Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

I think that within the set of values and regulations that we have in our culture, and have had for the past couple centuries, it's not difficult to come to the conclusion that women, blacks, and gays have been far more victimized than heterosexual white males. It's a fantasy that we like to imagine ourselves as oppressed by our Orwellian government.

Of course. While you and I and the other frequenters of this thread snap our white, male, cisgendered fingers and the world jumps, this is not the case for pretty much anyone else (asian male exception). But the holywars I speak of are entirely amongst the "victim classes" or those desiring of some victim status (even when, absurdity of absurdites, the privileged make a sad attempt at privilege denial).

As a sidenote to the fantasy of Orwellian oppression: It's not so much illusion but soft and subtle, and certainly not restricted to The Gubmint.

The university system as a continuation of daycare is a hyperbole, I must assume. Acknowledging potentially traumatic historical conditions isn't the same as coddling.

Only barely. And bubblewrapping everything is beyond simple acknowledgement - unless that's exactly what it is. The implications of that are too uncomfortable though.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml1G919Bts0&feature=em-share_video_user[/ame]

 

[rms]

Ein, did you see this? Bet you remember Buff State..Free speech ain't no laughin' matter

http://buffstaterecord.com/4942/news/usg-freezes-record-budget-over-april-fools-issue/

 

[Dak]

Taking this out of that shit thread, which - incidentally - functions as an example of what
calls the following into question:

Because what you're suggesting is that we forego critique entirely and simply accept convention unquestioningly. By "you," I mean much of society in general; I'm not willing to do so, and so I emphasize the persistent dissolution of convention.

People don't want to forego critique entirely, they just want to forego meaningful critique. Very badly do they want this. They will hate and murder to forego meaningful critique of anything. We need our religions, our idols. Break one and we will build another just as dead as the person who broke the previous one.

And beyond that, the vast majority of people genuinely believe that these conventions derive from some naturalistic origin. I consider it an imperative to divest people of such delusions.


Convention derived (purportedly) from absolute origins presents an infinite number of excuses for exclusion and oppression. Convention derived from social conditions - and recognized as such - allow more room for inclusion and, most importantly, change.

Where does this imperative spring from? Why inclusion because inclusion, or change because change?

 

[Einherjar86]

People don't want to forego critique entirely, they just want to forego meaningful critique. Very badly do they want this. They will hate and murder to forego meaningful critique of anything. We need our religions, our idols. Break one and we will build another just as dead as the person who broke the previous one.

Correct... which is exactly why I'm arguing.

Where does this imperative spring from? Why inclusion because inclusion, or change because change?

It springs from paradox. Duh.

Edit:

Ein, did you see this? Bet you remember Buff State..Free speech ain't no laughin' matter

http://buffstaterecord.com/4942/news/usg-freezes-record-budget-over-april-fools-issue/

I didn't see it.

 

[Dak]

It springs from paradox. Duh.

I don't see new ideals (not that inclusion and change are new ideals) springing from any paradoxes. Let us say that liberalism is winning even as it loses (or even vice versa - not quite a true paradox): that doesn't tell me anything about how to respond to hearing this. Should I cheer? Be indifferent? Dig in and fight to turn the losing to winning? Paradox doesn't tell me.

 

[Einherjar86]

I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

Taking convention as our example: all conventions exclude someone somehow, and all conventions aim to repeat the same. Any conventions that are disrupted, or dismantled, will surely be replaced by new ones because we appeal to convention in our behavior - they govern our every waking thought and move. How do we square this with the fact that no convention is absolute (they are all socially constructed) and thus has no metaphysical claim on perpetuating itself? What does this paradox tell us?

It tells us that critique of any and all conventions is basically automatic - conventions expose their limitations, compel their own critique; because if no convention is absolute, then there is no guarantee that its excluded subjects will always be viewed in a negative light (even if they might appear so currently). Yielding to complacency and blind repetition increases the likelihood that convention turns into hegemonic terror; the critique of the paradox of convention combats this.

Finally, inclusion constitutes exclusion. You can't have one without the other. I'm not making the argument that either inclusion/exclusion or change are necessary. I'm saying they simply are. Phrasing the question in terms of "inclusion because inclusion" or "change because change" misses the point. There is no "why"; there just is what there is.

Change happens regardless. Convention, particularly blind conservatism, invites damaging resistance to what happens regardless.

 

[Dak]

^That's acceptable.

