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Beefeater1980 posted:I was never very religious, but in the period leading up to getting married my then fiancée and I went to prep sessions with a priest because we had for various reasons to have an Anglican wedding. Going to church every Sunday for a few months, having previously not done it, was a strange experience. I'm not a particularly religious person either, but over the past few years I've been working towards a career in counseling and I've seen first hand how important religion can be in helping people who are struggling. I don't want to go into too much detail because these are not my stories to tell, but after what I've seen I feel like religion has an important roll in providing many people a sense of community and connection to things beyond themselves and I firmly believe that they're not incompatible with a non-capitalist nation. Also, I went to bed thinking about that phrase "religion is the opiate of the masses", and I woke up thinking "opiate is the opiate of the masses". Drugs often serve the same purpose as religion in making life under unfair working conditions bearable, however much like how I don't think banning religion is a good idea I also don't believe banning drugs helps a society much either (case in point: the complete and utter failure of the war on drugs and the many lives it ruined). Fortunately, nothing I'm saying is new information. You walk into your local DSA chapter and ask to volunteer they're not going to say "First you must denounce God and all sins of the flesh" they're just going to be happy to have more help in getting people access to healthcare. Also, most anarchists/communists/socialists/people to the general left are already aware of the value of drug legalization/decriminalization and on-board with making that happen.
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Nov 28, 2020 13:08
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I mean yeah that's literally the point of the phrase, that it serves the same function as a recreational drug.
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Nov 28, 2020 13:13
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OwlFancier posted:I mean yeah that's literally the point of the phrase, that it serves the same function as a recreational drug. ....look, I figure things out at my own pace, alright?
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Nov 28, 2020 13:42
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Did Marx acknowledge the history of religion pre-dating capitalism? I assume he would say that religion has the same ultimate control/placating effect across a spectrum of exploitative socieconomic arrangements, and isn’t unique to capitalism? Yes. For instance, Marx acknowledged how religion was the main form of ideology in feudal society (back when the Pope was well above kings in stature and power). While the hierarchical command and exploitation aspect of religion only really comes in with class society, the soothing and drugging effect is presumably why people form religions without any (class) coercion as well. Essentially, for the duration that religion has existed, it has done so because it's been socially necessary, and can only be swept away once it has become unnecessary. The war on drugs is a good example of what happens when someone tries to fight against social necessity and win by doing it really hard. quote:Isn’t this confusing materialism as a historical dialectic with materialism as a basis for values/ethics? Seems like a classic is-to-ought naturalistic fallacy; historical materialism tells us why things are what they are better than idealism, but it alone doesn’t tell us how things should be. Dialectical materialism doesn't try to derive "ought" from "is". It treats oughts as a given, something that don't need to be derived because they already are. They're concrete social impulses that can be discovered by studying people's moral demands. So far as people disagree on oughts and struggle over them, they can either come to an agreement and unite, or the strongest team can subordinate the rest. Marx makes moral judgments because he's human and doesn't believe in impartiality as a precondition for making scientific claims, but he doesn't consider his judgments to carry any scientific weight unless others agree and force that morality on society. And Cpt_Obvious is right: religion isn't the words on the pages of the books that religious people read, it's the actual social organisation of religious people, which in turn is the outcome of struggles between religious people. Religions pretend to be unchangeable atemporal truths, but in practice they are anything but. On the other hand, there's a point where religious practice drifts so far from religious writings that a new kind of faith needs to be established. There is also a point when faith and rituals stop being religious at all. All sincerely held morality is a matter of faith, and social practice is the impartial judge of all faiths. Policies either work out or they don't, and who they work out for is critical. For what it's worth, I disagree that faith could ever be subordinated to science. Science is the antithesis of faith, it makes profane evidence into a sword that attempts to savagely execute everything that people find sacred, and break up established communities. When scientific claims enter popular consciousness, they enter the realm of faith. They need to duke it out against established faith-based claims as equals, and victory only integrates them into the dominant faith without making that faith more scientific in principle. I think a directly science-based society requires a radical social dynamism that overcomes the need for the stability that faith-based communities provide, and mass science that most people seriously participate in at some point of their lives. uncop fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 15:12
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I also can't really imagine what that sort of society would look like, or even if I would call it a society because a state of being where everyone continually rejects the intuitive sounds like absolute chaos. Even living like that as an individual would be chaos never mind trying to deal with everyone else doing the same thing.
