TIL: Today I Learned

[Hygro]

As an expert on positivism who just read the wiki intro, I must interject. JP seems to be in favor of making sure you aren't acting against the known sensed and logically understood information before you wander off, rather than saying only information is what is both sensed and reasoned can be valuable information.

Totally in my depth here.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I don't mind making small talk, but when I do, I'm never not thinking to myself, "This is small talk." In other words, I never make small talk unselfconsciously, effortlessly.

Which is how I assume people who are good at small talk do it.

 

[Kyriakos]

A structuralist reading of, say, myth is to condense a myth into a series of irreducible elements (in the same way that an utterance or a word can be reduced to a series of irreducible morphemes/phonemes) and look for binary pairs present in the structure of the myth. For example Claude Lévi-Strauss identifies two pairs in the Oedipus myth: one is overrating vs underrating blood relations, where Oedipus marrying Jocasta, and Antigone burying Polynices despite prohibition are examples of overrating, and Oedipus killing his father and Eteocles murdering Polynices are examples of underrating; and then denial vs persistence of the autochthanous nature of man would be the second binary; with destruction of monsters (Cadmos must kill the Dragon in order to create literal humans; Oedipus kills the Sphinx as a repetition of the first; i.e. killing the very thing which is necessary for your creation) representing the denial of autochthany, and the fact that Labdacos (lame), Laios (left-sided), and Oedipus (swollen-foot) have names which all have to do with lameness or inability to stand upright echoes a common trope of the birth of mankind; that it cannot walk properly initially. And a structuralist can say that we can deduce from this myth that it serves as a necessary mediating process through which man can reconcile its belief in autochthany (that man is born from the Earth/dust/what have you; that man is born from one), and that every human being necessarily has two parents (man is born from two). The mediation in the first binary is reflected in the second, and thus "although experience contradicts theory, social life validates cosmology by its similarity of structure. Hence cosmology is true."

That's what we're talking about here. That's structuralism. Poststructuralism is a reaction against this, hence the name.

If that is structuralism, it seems really failed an idea. In relation to the plays - eg Oedipus - it even sounds irrational and a particular/personal interpretation.
Btw, it is 'autochtonous' Cthon=earth (and of the earth).

 

[Hygro]

I don't mind making small talk, but when I do, I'm never not thinking to myself, "This is small talk." In other words, I never make small talk unselfconsciously, effortlessly.

Which is how I assume people who are good at small talk do it.

Hm, is it the small talk, or the small talk where people are reaching to say anything at all? Because I find "reaching" to have that effect on both parties, and it's more common when the only things to talk are small talk things, but also happens when people are just talking in general.

It can happen deep in conversations when people are focused on the person but not the conversation's content and they kind of metagame the response. Results may vary.

 

[Mouthwash]

Look dude, I read the whole thing and you read a couple of paragraphs that I quoted here and refused to read the rest. Who do you think has the more informed opinion about what the piece is and isn't doing?

I know how to spot a smear piece and do not treat them as valid critiques, no matter what they have to say. I also haven't read Peterson's book, so it's very hard for me to fact-check.

Okay, so that's one. Can you quote her identifying herself as a "postmodernist?" Can you expand a little bit on her "goals"?

Wikipedia lists her as postmodernist and poststructuralist. Foucault appears seven times in the article.

Her main goal seems to be proving that 'maleness' and 'femaleness' are both entirely invented and arbitrary categories, and on building a post-gender society where anyone can be anything.

Just read the darn article. Postmodernism isn't a "theory", and it's most commonly considered as a period in artistic, intellectual, or cultural history rather than a worldview.

But Jordan Peterson explicitly refers to claims made by postmodernists about the Western psyche and oppression (see: phallogocentrism). Even if he misuses the terms, it's more important to focus on his actual claims than correcting his misunderstanding. Focus on the latter is what characterizes smear artists.

Yes, and being influenced by something is very different than identifying as that thing. Or do you think there is no difference between being influenced by Marx and being a Marxist?

