Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Blurry_Dreams]

I wonder how it breaks down by age in regards to what games men play vs what games women play. I have a feeling if you look at the mobile game players, a decent chunk of the women are middle-aged and older. My mother plays mobile games more than I play any kind of game, especially Tetris (and Tetris derivatives) and any kind of gambling game available. She's even won hundreds of dollars playing the latter.

I don't mobile game, so not really sure how competitive that is. What competition there could be is probably indirect (IE high scores on candy crush or whatever). There's definitely heavy on the directly competitive side for all the esports type games and the sports titles (nba/madden), which are pretty male dominated. Thrown in CoD/CS:GO and stuff too. Might be a point there regarding the competition aspect.

Edit: Regarding education, it's without bach degrees:

if you separate the the people who buy mobile phone games from the people who buy games for desktop/laptop/gaming-consoles/MMOs
the distinction is damn near pure gender
most of the people buying mobile-phone-games are female
most of the people buying computer/gaming-console games are male
it was lumping the phone games in with the other games that created that whole wierd-ass "60% of gamers are female" statement that created the whole "gamer-gate" thing

 

[Dak]

Yeah. And I bet if they further specified phone vs handheld systems, phone games would be overwhelmingly dominated by women.

 

[Einherjar86]

What I meant by inhuman was that it isn't "against" humanity, simply that it's an environment that although some thrive in it, collectively we can't "keep up"; there's something like an indifference. Having a "god shaped hole" for instance. Anti-human is something that is, in this use, is so alien that it is actively working against humans collectively, rather than something more like indifference.

I tend to argue the extreme that capitalism (or at least "market based economics" or some other such label) has basically always existed (at least to the beginning of human history), and that formalized concepts of it were a part of a larger shift in formalizing (moving beyond religious contexts) that marks the Enlightenment era. Once you understand what you have been doing, you can maximize it, make effective changes, etc.

Ah, the capitalist axiom. Another D&G theory (although maybe some economists too, I admittedly don't know). I suppose what I meant by capitalism was its specifically modern attributes, namely industrialization and the rise of corporate entities. I don't think it's any coincidence that Adam Smith's and David Hume's economic writings were accompanied by major developments in industrial technology and the transition from charter companies to privately-run companies. So I take your point about capitalism always existing; but I also think that material (i.e. industrial) developments fueled the socio-intellectual/self-descriptive trends that come about under modernity.

I'm still not entirely sure I understand your distinction between inhuman and anti-human. When you say inhumanism entails indifference, do you mean indifference to human existence under the conditions of modernity? i.e. "We can't keep up, so why bother trying?" If so, could you provide some reasoning behind why you see that as a component of modernity (which begins sometime in the 17th-18th centuries), and how it's a widespread notion?

I can definitely sympathize with you seeing that as an element of some postmodern theory, e.g. Baudrillard or Lyotard. But I wouldn't privilege either of them as emblematic of modernity.

Well this is the Transhumanist position, or even imperative. I'm not clear on whether Land is quite to that extreme or not. NRx seams to be an attempt to, again, ride it out while staying at least nominally human.

I think there's a posthumanist dimension to what I'm saying that avoids the Transhumanist one. Transhumanists believe specifically that technology will "save" humanity, so to speak--that it will allow us to live longer, or eternally via virtual existence, etc. There's a direct correlation between technological development and the preservation of, let's say, the human idea. We might continue on with our consciousness uploaded to computers, but we'll still "be us," or "think like us," so to speak.

Posthumanism declares that we would no longer be us or think like us. We would evolve, which is an un-directed and unintentional process. Technology wouldn't save us, it would simply factor into the process of our evolution. I see these two things as being quite different. Not sure where Land sits though.

Also, fyi, Land's been writing some creative weird cosmic horror in his spare time and self-publishing to Amazon. His most recent (I think) is called Phyl-Undhu, and it's about the Great Filter. The premise of the story is basically that the Great Filter is the tendency of advanced civilizations to retreat into simulated environments, effectively halting all socio-cultural change. Seems plausible to me.

In other stuff:
https://qz.com/1486287/a-new-theory...rom-the-ashes-of-the-global-financial-crisis/

First thing from the macro side I've seen that has me interested.