In other news: BAM!

https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/peter-thiel-on-the-future-of-innovation-77628a43c0dd

PETER THIEL: The intellectual question that I ask at the start of my book is, “Tell me something that’s true that very few people agree with you on.” This is a terrific interview question. Even when people can read on the Internet that you’re going to ask this question to everybody you interview, they still find it really hard to answer. And it’s hard to answer not because people don’t have any ideas. Everyone has ideas. Everyone has things they believe to be true that other people won’t agree with you on. But they’re not things you want to say.

Towards the end:

AUDIENCE MEMBER:I’m going to take you on in your challenge about sharing something we know to be true that everyone disagrees with, and then ask you a question about it. The truth that I know to be the case is that the future of human evolution and how we think about how we structure society lies in privately funded, managed, for-profit cities built in partnership with, but independent from, governments today in the world.

My question to you, and then also I have a follow-up for Dr. Cowen, is “What do we need to do to enlist your powerful support in that view, in addition to getting introduced by someone in your inner circle?”

Dr. Cowen, my question to you is, “What do we need to do to be on that stage, having a similar conversation with you and the crowd that you have managed to get out here?”

PETER THIEL: I think there are many things that would be incredibly terrific to do. The business version would be “Is this important?” If we could reopen the frontier in geopolitical terms and find a way to really innovate on society, I think this would be a terrific thing to do.

Then the question “How does one actually do this?” is very tricky. All the surface area on this planet is occupied. It seems very hard to get this to work. I know Romer had this experiment with these city-states in Africa. I think it was prohibitively expensive. It could never really quite get started.

You need to have some version of where this would work and you could get started with a budget of let’s say less than $50 billion. If you could give me a convincing way it would work for $50 million instead of $50 billion, I’d be interested.

TYLER COWEN: Your question addressed to me. I have a graduate student and also a colleague who are working on the economics of private cities. Not private cities being completely separate from larger political units, but largely private cities with mostly private infrastructure nonetheless. If you’re talking about private cities truly independent of government, I would call those “cruise ships.”

[laughter]

TYLER COWEN: We do have many of them. I think they work fine, but I don’t view them as a significant blow for liberty. In fact, when I go on a cruise ship, I actually worry about some of the liberties I’m signing away. I know I do that voluntarily. It’s fine. I don’t object to that.

I tend to favor larger political units and to think that human freedom will be found by the wealth and diversity within larger political units giving people pockets. I’m not sure we’ll ever have a bottom-down creation of a lot of micro-units which compete very intensely and through exit give people true liberty.

Cowen didn't even blink in discussing NRx.

 

[Einherjar86]

Where does Cowen mention NRx? I don't have time to read/watch the whole thing, so I search the page but couldn't find it.

I find this fascinating. The prospect of privately owned cities simultaneously terrifies and excites me, namely because (at this point in history) I associate developed corporate business organization with advanced AI. That might be more speculative than analytic. Whatever, I don't care.

I'm not going to resist private ownership in the abstract. My wife and I have been having lots of conversations lately, and she has some incredibly interesting perspectives on late corporate capitalism. My concern with privately owned cities simply has to do with who owns them; and at this point in history (again) most of the people who have the funds to "buy a city" may not share the values of a vast majority of the poorer population. Anyway, maybe that's a moot point.

Recently I read (and subsequently taught) this really short piece by Deleuze in my class on simulation. I think it's a fairly accurate portrayal of modern corporate society. It's titled "Postscript on Societies of Control":

https://files.nyu.edu/dnm232/public/deleuze_postcript.pdf

 

[rms]

What's NRx?

But yeah, privately owned cities are interesting. Maybe they will pop up in Northern Canada when everything melts!

 

[Einherjar86]

NRx = "neoreaction"

It's a recent extreme facet of anti-Enlightenment, anti-liberalist philosophy. It has some good points. Some of it is far too conservative, in my opinion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

 

[Dak]

Where does Cowen mention NRx? I don't have time to read/watch the whole thing, so I search the page but couldn't find it.

