Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[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.

 

[rms]

Bernie is huge on building up the infrastructure, gimmedats would automatically be reduced if people got work.

Bernie policy makes sense if he actually said educated labor force is the only real employer in this modern global economy, but he won't say it/doesn't believe it

 

[Dak]

Bernie is huge on building up the infrastructure, gimmedats would automatically be reduced if people got work.

Not when they get expanded in tandem.

Bernie policy makes sense if he actually said educated labor force is the only real employer in this modern global economy, but he won't say it/doesn't believe it

His positions on education are possibly the worst thing about him.

 

[Dak]

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

Hoffman: We’ve been shaped to have perceptions that keep us alive, so we have to take them seriously. If I see something that I think of as a snake, I don’t pick it up. If I see a train, I don’t step in front of it. I’ve evolved these symbols to keep me alive, so I have to take them seriously. But it’s a logical flaw to think that if we have to take it seriously, we also have to take it literally.

I think this is pretty much the synthesis of a sort of meta-argument between Pat and I, although I always got the impression Pat discounted the seriousness which the potential ir-reality presents (unfortunately Pat isn't visiting these days to defend his position). To extend the metaphor used in the article: Just because the icon on the pc desktop is only a representation of the file, which in no way describes or represents to me its true "itness" if you will, the underlying itness is gone if I delete it (or at another level of gone, incinerate the hard drive).

 

[rms]

“Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”

It's literally mind boggling that things react in space when they are observed and do ??? when not observed.

It's cool that Hoffman is channeling David Hume though

 

[Dak]

It's literally mind boggling that things react in space when they are observed and do ??? when not observed.

It's cool that Hoffman is channeling David Hume though

You mean Kant.

 

[rms]

Hume was born first!

But I haven't read anything by Kant

 

[Dak]

Hume was born first!

But I haven't read anything by Kant

Kant responded to the problems that Hume raised by introducing intersubjectivity. Although what Hoffman is talking about isn't completely in alignment with the way Kant described intersubjectivity, but it's pretty close. Basically that we can't know the "thing in itself", but that we can know what we can all agree on. It's a compromise between empiricism and Hume's problem of induction, and appears to be right on a certain level.

 

[rms]

He was a fun read. Maybe i'll find myself in a course with Kant involved

 

[Dak]

Hume is much easier to read than Kant. Kant isn't "fun" per se.

 

[rms]

Yeah, I have realized and figured Hume is in the minority in his prose

 

[Einherjar86]

Well, I figure this is as good a place as any to make a return post.

I think this is pretty much the synthesis of a sort of meta-argument between Pat and I, although I always got the impression Pat discounted the seriousness which the potential ir-reality presents (unfortunately Pat isn't visiting these days to defend his position). To extend the metaphor used in the article: Just because the icon on the pc desktop is only a representation of the file, which in no way describes or represents to me its true "itness" if you will, the underlying itness is gone if I delete it (or at another level of gone, incinerate the hard drive).

This is a great article, and one that I think everyone should read and grapple with. In fact, the issues he's expressing occupy a central position in the work I'm doing; some of it even serves as the topic of my article coming out in July. These findings have serious implications for the study of narrative and narrative theory (after all, if observation designates a dilemma of perspective on "truth," can there be any such thing as a reliable narrator?).

As far as my own position goes, I can't think of any issue I have with taking representations "seriously." My only reservation derives from the apparent faith in evolutionary development, which even Hoffman seems to be wary of, despite his admission that we have no choice but to trust it. In short, I'm not sure that consciousness even qualifies as an acceptable fitness function, at least if we're expanding our scales here. Consciousness may be adequate for the social environment at hand, in which technology assures relative security/safety; but even then, we can barely wrap our brains around the algorithms that dictate those technologies. More than anything else, more than providing representationally efficient images of the world around us, I would say that consciousness allows for security by constructing the impression of control, without requiring us to actually map the terrain.

Kant responded to the problems that Hume raised by introducing intersubjectivity. Although what Hoffman is talking about isn't completely in alignment with the way Kant described intersubjectivity, but it's pretty close. Basically that we can't know the "thing in itself", but that we can know what we can all agree on. It's a compromise between empiricism and Hume's problem of induction, and appears to be right on a certain level.

I think this is a scientific recapitulation of the Kantian dilemma, but I think there's a contemporary intellectual more appropriate for the current terminology, and that's Niklas Luhmann. Kant is like the specter we can't get away from - forget Hegel and Marx, the crucial dilemma really comes back to Kant, and this is where Luhmann comes into play. In a way, the dilemma of Luhmannian systems theory isn't strictly Kantian because I think Luhmann would say it isn't about individual choice or belief - it's about necessity, and I think that Luhmann and Hoffman both understand this as evolutionary necessity (Kant didn't have the evolutionary paradigm to work with). But the model of Luhmannian systems theory definitely owes its organizational structure to Kant.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Where the hell have you been, Professor!?

"welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaaack!"

 

[Einherjar86]

Ha, thanks. I really just needed to dig my heels in over the past few months and was spending a bit too much time here. At this point I've met all my (current) deadlines, so I felt comfortable reactivating my account.

 

[Dak]

 

[Dak]

https://judithcurry.com/2016/04/10/twilight-of-the-climate-change-movement/

I bolded the statements I found most insightful, here are my favorites.

Uncertainty about risks is not necessarily fatal to a policy of precaution, and but false claims to certainty usually are, sooner or later.

The distinction between “more than half” (the IPCC summary’s of scientific literature) and “all” or “nearly all” is crucial from the point of view of public policy.