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Nov 28, 2020 15:30
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uncop posted:For what it's worth, I disagree that faith could ever be subordinated to science. Science is the antithesis of faith, it makes profane evidence into a sword that attempts to savagely execute everything that people find sacred, and break up established communities. When scientific claims enter popular consciousness, they enter the realm of faith. They need to duke it out against established faith-based claims as equals, and victory only integrates them into the dominant faith without making that faith more scientific in principle. I think a directly science-based society requires a radical social dynamism that overcomes the need for the stability that faith-based communities provide, and mass science that most people seriously participate in at some point of their lives. I strongly disagree with this. Science and religion are two very different things and neither should be treated as a substitute for the other on a mass scale. Science is for determining which rocks are which and why the weather is trying to kill us and how many numbers there are and things like that, it should be apolitical and amoral and trying to base a belief system around it really doesn't make much sense. If you personally want to dedicate your life to science and feel no need for religion that's fine, but when groups of people start worshiping science and trying to use it to justify their actions and way of life as opposed to using it as a tool to figure out why things do what things get really weird and bad really fast. Just look at startup culture, tech bros, and Elon Musk.
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Nov 28, 2020 15:32
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Science cannot be apolitical, because people's politics will often be in conflict with it because as noted, people often operate on intuitive understandings of the world, and make decisions based on that (techbros and cult of rationality people included) and if a scientific approach suggests that the intuitive understanding of a significant portion of the population is wrong, as it often does, then it is impossible for it to be apolitical, because what it suggests is in direct conflict with the beliefs of a lot of people, and the process by which conflicting beliefs about society are resolved is called politics.
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Nov 28, 2020 15:40
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OwlFancier posted:Science cannot be apolitical, because people's politics will often be in conflict with it because as noted, people often operate on intuitive understandings of the world, and make decisions based on that (techbros and cult of rationality people included) and if a scientific approach suggests that the intuitive understanding of a significant portion of the population is wrong, as it often does, then it is impossible for it to be apolitical, because what it suggests is in direct conflict with the beliefs of a lot of people, and the process by which conflicting beliefs about society are resolved is called politics. Fair enough, also upon further reflection having science be completely amoral is also a bad idea because then you get stuff like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Edit: fool of sound posted:The idea that science is apolitical is nonsense, both in an is and ought sense. Pure research and otherwise unprofitable science are necessarily going to be funded by either individuals or collective concerns, and is therefore going to primarily research the things that those funding it are interested in or think is valuable. In turn, where there is ambiguity in results personal politics is inevitably going flavor data interpretation, especially in fields with weak models like psychology or social sciences, but also in plenty of other fields where science butt heads with public policy. Yeah, I was talking out of my rear end on this one. Space Cadet Omoly fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Nov 28, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2020 15:48
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The idea that science is apolitical is nonsense, both in an is and ought sense. Pure research and otherwise unprofitable science are necessarily going to be funded by either individuals or collective concerns, and is therefore going to primarily research the things that those funding it are interested in or think is valuable. In turn, where there is ambiguity in results personal politics is inevitably going flavor data interpretation, especially in fields with weak models like psychology or social sciences, but also in plenty of other fields where science butt heads with public policy.
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Nov 28, 2020 15:51
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Also if you want to take a structural (or even just basic historical) view of science then you run into issues like the discovery of nuclear theory and the effect it had on the world and its politics. Or vaccination, or hell even loving industrialization. As in the largest determining factor in why our society is the way it is. Knowledge carries a tremendous political weight with it, because knowledge can change the material reality of the world when it is applied. The acquisition of knowledge can thus never be apolitical either in effect or intent. What knowledge is acquired and what is done with it once it is is inherently poltical. If you don't approach it with that in mind then you're just a gigantic rube.
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Nov 28, 2020 15:55
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Baka-nin posted:Speaking of software being evil or good I'm watching this video by Sub.Media about hacking and the internet that covers how the internet is used by governments and corporations and how its being used to subvert them. sub.media is extremely pro-click in general and everyone should check them out
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Nov 28, 2020 16:50
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Are the Amish an example of a successful anarchist or possibly communist community? I don't know enough about anarchism, communism, or the Amish to know for sure whish one it would be. the amish are a highly heirarchical, traditionalist christian society and in almost no manner resemble anything close to anarchism, communism, etc.
