somethingsomething
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User ID: 1123
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Ah yeah that almost seems like a developmental psychology problem of some kind at that age. I can understand wanting to have a standard just to give kids direction or expectations but that's out of my realm of expertise at that point. Good luck!
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I think you could do good gradeable art tests using human proportions and perspective work, both of which can be made to have "right answers". Possible using graph paper if the student needs to turn in a drawing. Then have quick ways of counting tiles uses for proportions etc. And just as an artist I would feel way more comfortable grading that than various stylistic choices.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I'm not sure what you mean by your question
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I appreciate the link, I'll have to spend more time digging through the previous sections but the page you linked helps me understand where you're coming from.
There are a few threads that interest me that I think expose weaknesses in CRT related to your reply here.
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If you accept the capture of French philosophy and academic elites by communism in the 60's as analogous to CRT, its collapse could point to similar ways CRT could collapse in the future. And part of that was surely the political situation, but I'm also curious how much of that was Foucault, who possibly gave the academics something to "chew on", a less obviously activist, more wide-ranging theory. I'm sure that's a simplification, but I do think there was this kind of new breed with him and others of something more sophisticated that allowed communism to be kind of moved on from, something passe.
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As far as the abusers go of critical theory, like that legal theorist, I'm curious how much that is a kind of perversion or simplification of something that is more useful when treated with maturity, and not just useful to the left, but against the left's power. And it doesn't necessary have to be useful in a sense of persuading them, but instead of disillusioning its sort of fair-weather followers potentially.
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The other thing is something that I've had a hard time expressing, but I feel like CRT can't escape it's intellectualist roots, which is a point of failure it shares with communism. It wants to be pure activism, all about changing minds, but its identity demands that it take an intellectual root, and it sort of has to assume that the most effective activism is intellectual (or even pseudo-intellectual) activism, which I think is far from true, because I think you can argue most people bounce off that kind of thing, if not now then after it outstays its welcome.
Anyway I'll read your other posts but those are the threads of thought I've been pursuing
I think that the idea that critical theory is an activist philosophy is self-contradictory and that those who practice critical theory to change the world in some way, or motivate action, are basically destined to have an incomplete, irreconcilable worldview.
(edit for clarity: Modern critical theory obviously is often activist, and believing that is not self-contradictory. But believing that critical theory at its core is activist, and should be practiced as a kind of means-to-an-end to affect social change, as many critical theorists believe, I think contradicts with the actual core of critical theory philosophy)
I started coming to this idea watching the Foucault/Chomsky debate, where Foucault is suspicious of Chomksy's Anarcho-syndicalism as a way to bring out a kind of ideal human nature, because he thinks the formulations we make about an ideal human nature, or society without political violence, are informed by the society we live in, which makes violence and non-ideality kind of unavoidable.
This argument is interesting in terms of the political spectrum because on one hand, it "out-criticals" the critical activist, but it also echoes the basic conservative reaction to leftist societal transformation projects.
There's no reason to me that a critical theory couldn't exist critical of social justice projects, BLM, modern Marxism, etc. The modern leftist capture of critical theory appears arbitrary.
But the Foucault debate led me to think, that conservatives, or just anti-progressives, could be a lot more bold in using their own critical theory against them in a way. I think it would be a field worth studying as a way to deconstruct leftist idealism and activism in a way that, like Chomsky, would leave them looking kind of pathetic in debate.
Doing that would kind of require doing the Nietzschian thing of acknowledging power, political violence, etc. and working with it in the debate, which I feel like is probably a step too far for most politicians. But I think specifically that rather than debate competing visions, there's room for a thinker to basically just deconstruct modern "critical theory" on its own terms, argue that it is self-contradictory and unlikely to do anything but breed new forms of political violence and power imbalance.
To tie it back to Nietzsche, it seems his works have an irony to them, even a self-aware irony, and that is what makes his calls for action "work" in some sense. It seems to me that a modern critical theory text that calls for action with no sense of irony is not thorough, and has a huge blind spot by basically not applying self-criticism.
I've been kind of working this idea out on my own, not sure if this is well trodden ground elsewhere, apologies for the half-baked quality.
somethingsomething
9mo ago
The hardest part about Christianity is that all of the evidence points to a Pharisee who never met Jesus exploiting his death and fashionable Jewish apocalypticism onto disaffected Romans which he felt compelled to do after hallucinating that he saw the heavenly Jesus alone in a cave somewhere. Do I believe his hallucination was a secret revelation given to him by the heavenly body of Jesus himself? No.
If a miracle happens somewhere, you've piqued my interest and I'd be curious to follow up on it. If it turns out the miracle was a rumor spread by a guy who saw it in a hallucinatory vision, I move on pretty quickly.
somethingsomething
7mo ago
Well I think I mean categorization in a different way than what you describe. I'm aware of what you're talking about but I am thinking of the way progressives tend to isolate problems into categories and define immoral antagonists for each. Gender issues are cause by patriarchy, race issues by whiteness, economy issues by capitalists, etc.
