Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Einherjar86]

https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/curry-senate-testimony-2015.pdf

Senate testimony by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Curry

Skeptics have a right.

Skepticism is an appropriate response to any field of knowledge that has limitations (i.e. all fields of knowledge). Curry's operation is a necessary albeit often overlooked strategy of meta-commentary; she's pulling back and assessing the epistemological limits of studying global climate.

I think she makes excellent points on the political rhetoric surrounding climate change and the IPCC's emphasis on consensus, which results in the downplaying of uncertainty and resultant overconfidence. But Curry herself is still a climate change scientist, and I don't think she would say that her essay is cause for decreasing the funding of climate change science (which is likely to happen under Trump) or refusing to consider various social policies that decrease carbon emissions (also likely to happen).

Skepticism is healthy, but you can be skeptical until the next ice age. At some point we also have to try putting certain research to the test, and the resistance to that isn't coming primarily from alternative research (interestingly enough, Curry isn't providing any alternative research; she's pointing out logical and/or philosophical weaknesses in climate change rhetoric). Along with "manmade climate change" research we also should be looking at alternative explanations or data, which I think is what Curry's arguing. A lot of skeptics don't want that though; they simply want to reduce funding/research altogether.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

been awhile since I looked into this shit but I think this is it;

Maybe he was talking out his ass, who knows.

Also check out this article: https://www.yahoo.com/news/mystery-surrounds-loss-records-art-9-11-164719650.html?ref=gs


"Dozens of federal, state and local government agencies were at the site, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Central Intelligence Agency had a clandestine office on the 25th floor of 7 World Trade Center, which also housed the city's emergency command center and an outpost of the U.S. Secret Service."


There you have a plausible explanation for controlled detonation as a reaction to the attack (i.e. "we'd better destroy these sensitive national security documents before terrorists or firefighters find them") rather than part of the attack plan.

 

[Einherjar86]

Based purely on the video, what exactly do people claim the conspiracy is concealing? That they brought the building down intentionally out of fear that letting it fall on its own would cause more damage?

Such malicious intent.

 

[rms]

there is two claims, one that the owners of the towers blew more buildings down in an attempt to get more insurance money. the second being that there wasn't really a fear of them causing more mayhem and blowing down the towers was an attempt to deceive the public into getting into an oil war.

that's why there's the 'jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams' thing

 

[Dak]

I think there can be multiple reasons, it doesn't have to be just one. Grant offers the postulate that maybe the buildings were rigged years in advance as a security protocol. Who knows? But the official narrative is obvious bunk just on the face of publicly available and accepted evidence.

 

[Dak]

I wonder if there's a Trump-phrase-usage-exchange. I'll buy "very important" and sell "nasty woman".

 

[Dak]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

Apparently I'm only batshit because I'm poor.

 

[Einherjar86]

So you think the article doesn't portray survivalist tendencies of the super-rich as "batshit"?

 

[Dak]

So you think the article doesn't portray survivalist tendencies of the super-rich as "batshit"?

It boils down to basic cost-risk assessment.

Yishan Wong, an early Facebook employee, was the C.E.O. of Reddit from 2012 to 2014. He, too, had eye surgery for survival purposes, eliminating his dependence, as he put it, “on a nonsustainable external aid for perfect vision.” In an e-mail, Wong told me, “Most people just assume improbable events don’t happen, but technical people tend to view risk very mathematically.” He continued, “The tech preppers do not necessarily think a collapse is likely. They consider it a remote event, but one with a very severe downside, so, given how much money they have, spending a fraction of their net worth to hedge against this . . . is a logical thing to do.”

 

[Einherjar86]

I wasn't asking whether you think the super-rich actually are batshit.

Your comment insinuated that, because you share similar survivalist/apocalyptic thoughts as the super-rich, there must be another reason why you're "batshit" - i.e. they're wealthy, so survivalism is okay; but you're poor, so your survivalism is crazy.

That's what I got from your comment. But I don't think the article portrays the super-rich as what I would call sane, or normal.

 

[Dak]

What's batshit about risk management in the form of diversification of investment into non-financial product forms (unless it totally consumes you obviously)?

