ShariaHeap
5mo ago
Oh right, I wasn't really meaning not having religious schools, I was thinking for public schools, public funds to have an expectation of secularity. I'm also in favour of charter schools with different perspectives etc.
ShariaHeap
5mo ago
That seems true from my limited knowledge of war contexts. Yes I'd say we are at a new time in history in that we have many perspective takers neutral to this or that conflict that see various wars, beyond geopolitical reasons and parochial local forces, as being somewhat pointless. US foreign policy has this sense of arbitrariness, where every action is completely justifiable from some strategic perspective, even if just undermining the region or wanting to spoil a rivals influence. But when the accounting is done some period after, the reasoning drops away and the action is ceased, reverted, like a cat that gets tired of playing with some half-dead mouse. Meanwhile the massive loss of infrastructure and often civilian life plants the seed for further deprivation and violence down the track, this justifying the next intervention.
The consequence for perspective takers that are not linked to either side is that they can start to make connections from war, to other bad outcomes, such as an influx of immigrants into your country.
ShariaHeap
6mo ago
Not sneering, just trying to figure out what breed of Christian you're promoting.
ShariaHeap
6mo ago
Yes, it's not the right term, I agree.
ShariaHeap
6mo ago
It's worth bearing in mind we know little about brain development in puberty, ergo we know little about the effects of bypassing puberty.
ShariaHeap
6mo ago
Thanks for Hoffer tip.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
I agree with a lot of what you say. There's obviously a range of material from good to bad put out in any particular generation, a lot of it I'd suggest is pretty shit. But also gems.
Agreed also that most forms of art are molded by the societal norms of the time, as they act on the film makers/ producers and audience at large, and as those individuals interact/ react against those norms, while also being more or less aware of them.
These norms will include the politics of the time (the negotiation of norms), whether that be issues politics along tribal lines or political in the manner of 'the personal is political', which is a truism in the sense that a political act has to be done by an individual, who always acts 'personally'.
For example, an author may put specific political polemic into the mouth of their interlocutor, or they may seed their version of the norms in a more subtle but equally intentional way, therefore acting politically-- in addition to their other creative acts. Nothing precludes subconscious molding by social norms either, this is the sea we all swim in, but I'd argue this isn't the case for political acts, which seem to me to have a conscious intention by definition, operating at the level of polemical belief, in that politics involves a certain forcefulness, or righteousness.
I think it's this intentionality that gets at the root of why, beyond a certain threshold, it deteriorates the quality of the work down an exponential decay into the zone of 'forced', 'contrived', 'preachy' etc. While we can be a mindless milieu, we can also have a fine ear for being told what to do or think. This is most evidenced by the general reaction to most advice, which has an element of actual resentfulness.
This element of 'too much', or 'against the grain' will vary with each individual, so there does have to be a defense of why this should be more than just taste, pitching reactionary responses against early adopters of the political message or culture shift.
Or to frame it as another commenter, isn't this just the culturally new coming into being? With the usual railing against the wind kind of response?
This feels to me like a familiar relativistic slight of hand, along the lines of 'global warming is a hoax', temperature has always been changing. To find out if things are qualitatively different in the creative merit of a particular artistic work, or a trend in the production of them, we need to do some kind of analysis against some objective marker. An individual can have a sense of it, I would argue, but to prove it's not just taste, they have to demonstrate it somehow, with reference to the works themselves and a rubric.
But in this task we will quickly be flung into dealing with philosophical assumptions. If we were to adopt a relativistic stance, it would be quite hard to measure any differences over time, because there is no measure sufficiently privileged over its material, or it's own substrate, for it to be able to do the job. In contrast, if we adopt an aesthetic stance, we may be able to get somewhere, though it doesn't seem easy to bridge to the definitive answer on the matter.
I think, at the level of metaphysics, we come up against something like Judith Butler's problem. In her case, What is the space--that is Us--that allows for us to perform against the norms, despite being subject to them? Where does it come from and how does it resolve existentially?
