Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

If biology is the problem, then why would psychologists be necessary?

 

[rms]

That's the kind of feeling I have towards that profession

 

[Dak]

If biology is the problem, then why would psychologists be necessary?

Well if you perceived psychology as a Freudian profession, it wouldn't be necessary.

Of course, psych hasn't done itself any favors with making nearly everything potentially a "disorder", but there's a need for people to provide real talk or to "smash some mirrors". But people don't want that, they want their Prozac and Xanax. Or they want a politician to announce some new program, of the reform of some old program that will fix all their/our problems.

 

[Dak]

Good share from Land:

http://evonomics.com/the-real-power-of-free-markets-not-efficiency-but-innovation-and-dumb-luck/

The market mechanism is loosely efficient. But the idea that efficiency is the main virtue of free markets is wrong. Competition itself is highly inefficient. In my home town, I can buy food from about eight different places; I’m sure this system could be much more ‘efficient’ if Waitrose, M&S and Lidl were forcibly merged into one huge ‘Great Grocery Hall of The People No. 1306’. I am equally confident that after a few initial years of success, the shop would be terrible. […] The missing metric here is semi-random variation. Truly free markets trade efficiency for a costly process of market-tested innovation heavily reliant on dumb luck. The reason this inefficient process is necessary is that, though we pretend otherwise, no one knows anything about anything: most of the achievements of consumer capitalism were never planned; they are explicable only in retrospect, if at all.

 

[Einherjar86]

I would say the point is to expand the definition of "efficiency" beyond the scope of single enterprises or annual reports. Evolution is efficient in a way that doesn't reduce to a single organism or even species. Economics can be thought of in this way, but it requires expanding the framework of efficiency. And as the author says, we can only really identify efficiency at that scale in retrospect.

 

[Dak]

Land finally connects his philosophy with his politics in one sentence:

Security capacity is needed to fend off those determined to share their mistakes.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think that's been pretty clear for a while now.

 

[Dak]

http://savageminds.org/2015/11/23/the-ruination-of-written-words/

What got me thinking about the ruination of written words is Stephen Greenblatt’s fascinating (if uneven) book The Swerve, which narrates how in 1417 a book-hunter discovered Lucretius’ The Nature of Things in a remote monastery. In my book Rubble, I examined how different forms of ruination, from the Spanish conquest to the soy boom, have created constellations of nodes of rubble in northern Argentina, many of which are perceived by locals to be haunted (Gordillo 2014). I therefore read The Swerve with an eye sensitive to the destruction of places and matter and the affective materiality of their debris. The richness conveyed by Greenblatt’s story of the vanishing of Roman books reveals that the physical disintegration and afterlives of rubble also involve the written word, which in the modern world is often presented as an emblem of human endurance.

 

[Dak]

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

- John Adams

Looks like things are coming full circle. No end of history for a perpetual poet class.

 

[Dak]

http://quillette.com/2015/12/01/why...st-social-science-research-is-probably-wrong/

 

[Dak]

http://hplusmagazine.com/2015/11/30/mind-as-a-virtual-reality-machine/

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Ein, where the fuck are you!

 

[viewerfromnihil]

I was filled with glee when I saw him at the top of the page. Then I saw the post date.

THE BOOKS THREAD SUCKS WITHOUT YOU EIN!

 

[rms]

Outside of the present day hatred for Islam, the historical impact of both 'religious' peoples is pretty interesting (including Jews with Christians)

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Yo @Dak I'm just curious dude (havent been reading this board much) what do you think about Bernie and Trump, dude? I'm genuinely curious btw

 

[Dak]

One is dangerous and an embarrassment to the country, and the other is a billionaire .

They are both offering a form of populism, but only one is attempting to provide something for the failed middle class/working class, and that is Trump. Whether or not his vague policy prescriptions would work is an entirely different matter. Bernie is offering other peoples money to cover the extreme costs of salving the pain of the new white man's burden. Of course as with any election in this country, people will vote for those who they stand to gain from., or at least they believe they will. There's a reason Trump does quite well in blue collar areas and Bernie does really well with the college crowd. The fact that Bernie has not done well with minority voters shows that maybe they are smarter than Democrats give them credit for.

 

[rms]

What is Trump's position that will help the middle class? Bringing jobs back?

 

[Dak]

What is Trump's position that will help the middle class? Bringing jobs back?

In all it's glorious vagueness, yes. Both tariffs and immigration restriction (also vague in detail) are supposed to be ways to do that.

 

[rms]

I wonder how strong a tariff would have to be to force American business owners to leave the global market.

I think he, and other politicians who say this, are just actively misleading the 'blue collar' population and really just have to understand that nothing is going to bring manufacturing jobs back.

 

[Dak]

I wonder how strong a tariff would have to be to force American business owners to leave the global market.

I think he, and other politicians who say this, are just actively misleading the 'blue collar' population and really just have to understand that nothing is going to bring manufacturing jobs back.

I think you can bring them back to some degree, but it'll be a pyrrhic victory, as robotics etc eat into the "blue collar" job market; greater and greater education/ability and less people required to manage the robots. Also, there will be a cost to be paid, as although there may be more jobs, costs for those manufactured goods will necessarily go up.

A better initiative imo would be to start eliminating gimmedats and replacing them with public works projects. Probably about the only intelligent FDRish policy from a national perspective. But shitlibs won't stand for any work being done, tangible physical improvements that everyone can benefit from, or skills being obtained by minority/poor voting blocs.