I'll try to read when I have time.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

Yeah. And I bet if they further specified phone vs handheld systems, phone games would be overwhelmingly dominated by women.

yeah
now that i'm thinking about it
women playing Candy Crush and Bubble Witch caused Gamergate,

 

[Dak]

Ah, the capitalist axiom. Another D&G theory (although maybe some economists too, I admittedly don't know). I suppose what I meant by capitalism was its specifically modern attributes, namely industrialization and the rise of corporate entities. I don't think it's any coincidence that Adam Smith's and David Hume's economic writings were accompanied by major developments in industrial technology and the transition from charter companies to privately-run companies. So I take your point about capitalism always existing; but I also think that material (i.e. industrial) developments fueled the socio-intellectual/self-descriptive trends that come about under modernity.

I'm still not entirely sure I understand your distinction between inhuman and anti-human. When you say inhumanism entails indifference, do you mean indifference to human existence under the conditions of modernity? i.e. "We can't keep up, so why bother trying?" If so, could you provide some reasoning behind why you see that as a component of modernity (which begins sometime in the 17th-18th centuries), and how it's a widespread notion?

I can definitely sympathize with you seeing that as an element of some postmodern theory, e.g. Baudrillard or Lyotard. But I wouldn't privilege either of them as emblematic of modernity.

Well what I mean is that the system isn't being built with humans in mind. It hasn't, I would argue, to this point worked directly against humans. After all, we can trot out all of Pinker's indices and point to all of our technological toys and life-saving things as evidence. But I would say the environment, as we become more developed, isn't necessarily conducive to happiness, or peace, or satisfaction, or belonging, or any number of vague fuzzy terms which indicate something approaching contentedness, just the opposite in fact for many, even as their objective positions improve. We don't judge things objectively very well, we judge them relatively, and almost all of us can find something to place ourselves as doing relatively badly, and it's increasingly easy to do. By contrast, it's certainly possible that the "new tech creates new jobs" train is is reaching its end, which, even without any further damage done, is going to create significant problems for everyone, but especially for persons who are biologically and/or sociologically disadvantaged already. Social problems are only going to grow in the near to medium future, because we have a growth based modern capitalist society, of which the originating genetic stock is depleting, and which also are torn about its value. Meanwhile, non-originating genetic stock is growing which might portend a collapse, but technology and capital might be advanced but sequestered enough to reach runaway status anyway. Nothing about the future looks good from any direction without a reset, or in case Musk et al's longshots get them off the planet.

As far as talking about the genetic (and I mean culturally too in that), this was posted today by Greer:

http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-taking-cross-cultural-psychology.html

I don't have any sort of reference at the moment to provide any extra academic backing, and I imagine what would easily be found in a non-academic sense would be neoreactionary-ish. I can

I think there's a posthumanist dimension to what I'm saying that avoids the Transhumanist one. Transhumanists believe specifically that technology will "save" humanity, so to speak--that it will allow us to live longer, or eternally via virtual existence, etc. There's a direct correlation between technological development and the preservation of, let's say, the human idea. We might continue on with our consciousness uploaded to computers, but we'll still "be us," or "think like us," so to speak.

Posthumanism declares that we would no longer be us or think like us. We would evolve, which is an un-directed and unintentional process. Technology wouldn't save us, it would simply factor into the process of our evolution. I see these two things as being quite different. Not sure where Land sits though.

Also, fyi, Land's been writing some creative weird cosmic horror in his spare time and self-publishing to Amazon. His most recent (I think) is called Phyl-Undhu, and it's about the Great Filter. The premise of the story is basically that the Great Filter is the tendency of advanced civilizations to retreat into simulated environments, effectively halting all socio-cultural change. Seems plausible to me.

Well at some point there will be a post human, we can't expect otherwise barring some sort of freeze. Which would tie into this simulation, but even then I'm skeptical. The question becomes one of direction and pace.

