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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2936 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 9, 2023

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I’m having a body snatchers moment, ever since Dase jumped in angry in a ‘da juice’ discussion I was having with SS where I was just pointing out the imho postmodern trappings of his argument. I thought with all the bitching about wokes, the criticism of postmodernism was baked in, but it appears it’s a major fault line on the board. So how many of you are postmodernists?

In general I find this line of debate fruitless; belief that one's opinions are «postmodernist» in the common derogatory sense is at odds with what we understand as having a belief, so it's practically impossible to get someone to do a yes.chad. Nowhere is this clearer than in this exchange with Hlynka. @SecureSignals, too, has a set of beliefs about material reality that he thinks are objectively true.

And from my perspective your argument there was the «postmodernist» one, and your claim of only having loyalty to truth was disingenuous:

I believe those forces are weak. The stronger you assume those forces to be, the harder it is to find what is objectively correct. At the extreme, if the forces can convince everyone of anything (God the deceiver, conspiracy nuts), objective Truth is too corrupted and just disappears.

You think I‘m attacking ‚your guys‘ from the left, when I operate on a completely different scale. Based on love of objectivity. It‘s my scale so of course I‘m at the top, then, in order, scott, the average guy, you, the woke mainstream, anthropologists, SS, critical theorists‚ ‚aryan science‘ believers, lysenko. At the bottom they don‘t even recognize objectivity as a valid concept so they just fight in the dark like good conflict theorists.

Here you conflate (cramming into the same spectrum) the belief in objective correctness of popular narratives, interest in objective truth and conviction in its existence. I think those are all different issues (with the first and other two orthogonal), so I don't even know how to approach this kind of posture.

If jews produce arguments, works of art, or scientific theories that appear to be of high quality, then the simplest conclusion is that they are indeed of high quality and true. Just like similar arguments presented by non-jews.

You conflate merits of science and art, and inferre the truth of a given sociopolitical idea from high quality (measured by popular success) of its propaganda. Restricting the valid scope of our truth evaluation procedure to the whole world or conclusions of wars is unprincipled, so by this token Nazi propaganda, too, was truer than anti-Nazi propaganda within the scope of its dominance in 20th century Europe. So was Lysenkoism in 1938-1962 in the Soviet Union, I guess. What you wrote is definitional postmodernist relativism, pretty much «truth is what sells» and «might is right». This is not me beating up a strawman, you actually practice such a restriction:

My point here was that defeat discredits an ideology, like the ukraine fiasco discredits putin‘s system (to a degree… moscow isn‘t in ruins yet, like berlin was) , the loss of the cold war discredits marxism-leninism, etc. So if, as I understand SS to be saying, Hitler was right about everything, it just makes his defeat inexplicable. If nothing else, defeat is a failed prediction.

This is a snappy slogan. What is «putin's system» – do you mean stuff like logistics and military doctrine? That's too trivial and more consistent with SS's theory than with your argument. (Checking: SS, do you think Hitler's Germany was right about every instrumental issue?) So, had Putin's generals made a few sensible calls prior to 24th February 2022, would that cause Ukrainian nationalism to be discredited? Or the whole of "Rules-Based International Order"? Or all opposition to totalitarians? This is not some Pascal's Mugging; epistemology vulnerable to such pedestrian counterfactuals is laughably flimsy.

I thought with all the bitching about wokes, the criticism of postmodernism was baked in, but it appears it’s a major fault line on the board. So how many of you are postmodernists?

If I understand you correctly, your opposition to postmodernism is simpler and more radical than what people «bitching about wokes» espouse. You reject what you call postmodernism as a method, you claim deconstructions of successful things cannot be valid (of course, this is gibberish: any successful paradigm asserts to explain the failures and delusions of its vanquished predecessor, so this method would retroactively invalidate itself). You say: "yes, it could be the case, logically, that many/most people would believe in constructed propagandistic bullshit, but actually bullshitting is just not that potent and people converge on truth". This is a childish just world theory and a thorough rejection of skepticism.