The whole answer he gave to the audience questioneer at the end. Corporate city states are basically the rubber-meets-road organizational model for NRx. I don't have the time to speak to the rest of the comment atm.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Just starting reading about Terror management theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

Everything that humanity has ever accomplished beyond basic survival has been motivated by a fundamental and irreducible fear of non-existence. Our conception of self and self-esteem generally is simply a buffer against the anxiety that comes with recognizing that we will cease to be. Culture is just a massive shared delusion to mitigate our fear of the unknown and ultimately of death. Thus we want to imagine certain works of art as timeless or to place value in family lines and offspring, to project ourselves beyond death. We take comfort in our value systems and the structures that arise from them, whether that’s through conceptions of biological kinship, national/ political identity, religious faith, etc. This includes belief in the inherent value of ensuring the future of humanity through scientific progress. Indeed much of modern western life is devoted to the avoidance of death, the various euphemisms and stock phrases in mourning, the entire funeral home industry that serves to remove death from the ordinary course of life, from the home and onto the embalming table or into the crematorium. We build up the artifice to avoid the brutal reality. In short, everything that we’ve ever done and will ever do is motivated by nothing more than our existential terror in confronting death.

 

[Dak]

Just starting reading about Terror management theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

Everything that humanity has ever accomplished beyond basic survival has been motivated by a fundamental and irreducible fear of non-existence. Our conception of self and self-esteem generally is simply a buffer against the anxiety that comes with recognizing that we will cease to be. Culture is just a massive shared delusion to mitigate our fear of the unknown and ultimately of death. Thus we want to imagine certain works of art as timeless or to place value in family lines and offspring, to project ourselves beyond death. We take comfort in our value systems and the structures that arise from them, whether that’s through conceptions of biological kinship, national/ political identity, religious faith, etc. This includes belief in the inherent value of ensuring the future of humanity through scientific progress. Indeed much of modern western life is devoted to the avoidance of death, the various euphemisms and stock phrases in mourning, the entire funeral home industry that serves to remove death from the ordinary course of life, from the home and onto the embalming table or into the crematorium. We build up the artifice to avoid the brutal reality. In short, everything that we’ve ever done and will ever do is motivated by nothing more than our existential terror in confronting death.

I buy that to some degree. Maybe not as an all-encompassing explanation, but it certainly has to play a role, even if subconsciously. The "human action" explanation of economic motivation speaks of "trying to ease some discomfort", which could certainly be interpreted in darker tones such as these.

 

[rms]

I took a sociology class that focused on death and dying, and this was covered. Watched a documentary/science experiment that focused on this theory. The premise was that if you took a test on a computer screen and flashed the words death at a subconscious/subliminal level..people were angrier. Had a fake scenario about giving judgments to those accused of crimes. One that stuck out as bogus to me was this test where they had to problem solve pouring some substance into a jar but saving the solid contents inside, and the best tool to use was an American flag...but no one used it because its a sacred cultural object, or some crap.

 

[Dak]

I took a sociology class that focused on death and dying, and this was covered. Watched a documentary/science experiment that focused on this theory. The premise was that if you took a test on a computer screen and flashed the words death at a subconscious/subliminal level..people were angrier. Had a fake scenario about giving judgments to those accused of crimes. One that stuck out as bogus to me was this test where they had to problem solve pouring some substance into a jar but saving the solid contents inside, and the best tool to use was an American flag...but no one used it because its a sacred cultural object, or some crap.

Why does that seem bogus?

 

[rms]

Context of the test..never used different flags, and who thinks a flag is a good strainer? Especially a miniature..

 

[Dak]

who thinks a flag is a good strainer

Good call. @Ein: Episode 9 (BCS) around 60% through verifies Mike as a model.

 

[Dak]

I didn't double check this, but given how far back GHWB was working in government administration, it sounds legit:

If you're 52 or younger, you've never voted in an election where a Bush or Clinton wasn't a candidate, running mate or in the Adminstration.

 

[Einherjar86]

I took a sociology class that focused on death and dying, and this was covered. Watched a documentary/science experiment that focused on this theory. The premise was that if you took a test on a computer screen and flashed the words death at a subconscious/subliminal level..people were angrier. Had a fake scenario about giving judgments to those accused of crimes. One that stuck out as bogus to me was this test where they had to problem solve pouring some substance into a jar but saving the solid contents inside, and the best tool to use was an American flag...but no one used it because its a sacred cultural object, or some crap.

Context of the test..never used different flags, and who thinks a flag is a good strainer? Especially a miniature..

I may be misunderstanding, but it sounds like the test was trying to demonstrate that a strong sense of value can override practical application, thereby inhibiting survival.

I mean, if you have nothing else, then a flag would be a good strainer - any kind of sewn fabric like that is porous, thus allowing liquid to pass through while larger particles will sit on top. I doubt they told the participants they could choose any object whatsoever, because then everyone would have simply chosen a strainer...

Good call. @Ein: Episode 9 (BCS) around 60% through verifies Mike as a model.

A model citizen? I haven't seen episode nine yet...