Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week
- Thread starter Ender Rises
- Start date
Dak
mentat
I don't really know what the writer was ultimately trying to get at. Reading it felt like a bunch of boxes being opened with a bunch of semi-related concepts pulled out that suggest a lot of problems going forward, and then a quick wrapping paper job with a messy bow over the mess trying to appeal to "things are actually better than they feel".
I did like the bit about how the West progressed because big thinkers talked to people who make cool machines. Ideas need application to be ultimately worthwhile.
I did like the bit about how the West progressed because big thinkers talked to people who make cool machines. Ideas need application to be ultimately worthwhile.
Dak
mentat
Not sure exactly where this quote comes from but it's decades old at the least:
Seems pretty spot on.
Seems pretty spot on.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Is the the implication that prosperity and comfort are the reasons for dissent and dissatisfaction in modern society? Because prosperity and comfort have never been globally present or evenly distributed; and in plenty of places, prosperity and comfort don't exist. I'm not sure I think the upheavals of our historical moment can be explained by the boredom of success.
Dak
mentat
Dissatisfaction occurs not when people have it the worst, but just when they think they might could have it even better. From another direction, the banality of cycle of produce-consume-(sleep), divorced scientifically and socially from any higher meaning or cause, drives one to either dispair or desire for that thing lacking. In the age of Reason we have no reason for living.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Dak
mentat
If there appears to be no possibility of improvement and/or the situation is so dire so as to consume all your energy to get along from day to day, thoughts of dissatisfaction are in the first case pointless, and in the other case, dangerous.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I think it's pretty obvious that people in such places do feel thoughts of dissatisfaction though. Hence you have feminist movements in Islamic countries, self-immolation in the Arab Spring, refugees fleeing in masses to come to European countries, etc. It seem to me that people can acknowledge their dissatisfaction just fine.
Dak
mentat
I see your examples as proof of one of the points. The primary point is that our empty comfort is fertile ground for upheaval.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Whose empty comfort? Whom does "our" refer to? Because while I agree that you and I experience comfort in relation to women in Islamic countries, I'd say that their resistance is due more to their discomfort than our comfort.
Dak
mentat
If you seek examples of these resistors, what you will most likely find are women in, say, US occupied countries (or in the somewhat occupied portions), or in countries which are more liberal (ie Iran or Jordan).
I'm looking at the West though. We have killed transcendence with god, and with transcendence, purpose. That's why you get stories like these:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/europe/isis-behind-the-mask/index.html
The man, being fed, housed, and clothed by the child of Christianity (secular humanism) and in the shadow of the grand works past, longs for the dirt and violence of the Levant - for there is purpose there. Christianity has castrated itself, and Islam is virile.
Of course, that is one direction to go. Another is some form of populism - nationalistic or racial. Maybe the emergence of the religious left
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-religion-idUSKBN16Y114
or atheist churches
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21319945
or maybe any number "movements". Maybe go trash the Dakotas to prevent an oil pipeline from trashing it later. Maybe Occupy a Street. Maybe go to the same place as a bunch of other people while carrying signs.
And yet the emptiness lingers and grows. Because in the end it's all for dust and ash, and we know it. Tyler Durden laughs and knows time is on his side.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/0...ow-leading-cause-of-ill-health-worldwide.html
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Einherjar86
Active Member
So, protesting the DAP, or going to the Women's March, or the March for Science (happening later this month), aren't in response to actual problems, but because we actually don't have anything to complain about. Sounds about right.
Dak
mentat
The potential problems of the DAP were overshadowed by both the need for the oil and the actual trashing of the area by activists. As for the Women's march, it isn't in response to any actual problems (in the US anyway - they should have flown to Saudi Arabia and marched there). The scientific method cannot be "endangered", and even if it were, a march wouldn't protect it.
Edit: Objective, material indicators show the world is in better shape than ever before (for example, world poverty has been cut in half in the last 25 years), yet people are increasingly unhappy and prone to radicalization. US women under the age of 30 are out performing male peers in school and at work, but we need a pussy hat march. Oil pipelines are the safest and most efficient way to transport a vital resource (albeit not a perfect way), and yet it's ok to swarm and trash an area to try and stop it from maybe trashing that area.
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Einherjar86
Active Member
Wow. You're incredible. Not only did you just admit that poor response toward an issue negates the importance of an issue (not a logical conclusion at all, which you should know), but you also somehow managed to completely miss the point about a march for science. Do you really think it's about the endangerment of the scientific method? Are you being serious?
Dak
mentat
I don't see how science is in danger. I do know that certain government funding sources are threatened. Government funding =/= the thing itself (unless, of course, we mean a government-exclusive service, like letter mail delivery and the uniformed services).
Pipeline spills being negated by the absence of pipelines is equivalent to killing people to prevent them from dying of any number of illnesses. Calling the DAP protests a poor response is an understatement.