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Nov 28, 2020 16:52
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Crumbskull posted:My understanding is that most Amish communities are functionally authoritarian patriarchal cults, but I'm not an expert. its complicated but yes this is basically the best way to describe them
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Nov 28, 2020 16:55
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I'm not the expert on anarchist theory, but I know that Marxism generally views religion as a way to control and placate a population. Marx famously called it "The opiate of the masses" in the medical sense, meaning that believing that Jesus loves you makes life under the crushing fist of capitalism a little more bearable. its important to note that religious anarchism does in fact exist, for example tolstoy famously was a christian anarchist. "the kingdom of god is within you" is considered an extremely important text by anarchists in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_anarchism
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Nov 28, 2020 16:56
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Are the Amish an example of a successful anarchist or possibly communist community? I don't know enough about anarchism, communism, or the Amish to know for sure whish one it would be. amish no but some quakers practice a form of loose anarcho-pacifism
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Nov 28, 2020 16:56
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:I strongly disagree with this. Science and religion are two very different things and neither should be treated as a substitute for the other on a mass scale. Science is for determining which rocks are which and why the weather is trying to kill us and how many numbers there are and things like that, it should be apolitical and amoral and trying to base a belief system around it really doesn't make much sense. i havent done a lot of research into this specific line but ive seen a lot of takes within academia that religion/myth was essentially the expression of what we now call philosophy and ideology before there was concrete divisions between these various concepts edit: also sorry i just spammed the thread ill try not to do that again in the future
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Nov 28, 2020 17:02
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gradenko_2000 posted:It was Bakunin that had an especially atheistic bent in his socialism, while Marx's "opiate of the people" remark can be taken to mean less that it needs to be abolished outright, and more that people clinging to religion is a natural outgrowth of them seeking reprieve from their feelings of oppression. The full passage is more prosaic and nuanced, but his expression of this point is actually somewhat poetic “ Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. . . .”.
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Nov 28, 2020 17:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:
Not quite, Bakunin believed it was important to demolish religious power structures along with the rest but didn't beleive it was necessary for the socialist movement to be made up solely of atheists and opposed making it a requirement for membership to the International, since that would effectively doom it to a minor club with no presence in the working masses of much of the world. He like Marx Opiate qoute believed religion was popular amongst workers as a way of making their lives more tolerable, the other two being the wineshop (meaning all minor distractions) and social revolution. His solution to the God question was to work for the social revolution and prove it is a viable alternative to both. And given how the two nations Italy and Spain where he had the most sucess in building the workers movement are both famous for a strong and powerful Catholic church it seems to have been on the correct path.
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Nov 28, 2020 17:38
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For the sake of (attempted) brevity I'm just replying to uncop's post, which I think also touches on some of the points made by gradenko_2000, OwlFancier and Space Cadet Omoly.uncop posted:Yes. For instance, Marx acknowledged how religion was the main form of ideology in feudal society (back when the Pope was well above kings in stature and power). While the hierarchical command and exploitation aspect of religion only really comes in with class society, the soothing and drugging effect is presumably why people form religions without any (class) coercion as well. Essentially, for the duration that religion has existed, it has done so because it's been socially necessary, and can only be swept away once it has become unnecessary. The war on drugs is a good example of what happens when someone tries to fight against social necessity and win by doing it really hard. Thanks, this is helpful. To push on this idea of when religion can be swept away once it's become unnecessary -- is there any consideration to the idea that for many people, spiritual needs are inextricable from material needs? quote:Dialectical materialism doesn't try to derive "ought" from "is". It treats oughts as a given, something that don't need to be derived because they already are. They're concrete social impulses that can be discovered by studying people's moral demands. So far as people disagree on oughts and struggle over them, they can either come to an agreement and unite, or the strongest team can subordinate the rest. Marx makes moral judgments because he's human and doesn't believe in impartiality as a precondition for making scientific claims, but he doesn't consider his judgments to carry any scientific weight unless others agree and force that morality on society. I'm not sure how to square your first two sentences -- your second sentence reads to me as a more detailed way of how to derive ought from is. It also sounds like you're suggesting that Marx views moral judgments as a type of scientific claim (even if he doesn't believe his own moral judgments are scientifically special, per se)? Maybe I'm being dense here, is the nuance that Marx is basically unconcerned with the concept of morality insofar as it's fundamentally based in idealism, and that the concept of "ought" is just an imaginary tool for persuading others to unite so you don't get crushed by the guy with the really big stick? quote:And Cpt_Obvious is right: religion isn't the words on the pages of the books that religious people read, it's the actual social organisation of religious people, which in turn is the outcome of struggles between religious people. Religions pretend to be unchangeable atemporal truths, but in practice they are anything but. On the other hand, there's a point where religious practice drifts so far from religious writings that a new kind of faith needs to be established. There is also a point when faith and rituals stop being religious at all. All sincerely held morality is a matter of faith, and social practice is the impartial judge of all faiths. Policies either work out or they don't, and who they work out for is critical. I find this to be a shallow analysis of religion, and a bit of a false dichotomy. Religion is both the words on the pages and the actual social organization of religious people, and these dynamics both depend on and shape each other. Religion can/does entail making up atemporal Truth, but I think it's a inadequate