If the performance is 'naturally adopted', then where then really was the subjection, or what is the extra element that allows for it? And if subjection rules, how is the reaction able to pass up and out and reconcile the existential split of being the subject and the performer against subjection? This is all just wank at this point- but I think it's something analogous to the current question of how we are molded by culture, which also arises from us as a collective, in this case problematizing the conception of 'right adopted' v 'wrong reactionary', or 'inevitable adoption' v 'railing against the wind', because there's some extra ingredient needed beyond just being washed over by culture, or reacting against? Is there the possibility we can definitely privilege a stance or are we stuck in an arbitrariness?
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
Great, Id be keen to hear one day- some of my comments probably could be a bit more nuanced. I mean there is a gender layer between sex, culture and psychology - I wouldn't reduce it away entirely from the inter-personal space but the underlying framework around it we have currently I find limiting.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
Well there's a lot of interesting things to do and see so I wouldn't rule out being persuaded for another chunk of 20 or so, and I admit there's a slippery slope there. But finitude has its own motivation - my knowledge of death encourages me to try and 'lay it on the line', notwithstanding my desires for comfort and ease.
As to assuaging moral confusion, isn't transhumanism just operating as some cosmic consequentialism? Don't worry about the petty ethical concerns of the day such as unnecessary surgeries, the utopia of the future will render them moot. Once we get bored by the ubiquity of sex change we will realise the futility of such an identity focus ...
It's also so open ended it raises questions around how meaning is possible.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
I can actually see the appeal in pushing out the age, it's one of those things where the desire to get more may creep up once you get closer to the time. As long as you have health but then that would presumably go hand in hand with the life-extending capability. I might be part of a minority - for me, knowing I'm going to die one day gives me great solace! And I like the idea of life stages, childhood - youth - middle age - old age and all the changes in perspective that go with it. I'd rather the 2-3 really good seasons and finish up, than the meandering season after season for the sake of it. But perhaps that's not a fair analogy.
I agree, the spiritual transcendence is acting here as a total macguffin! I'm still working on this admittedly but it's in the scientific frame I'm thinking of ...
I'm not sure on your last point. I assume it's around why would you withhold treatment if it works. While I don't rule out cosmetic sex change as being effective for some people my contention is that there might be something else that works and that so much is downstream of culture. These ideas are so new and therefore contingent. I don't see lifestyle diversity/identity optimisation as the holy grail as I think it's operating at a fairly superficial layer. It feels to me like one of the dead-ends of modern liberalism, a symptom of ennui.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
Yes, I didn't touch on intelligence, cognitive enhancements but that seems a logical consequence. I would argue that there's some connection between the mindset of your stricter definition and my broader outlook, though I accept it may not be the target of current thinking. They share some of the same features as a cognitive displacement, and have the same problem of finite transcenders. If it were to happen, then what? How to other perennial problems disappear when a threshold of technology makes something possible, how does this solve energy problems, global warming? Is it just luxury, lifestyle practices akin to luxury beliefs?
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
Fair enough. I suppose I never felt a personal connection, so while it was weird over that time, I wasn't disappointed with him or inclined to judge him particularly. He seems to be doing ok these days.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
Yes, that's what I mean, 'is justifying it in the confused minds of the people who are immersed in the ideology'.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
I am formulating a post on this. I'm thinking that the branding, or framing, of strangeness or weirdness might not be a great draw, but nonetheless there is a great potential uniter in a better description of how we actually experience reality. Of course religious people are already playing in this space, but this always requires some extra beliefs.
For me, this sense of reality, which as you describe can include a feeling of unreality, has been the starting point to a notion of God, but a God akin the Spinoza's God, ie God as the 'other' or the universe. The universe is somehow unfolding in front of us and while quite strange is also magical. It takes me out of the plain scientific frame of my specific beliefs and thoughts running around my brain and into some other space.
ShariaHeap
8mo ago
I was going by a podcast title a while back that seemed to suggest so, though that might have been click bait.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
It all rests on personhood I suppose and the current social contract is pretty clear on what a person is as far as I can tell.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
Yes, the example wasn't very real and a bit half-baked but as a thought experiment youre obliged to take it as it is. The point is there's a compulsion element from the state on the individual in banning abortion. This kind of thing normally raises the hackles of an average republican but doesn't seem to register in this case. Murder is also a misframing because the cost of not committing murder is zero.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
But what happens when that higher g means that you're developmentally behind all of your peers when it comes to physical instrumentality during extremely important stages of your life and development?
