Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

Sounds like a really good book. I didn't watch the video, but read some about the author.

Why is it up your alley? Are you studying race in America? Or just interested in it?
 
I imagine I'm done in the humanities after this nice jobless stretch LOL

My preferred reading of any history is people making their own way and then that own way having a large and noticeable impact. Big time sucker for that in any region
 
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I imagine I'm done in the humanities after this nice jobless stretch LOL

My preferred reading of any history is people making their own way and then that own way having a large and noticeable impact. Big time sucker for that in any region

History: A story of incentives and the people motivated by them.
 
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...273&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook

People who would be put on the restricted lists included those found to have committed acts like spreading false information about terrorism and causing trouble on flights, as well as those who used expired tickets or smoked on trains, according to two statements issued on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website on Friday.


Those found to have committed financial wrongdoings, such as employers who failed to pay social insurance or people who have failed to pay fines, would also face these restrictions, said the statements which were dated March 2.

It added that the rules would come into effect on May 1.

The move is in line with President’s Xi Jinping’s plan to construct a social credit system based on the principle of “once untrustworthy, always restricted”, said one of the notices which was signed by eight ministries, including the country’s aviation regulator and the Supreme People’s Court.
 
lol, how is not paying a fine equivalent to aiding terrorism or disorderly conduct? I wonder if people who accidentally forgot to pay a parking ticket or some equivalent on time would be permanently blacklisted from public transport? It sounds as though it may be likely considering the "once untrustworthy, always restricted” mantra. Seems a bit draconian to me.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...ce-class-white-and-black-men.html?mtrref=t.co

@Dak , it's got your favorite stat :D

123.jpg
 
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Pretty good review, sums up some of my objections to Pinker.

https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/enlightenment-how-pinkers-tutelary-natures/

And here we encounter the paradox that Enlightenment Now never considers, even though Pinker presupposes it continually. The challenge for us today is to construct an informational environment that mitigates the problems arising out of our previous environmental constructions. The ‘bugs’ in human nature that need to be fixed were once ancestral features. What has rendered these adaptations ‘buggy’ is nothing other than the ‘march of progress.’ A central premise of Enlightenment Now is that human cognitive ecology, the complex formed by our capacities and our environments, has fallen out of whack in this way or that, cuing us to apply atavistic modes of problem-solving out of school. The paradox is that the very bugs Pinker thinks only the Enlightenment can solve are the very bugs the Enlightenment has created.

What Nietzsche and Adorno glimpsed, each in their own murky way, was a recursive flaw in Enlightenment logic, the way the rationalization of everything meant the rationalization of rationalization, and how this has to short-circuit human meaning. Both saw the problem in the implementation, in the physiology of thought and community, not in the abstract. So where Pinker seeks to “to restate the ideals of the Enlightenment in the language and concepts of the 21st century” (5), we can likewise restate Nietzsche and Adorno’s critiques of the Enlightenment in Pinker’s own biological idiom.

The problem with the Enlightenment is a cognitive ecological problem. The technical (rational and technological) remediation of our cognitive ecologies transforms those ecologies, generating the need for further technical remediation. Our technical cognitive ecologies are thus drifting ever further from our ancestral cognitive ecologies. Human sociocognition and metacognition in particular are radically heuristic, and as such dependent on countless environmental invariants. Before even considering more, smarter intervention as a solution to the ambient consequences of prior interventions, the big question has to be how far—and how fast—can humanity go? At what point (or what velocity) does a recognizably human cognitive ecology cease to exist?
 

Good piece. I liked this bit (but of course):

As it stands, I’m with Nietzsche and Adorno. All things are not equal… and we would see this clearly, I think, were it not for the intentional obscurities comprising humanism. Far from the latest, greatest hope that Pinker makes it out to be, I fear humanism constitutes yet another nexus of traditional intuitions that must be overcome. The last stand of ancestral authority.

And most of the information after (too cluttery to quote half an article):

Just what are these pertinent facts? First, there is a profound distinction between natural or causal cognition, and intentional cognition. Developmental research shows that infants begin exhibiting distinct physical versus psychological cognitive capacities within the first year of life.
 
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Bakker's latest really hammered the point home.

Edit: Didn't realize Bakker had a ABD PhD. I don't know how people fall into that. I can't afford to not finish my future dissertation. Earnings difference would be like 50k+ per year + retirement benefits.
 
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Bakker's latest really hammered the point home.

FINISH HIM.

Edit: Didn't realize Bakker had a ABD PhD. I don't know how people fall into that. I can't afford to not finish my future dissertation. Earnings difference would be like 50k+ per year + retirement benefits.

If I recall, he became pretty disillusioned with academia. Personally, I think he realized he could write about the same ideas in a fantasy series and make a comparable amount of money (he's under contract and his series is mentioned alongside Malazan and ASOIAF). And it would reach a wider audience.
 
There's a really interesting discussion going on in the comments of Peter Watts's most recent blog post (which he's since amended a couple times, noting when he does so):

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=7917

I'm not going to quote any sections because there are a lot of comments, but it's an interesting debate. Made some points about the history of vaccinations that I wasn't aware of.
 
I've read some research on herd immunity and the methodology looks kind of shit. It appears that vaccines for stuff like polio might be worth it to get people through to adulthood, but overall vaccines appear oversold.

I haven't gotten the flu shot since getting out of the military and haven't had the flu until this year, after the kids exposed me to it for like a week and a half, and it's only the second time they have had it.

Edit: To Watts thesis, I'm much more concerned with MRSA type stuff than a killer flu. If theres a major pandemic I expect it will be more due to compromised immune systems through shitty lifestyles and fast transmission through porous global transit vectors than whether or not we vaccine.