reduction to say that ultimately this is what religion is about, even textually. I'm not sure how social practice could be seen as impartial; I thought that the partiality of social practice is exactly why nothing humans do is impartial, because everything we do happens in the context of social practice? And like science, when experiments work or don't work, it's not a given that this definitively tells us whether the interventions being studied can actually have an effect or not; experiments are never perfect in a laboratory setting, let alone in the context of real world social practice. If a policy doesn't work out, does that mean it was a bad policy that should be discarded? Or did the experimental design contribute to the failure in a way that could be mitigated the next time you "run the experiment"? Sometimes the answer is the former, sometimes it's the latter, and teasing this out is a key element of the scientific process of discovery. quote:For what it's worth, I disagree that faith could ever be subordinated to science. Science is the antithesis of faith, it makes profane evidence into a sword that attempts to savagely execute everything that people find sacred, and break up established communities. When scientific claims enter popular consciousness, they enter the realm of faith. They need to duke it out against established faith-based claims as equals, and victory only integrates them into the dominant faith without making that faith more scientific in principle. I think a directly science-based society requires a radical social dynamism that overcomes the need for the stability that faith-based communities provide, and mass science that most people seriously participate in at some point of their lives. Agreed, I don't think I'd say that faith should be subordinated to science, but IMO the more I learn about hard science, especially post-relativity particle physics and astrophysics, the more I see it as an incredible vessel in which to place the spiritual impulse that I believe is basically universal in humanity. I don’t really think this would require any particular societal dynamism, it would be more about science being the process by which we commune with nature, both in terms of finding joy & beauty in the mysteries we unravel and infinite wonder in the new mysteries we discover upon that unraveling. The drug discussion is interesting, cards on the table I read the Michael Pollan book about psychedelics (How to Change Your Mind) a few months ago and I guess where my head’s at is, if I was attempting to design an utopian society it would probably entail some sort of psychedelic-facilitated religion that holds science as the holy method of getting closer to nature and basically nature=god (in addition to some form of leftist governance and economy). Similar to other posters’ experiences, I grew up in a secular household. I went to church once or twice as a kid and only because I slept over at friends’ houses on a Saturday night and had to stay with them through Sunday morning. But my wife grew up very religious, and I’ve gone to church with her and her family probably a few dozen times now. There’s a lot I object to (primarily in the text itself) but I find the effect on strengthening a local community to be inspiring. It was something I didn't realize was missing from my life until I was exposed to it (in terms of community & ritual, not in terms of the scripture or dogma). Part of what draws me into leftism I think is that local organizing, direct action, mutual aid, etc. can have a similar community-strengthening effect as what I've observed from religion, but without the troubling entrenchment of oppressive hierarchies and morality. But deep down in my bones, and going back to the first question I posed in this post, I do believe that spiritual (and moral) needs are material needs. I can understand that economic material needs are more pressing right now, but I think any attempt to change a status quo, especially as it relates to social practice, is much more effective if there's a vision for what comes next, so I guess I'm trying to make the case for some version of religion/faith/morality being included in the socialist vision.
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Nov 28, 2020 19:51
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Thanks, this is helpful. To push on this idea of when religion can be swept away once it's become unnecessary -- is there any consideration to the idea that for many people, spiritual needs are inextricable from material needs? Spirituality is its own thing, religion is organised. The claim that religion would become unnecessary and disappear isn't really a claim that it'd be gone without a trace, it'd just disappear as an external historical force that compels people to do things. Traces of old religious beliefs might persist in all sorts of small-scale spiritual practice, and that's just personal freedom. quote:I'm not sure how to square your first two sentences -- your second sentence reads to me as a more detailed way of how to derive ought from is. It also sounds like you're suggesting that Marx views moral judgments as a type of scientific claim (even if he doesn't believe his own moral judgments are scientifically special, per se)? Maybe I'm being dense here, is the nuance that Marx is basically unconcerned with the concept of morality insofar as it's fundamentally based in idealism, and that the concept of "ought" is just an imaginary tool for persuading others to unite so you don't get crushed by the guy with the really big stick? It's not a derivation - the oughts exist directly. Everyone has opinions on what ought to be, and you can just go ask them. That's the form oughts exist in. The oughts in individuals' minds aren't truly derivations either, they exist regardless of whether that person has engaged in any sort of deep philosophical thinking about them. They just need to eat, they need to sleep, they need to do things. If they can't, they will struggle for the ability. So they will unite around certain demands even with no one trying to philosophically derive anything from reality and tell them why they should do what they do. Their ape brains just tell them that something is wrong, that it's not as it ought to be. I'd describe the process of Marx's science like this: 1) Marx studies society to learn what different kinds of people think ought to be. 2) He picks out who he thinks could (or should, but he doesn't admit this kind of unscientific favoritism) win the battle of oughts, and studies society to learn how they might be able to do it. 3) He writes texts illustrating his discoveries and peppers them with moral statements that should appeal to the people he studied in service of, in hopes that they bite and use the texts in practice. quote:I find this to be a shallow analysis of religion, and a bit of a false dichotomy. Religion is both the words on the pages and the actual social organization of religious people, and these dynamics both depend on and shape each other. Religion can/does entail making up atemporal Truth, but I think it's a inadequate reduction to say that ultimately this is what religion is about, even textually. Here, you are assuming an "either-or" way of thinking, and of course the things I said don't make sense looked at that way. AndIf reality was either-or, social struggles would cleanly end with one winner and one truth. But it's not "sometimes-sometimes" either, there's a structure and an objective pull toward certain types of consequences.
