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The Kolmogorov option

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Re: The Kolmogorov option

#281

Post by beaconstudios »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #276
beaconstudios wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cultural Marxism" is just the idea that progressivism is a pivot from economic Marxism. That's it. So yeah, I do agree with that because if you look at the academic literature that defines progressivism you'll see that much of it is derived from Marxist thought. So what? Because I can read some academic literature and know the word for this idea I must be a radical anti-semitic white nationalist? A ridiculous idea.…

I didn't say you were. I said that you mentioned "cultural marxism" which you think is a perfectly reasonable thing for someone to mention, as it simply means, according to you, that there is some linkage between modern progressive thought and Marxism. And I asked if you think the person who wrote the memo was using it in the same way. That seems to be the position the other replies are going for. Just no-one seems t…

OK, well I'm glad you're just inquiring genuinely. It's hard not to get defensive when you trot out some pretty horrible characters.

I'm in strong agreement that discrimination against gays, minorities and women is bad. I think most reasonable people are. My issue with the progressive movement is how it doesn't seem to want to stop in the middle by just stopping racism, but instead wants to flip it over by making discrimination in the opposite direction the social norm. For example, diversity quotas explicitly stating that e.g. the engineering department's demographics must closely align with the general population's demographics. It refuses to account for different groups' inherent different tastes and interests by pushing forward the idea of tabula rasa (the human being is a blank slate and all differentiation is socially learned) which doesn't seem to be a foregone conclusion by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm not sure how the idea of a link between Marxism and progressivism has anything to do with Jews aside from that fact that there are a lot of Jewish intellectuals. If cultural marxism is some kind of anti-semitic dogwhistle now, that's a new one on me.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#282

Post by Chris2048 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #279
Chris2048 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I'm not American, I'll leave this one for others. But, I'd ask what "freedom from consequences" means? There are certain consequences arising from free speech that are , in some sense, protected. Can I (as a non-government entity) fire someone for choosing a certain religion, for example? Wouldn't that be a "consequence" of their choice?

> Can I (as a non-government entity) fire someone for choosing a certain religion, for example? Yes. Can you do it without consequences to yourself? No, because that is almost certainly a protected case in law.

Then I'm not sure what your point is. "freedom" in this context usually relates to the law. As such "freedom to X" usually implies the legal framework to support X.

If you are saying "freedom to X doesn't mean no legal consequences" then the phrase would be meaningless.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#283

Post by imron »

benmmurphy wrote: post #218
imron wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious as to how rational discussion about the contents of the memo is harmful. If reasonable people are having a rational discussion (difficult on the Internet, I know), surely we can still talk about disagreeable facts and theories without causing harm.

if you have a norm where people don't discuss certain things because it will cause offence to a group then having a discussion about things that will cause offence to that group is massive slight against that group. not only will it offend that group but it also shows that no-one cares about offending that group. i know this is a tautological argument. but i feel we do have a norm of not discussing things that will c…

Offense and harm are different things.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#284

Post by yorwba »

vanderZwan wrote: post #140
benchaney wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not all subjects are amenable to "rational discussion", since it's inherently a restricted format which has implicit rules about what does and does not count as "rational". I don't see how this follows. Are you suggesting that some topics can only be discussed if the discussion includes a non-sequitur. > Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful. On the balance it seems…

No, the claim is that you cannot have context-free universally true premises for every type discussion. Most of this discussion outrage is based on people on all sides not realising they start from different, inherently subjective premises, and then believe they can build a universally true objective claim on that card house. EDIT: This is why I believe people in STEM fields would really benefit from spending some ti…

> No, the claim is that you cannot have context-free universally true premises for every type discussion.

A core part of "rational discussion" (as I understand it) is separating premises from arguments, so that when someone comes to a conclusion you disagree with, you point out whether you disagree with the premises or the argument (or both) and then you can go into more detail to pinpoint where exactly the disagreement comes from.

The statement "Because Jews are possessed by mind-eating demons from Xzdrgs, the Holocaust was justified." is probably both too absurd in its premise and too abhorrent in its conclusion to warrant serious consideration, and yet if someone wanted to engage it in a rational discussion, they could do so, e.g. by stating that mind-eating demons from Xzdrgs don't exist or that assuming they did exist, you couldn't defeat them by killing the host, or any number of other arguments. Those arguments themselves are then subject to counterclaims based in the same principles of rational discussion, and so on.

Now I wonder whether you could turn "absurdist rational discussion" into a game and whether it would be any fun to play.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#285

Post by sixo »

thebooktocome wrote: post #238
TeMPOraL wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only if you reduce the problem to one parameter. Two points on a plane are different: is one necessarily less than the other? No. The question itself is ill-formed. You need a metric to transform the points to a form that can fit into the "less than" comparison. A common transformation would be e.g. euclidean distance - under which two different points (e.g. (2, 4) and (4, 2)) can end up being equal. Real-life…

See the figure on page four and the subsequent laundry list of individual traits.

Two traits (distributed according to that figure) form a distribution on a plane.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#286

Post by mseebach »

empath75 wrote: post #245
mseebach wrote: post #31

I don't know anything about Kolmogorov, so I can't evaluate the assumption that he obviously saw through the lies and was horrified by the brutality - but I will note that a great number of prominent intellectuals, who were in absolutely no private danger from the soviet regime whatever they'd believe and say, and who definitely had access to information about the brutality, who still chose to support and defend the…

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not remotely comparing the two situations, but a whole lot of people in the us stood by and watched us launch a pointless war of aggression based on lies that we're still seeing the bloody consequences of today.