That is what parents are for any child and the way they do this is through strategic alliance with the tribe, co-operate to achieve strategic advantages over other tribes, and have a system of child development, underneath culture. Probably an oversimplification but this is actually how cognition evolved, and in all these behaviours I would find G useful.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
That's a wild concept, phrenology indeed, perhaps skull transplants or 'brain moulding' could be the way to go... The link up to phrenology is indeed quite hilarious given the recent discussions..! Everything in circles perhaps
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
Thanks, this is a cogent summary with plenty to explore. It was cheeky of me to prompt it because of course it's possible for me to do my own hunt. There are some things I've never come across here such as reaction norms so all well and good for learning something new.
But as you say rests on finer empirical points. I found what I read of Murray (not the bell curve but a later one that talked about gender as well) that it was already making inferences at the higher level and didn't have enough of the detail underneath. Of course at that level it's rapidly overwhelming, but it's where potentially false assumptions could be exposed.
Broadly speaking I don't think the universe is necessarily going to line up with progressive wishes but I'd need to understand more to get a view on the robustness of HBD.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
Thanks, I think... I am quite agnostic about these issues. I do have a prior skepticism on HBD because I've seen the way it's used but am capable of updating priors and I'm not bad faith.
The things you are happy to leave behind seem pretty relevant to me, but I'm just at the start of rediscovering the science. I was pretty keen on evolutionary psychology about 20 years ago.
My personality is to latch on to something and think about it for a while, read a paper and slowly cycle, given the usual time constraints of daily life.
But if I gain an understanding I can explain it relativity simply and linearly to someone else, and I can point to weaknesses in the logic, science. I understand frustration with hearing the same old arguments, or bad-faith people and I know that people can get worn out on a topic but I don't know of any belief I have that I couldn't articulate the gist of in a long post.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
These seem all a bit rote, and again don't really address much complexity. If I can practice and improve on a test then there is a cultural element. You mention speed reaction can't be trained for, but I'm assuming elite black athletes have superior scores on these, does this imply that blacks have superior native intelligence on aspects of intelligence?
Populations at the level of black v white v mixed are mixed of genetic lineages. This means tail genetics doesn't have to relate to median genetics.
Your genetic pot analogy seems a bit naive scientifically. To infer a causal relationship I'm going to need a bit more in terms of genetics.
My beef isn't that there's 'nothing there', just that the complexity is not engaged with, which implies a dunning-kruger potential. I am a scientist so I'm actually interested in the complexity and science. Others aren't interested in this but in making blanket statements about groups of people (with immense intragroup genetic variation), which overindexes on skin attributes.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
I agree with this angle. I think the stance of moral relativism is a performative contradiction -as soon as we have an 'other' we have to reckon with a non-relativist morality. I think morality gets mixed in with the locus of care where we apply it. Humans are very good at shifting this boundary and there are different solutions to scaling morality across different groups. Some cultures favour family, tribe over all else, but this is different from moral relativity.
ShariaHeap
9mo ago
I've always been taken by Godel's theorem's as it really cuts us down to size. But if I'm understanding it properly, it doesn't preclude the idea of a proof itself from a series of other proofs, just we can't prove a system of them all lining up together on the same axiom base. But that's not quite the same as having an ambivalent confusion about everything in mathematics...?
These days I like Iain Mcgilchrist's left-brain, right-brain algorithmic vs gestalt brain thing. A lot of our thinking and limitations are because we mistake the left-brain view of the world for reality. The key scientific insights of the 20th century, Godel, quantum physics, relativity and, yes, postmodernism are all pointing us to somewhere else...
Yes, this makes sense as a strategy. Having some experience of it from both sides I've noticed there's a perception of moral righteousness you can hold onto (exploit?) that starts out comforting against a background say of stress, confusion or pain
As to always a male behaviour surely thats laughable. My friends relationship has the tendency to pattern as him doing something a bit egregious (being too hungover to take kids somewhere) and her punishing him with silent treatment for the appropriate length of time...
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