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Nov 28, 2020 21:07
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uncop posted:Spirituality is its own thing, religion is organised. The claim that religion would become unnecessary and disappear isn't really a claim that it'd be gone without a trace, it'd just disappear as an external historical force that compels people to do things. Traces of old religious beliefs might persist in all sorts of small-scale spiritual practice, and that's just personal freedom. I'll be honest, I think that a lot of Socialist lenses and what I'm hearing here tend to view religion as very transactional. Religion offers a lot of mental models and guidance that I'm not sure can be discounted. For example, Judaism and Catholicism both offer processes for mourning (A long period of quiet reflection or a short period of being utterly surrounded by death).
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Nov 29, 2020 13:49
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'to be is to do' said hegel 'to do is to be' said marx 'dobedobedoo' said sinatra
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Nov 29, 2020 14:13
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I think the point of materialism is that you can characterise almost anything in a "transactional" fashion, in the sense that you can look at what people put into it and what they get out of it and you can also ask if there are other ways to elicit those outcomes. Certainly the adherents of religions might not view them as transactional but people do a lot of things that they probably wouldn't view as transactional but which could still be viewed through that lens if you were so inclined.
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Nov 29, 2020 14:21
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Very good video on dogmatism, anarchist analysis, and theory wanks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVhuKT7rfyI
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Nov 29, 2020 22:14
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I don't think there is any fundamental conflict between intuition and science. Intuition can be characterised as a mode of thinking that involves synthesis of prior experience, as "stored" in the synaptic connections within the brain. As such, intuition induces new ideas. The unscientific part comes when those new ideas are not tested against the objective world via the scientific method. One can equally well comes up with new, unscientific ideas via a logical process, as, fundamentally, logic will always be based on an arbitrary set of axioms which are then extrapolated into an entire system of reasoning. If your prior knowledge is e.g. Newtonian physics, then you would, via logical thought, be able to construct the schematics for a faster-than-light vessel. You could also just set up a robot to randomly generate new ideas, e.g. chemical synthetic processes (I have actually done this particular thing). That's neither intuitive nor logical but, as long as those "ideas" are then tested in experiment, they are scientific. "Science" is simply a way of validating new ideas and makes no distinction between how those ideas were generated. The hierarchy of logic over intuition is nonsense from the quasi-religious side of the Enlightenment and, increasingly, we are relying much more on intuitive thought in our machines themselves, in the form of Artificial Neural Networks, which are a very obvious (and pure) expression of that mode of thought. Sharks Eat Bear posted:Agreed, I don't think I'd say that faith should be subordinated to science, but IMO the more I learn about hard science, especially post-relativity particle physics and astrophysics, the more I see it as an incredible vessel in which to place the spiritual impulse that I believe is basically universal in humanity. I don’t really think this would require any particular societal dynamism, it would be more about science being the process by which we commune with nature, both in terms of finding joy & beauty in the mysteries we unravel and infinite wonder in the new mysteries we discover upon that unraveling. I generally think it's incredibly difficult to truly live a life without faith. The current science consensus seems to be that the entire universe will rip itself apart with dark energy and every hint that we ever existed will be erased for eternity. That's a fairly hard sell to most people, although I have no idea what a society would look like with that knowledge included in early education e.g. in lieu of religious education. I think it would be fairly easy, on the other hand, to exactly include those mysteries into an eco-socialist quasi-religion. Generally, people seem to do well then there is a struggle to push up against: Whether that's fighting for the revolution in the first place, fighting the Nazis etc. It gives meaning to our lives. It's much less easy to hold things together afterwards, when you have a generation born into a world without that kind of "mission": We've seen how that ends up with the boomers. A mission to "Repair the Earth and then Green the Galaxy" seems like the kind of thing you could drive a society with for quite a while but it would require a spiritual aspect, I think, because science alone can offer nothing but a vast, uncaring void. Ultimately I think the fascists are half-right in that people do need conflict (we have evolved for a life of constant struggle after all) but they are wrong in that the conflict does not need to be against other people: It can be against things as they are for the sake of things as we wish them to be. Active Quasar fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Nov 30, 2020 |
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Nov 30, 2020 19:56
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Disnesquick posted:Ultimately I think the fascists are half-right in that people do need conflict (we have evolved for a life of constant struggle after all) but they are wrong in that the conflict does not need to be against other people: It can be against things as they are for the sake of things as we wish them to be. This is an incredibly bad take on biology and evolution and what counts as “enrichment” for a living organism. Conflict on its own and for its own sake does not beget homeostasis or mental well-being or whatever you’re suggesting it does, and there are plenty of ways of providing enrichment and meaning to the lives of animals of all kinds including humans (who are fundamentally no different, for all that we still love to tell ourselves that we are) without reducing it to “add conflict or stressors”. Saying that humans “were evolved for conflict” is like saying any other stupid evopsych half-truth.