 

[Dak]

https://www.nowpublishers.com/article/Details/RBE-0092

 

[Dak]

https://www.jehsmith.com/1/2018/12/its-all-over.html

 

[Einherjar86]

https://www.jehsmith.com/1/2018/12/its-all-over.html

To me, this sounds like just more vaguely luddite-ish lamentation over the abdication of subjectivity, which I think the author conflates roughly with individuality, personhood, etc.

There's just too much going on to give this my complete attention, but I see too many ambiguities and elisions to approach it without suspicion--beginning with this passage:

Someone who thinks about their place in the world in terms of the structural violence inflicted on them as they move through it is thinking of themselves, among other things, in structural terms, which is to say, again among other things, not as subjects.

Is this to say:

a) there's no such thing as structural violence, but only some other kind of more intimate violence that grants subjectivity to the body

b) there is such a thing as structural violence, but we shouldn't pay attention to it because it deprives the victim of subjectivity (*note the author doesn't say someone who thinks about their place in the world only in terms of structural violence, which would imply that we can think about violence in various ways*)

c) that thinking in structural terms forecloses the possibility of thinking in terms of subjectivity? (*this seems to me an obvious implication of the passage, but I also think it's prematurely stated and unsupported; people like Althusser and Foucault would say that subjectivity arises because of structural thinking*)

I can't help but see this as the familiar criticism that identifying structural violence denies victims their subjectivity (individuality, personhood, etc.). But then this raises the question of what we're to do about structural violence if we shouldn't identify it. Some might say there's really no such thing as structural violence--a statement I find absurd, but I'll leave it at that.

But if structural violence does exist, then I'd contend that thinking in structural terms doesn't deny victims their subjectivity; the structural violence itself is what does that. Thinking in structural terms, i.e. identifying methods and practices of structural violence, is an attempt to diagnose problems and returns subjectivity to the victims.

Anyway, those are just my immediate reactions to that piece. I'm also a William Burroughs fan, so that part's cool.

 

[Dak]

@Einherjar86

I took the totality of the piece to be asserting that we are beginning to see ourselves as merely a data point formed from a coalescence of data points, rather than experiential subjects, and I think there's at least plenty of "anecdata" in support of that point.

 

[Einherjar86]

@Einherjar86

I took the totality of the piece to be asserting that we are beginning to see ourselves as merely a data point formed from a coalescence of data points, rather than experiential subjects, and I think there's at least plenty of "anecdata" in support of that point.

I think that's definitely true. My primary concern is with the implicit false dichotomy that the author sets up in the essay, which is that we can't simultaneously see ourselves as data and as individual bodies/selves that have experiences.

My secondary concern is that the author appears to assume that seeing ourselves as data is a bad thing, and that his general readership would agree. I'm also not suggesting that seeing ourselves as data is prima facie a good thing. I simply got a polemical vibe from the piece, and would have liked to see more reflection on the author's part.

 

[Einherjar86]

Probably more appropriate here.

People who inflict some pain, psychological or material, on others, may be repaid in kind. Is it unethical to repay pain with pain purely because it is pain? I don't even consider pain in the equation but that's how it looks from a "pain" perspective. Just a pain stalemate.

Again, I don't understand your comment. It reads to me as evasive.

The question I posed was: when it comes to interpersonal relations in which no prior agreement exists, why isn't acknowledgement of another's pain a reasonable premise from which to formulate an ethics of behavior? If you've offered or implied an answer, I'm still not sure what it is.

Let me answer your question to the best of my ability. Yes, it's unethical to repay pain with pain--but that's not because pain in and of itself is inherently unethical. In and of itself, pain is meaningless. My emphasis here is on the interpersonal capacity of acknowledgement. This isn't my term; it's from Stanley Cavell's influential reading of Wittgenstein, primarily his essay "Knowing and Acknowledging." Inflicting pain on another, absent any established precedent for doing so, is unethical given that the aggressor has the capacity to acknowledge that they're causing another's pain. "Eye for an eye" is, interpersonally speaking, an unethical value system.

It sounds like you're just trying to break down the argument by repeating the mantra that pain doesn't mean anything--pain is just pain. But I'm not trying to say that pain means anything.

 

[Dak]

Probably more appropriate here.



Again, I don't understand your comment. It reads to me as evasive.