This is all, still, beside the point. These movements are stabs at finding a purpose in fleeting events, in misidentified solutions to potentially inescapable trade-offs if not outright non-problems (obviously if your job is threatened by government fundings cuts or changes, these are certainly personal problems even if not systemic threats to the field). The secular/christian west lacks meaning and purpose, and ideologies (including other religions) offer Hope and Change, even (and maybe especially) if it comes with a bloody cost. There's a reason why women voluntarily don hijabs. There's a reason why people will vote in populist demagogues. There's a reason why people will blow themselves up or self-immolate, and it isn't ultimately material comfort, which is all the West has left to offer at this point.
If science is in danger, it is because it offers no meaning or purpose. Science is a tool, not an end. The West has confused this.
Einherjar86
Active Member
The thing itself? Dak, come on. There is no science "in itself." Science is a social practice and can have various sources of funding. Privately-funded science is fine, but it needs to be supplemented with scientific research not inhibited by corporate interests. Stop deluding yourself by promoting this ridiculous "Trump's not all that bad" political stance.
It could be an understatement. They could be the most disproportionate responses of all time. That doesn't diminish the issue of environmental jeopardy. You're acting like it's a non-issue now because of the way it's been treated by protesters. That's the equivalent of me saying that potential violence towards sex slaves is a non-issue because some vigilante killed the asshole trying to sell them (since we're dealing with questionable equivalencies).
I disagree. You're generalizing based on selected examples, and you're attributing non-value to situations that you already are biased against. I'm not going to claim that I have no skin in the game, but you're really being obtuse here.
This is bullshit. Science isn't in danger because it offers no meaning or purpose, it's in danger because it's producing results that particular political parties don't like. You have to fucking see that.
rms
Active Member
Dak
mentat
I'm grouping these together because I think they are more or less related. I think Trump is bad - just not as bad as CNN wants one to think. I also have skin in the game. My program depends on a grant that was facing a 70+% cut in the recently pulled Obamacare replacement bill. If a similar cut gets passed at some point, I'm not sure how that will affect me/my family financially.
I don't know what bias you're referring to. I don't just read theoretical pieces and run off into deontological voids, as I think should be rather evident - in fact I think I'm relatively beyond practical. Theory and data/statistics should be be ever synthesized and engage in reciprocation.
There is no danger to science because of results. You're thinking of an example of one deletion of data in one aspect of science, which may or may not even matter. Even if it does, the information has no direct path to change or results. The arctic data informs no particular course of action. Assuming it showed radical warming or cooling, this means nothing in and of itself (however, there is a religion surrounding the pseudo-transcendence of climate stability). In contrast, science with very clear application moves ever more rapidly forward, in both the private and publicly funded sectors. Space X is reusing rockets, DARPA in collaboration with John Hopkins etc are allowing people with no limbs to move and feel again, and IBM presses forward with Deep Learning.
You're speaking on this issue like the religious person you accused CIG of being. The earth lives on regardless of where the oil on it is.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Practicality has its own bias. Maybe you can't see that because you're practical.
I admit my bias. You run from yours.
Thank goodness science is still producing results! I guess we can afford to cut its funding a little.
You're not understanding my point.
I'm commenting on the logic of your statement, in which you implied that an issue can become a non-issue because of the way it's handled. That's an illogical and entirely fallacious position. That's what I'm saying.
Do I think there are environmental concerns worth protesting over? Absolutely. Do I believe that Gaia is dying? I don't think I've ever said that. The ecosystem is more complex than "Mother Earth."
Dak
mentat
We assume no objective position available to the subjective viewer. This is as close to objectivity as the subjective viewer may approach (as far as I can tell). But I do not admit some a-practical position to be superior to the practical one. The argument, then, is over what is indeed practical. I will concede an argument here. I will not concede a preference to the theoretical to the practical, and readily admit it as a necessary bias. Kind of like the necessary bias of breathing vs the theoretics of maybe breathing.
Cut particular funding from particular sources. Science isn't a monolith, in either its funding or its results.
I find the whole DAP thing tangential but you seem to be insisting it as central (I apologize if this is incorrect) so I will try to treat it seriously. The entire anti-DAP movement wasn't even about oil per se, but about degradation of a water supply. Moving the pipeline had various issues, but would still threaten water supply were a leak in that vicinity to occur. However, pipelines are a lesser necessary evil, and shifting the line only shifts the potential threat. Why are the Souix there more special than other peoples? Do they not benefit from oil products? Are they more at risk from spill damage than anyone else?
The fact that the protest caused actual problems vs the potential problems of a pipeline is more irony than argument. A sort of cherry on top of any argument.
I also think there are environmental concerns. I don't think protests are the best option, nor do I think most protests intelligently oriented to concerns. The reason for this, and this is to track things back to my point, is that actual solutions don't matter. We need transcendant purpose. Transcendence is, more or less, by definition, impossible and more importantly, untestable. That way we cannot have counter evidence to our actions. This is why these movements do not generate more happiness. They protest the impossible, but not the untestable.