Marxist influence is certainly a problem in academia (less now that it's gone out of fashion). I recall reading a sociologist's paper on Haredi lifestyles in Israel - she defaults to Marxist analysis where economics 101 would do.

I didn't read this whole section but from what I've read it seems like these are pretty much entirely uncontroversial principles of philosophical skepticism. At least one of those lettered bullet points can be found in Nietzsche, and many have traditions that go back quite deep into Western philosophy (again, the thing that Jordan Peterson & co claim to be defending here). This is the whole problem that poststructuralism raised: the Ideal, True Knowledge, can never be reached, we are forced to grope toward it using imperfect media all derived from language. It's kind of amazing how simply observing this elicits claims that you are trying to destroy the whole structure of Western civilization, when in reality everything worth taking from the Western tradition is in keeping with this tradition of skepticism, of constantly critiquing the received wisdom, which in our day and age is frequently a critique of some previous generation's received wisdom.

The problem is that it is also used to invent "power-based epistemologies" which seem analogous to Marxism: oppressors force their own epistemology onto the oppressed. If you accept that, then you can basically dismiss the reasoning of an entire class of people as pathological. Remember that according to Butler, males and females are all just under a delusion that their respective identities exist.

That's what we're talking about here. That's structuralism. Poststructuralism is a reaction against this, hence the name. Not Marxism.

But the sort of thing Peterson is talking about is basically rehashed Marxist class war, so it's reasonable to suggest some intellectual crossover. I don't care where the term 'neo-Marxist' came from, any more than you would care where the term 'racism' comes from.

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL that at this moment 1 in 5 people of this world are having holiday
The Chinese celebrating their new year !

Originally this was a period of 3 days of no production
but because of the improved economy, people wanting to visit their relatives, urbanisation,
this is more like 2 weeks no production affecting delivery reliability worldwide

 

[Traitorfish]

But the sort of thing Peterson is talking about is basically rehashed Marxist class war, so it's reasonable to suggest some intellectual crossover.

That's really not true at all. The similarities are only that both maintain that some people are oppressed and that other people are doing the oppressing, but that's the premise of any left-wing politics for as long as the term "left-wing politics" has been meaningful. The actual analysis of who is oppressing who, and how, and what can be done about it, is different in some fairly fundamental ways.

Marxist influence is certainly a problem in academia[...]

It's one of the major schools of twentieth century thought, one of the central pillars of Modernism, it would be bizarre if it didn't have an influence. If you're happy to frame that as a "problem", what exactly do you think that academia is for?

 

[Kyriakos]

It's one of the major schools of twentieth century thought, one of the central pillars of Modernism, it would be bizarre if it didn't have an influence. If you're happy to frame that as a "problem", what exactly do you think that academia is for?

As with everything, i think there is an issue with poor-level debate, including marxism (obviously not just that). I mean... there is a difference between being well-intended, or even a good and helping person, and just spewing some polemic. Imo it doesn't matter if one thinks of left or right, for the crucial thing is to be at least a bit decent, and actually care about good (of others too).
It is a sad phenomenon, and all too common, that fighting happens under the banners of symbols, instead of for actual striving to solve or better anything.

 

[Lexicus]

I know how to spot a smear piece and do not treat them as valid critiques, no matter what they have to say. I also haven't read Peterson's book, so it's very hard for me to fact-check.

"I was triggered by one thing it said so now I'm going to ignore the rest even if it was right."

Wikipedia lists her as postmodernist and poststructuralist. Foucault appears seven times in the article.

Okay, but I want self-identified.

Her main goal seems to be proving that 'maleness' and 'femaleness' are both entirely invented and arbitrary categories, and on building a post-gender society where anyone can be anything.

They are invented and arbitrary categories to some degree. I see nothing wrong with building a post-gender society where anyone can be anything; do you see something wrong with that?

Even if he misuses the terms, it's more important to focus on his actual claims than correcting his misunderstanding. Focus on the latter is what characterizes smear artists.

Correcting someone's misunderstanding is typically not referred to by anyone but petulant children as a "smear job".