The question I posed was: when it comes to interpersonal relations in which no prior agreement exists, why isn't acknowledgement of another's pain a reasonable premise from which to formulate an ethics of behavior? If you've offered or implied an answer, I'm still not sure what it is.

Let me answer your question to the best of my ability. Yes, it's unethical to repay pain with pain--but that's not because pain in and of itself is inherently unethical. In and of itself, pain is meaningless. My emphasis here is on the interpersonal capacity of acknowledgement. This isn't my term; it's from Stanley Cavell's influential reading of Wittgenstein, primarily his essay "Knowing and Acknowledging." Inflicting pain on another, absent any established precedent for doing so, is unethical given that the aggressor has the capacity to acknowledge that they're causing another's pain. "Eye for an eye" is, interpersonally speaking, an unethical value system.

It sounds like you're just trying to break down the argument by repeating the mantra that pain doesn't mean anything--pain is just pain. But I'm not trying to say that pain means anything.

How can pain both not mean anything and also be the foundation of reasoned ethics?

I've got a couple of problems with taking pain so seriously. First, pain as a term is slippery and as an experience incredibly subjective. The second problem is found in the first: What kind of pain are we talking about? Physical? Mental? Well, all pain is ultimately mental, even when due to damage inflicted to the body. But if we keep the dichotomy, then there are several easy thought experiments which render physical pain as the "lesser of evils". If we include both mental and physical pain, now we run into all sorts of contradictions that come from the subjectivity.

tl;dr: Pain has low signal to noise ratio when establishing data points on which to base ethics.

 

[Einherjar86]

How can pain both not mean anything and also be the foundation of reasoned ethics?

1. All systems of meaning are built on meaninglessness.

2. I said that ethics is based on acknowledgement of pain, not on pain in and of itself. It's our shared capacity for expression that bestows meaning on pain-behavior (Wittgenstein's term, not mine).

I've got a couple of problems with taking pain so seriously. First, pain as a term is slippery and as an experience incredibly subjective. The second problem is found in the first: What kind of pain are we talking about? Physical? Mental? Well, all pain is ultimately mental, even when due to damage inflicted to the body. But if we keep the dichotomy, then there are several easy thought experiments which render physical pain as the "lesser of evils". If we include both mental and physical pain, now we run into all sorts of contradictions that come from the subjectivity.

Acknowledgement is about socially negotiating the subjectivity of private sensations. I'm going to appeal to an article from a colleague of mine:

Wittgenstein indicates that the shared nature of language also informs our descriptions of our own internal experience. He tries to imagine a language in which words “refer to what only the speaker can know—to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language” (243).7 He then imagines the case of a man who labels a particular internal sensation “S” whenever he experiences it, wondering if “S” could become a private word, known only to this speaker. However, Wittgenstein points out that for the man to conceive of “S” as a sensation is already to rely on shared language: “For ‘sensation’ is a word of our common language, which is not a language intelligible only to me” (261). The private word simply substitutes for, and therefore relies on, the speaker’s knowledge of a shared term. We learn to use a word like “pain,” then, by speaking with others and familiarizing ourselves with the standard contexts in which people employ this term. When I grimace and say, “I am in pain,” my companion knows what I mean, Wittgenstein suggests, because I am using the word in accordance with conventions we have both learned for its use. [End Page 170]

In “Knowing and Acknowledging,” an essay in Must We Mean What We Say? (1969), Cavell expands on Wittgenstein’s discussion by considering the case of the skeptic: the speaker who [...] points to the impossibility of knowing another’s pain the way I know my own. For Cavell, the fact that the word “pain” is used in shared ways does not actually refute the skeptic’s point. After all, when the skeptic says something like “I cannot know you are in pain because I cannot have your pain,” we understand this statement; the skeptic does not use words in ways that are incoherent to us, inconsistent with our shared linguistic practices. Moreover, Cavell points out, in a certain sense the skeptic’s statement is exactly right: my knowledge of your pain is of a different order than my knowledge of my own, a different level of certainty. To respond to the skeptic, Cavell writes, requires that we attend to a different use of the word “know”: that of expressing acknowledgment. In this sense, to say “‘I know you are in pain’ is not an expression of certainty . . . ; it is an expression of sympathy” ([1969] 2002, 263). The problem with the skeptical position is that concern with the inaccessibility of other minds may prompt us to discount our connections to, or obligations toward, those around us. The skeptic’s picture of the divide between mind and world relegates not only “objects of knowledge,” as Simona Bertacco and John Gibson suggest, “but nearly the entire range of objects of human concern, of value” (2011, 109) to the far side of this divide. So Cavell decides that while we cannot know (be certain) of another’s pain, we can acknowledge (respond to, do something about) it.

