand theories is something that comes up frequently in philosophy spaces (i.e., /r/academicphilosophy or https://dailynous.com ). The problem is that the academic system is really not designed to select such individuals, instead optimizing for specialized publications, pedigree, etc. The average philosopher has zero incentive for constructing grand t…

The problem is not limited to philosophy. All of academia is broken this way. Sadly, we think the only alternative is "industry", an equally broken set of incentives. That limits fronts of human progress to two types. We either get committee-driven institutional science leveraging huge resources, supercomputers, particle accelerators - blighted by cutthroat competition, opaque "publishing" and fraud - or radical populist individuals and small unaffiliated groups of thinkers able to operate without material resources. The Goldilocks zone of quiet, contemplative science, of whimsical, "high-risk" enquiry reminiscent of the Enlightenment, is gone in the 21st century.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#42

Post by keiferski »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #41
keiferski wrote: post #30

Good article. The point about contemporary philosophers not having grand theories is something that comes up frequently in philosophy spaces (i.e., /r/academicphilosophy or https://dailynous.com ). The problem is that the academic system is really not designed to select such individuals, instead optimizing for specialized publications, pedigree, etc. The average philosopher has zero incentive for constructing grand t…

The problem is not limited to philosophy. All of academia is broken this way. Sadly, we think the only alternative is "industry", an equally broken set of incentives. That limits fronts of human progress to two types. We either get committee-driven institutional science leveraging huge resources, supercomputers, particle accelerators - blighted by cutthroat competition, opaque "publishing" and fraud - or radical popu…

Agreed and that is a really good, but simple, point that I didn't realize as clearly before: there is no real alternative to the academia vs. industry dichotomy. What is needed might be a third option that allows for exploration without the pressures of profits or publications.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#43

Post by mardifoufs »

belter wrote: post #4
resurrected wrote: post #2

[flagged]

> the genocide contributed to bringing Trump to power Only because folks who refused to vote for Kamala said they could not stand her support of Israel policies :-) Like poor voters in the Midwest, you can always count on a certain electorate, to vote against their own interests and what they care about...

How is not voting for the administration that enabled and did absolutely nothing to stop the genocide of their relatives or community in Gaza voting against their self interest?

You realize that the deaths that happened in Gaza are probably more important than whatever grievances you have against Trump for some people? We are talking about tens of thousands of deaths, directly enabled by the previous administration (not only politically but with direct military shipments of the bombs that killed said people). But Muslim lives are typically completely worthless for a large part of the American population so your comment doesn't really surprise me.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#44

Post by nonrandomstring »

DeathArrow wrote: post #39
nonrandomstring wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tired old contention that some great historical thinker is somehow single-handedly responsible for the fall of civilisation is nothing more than railing against intellect itself.

My conjecture isn't Hegel is single-handedly responsible for the fall of civilisation. After all I don't have a reason to think he intended that, nor do I think civilisation will necasarily fall. Most villains of the thought, ideologues and philosophers are basing their operas on Hegel's. All I am saying Hegel established a framework which eased the works of some scum.

You might enjoy Rick Roderick's "Masters of Suspicion" where he talks about the influence (and perceived influence) of Nietzsche, Freud, Marx and some other individuals credited with "changing the world".

  "You notice I haven’t given an analysis of the Enlightenment but of
   modernity, of modernisation, of the advance of capital, because
   four pedants don’t make an age. And two or three weird philosophers
   don’t give birth to a century of unreason. You know, Nietzsche
   didn’t, you know, from his drawing room give birth to a century of
   cannonade, slaughter, concentration camps, CIA subterfuge, the
   raping and the murdering of nuns, the bombing of continents, the
   despoiling of beaches and the ruin of a planet! Four or five
   pedants do not have that much power, and never have. That’s just a
   sort of bugbear. They didn’t 'unleash unreason on the world'
   Jesus... how crazy can some people get. I mean, even in the
   postmodern world you shouldn't be that crazy, to say that three or
   four pedants invented this stuff. " -- R. Roderick Nietzsche’s
   Progeny (1991)

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#45

Post by mardifoufs »

boxed wrote: post #27
danknuggetz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just it though, the democratic and republican parties ran on Israel apartheid maintenance since the end of the second world war. And even in the face of a genocide, the democrats as a national party held the line and refused to consider the crime against humanity unfolding before them. How is electing them supposed to be taken? Should they continue to ignore human rights violations? There was no other way to s…