The problem is that it is also used to invent "power-based epistemologies" which seem analogous to Marxism: oppressors force their own epistemology onto the oppressed. If you accept that, then you can basically dismiss the reasoning of an entire class of people as pathological. Remember that according to Butler, males and females are all just under a delusion that their respective identities exist.

Well, my first direct encounter with the concept of "power-based epistemologies" was in the work of noted Marxist, poststructuralist, and third-wave feminist Friedrich Nietzsche, so I guess I think you're kinda wrong about all this. Power-based epistemology is simply a note that any question of knowledge is inseparable from questions of power. Not acknowledging this actually reduces our ability to generate useful knowledge, and is a classic example of reactionary counter-Enlightenment thought.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, my first direct encounter with the concept of "power-based epistemologies" was in the work of noted Marxist, poststructuralist, and third-wave feminist Friedrich Nietzsche, so I guess I think you're kinda wrong about all this. Power-based epistemology is simply a note that any question of knowledge is inseparable from questions of power. Not acknowledging this actually reduces our ability to generate useful knowledge, and is a classic example of reactionary counter-Enlightenment thought.

In what context? Cause, in general, certainly not all questions of knowledge are tied to power (obvious example being math questions). Even philosophical questions don't have to tie to power, as long as one means (reasonably) direct or outward/social power. Eg your definition of "one" isn't about power, regardless of the myriad ways that how one thinks feeds back to the rest of one's existence, and by extension also actions. But to argue that any knowledge, or any thought, is tied to power, moreover what most people mean when they use that term (ie something external, and inter-personal), seems false.

Btw, despite having not read the structuralists, i do know Foucault deals with power. It was one of the reasons i passed over reading him.

Re Nietzsche - whose work i have read - he is fairly sociological, instead of outright philosophical. But i still wouldn't claim he argues that all thought or knowledge is tied to power. The 'will to power' is not about that either; it is a self-sustaining and argued as 'natural urge' to be something powerful (ie not decadent, in his view).

 

[Lexicus]

Nietzsche argued that there is no such thing as a perspective without a "power-will" behind it, ie, no such thing as a disinterested or 'unbiased' perspective from which 'true knowledge' can be attained. As I understand things, the inherent necessity of a subject is why all questions of knowledge are inseparable from questions of power. It is also simply a fact, cf. Gramsci, that perspectives that attain hegemony via a ruling class tend to displace other perspectives regardless of the merits.

 

[Kyriakos]

Nietzsche argued that there is no such thing as a perspective without a "power-will" behind it, ie, no such thing as a disinterested or 'unbiased' perspective from which 'true knowledge' can be attained. As I understand things, the inherent necessity of a subject is why all questions of knowledge are inseparable from questions of power. It is also simply a fact, cf. Gramsci, that perspectives that attain hegemony via a ruling class tend to displace other perspectives regardless of the merits.

I can agree with that as being a 'reasonable' view, yet i noted that if by 'power' one aspires to signify something so obscure that it is past all specific examination, then the claim is sort of self-defeating, no?

Eg, while, in theory, one's view of a math notion may be tied to some such 'will' related to power, the crucial issue here would be matters that are not conscious, and not actually part of the realm of consciousness in the first place. While 'power' tends to signify matters external or tangible to some degree. If by 'power' one aspires to mean 'the vast ocean of unknowns inside one's mind' then the term isn't that well used imo.

 

[Traitorfish]

As with everything, i think there is an issue with poor-level debate, including marxism (obviously not just that). I mean... there is a difference between being well-intended, or even a good and helping person, and just spewing some polemic. Imo it doesn't matter if one thinks of left or right, for the crucial thing is to be at least a bit decent, and actually care about good (of others too).

I don't disagree, but is that really the complaint that Mouthwash is making? He's lamenting the influence of Marxism as a body of thought, rather than just people arguing badly or superficially.