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Nov 30, 2020 20:43
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Disnesquick posted:"Science" is simply a way of validating new ideas and makes no distinction between how those ideas were generated. The hierarchy of logic over intuition is nonsense from the quasi-religious side of the Enlightenment and, increasingly, we are relying much more on intuitive thought in our machines themselves, in the form of Artificial Neural Networks, which are a very obvious (and pure) expression of that mode of thought. Can you expand on this? I'm not sure why Logic > Intuition is nonsense (or how a computer could generate non-logical thought). If intuition is generating illogical ideas, surely that's less a problem insofar as there is a cost to validating ideas and logical ideas will be more likely to be validated, as a generlization? I tend to think of this with a lens of pragmatism vs. the idealism that I suspect was more prevalent from the Enlightenment... If this is getting too off topic though, happy to take it to PMs.
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Nov 30, 2020 21:27
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Can you expand on this? I'm not sure why Logic > Intuition is nonsense (or how a computer could generate non-logical thought). If intuition is generating illogical ideas, surely that's less a problem insofar as there is a cost to validating ideas and logical ideas will be more likely to be validated, as a generlization? I tend to think of this with a lens of pragmatism vs. the idealism that I suspect was more prevalent from the Enlightenment... I don't want to get too technical, but... You're creating a hierarchy wherein logic is better than intuition because logic is more reflective of either a process (logical deduction) or reality (by better observing objective truth, or something in a similar vein). This is reflective of some of the core tenants of the Enlightenment, which was premised on the idea that humans could be rational, and that through rational observation (and applying a scientific process) we could accurately describe and assess the objective world. This is a particular type of "scientism" because it assumes a few things that aren't true: namely that there is some sort of objective, observable reality, and that we are able to identify and describe it. The larger argument is that the distinction between logic and intuition ins't particularly meaningful, because our own biases and inability to make accurate judgements means that the concept of something being "logical" is, in of itself, kind of an oxymoron. This is a broad strokes description of the post-modern reaction to the Enlightenment.
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Nov 30, 2020 21:31
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Can you expand on this? I'm not sure why Logic > Intuition is nonsense (or how a computer could generate non-logical thought). If intuition is generating illogical ideas, surely that's less a problem insofar as there is a cost to validating ideas and logical ideas will be more likely to be validated, as a generlization? I tend to think of this with a lens of pragmatism vs. the idealism that I suspect was more prevalent from the Enlightenment... Exploration of "logic" is perfectly on topic for a discussion like this. Leftist theories have large overarching theories about how rational thought can be coopted and biased.
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Nov 30, 2020 21:33
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Exploration of "logic" is perfectly on topic for a discussion like this. Leftist theories have large overarching theories about how rational thought can be coopted and biased. I would not say this is true. Many leftist theories - like many political theories in general - assume a level of rationalism and objectivity - both in the ability of people to make rational deductions, and that individuals can act rationally. In fact, thats one of the critiques of classical Marxism.