 

[Einherjar86]

Haha, I don't think we're connecting here.

I'm not trying to say that survivalism is batshit or that it isn't. I'm asking purely about the perspective of the article you posted.

You want to talk about the thing itself. I was talking about the text.

 

[Dak]

Well that's why I offered the qualifier at the end of my previous post. If you are consumed by anything - in this case survivalism - it's no longer diversification/risk management.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

This literally inspired me to buy a camping backpack, water filter and rations tonight haha. Haven't thought about emergency prepping for a while, and it's time I stopped putting off the "bug out bag" project.

Never thought of lasik as a survivalist thing - good idea there. I theoretically have budget space for an uninsured beater motorcycle, but a moped or bicycle is way more convenient. Getting into training or construction projects is more time and effort than I care for.

 

[Einherjar86]

https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/reactionary-atheism-hagglund-derrida-and-nooconservatism/

Everyone agrees that something radical is happening. Also, everyone agrees that this ‘something’ turns on the every-expanding powers of science–and the sciences of the brain in particular. This has led to what promises to become one of those generational changes in philosophical thinking, at least in its academic incarnation. Though winded, thought is at last attempting to pace the times we live in. But I fear that it’s failing this attempt, that, far from exposing itself to the most uncertain future humanity has ever known, materially let alone intellectually, it is rather groping for ways to retool and recuperate a philosophical heritage that the sciences are transforming into mythology as we speak. It is attempting to innoculate thought as it exists against the sweeping transformations engulfing its social conditions. To truly expose thought, I want to argue, is to be willing to let it die…

Or become inhuman.

 

[Dak]

Is Bakker committing seppuku? It's a dramatic statement and I think there's a kernal of truth there, but he appears to be crossing into the "profound statement" territory. I put scare quotes around that because it's my poking fun of the vapid "intellectualism" found in art departments. All talk, no substance.

There are two developments that all this transhumanism or posthumanism stuff hinges on and those developments are relative post-scarcity and the self-transformation of AI. Neither of which have any sort of significant guarantee. I understand the edgy coolness underlying the desire to jump behind the possibilities which those developments open up, but they are not even remotely foregone conclusions.

 

[Einherjar86]

I prefer posthumanism to transhumanism. The latter is a soft SF fantasy, the former is an epistemological reorientation.

Your observations are significantly economic in nature, but we have to consider these new findings in terms beyond economics. I think Bakker is saying that contemporary developments in cognitive science and neuroscience demand an attempt to formulate our theories in an inhuman way. You'll probably object that we can't help but formulate theories in a human way, but I would disagree. A theory of nonsense already rebuffs our human predispositions; maybe the trick is letting certain neuroscientific findings guide us through our nonsensical arguments.

 

[Dak]

As someone operating and learning on the outskirts of neuroscience, I would counter that neuroscience has so far promised much more than it has been able to deliver. Obviously that doesn't mean this course can't reverse in the future, but I think that at this point there's empirical support for serious skepticism. I also think that to couch economics in merely human terms is to overlook the mechanistic/physical realities surrounding resource discovery, extraction, manipulation, and recovery.

 

[Einherjar86]

I think that it failed to deliver because, possibly, we've been unable to extricate our humanist assumptions from what we've discovered. Hence they seem of little value.

When we talk about our expectations for delivery, so to speak, we're working based on assumptions handed down from our culture. If a field provides findings that do not complement those assumptions, then it stands to reason that we wouldn't see much value in them.

Unfortunately I'm not fluent in the economic terminology, but you're right that it's presumptuous to reduce economics to its humanist applications. Post-scarcity strikes me as a humanist element of economics though, as it appeals to the capacity of a society to provide for all its subjects. I don't think Bakker's posthumanism would rely on post-scarcity. He's making an epistemological argument, it seems to me.

 

[Dak]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/steve-bannon-books-reading-list-214745

Asked in a phone interview this week whether he’s had meetings with Bannon or his associates, Taleb said he could not comment. “Anything about private meetings would need to come from them,” he said, though he noted cryptically he’s had “coffee with friends.”

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon.

If this speculation is true this is kinda yuge.