This is a central argument in determining ethical behavior.

Clearly there are difficulties that arise when distinguishing between mental and physical pain, and in determining the extent of someone's pain. None of this means that we don't acknowledge pain when we sense it, even if we can't be specific about it. I don't think specificity about quantities and/or qualities of pain is necessary for establishing criteria about acknowledging that someone is in pain. Whether someone's actions cause a pinprick's or aircraft carrier's worth of pain, acknowledging that our actions have caused pain should factor into our ethical determinations.

 

[CiG]

The existence of a nervous system itself forms the basis of a lot of ethics. Even rabid animal rights activists acknowledge a tier of severity and importance when considering the suffering of animals, based on whether a nervous system exists in the animal and how developed it is, because the more complex a nervous system is the greater the chance to suffer is.

That doesn't get into non-physical pain though.

 

[Einherjar86]

The existence of a nervous system itself forms the basis of a lot of ethics. Even rabid animal rights activists acknowledge a tier of severity and importance when considering the suffering of animals, based on whether a nervous system exists in the animal and how developed it is, because the more complex a nervous system is the greater the chance to suffer is.

Totally. I mean, this is Peter Singer's whole approach to animal rights/ethics.

David Foster Wallace also has a great essay called "Consider the Lobster" in which he meditates on the pain capacities of lobsters. Crustaceans usually aren't associated with suffering, but Wallace makes some compelling points. It's definitely true that pain =/= suffering, but the capacity for suffering necessitates pain. So if we can imagine that an entity suffers, then pain is a no-brainer.

That doesn't get into non-physical pain though.

I'll fully acknowledge that mental pain complicates everything (although, as Dak said, all pain is mental--when you accidentally cut your hand, is the pain in your hand, or in your head? tough question...)

People can experience mental pain for a number of reasons, and the cause is usually impossible to pinpoint. I'm not saying physical pain is definitively identifiable (since it's also mental pain), but it's easier to coordinate.

 

[Dak]

1. All systems of meaning are built on meaninglessness.

2. I said that ethics is based on acknowledgement of pain, not on pain in and of itself. It's our shared capacity for expression that bestows meaning on pain-behavior (Wittgenstein's term, not mine).

I think this A. Makes sense intuitively and B. That's because we have shared culture (it works emically), and that this doesn't work well etically.

Acknowledgement is about socially negotiating the subjectivity of private sensations. I'm going to appeal to an article from a colleague of mine:

This is a central argument in determining ethical behavior.

Clearly there are difficulties that arise when distinguishing between mental and physical pain, and in determining the extent of someone's pain. None of this means that we don't acknowledge pain when we sense it, even if we can't be specific about it. I don't think specificity about quantities and/or qualities of pain is necessary for establishing criteria about acknowledging that someone is in pain. Whether someone's actions cause a pinprick's or aircraft carrier's worth of pain, acknowledging that our actions have caused pain should factor into our ethical determinations.

None of the quote answers why pain should be central to ethics. Sure, we all can acknowledge that there's a thing or things we might call pain, but why should that be the singular focus of ethics? I would counter that this focus on pain is precisely the focus on care/harm that Haidt points out is the distinguishing difference between "liberal" morality and "conservative morality."

 

[Einherjar86]

None of the quote answers why pain should be central to ethics. Sure, we all can acknowledge that there's a thing or things we might call pain, but why should that be the singular focus of ethics? I would counter that this focus on pain is precisely the focus on care/harm that Haidt points out is the distinguishing difference between "liberal" morality and "conservative morality."