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Nov 30, 2020 21:36
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Ok Comboomer posted:This is an incredibly bad take on biology and evolution and what counts as “enrichment” for a living organism. What a moronic way to write a post. If you want people to actually take you seriously then drop this aggressive line of phrasing things. You come across as an angry little child. Anyway, let's tear down the ignorant stupidity contained behind the aggression: Humans are clearly evolved for conflict. This isn't in question because any successful organism is evolved for conflict and the adaptations are incredibly obvious. A sharp claw is an evolutionary adaption for conflict, as are sharp teeth. an immune system is an evolutionary adaptation for conflict against micro-organisms. It's a well-supported hypothesis that an under-stimulated immune system leads to negative outcomes. Also, enrichment is provided to animals, generally, by doing such things as hiding food to induce foraging behavior. A more complex version of that is to provide a puzzle feeder. The animal is put into conflict with their environment because when food is simply provided, the animals have a higher likelihood of becoming depressed. The idea that "creatures have evolved for conflict" is not really down the road evolutionary psychology because evopsych, in its forms both as a field of actual computational/theoretical evolutionary biology (e.g. Trivers as an early example) and the nonsense stuff that non-scientists like to tack onto it (girls like pink because... etc.), invokes specific behavioral traits. "Predators have claws to kill animals", "humans have the ability to run down quadrapedal prey", "humans show metabolic adaptations that are highly indicative of long periods of starvation" etc. are clear indicators of "a life of constant struggle" but aren't mentioning behavior at all. Remarking that we have evolved for a life of constant struggle has not made the arguments you seem to have invented in your head.
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Nov 30, 2020 21:42
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Can you expand on this? I'm not sure why Logic > Intuition is nonsense (or how a computer could generate non-logical thought). If intuition is generating illogical ideas, surely that's less a problem insofar as there is a cost to validating ideas and logical ideas will be more likely to be validated, as a generlization? I tend to think of this with a lens of pragmatism vs. the idealism that I suspect was more prevalent from the Enlightenment... If we break it down to the actual hardware of neurons that thought is running on, then intuition is effectively using learned behavior to generate new thoughts. The method of that learning is via the formation, and reinforcement of synaptic links. The result of that is that connections are formed between different thoughts so that one pattern of thinking will induce a second pattern. Here is an example: "I have previously encountered fire and it is hot and hurts: I avoid touching hot things because I think they will hurt. Fire is also orange but I have encountered other orange things and they do not hurt. I am wary of orange but not so much as hot things. I may assume that orange things have a chance of being hot". A computer can generate the same kind of thinking by copying the mechanisms behind that kind of pattern connection. Something like an artificial neural network will basically learn to recognise patterns in the data an be able to reproduce the learned response when a similar pattern is produced. This isn't logical (except with logic as the fundamental substrate) because it's not doing something like "whiskers + ears + eyes -> cat" but rather synthesizing all the little hints. Something like a decision tree is much closer to logical thinking because it will learn that kind of "if A and B then C" structure. Most of the cutting-edge advances in machine-learning have been about recreating the intuitive angle because it's so powerful. What it doesn't do, however, is explain how the conclusion was reached, so something like a medical diagnosis AI would probably be better built from the kind of logical predicate structures that will actually say "patient has A, B but not C, therefore possibly I, II but definitely not III". An ANN there will just say "45% I, 50% II and 5% III". edit: My point about hierarchy here is that, at the end of the day, we can generate falsifiable hypotheses with both intuition and logic. "I feel that the experiment will work if it's hotter because that's worked before" vs "The chemicals involved have high viscosity which decreases with heat so increasing the temperature will increase the rate of mixing, resulting in more molecular collisions, increasing the rate of reaction". The former is intuitive, the latter is logical. Both result in the same hypothesis though, which is then tested with the scientific method. We may prefer the side-effects of the logical method (as in the medical example, intuition is a black box, but logic gives us a modular deconstruction) but from the perspective of the scientific method, as long as we've run the test, the result is the same. editedit: I want to stress that this line of argument specifically applies to whether something is scientific or unscientific. I'm not trying to make an argument about whether or not intuition or logic gives us a better defence against propaganda (as Cpt_Obvious mentions). Active Quasar fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Nov 30, 2020 |
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Nov 30, 2020 21:54
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Aruan posted:I would not say this is true. Many leftist theories - like many political theories in general - assume a level of rationalism and objectivity - both in the ability of people to make rational deductions, and that individuals can act rationally. In fact, thats one of the critiques of classical Marxism. You should read Marx's opinions on propaganda and how we are constantly barraged by illogical messaging every second of every day with the express goal of tricking us to toss aside rational frameworks and embrace irrational compulsions and beliefs in order to maintain a power structure which exploits and oppresses us.
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Nov 30, 2020 22:00
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Cpt_Obvious posted:You should read Marx's opinions on propaganda and how we are constantly barraged by illogical messaging every second of every day with the express goal of tricking us to toss aside rational frameworks and embrace irrational compulsions and beliefs in order to maintain a power structure which exploits and oppresses us. Yes, Marx believed in rationalism and objectivity. I believe this is a problem with Marxism - and is something that later Marxist scholars have also moved away from. I do not believe in an objective worldview (or that if there is its unknowable by humans, who are fundamentally irrational, to the point where it doesn't make it a difference).