They don't consider that (1) good intentions or moral behavior (defined by them) can have negative consequences and that (2) bad things can happen because of things outside the category that they have defined them in. That is, the idea that men were hurt because we sold jobs overseas doesn't make sense to them, because it's a gender issue with an economic cause. It must really have been the patriarchy at the root of the issue, because that's the only thing that can cause gender issues, since the patriarchy is the antagonist of the gender category.
somethingsomething
9mo ago
I think this is buying the propaganda a bit. Feminists would love if that were true, but I think it's a more complex story on how that happened.
somethingsomething
10mo ago
Recently I saw an old friend and some of his buddies that were all very left leaning and weren't aware I've shifted right. Occasionally some "white people" remarks came up that put me off, though it was nice to allow myself to actually feel put off rather than pile on with it like I used to.
But I actually did enjoy doing the tricky thing of finding agreement on more right-wing ideas while still presenting as leftist.
The best example that came up with my friends was me saying how much I like Biden because he forgave my student loans. I make enough money that this is totally ridiculous, but it's true, and it's a fun way to kind of present the absurdity of a policy I don't like, without harshly committing to any real position out loud.
By doing this I don't feel fake, it's more like, I'm saying what I believe in a crafty way, and if you really want to know what I think I'll tell you. But if these people don't poke and prod, which they won't because people just talk about themselves, then I can just drop hints as long as I'm clever about it. And the archetype of the clever right-winger can actually be very attractive or interesting to the leftist. Just watch this Bill Buckley interview with Betty Friedan: https://youtube.com/watch?v=E7BJyQmqo_Q
somethingsomething
11mo ago
The Ehrlichs float the idea of adding "temporary sterilants" to the water supply or staple foods. However, they reject the idea as unpractical due to "criminal
Stop there!
somethingsomething
1yr ago
As someone who can't stand 30fps gaming but loves 24fps film, let me just (imprecisely) defend it here.
I'm pretty sure there are ways to mitigate the choppiness from pans, I'm not sure on the specifics. But generally I think it's a limitation that should be worked around as one of the weak points.
The strengths of 24fps film is how the natural blurring of movement in each frame creates the beautiful and subtle impressionistic quality movies have, and that's something that would have to be painstakingly simulated to do in games (and blurring effects in games are pretty bad so I feel like that is a ways away)
somethingsomething
1yr ago
It's not strictly class based but I do think there's a clear connection to the market, when you have the epicenter of this in public institutions, and jumping off your conclusion, sucess in the market is more or less rational self interest.
If you buy that pro/anti-market was never really about class, but more of a kind of its own philosophical battleground, I think "anti-racism" fits pretty well into "anti-market"
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I see this sentiment often enough and I feel like there's a few places you can deconstruct this to possibly understand what's behind the feeling a little better.
"Protagonist" is obviously a term for a character in a story and doesn't really have an exact analog to actual real life. A story is a construction, and a protagonist is basically a post-hoc analysis of story structure, which refers to one or often more central characters the story focuses on.
So using that analysis I don't see why we "should" feel like it should be ideal to identify with this structural trope more or less. A novel is built around protagonists to fulfill its structural and thematic needs. The protagonist construct in itself does not have a moral valence, and there's no inherent reason one should strive to identify ourself with this construct.
And regarding being part of history, it's similarly comparing stories we tell to lives that are lived. It's not the same exact thing, and we all know that historical acts tend to be consolidated into much fewer lives when told as a story, and every movie or TV show will simplify and reduce these characters even further.
I think what has happened is basically that our culture, by being so story-focused, has failed us in preparing for what we should expect from our lives and the effect we have on the world, and what satisfaction we should take. At the same time we've seemingly lost perspective on how many people we are able to reach. 800 people have viewed this thread as I write this, and a good portion have presumably read your comment. That kind of reach with the accessibility we have is pretty historically profound. So I think a solution to this kind of malaise can be a combination of rejecting that our lives must look like the stories we read, while at the same time finding satisfaction in the actually pretty profound reach and influence we all have that is often invisible or veiled by our very high expectations.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I didn't have the most precise phrasing but this is the hypothetical we were debating from OP
somehow, losing the House but keeping the Senate is framing in some areas as 'Republicans lost.'
If Ds lose the Senate I'd agree that it doesn't look like much of a victory. That said I'd bet on a D senate.
somethingsomething
6mo ago
I think well done 2d animation tends to look more "real" than 3d animation for anything organic, which I think has to do with the complexity of organic movement that is too time consuming to replicate with 3d models (when all it takes is the right pencil stroke to emulate in 2d). I also notice this with "muppets", if you watch Fraggle Rock for instance they show a ton of expression and liveliness that would just be too time consuming to do on a computer.