20% of the population of Israel are Palestinians with full rights. Some were killed 7/10. There's a muslim party in the Knesset. Remind me again: how many black parties had representation in apartheid South Africa? You are confused because Israel HAS A apartheid state: the settlements (a small part of Israel in total). But that's not the same as Israel IS A apartheid state. If you can't separate HAS A from IS A you w…

That's all cool. But it's just standard deflection from the tens of thousands of deaths that the Biden administration directly enabled. And Arabs living in Israel doesn't magically make all the very public statements that Israel made (like that they wanted to level the city to the ground, and displace its population once and for all), repeatedly and throughout the entire Gaza operation just go away.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#46

Post by amanaplanacanal »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #25
ggm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It altered voting intent by both Jewish and Islamic groups in ways which were net negative for Harris. The margin of error in voting was less than the number of votes swayed. All of this is out weighed by the "didn't vote" but democrat didn't vote was larger than before. If this issue stimulated a vote boycott it could have affected democrat voters more.

That argument is not really credible to me, saying that democrats did not vote or voted republican because Harris (and Biden before her) were too favorable towards Israel, ignores the fact that it was glaringly obvious that trump would be even more favorable towards Israel.

I have certainly heard people say that they couldn't support Harris because the Biden administration was too close to Israel, so instead didn't vote at all. I know it doesn't make sense to hand the election to somebody objectively worse on an issue they claim to care about, but there it is.

I suspect that whole thing was driven by some clever folks trying to get Trump into power.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#47

Post by lukan »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #37
suraci wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, we could organize gatherings where we purify ourselves of such works of degenerate literature by gathering all the copies we can find and burning them /s

Just don't burn the wrong type of books

https://xkcd.com/750/

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#48

Post by amanaplanacanal »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #15
dudefeliciano wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did it contribute to bringing trump to power?

Some fantasy about how millions of leftists voters either boycotted the election or voted for Trump because of Biden’s position on Gaza. Complete nonsense of course, but it’s a popular conspiracy theory among certain democrats circles. It was also funny to see democrats suddenly realizing that Arab Americans vote republican. They always have and they always will. Just like how Latino Americans, and generally most imm…

This is, of course nonsense. The data is clear that Latinos vote majority Democrat, though it was a smaller majority in this election than the previous.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#49

Post by cess11 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #44
DeathArrow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My conjecture isn't Hegel is single-handedly responsible for the fall of civilisation. After all I don't have a reason to think he intended that, nor do I think civilisation will necasarily fall. Most villains of the thought, ideologues and philosophers are basing their operas on Hegel's. All I am saying Hegel established a framework which eased the works of some scum.

You might enjoy Rick Roderick's "Masters of Suspicion" where he talks about the influence (and perceived influence) of Nietzsche, Freud, Marx and some other individuals credited with "changing the world". "You notice I haven’t given an analysis of the Enlightenment but of modernity, of modernisation, of the advance of capital, because four pedants don’t make an age. And two or three weird philosophers don’t give birt…

Most likely they won't, since Roderick openly and efficiently argues against "paleoconservatives" and the like.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#50

Post by jajko »

graemep wrote: post #19

The world gets both better and worse. it is something that I regularly get voted down for saying here, but IMO the west is unduly pessimist because it had a golden age from winning the cold war until the late 2000s, took an overly optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of progress (remember "the end of history") and cannot cope with things going back to normal. Things get better, sometimes they get worse…

Well, WWIII or some other form of nuclear strikes may change that perception.

I agree its dangerous to be overly positive and naive, we humans are still just a notch above beasts, are easy to manipulate (always via negative emotions like greed, envy, inferiority complex and so on), but things can absolutely go to utter shit, we have more capabilities than ever to spread it across globe. Not just nuclear - drone warfare is absolutely maddening. Imagine 10 millions of them, each with their target, each going with absolute precision and on its own - thats what current armies aim for and within a decade they will get it.

What is (and always was) is that very few holds most of the decision power. Get one mental unstable vicious person there and it falls down like house of cards. Our current high tech civilization is pretty fragile to disruption. Sure, we can always revert to stone age, some would even be glad, but I strongly prefer not to.

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