If God can create light as if emanating from a star en route or plant dino bones, and if the jews or ‘the government’ can make people believe whatever they want, nothing can be declared real . Your own beliefs are subject to this magical power , pehaps the jews created ethnic supremacy to justify israel, orbecause they want to prop your side up so that it can be resoundingly crushed like Hitler. The ways of narrative crafters will forever remain mysterious.

I see terror under your snark. This is an unsustainable and inconsistent prior. Your epistemology is broken, not his. I believe that you'll experience a thorough mental collapse if you ever allow yourself any scrutiny of authenticity of your received wisdoms.

I see terror under your snark.

Did the image of my friendly neighbours being secretly replaced by nefarious aliens tip you off?

So, had Putin's generals made a few sensible calls prior to 24th February 2022, would that cause Ukrainian nationalism to be discredited?

Yes, obviously, to a degree. If the ukrainians had welcomed their russian liberators in 24 hours, ukrainian nationalism would be discredited and putin’s ‘on the unity’ view would be validated(again, to a degree). Reality is the testing ground for opinions just as much as it is for science.

There is a signal in a military defeat, there is a signal in popular belief, the Truth is trying to tell you something. And if you say ‘widespread popular belief just means more effective propaganda’, you’re putting your fingers in your ears.

You reject what you call postmodernism as a method, you claim deconstructions of successful things cannot be valid (of course, this is gibberish: any successful paradigm asserts to explain the failures and delusions of its vanquished predecessor, so this method would retroactively invalidate itself).

How can a deconstruction of science be valid? Besides, postmodernism invalidates itself retroactively, proactively, presently, it can deconstruct anything anytime.

You say: "yes, it could be the case, logically, that many/most people would believe in constructed propagandistic bullshit, but actually bullshitting is just not that potent and people converge on truth".

Yes, correct. There are limits imposed by the truth. Propaganda can’t make them believe they have 5 arms. They do converge on the truth, even if they miss it.

This is an unsustainable and inconsistent prior. Your epistemology is broken, not his. believe that you'll experience a thorough mental collapse if you ever allow yourself any scrutiny of authenticity of your received wisdoms.

I’m actually very agreeable, I take everything I hear on faith, I avoid any area of controversy and I certainly would never go out of my way to invite people to explain to me exactly why I’m wrong. Come on. Blow my mind. You have my permission to collapse my mental sanity if you can.

You said SS has a set of beliefs about material reality that he thinks are objectively true. But when I say it, my epistemic systems are about to give out.

Yes, obviously, to a degree. If the ukrainians had welcomed their russian liberators in 24 hours, ukrainian nationalism would be discredited and putin’s ‘on the unity’ view would be validated(again, to a degree)

What if they were as oppositional as in reality, but Russian forces were just more competent and swiftly crushed all resistance?

This is not a matter of degree, this is a matter of things having nothing to do with each other. You talked of defeat. The signal in defeat can have zilch to do with merit of ideology.

How can a deconstruction of science be valid?

All of science is deconstruction of earlier failed science: both procedure and facts finding new shared mechanical explanation. We know why Galileo failed to measure the speed of light with lanterns, because we know how all parts of the system work, and which of his assumptions were erroneous.

Propaganda can’t make them believe they have 5 arms.

Can propaganda make a child believe she is in some truer-than-life sense a boy with a penis, and only the nature's caprice has made it seem otherwise?

How does postmodernism accrue popularity at all, in your theory?

What if they were as oppositional as in reality, but Russian forces were just more competent and swiftly crushed all resistance?

In alternate universe where SMO worked as planned Russian propaganda would claim that all Ukrainians welcomed the liberators and any resistance was due to NATO mercenaries.

This was outcome that everyone predicted, and would not discredit NATO/GAE any more that fall of Mosul to ISIS and Kabul to Taliban discredited it. Instead of shock and horror, the reaction would be: "Ukraine? What you expected from this shithole?"

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