There's a fair criticism, as he suggested, that leftists who aren't terribly well-acquainted with economics end up relying on a half-understood Marxist economics, usually pilfered from some Maoist or Trotskyist textbook that gets way to hung up on "imperialism", even when their thought is otherwise not aligned with Marxism or even hostile to Marxism. (Anarchists are the worst for this.) But that's not an exclusively left-wing sin; most people, even most scholars, don't really know very much about economics, and tend to operate on a Received Wisdom, the specifics changing with their politics, from sorta-Marxism and sorta-Keynesianism on the left, to sorta-Neoclassical economics on the right, through whatever it is moderates believe this week in the middle. It's a result of economics being at the same time poorly-understood and pretty inescapable, rather than a malign Bolshevik influence; Marxism is unusually only in that its regarded as ultra-heterodox in English-speaking economics departments.

 

[Lexicus]

I can agree with that as being a 'reasonable' view, yet i noted that if by 'power' one aspires to signify something so obscure that it is past all specific examination, then the claim is sort of self-defeating, no?

I don't think power is past all specific examination. I also don't think there is only one valid way to conceive of or examine power.

Eg, while, in theory, one's view of a math notion may be tied to some such 'will' related to power, the crucial issue here would be matters that are not conscious, and not actually part of the realm of consciousness in the first place. While 'power' tends to signify matters external or tangible to some degree. If by 'power' one aspires to mean 'the vast ocean of unknowns inside one's mind' then the term isn't that well used imo.

Well, I would probably argue that mathematics is a powerful tool for subverting the influence of power on knowledge because it's reproducible, and it's the same everywhere. Other than that, I'm not conversant enough in the philosophy of mathematics to apply this stuff to it.

she defaults to Marxist analysis where economics 101 would do.

Btw, in my experience you have to be a really crude Marxist to be more wrong than the things you learn in a typical economics 101 course are. Honestly, economics students should probably first go over Marxism because it's definitely more right than the 19th century neoclassical economists were.

There's a fair criticism, as he suggested, that leftists who aren't terribly well-acquainted with economics end up relying on a half-understood Marxist economics, usually pilfered from some Maoist or Trotskyist textbook that gets way to hung up on "imperialism", even when their thought is otherwise not aligned with Marxism or even hostile to Marxism. (Anarchists are the worst for this.) But that's not an exclusively left-wing sin; most people, even most scholars, don't really know very much about economics, and tend to operate on a Received Wisdom, the specifics changing with their politics, from sorta-Marxism and sorta-Keynesianism on the left, to sorta-Neoclassical economics on the right, through whatever it is moderates believe this week in the middle. It's a result of economics being at the same time poorly-understood and pretty inescapable.

Actually, analyzing the economic thought of the right has been something of a hobby of mine for a while, and an observation I've made is that the right not only doesn't understand economics, they don't understand, like, the idea of economics. What they think of as economics is actually moral philosophy boiling down to thinly-disguised Social Darwinism married to a kind of Old Testament cosmology. The Market is the stern father/god who dispenses reward and punishment according to people's moral success or failure. None of the humanist ideas that have traditionally motivated the pursuit of economics as a science are present. We are simply playthings of the Market, to be played or sacrificed like pawns, and it has to be this way or the cosmos itself will disintegrate.

That is just a pattern I've noticed, it certainly doesn't describe the totality of right-wing thought on questions of political economy. If you get far enough right, you have people who openly reject the market and prefer race or religion as organizing principles.

It's a result of economics being at the same time poorly-understood and pretty inescapable.

And this is because you typically need to get a PhD in economics to really study the history of economic thought. And not even close to all economics PhDs do that. The history of economic thought is rarely addressed at all in undergrad.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I was told that economics is the easiest thing to understand in the world. Then again, that same person couldn't understand the basic idea of inflation.

 

[Synobun]

With basic economic theory that's probably true. It's something a few species can grok without much difficulty.

Humans don't want to do anything the easy way though, and are often the architects of their own demise.