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Nov 30, 2020 22:29
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Aruan posted:Yes, Marx believed in rationalism and objectivity. I believe this is a problem with Marxism - and is something that later Marxist scholars have also moved away from. I do not believe in an objective worldview (or that if there is its unknowable by humans, who are fundamentally irrational, to the point where it doesn't make it a difference). Oh, he most certainly did not believe in either of those things, that's why he was a materialist.
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Nov 30, 2020 22:36
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Aruan posted:Yes, Marx believed in rationalism and objectivity. I believe this is a problem with Marxism - and is something that later Marxist scholars have also moved away from. I do not believe in an objective worldview (or that if there is its unknowable by humans, who are fundamentally irrational, to the point where it doesn't make it a difference). this seems like a metaphysical disagreement. if people could "know an objective worldview," what should we do differently?
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Nov 30, 2020 22:36
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Oh, he most certainly did not believe in either of those things, that's why he was a materialist. I think you're confusing terms. Marx absolutely believed in an objective worldview - that's what Marxism is at its core, that Marx recognized the objectivity reality of how human societies are formed and interact, and how these interactions are driven by a predictable dialectic. And Marx absolutely believe in rationalism - the entire premise of historical materialism and Marxism is that the dialectical interaction between capital and labor is observable, predictable and knowable through the application of rationalism. Marx was a scholar in the 1800s. Of course he believed in rationalism. Almost everyone did at that time. Neither of these things have anything to do with materialism - which at its base argues that things matter. Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Nov 30, 2020 |
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Nov 30, 2020 22:53
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Doc Hawkins posted:this seems like a metaphysical disagreement. if people could "know an objective worldview," what should we do differently? Seek that knowledge out and apply it to our life. Marxism is an example of an objective worldview, i.e. that there is a process that drives human societies, that this process is observable and knowable, and that this process is deterministic. There is an argument to be made (and one made by later Marxist scholars) that the value of Marx isn't in this specific, teleological, deterministic worldview, but rather in the observation that class struggle is an important explanatory factory in human societies (if not "the" singular factor), which I would agree with. But if you are a for real original Marxist, then you by definition believe in objective truth and rationalism. Also, when we talk about rationalism, we're also talking about a process. Our society is a secular society that even today believes in rationalism. Owlspiracy fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Nov 30, 2020 |
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Nov 30, 2020 22:55
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Disnesquick posted:What a moronic way to write a post. If you want people to actually take you seriously then drop this aggressive line of phrasing things. You come across as an angry little child. I literally work in evolutionary biology you petulant clownbaby. Organisms (or really, genes) evolve to reproduce, organisms/genes that reproduce most successfully are deemed fit. The “conflict” as both a physical and metaphysical ideal that you appear to be so fetishistically fixated on is largely incidental. Organisms readily lose defensive and offensive features when the material cost to keeping them outweighs the benefit, or even when a random mutation eliminates or breaks the function of a structure and the gene line muddles along regardless. Organisms are full of genetic accidents and evolutionary dead ends that don’t have any real direct correlation to “conflict”. Your use of the immune system priming hypothesis, wherein epigenetic and biochemical changes trigger immune adaptation to the pathogens in a person’s environment is a seriously poor fit for the argument you’re trying to make about humans creating a better universe for themselves. It relies on the same kinds of anthropomorphizing thought that drives homeopaths. Furthermore, let me reread your original comment back to you: Disnesquick posted:Ultimately I think the fascists are half-right in that people do need conflict (we have evolved for a life of constant struggle after all) but they are wrong in that the conflict does not need to be against other people: It can be against things as they are for the sake of things as we wish them to be. How the gently caress is anybody supposed to take this except as some modernist “grand narrative” hoo-ha, with a side of “I guess you gotta hand it to those fascists and their obsessive beliefs about big struggles and stories”? Humans need to have their physical and material needs met, they need to be healthy mentally and physically, they need to be entertained, and many of them need companionship, community, and family and/or reproduction to be happy. Saying that “the fascists are half right” about “the need for conflict” is like boot camp mentality. It’s like when your dad tells you that you’ll appreciate that new bike more if you earn it yourself, not because it will teach self-reliance, confidence, and the value of money and objects where previously you may not have had them, but because it will make you tough.
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Nov 30, 2020 22:59
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Aruan posted:I think you're confusing terms. Marx absolutely believed in an objective worldview - that's what Marxism is at its core, that Marx recognized the objectivity reality of progress and the determined outcome of the dialectic. And Marx absolutely believe in rationalism - the entire premise of historical materialism and Marxism is that the dialectical interaction between capital and labor is observable, predictable and knowable through the application of rationalism. Also: you seem to be arguing against scientific truth, especially the concepts of observation and predictability.
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Nov 30, 2020 23:01
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