Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my most fascinating reads of all time was "Brave New World Revisited" (1950s I think), a follow-up of "Brave New World" (1920s I think) by Aldous Huxley. Similarly, the point then was how the mass media and TV would eventually be used to mislead and deflect populations' attentions. Such innocent times when we thought the TV could be evil.
The TV was evil? I feel like people forget that so much of what they blame on social media now existed with television. Propaganda, misinformation, addiction, emotional manipulation, mind rot, overstimulation, excessive advertising, even moral panics blaming it for violence and deviant behavior. Television didn't create self-reinforcing bubbles of hyperreality because it represented a corporate model of reality appli…
Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)
181–186 of 186 posts
Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)
#182I loved the Foundation series and Isaac Asimov was definitely my most read science fiction author as a kid, but damn - my estimation of Asimov as a man just fuckin plummeted. He comes across like a whiny nerd. He's upset that 1984 gets such acclaim in "his" area of expertise, science fiction. And how dare this non science fiction guy step foot in his domain. If 1984 weren't set in the future, he wouldn't have any gri…
> He did not have the science fictional knack of foreseeing a plausible future and, in actual fact, in almost all cases, the world of 1984 bears no relation to the real world of the 1980s.
Asimov refuses to concede that Orwell beat him at his game. The book is not about predicting future gadgets but societal patterns and operating models.
Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
His work is not misogynistic. So I really cannot understand this type of criticism.
The criticism is that an aspect of the work is jarring. In my life, women feature. I can't think of any shared enterprise in which I have taken an interest where they do not. So for me it is jarring when in 3 separate short stories there are none. (Why? Is it a choice? Is it limited by author ability? Something else?) It damages the hell out of suspension of disbelief at the minimum. The film Amélie "Le Fabuleux Dest…
Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
The criticism is that an aspect of the work is jarring. In my life, women feature. I can't think of any shared enterprise in which I have taken an interest where they do not. So for me it is jarring when in 3 separate short stories there are none. (Why? Is it a choice? Is it limited by author ability? Something else?) It damages the hell out of suspension of disbelief at the minimum. The film Amélie "Le Fabuleux Dest…
Thank you, I can understand. Sorry, I should understand more details in your opinion.
Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you consider people with different values then you sociopaths? You sound very intolerant.
Yes. Karl Popper's 'Paradox of Tolerance' applies. TL,DR: tolerating intolerance turns out to be a bad idea. Glancing at your user page, this should be an exercise in preaching to the choir. You do understand that the only reason the Republicans in the US support Israel is because embracing fundamentalist Christian eschatology gets them votes they don't have to work for. Right?
To provide some additional context to an often over-(ab)used quote:
I often see it used as a "thought-terminating cliché". Applying it this way would likely meet his definition of intolerant at least half-way:
Popper defines what he means by 'intolerance'. According to his definition, it requires both (A) the refusal to participate in 'rational discourse', and (B) incitement to and use of violence against people with different views.
You will find 'intolerant people' on all sides of the political spectra. (I don't see how dumbing it down to 'left' and 'right' really serves any rational discourse.)
> "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies ; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force ; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument ; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal." (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945)
https://ia800100.us.archive.org/10/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.5...
(It's well worth to read as a whole, given how often it is used and abused out of its surrounding context in the book.)
> "Conscience could be defined as the intuitive capacity of man to find out the meaning of a situation. Since this meaning is something unique, it does not fall under a general law, and an intuitive capacity such as conscience is the only means to seize hold of meaning Gestalts. […] True conscience has nothing to do with what I would term “superegotistic pseudomorality.” Nor can it be dismissed as a conditioning process. Conscience is a definitely human phenomenon. But we must add that it is also “just” a human phenomenon. It is subject to the human condition in that it is stamped by the finiteness of man. For he is not only guided by conscience in his search for meaning, he is sometimes misled by it as well. Unless he is a perfectionist, he also will accept this fallibility of conscience. It is true, man is free and responsible. But his freedom is finite. Human freedom is not omnipotence. Nor is human wisdom omniscience, and this holds for both cognition and conscience. One never knows whether or not it is the true meaning to which he is committed. And he will not know it even on his deathbed. Ignoramus et ignorabimus—we do not, and shall never know—as Emil Du Bois-Reymond once put it, albeit in a wholly different context of the psychophysical problem. But if man is not to contradict his own humanness, he has to obey his conscience unconditionally, even though he is aware of the possibility of error. I would say that the possibility of error does not dispense him from the necessity of trial. As Gordon W. Allport puts it, “we can be at one and the same time half-sure and whole-hearted. *The possibility that my conscience errs implies the possibility that another one’s conscience is right. This entails humility and modesty. If I am to search for meaning, I have to be certain that there is meaning. If, on the other hand, I cannot be certain that I will also find it, I must be tolerant.* This does not imply by any means any sort of indifferentism. Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience. […] Suffering is only one aspect of what I call “the tragic triad” of human existence. This triad is made up of pain, guilt, and death. There is no human being who may say that he has not failed, that he does not suffer, and that he will not die." (Viktor Frankl, The Will to Meaning, 1972)
> "For tolerance, rightly understood, has not the slightest thing to do with indifferentism. And if we finally ask ourselves: how can I, being one hundred percent convinced of my own faith, possibly accept another's faith, another's conviction? Do I not, by that very act, become unfaithful to my own faith and my own conviction? We must answer this question in the negative. For I do not respect another's faith because I can share it, but because I must respect the other person himself. Note: Tolerance does not consist in sharing another's view, but only in granting the other the right to be of a different view at all. On the other hand, tolerance is also misunderstood if one goes so far as to grant the other the right to be, for his own part, intolerant." (machine translated from the German original)
Re: Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Karl Popper's 'Paradox of Tolerance' applies. TL,DR: tolerating intolerance turns out to be a bad idea. Glancing at your user page, this should be an exercise in preaching to the choir. You do understand that the only reason the Republicans in the US support Israel is because embracing fundamentalist Christian eschatology gets them votes they don't have to work for. Right?
> Karl Popper's 'Paradox of Tolerance' applies. TL,DR: tolerating intolerance turns out to be a bad idea. To provide some additional context to an often over-(ab)used quote: I often see it used as a "thought-terminating cliché". Applying it this way would likely meet his definition of intolerant at least half-way: Popper defines what he means by 'intolerance'. According to his definition, it requires both (A) the ref…
The armed and belligerent government agents who killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good certainly meet both criteria, as do the Trump administration personnel who repeatedly and maliciously lied about the events in question. History tells us that societies that tolerate such actions eventually pay a terrible price.
The rest of your wall of text doesn't seem relevant, unless I'm missing something.