 

[Traitorfish]

Actually, analyzing the economic thought of the right has been something of a hobby of mine for a while, and an observation I've made is that the right not only doesn't understand economics, they don't understand, like, the idea of economics. What they think of as economics is actually moral philosophy boiling down to thinly-disguised Social Darwinism married to a kind of Old Testament cosmology. The Market is the stern father/god who dispenses reward and punishment according to people's moral success or failure. None of the humanist ideas that have traditionally motivated the pursuit of economics as a science are present. We are simply playthings of the Market, to be played or sacrificed like pawns, and it has to be this way or the cosmos itself will disintegrate.

That is just a pattern I've noticed, it certainly doesn't describe the totality of right-wing thought on questions of political economy. If you get far enough right, you have people who openly reject the market and prefer race or religion as organizing principles.

I think that's true of a lot of right-wing thought more generally. There's a widespread conviction on the right, usually unstated but very real, that the universe operates on essentially moral logic, with material reality acting as a derivative or expression of that moral logic. Moral character is the central determining force in history, whether of individuals, institutions or nations. When material reality falls out of step with what morality would predict, this is because of moral failing somewhere along the line, the result of low or malicious character, rather than the initial prediction being incorrect. Fascism is in some ways the peak of this, the idea that you can almost literally will the world into the shape it should be, with the frustration of the will being understood not as mortal men running up against hard reality, but as moral failing, perhaps of the subject but most usually of somebody else. The outcome inevitably being the institutionalisation of incompetence and obscurantism, as superiors refuse to understand the failure of their schemes as anything but the direct personal failings of their underlings, and underlings routinely feeding false information to their superiors to avoid this judgement.

This isn't uniquely right-wing, of course, it's a fallacy a lot of people fall into quite regularly, but for most people it's lazy or sloppy thinking, a set of assumptions that they fall back onto because they can't be bothered to think something through, but for a large part of the political right, that is the thinking, this is how they genuinely believe the world works and how the world should work- the two, of course, being rendered identical by the premise itself.

Btw, in my experience you have to be a really crude Marxist to be more wrong than the things you learn in a typical economics 101 course are. Honestly, economics students should probably first go over Marxism because it's definitely more right than the 19th century neoclassical economists were.

Marxism also has the advantage of actually being an attempt to describe how economies work. Maybe not a perfect one, maybe even not a useful one, but an attempt. Neoclassical economics mostly just describes the models of Neoclassical economists. (Obligatory SMBC.)

I was told that economics is the easiest thing to understand in the world. Then again, that same person couldn't understand the basic idea of inflation.

These people you know, have they ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

 

[Mouthwash]

"I was triggered by one thing it said so now I'm going to ignore the rest even if it was right."

I didn't realize my position on engaging with smear artists is so controversial. Please elaborate, why is it important to give them a platform and listen to what they have to say even though they aren't arguing in good faith?

Okay, but I want self-identified.

They are invented and arbitrary categories to some degree.

I can't overstate how large the difference is between that and 'completely invented and arbitrary.'

I see nothing wrong with building a post-gender society where anyone can be anything; do you see something wrong with that?

Certainly, but I'm not anxious to kick off a new fight on this thread.

Correcting someone's misunderstanding is typically not referred to by anyone but petulant children as a "smear job".

When one's arguments cannot be refuted, it's a time-tested strategy to refute some other misunderstandings they may have and present them as being the entire case. Marx was wrong about some things, does it follow that we dismiss everything he has to say?

Well, my first direct encounter with the concept of "power-based epistemologies" was in the work of noted Marxist, poststructuralist, and third-wave feminist Friedrich Nietzsche, so I guess I think you're kinda wrong about all this. Power-based epistemology is simply a note that any question of knowledge is inseparable from questions of power. Not acknowledging this actually reduces our ability to generate useful knowledge, and is a classic example of reactionary counter-Enlightenment thought.

Fine, fine, I'll admit I don't know jack about postmodernism. Scott Alexander predisposed me to dislike it.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

These people you know, have they ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

They've heard of it, I've even told them about it more than once, but they don't believe in it.

 

[Snerk]

Meeting Chukchi's friends is on the top of my bucket list.