I think if you aren't satisfied with what Pixar is putting out, you're probably not going to find anything more visually sophisticated than that in the realm of computer graphics.
somethingsomething
7mo ago
That things are getting better is not a view internalized by feminists or the left, Pinker is not popular in those circles, and to believe that is basically to be naive. The whole point of "woke" was to wake people up to the idea that that kind of belief is for the privileged and not based in reality.
somethingsomething
9mo ago
Any specific sources that expand on this? I'm curious to hear more from this angle.
somethingsomething
9mo ago
I was thinking along these lines in regard to anxiety, which is a targeted vector. What it is targeting seems to at its core be imagined events happening or not happening. And I imagine this to be a core emotion in which these other negative emotions are used to "manage" it to various degrees of success.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
You could try a big namelist and allow one of the lines to be a name, like the original square
somethingsomething
1yr ago
I use a cheap white noise player, and I noticed that sometimes I was hearing weird ringing noises which I assumed was because of some echo effect. Recently I put it in a cardboard box and I haven't noticed that since, presumably because of dampening or something like that.
I also constantly listen to podcasts or music on my phone speakers (headphones bother me), whether I'm dealing with surrounding noise or not, and in the mild environment I'm in that gets me through distractions.
I have meditated but I find it's tricky to kind of "let go" of things. Stuff can come up in meditation and sessions can be challenging so I tend to think the quieter the better. Instead I think having some at home workout tool like a pull up bar may be better to get you out of your head.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
So I didn't realize that, I actually just downloaded it and tried a "brainstorming" session with it. There's some promise there, but it's interesting what specific ways it falls short of providing a natural conversation.
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You have to press a button every time you want to talk
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It will arbitrarily interrupt you and respond
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Each conversation can only go 15 replies deep, presumably because of some technical limitation
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The quality of its responses lean towards that "buzzkill" quality of repeating what you say and giving the most generic reply possible.
Input-wise, I think it would be really interesting to see a version of this where the microphone is always on, and the AI could try to interrupt you in your pauses, but if you kept talking it would shut up and keep listening. Just having that, with the existing tech (and removing the 15 reply limit) would be a pretty cool tool to possibly organize your thoughts in a way. But then if the AI was actually interesting to talk to in a conversational way, that would be pretty fascinating, and get quite a bit closer to the Her bar. So I'm definitely keeping an eye on it.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
Days of Heaven for a movie that kind of quietly shows a lot of aspects of the 1910s around a personal romantic story. One of the great Malick films so it's one of the most beautifully shot (and edited imo) movies of all time. (oh I see you have it, nice)
I was also thinking if you wanted to use a Herzog film, Lessons of Darkness could be a good 90s one, as it just brings an interesting visual understanding towards an aspect of modern war (burning things)
Midnight Cowboy might be a good one, it's been a while since I've seen it
somethingsomething
1yr ago
It's funny, I've just started getting into classical philosophy and my therapist asked me if this was an interest I might be able to find others to share with. It's interesting that it does seem to be a "male" self-improvement kind of thing, but really, I just felt it as a click on of sudden interest and finding some good books.
I don't know anyone in my area and dont have a place to host if I did, but maybe this kind of thing is something I could work towards. Seems like you'd want a good grasp of things as a host anyway.
somethingsomething
1yr ago
As someone who also turned 30 this year and feels similarly, I just wanted to chime in.
I've been exposed to more and more people who had good liberal arts educations recently, mostly because of Andrew Sullivan's podcast where he always asks people how they grew up, but I also found myself jealous of Oppenheimer's education reading American Prometheus and I recently started watching old Firing Line episodes where education can come up and it resonates similarly for me there.
I think how year 30 cut through for me was in realizing how deeply rich the fruits of liberal intellectual pursuits can be, how on one hand you can offhandedly know Freud was flawed, but on the other you can read him, and other texts around him, and gain so much understanding in the process. I got a good math education because that institution seems to be doing fine, but liberal arts education failed to persuade me similarly.
I think the pernicious effect of losing out on a good liberal arts education is to invite "bad" liberal arts, which is to say, bad arts, bad media, bad values, to simplify. And I feel like my 20's were very much indulging in those things, while the media around me was saying this is good, this is fine, normal, etc. I think if you are a talented young person, "entertainment" can feed off that talent in a way, without giving much back in return.
I've landed somewhere a bit opposite from you, very much in solitude as I've removed most of the people from my life, but a few of them happened to be really toxic, and breaking from them left me with a pretty big wound I've been trying to recover from. So I've been trying to treat it as a Rilke-style isolation that I'll eventually be able to come out of stronger while I realign my values and pursue a wider and more fruitful liberal education to help me do so.
I've only sometimes run into this and it's usually with people who have some personality issue, so I'd wonder if there's some culture thing happening where you work. I am probably more nitpicky than most, and I know more and less nitpickers where I work, but nitpicks are usually brought up and dropped pretty quickly. Larger conversations are usually based around some kind of confusion. And we have a idiomatic consistency to the code to generally fall back on.
My issue has often been people not taking some concerns I have seriously, so again that makes me look like the nitpicker. On the other hand, I really feel little agitation when I'm getting nitpicked, usually because the reviewer has at least some point, or if not they are a junior dev who is confused about something. But I think my workplace has a good culture about these things in general and so I rarely feel bothered by reviews.
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