I think the why is that acknowledgement coincides with empathy and with the personal identification of what pain is. We may not be able to feel another's pain, but we have the capacity to imagine pain (excepting extreme cases, such as mental disability). Continuing to act in such a way despite knowing that we're causing pain is unethical because we have the capacity to reflect on what it means to cause pain.

I don't see this as a partisan argument. If anything, anarchy permits the apathetic use of harm against others, and conservative ethics argues for restraint based on acknowledgment and empathy.

I realize I'm placing meaning on the act of acknowledgment, but I actually believe there's a pre-linguistic, pre-conceptual motivation to acknowledgment-as-ethics. It has to do with the fact that we're able to identify another person in pain, and empathize with them, without recourse to understanding pain in some positivistic sense. That is, we don't empathize because we know what pain means; we empathize because we experience a visceral identification with the person in pain, even if it's not an experience of that person's actual pain. I think that experience is worth pausing over.

 

[Dak]

I think the why is that acknowledgement coincides with empathy and with the personal identification of what pain is. We may not be able to feel another's pain, but we have the capacity to imagine pain (excepting extreme cases, such as mental disability). Continuing to act in such a way despite knowing that we're causing pain is unethical because we have the capacity to reflect on what it means to cause pain.

I don't disagree in general with this until it's asserted that acting to cause pain is A. always unethical and B. it's unethical because we know what pain is. Point A is addressed below, and point B. is primarily due to all the murkiness of "imagining pain" or experiencing pain.

I don't see this as a partisan argument. If anything, anarchy permits the apathetic use of harm against others, and conservative ethics argues for restraint based on acknowledgment and empathy.

I realize I'm placing meaning on the act of acknowledgment, but I actually believe there's a pre-linguistic, pre-conceptual motivation to acknowledgment-as-ethics. It has to do with the fact that we're able to identify another person in pain, and empathize with them, without recourse to understanding pain in some positivistic sense. That is, we don't empathize because we know what pain means; we empathize because we experience a visceral identification with the person in pain, even if it's not an experience of that person's actual pain. I think that experience is worth pausing over.

It's partisan in the sense of placing over-emphasis on pain, and by partisan I don't mean necessarily in terms of US party politics, although at this point you won't find many conservatives in the Democratic party, although there are still liberals in the GOP. I understand the identification, but that's not enough alone to warrant any conclusions. Pain is merely one factor. There are other factors to consider. This is why you would rather take a punch in the stomach than have all your belongings blown up. This is why we have or there will be arguments for similar punishment for both rape and murder. I think of ethics in terms of loss, not pain.

 

[Einherjar86]

But rape strikes me as salient example wherein the victim doesn't lose anything in the same sense they would if all their possessions were blown up. If someone was presented with an ultimatum between getting gut-punched and losing all their possessions, it's like they would choose the former; but if the ultimatum was between getting raped and losing all their possessions, they might very well choose the latter.

Acts of physical violence toward a person's body might vary in degree, and the ethical value associated with such acts might also vary; but when you break it down, presenting someone with an ultimatum between getting punched and losing all their possessions is still an unethical proposition.

To put it another way, I see getting raped and getting punched as similar in kind but varying in degree. The difference in degree doesn't make one act ethical and the other unethical.

 

[CiG]

Getting gut-punched is something friends can even do to each other for fun, or other games where you slap each other in the face as hard as possible, or just punching each other's arm and the first one to give in loses. Nobody does that with rape, even if the rapist thinks it's a joke to rape somebody, the victim isn't in on it and if the "victim" is in on it, it's not a rape it's just rape-play and doesn't come with the severe psychological damage an actual rape does.

Is it unethical to break into a stranger's home even though you don't steal anything, and just leave? Nothing is lost in the material sense, but much like a rape something is lost, or taken more accurately, psychologically. You're never the same again once your home has been violated, even if what was stolen does not measure up to the grief you feel over it. Many rape victims talk about how their consensual sexual relationships suffer dramatically due to being raped, and it's not that dissimilar to someone who has had their house broken into becoming paranoid about people walking by, or shutting all the windows and locking all the doors in a compulsive manner.

Defining ethics by loss, if you mean material loss, doesn't really get at pain related to the abstract.