This is not about being wrong or not resisting -- everybody can be wrong. The contemporary equivalent would be the Neo-Con intellectual who still today defends the invasion, who goes to Baghdad and sends back rosy reports of how healthy Capitalist markets are providing plentiful goods and well-paying jobs to all and the swift eradication of poverty in Liberal-Democratic Iraq, and who angrily dismiss all arguments that things are actually pretty crap by blaming the state of things on the existential and entirely justified need to fight Iran-funded insurgencies and the damn communist Kurds stealing the oil in the north.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#287

Post by ZeroGravitas »

beaconstudios wrote: post #281
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say you were. I said that you mentioned "cultural marxism" which you think is a perfectly reasonable thing for someone to mention, as it simply means, according to you, that there is some linkage between modern progressive thought and Marxism. And I asked if you think the person who wrote the memo was using it in the same way. That seems to be the position the other replies are going for. Just no-one seems t…

OK, well I'm glad you're just inquiring genuinely. It's hard not to get defensive when you trot out some pretty horrible characters. I'm in strong agreement that discrimination against gays, minorities and women is bad. I think most reasonable people are. My issue with the progressive movement is how it doesn't seem to want to stop in the middle by just stopping racism, but instead wants to flip it over by making dis…

Here's Bill Whittle's version of Cultural Marxism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n8wQceQq_Y

Bill Whittle seems like an asshole by the way. But a slick asshole so he stays within the bounds of what's acceptable to say, though even that has some real craziness in it.

Apparently you're not allowed to tell homosexuals that Iran mistreats homosexuals. "Marxist Critical theory" stops him from saying that somehow. I'm not sure why you want to say that to homosexuals, or get annoyed that they don't listen. Presumably the real message is "don't complain, as it's worse elsewhere?" Maybe casually bringing up people exactly like them being killed for being exactly like them is to make them feel welcomed and cherished. He doesn't exactly spell it out, because, as I say he's kinda slick even though he says lots of crazy stuff.

Also, black people in 1920s America, didn't realise there was a problem until the Marxists told them they were getting a bad deal.

I guess this stuff explains why over 50% of Republican's think Higher Education is bad for America. Direct quote: "You are paying people to teach your kids to hate you".

But since "mainstream" Republicanism include Trump and Birtherism (which is totally not racist at all, just asking questions as you would for any President), Climate Change denial etc. I guess you're not wrong to call him mainstream.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#288

Post by loup-vaillant »

igravious wrote: post #177
loup-vaillant wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if a sizeable fraction, perhaps even the majority, of mathematicians are in fact ahead of all the others. They just have to be best at their own chosen specialization. (Also, one may need a little hubris to actually do something. I would never have written my crypto library if I didn't started with the overconfidence required to brave mainstream advice.)

You fool! Don't you know by now that you're not meant to roll your own crypto :-/ (I jest, of course)

Don't worry, I survived the non-jest version as well. :-)

I reckon opposition was not as unanimous as one might expect, though. If this thread¹ is to be believed, there's a rather wide range of opinions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917378

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#289

Post by zimpenfish »

Chris2048 wrote: post #282
zimpenfish wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can I (as a non-government entity) fire someone for choosing a certain religion, for example? Yes. Can you do it without consequences to yourself? No, because that is almost certainly a protected case in law.

Then I'm not sure what your point is. "freedom" in this context usually relates to the law. As such "freedom to X" usually implies the legal framework to support X. If you are saying "freedom to X doesn't mean no legal consequences" then the phrase would be meaningless.

> "freedom" in this context usually relates to the law.

Then where is the "a right to freedom of speech" enshrined in the law? The USA doesn't have that - only limited protection from the government. The UK certainly doesn't.

Re: The Kolmogorov option

#290

Post by beaconstudios »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #287
beaconstudios wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, well I'm glad you're just inquiring genuinely. It's hard not to get defensive when you trot out some pretty horrible characters. I'm in strong agreement that discrimination against gays, minorities and women is bad. I think most reasonable people are. My issue with the progressive movement is how it doesn't seem to want to stop in the middle by just stopping racism, but instead wants to flip it over by making dis…

Here's Bill Whittle's version of Cultural Marxism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n8wQceQq_Y Bill Whittle seems like an asshole by the way. But a slick asshole so he stays within the bounds of what's acceptable to say, though even that has some real craziness in it. Apparently you're not allowed to tell homosexuals that Iran mistreats homosexuals. "Marxist Critical theory" stops him from saying that somehow. I'm no…

I can imagine you find Bill Whittle to be an asshole, because it seems you are pretty far away from me on the ideological spectrum. That's fair, you have every right to think so, but I find him to be reasonably interesting.

Not sure what you're saying with regard to Iran and their mistreatment of homosexuals?

Do you genuinely think that Marxists are the primary reason for black people realising that getting treated like dirt is a pretty bad deal? That strikes me as a rather low opinion of African Americans.

I wouldn't know much about Republicans and their opinion of higher education. If they're skeptical of Marxism though, I at least share that sentiment with them. But then I dislike any ideology that has killed millions of people.

[edit] Birtherism is a weird phenomenon and as a Brit I'm not close enough to it to know whether it's based in racism or just bad info. I hear the same questions were raised about Ted Cruz and whether as a born Canadian he would be allowed to be president.

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