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T-man posted:history is the process of people slivering off chunks of philosophy and calling it a specialization that eventually builds itself into a discipline. sociology is just applied philosophy That’s what philosophers tell themselves, that everything is applied philosophy. In reality, philosophy organizes knowledge so it has been well positioned to identify gaps in it, set out to study them, and finally discover that they couldn’t be resolved by means of philosophy. Even math has empirical scientific roots: people discovered the solutions to problems first by measuring things, and then figured out general formulas based on the measurements.
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Jan 5, 2021 10:03
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Shear Modulus posted:marx pursued the highest practice: posting Marx is a load bearing post
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Jan 5, 2021 10:39
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quote:In just one year, 2015, at least thirty-four senior executives of Chinese companies were arrested by the state, including the CEO of Fosun which had acquired Club Med in the same year.17 Chinese call these the sha zhu bang, “pig-killing lists.” Jon Joe posted:President Xi, my people yearn for freedom. look it may not be perfect, but we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. i may not agree with the use of capital punishment by the state, but with proper means testing,
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Jan 5, 2021 11:46
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uncop posted:That’s what philosophers tell themselves, that everything is applied philosophy. In reality, philosophy organizes knowledge so it has been well positioned to identify gaps in it, set out to study them, and finally discover that they couldn’t be resolved by means of philosophy. Even math has empirical scientific roots: people discovered the solutions to problems first by measuring things, and then figured out general formulas based on the measurements. My understanding is that thinking of math as empirical is generally discouraged, and that mathematicians tend to be attracted to Platonism for fairly obvious reasons. I get what you're saying, though, and there are always spicy things like string theory converging with natural number sets in unexpected ways to make things interesting to a lay observer. And I do agree that philosophy is basically a meta-discipline at this point. While we're defining things, contemporary academic and otherwise broadly empirical history is best thought of as the study of the evidence of the past available in the present. At the same time it is also one or more overlapping sets of rules for making up a story about the past that can at least make a plausible claim to accuracy.
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Jan 5, 2021 11:56
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Shear Modulus posted:marx pursued the highest practice: posting
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Jan 5, 2021 12:00
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uncop posted:That’s what philosophers tell themselves, that everything is applied philosophy. In reality, philosophy organizes knowledge so it has been well positioned to identify gaps in it, set out to study them, and finally discover that they couldn’t be resolved by means of philosophy. Even math has empirical scientific roots: people discovered the solutions to problems first by measuring things, and then figured out general formulas based on the measurements. Speaking as a physicist... Lots of physics has been discovered by simply thinking without measurement or sometimes even good reason. General relativity (Einstein simply realised Newtonian gravity doesn't work in special relativity so he thought it up from thought experiments alone; it's actually unbelievable how ex nihilo he did it lol), antimatter (Dirac realised you could have a negative solution to his formulas and decided that there was no reason it wouldn't work), Higgs boson (its predicted properties were literally just picked because the formula looked beautiful to Higgs). Of course, all these people being scientists, they then made predictions that could be tested (bending of light plus perihelion of mercury; antimatter properties; and the LHC respectively) on which their theories lived or died, but to disregard the philosophical root that scientific thought has is a grave mistake. Science is, quite like light, dual in nature: philosophy AND empiricism at the same time; and not simply some percentage mix, but wholly philosophical and wholly empirical at once. The moment you disregard either facet of it is the moment your science ceases to go forward. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 12:12
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Like, sorry but as a relativist I gotta nerd out now. When Einstein debuted GR in 1915, he literally had the final equations only, we call them Einstein Field Equations now. He thought them up from the following postulates: observers agree on physical results irrespective of frame, speed of light is a physical result, inertial mass and gravitational mass are the same thing. These were a result of a series of thought experiments, aka he just thought so hard about what would happen if light was actually 40 miles an hour or if he were trapped in an elevator accelerating. From these he deduced concepts of curved geometry, invented an entire branch of math with some help, and derived the field equations. When faced with his goddamn equations, which are so abstract they are a single line but actually represent thousands of equations at once, he realised: you cannot solve them, it's impossible. Too many. But no matter, that's how it works. To prove they work, he has to essentially by hand perform numerical differentiation, basically painstaking approximations and calculations that we'd use a computer for. Only then he found it actually did get close to explaining the perihelion of mercury, within approximations he introduced. He would be proven wrong about the usability of the theory within a year by Schwarzschild, who derived an exact solution of EFEs for a point mass, which allowed the theory to be used for a thing orbiting a thing - but when Einstein himself was done with his explanation of gravity it was literally impossible to use it for that elementary purpose! And yet he was completely right that he solved it. If that ain't a philosophical theory I dunno what is. Ok, back to dialectics dex_sda fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 12:42
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My pet example is Newton developing gravity to prove that there was room for the invisible hand of god in science, and more importantly, thereby own Descartes in posting combat. Also as Einstein was a Marxist, his work is technically on-topic.
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Jan 5, 2021 12:49
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Hodgepodge posted:My pet example is Newton developing gravity to prove that there was room for the invisible hand of god in science, and more importantly, thereby own Descartes in posting combat. He also owned his posting enemy, Hooke. Of course, to show it is also about empiricism, consider that Kepler thought the description of orbits was going to be his treatise on how God made everything perfectly beautiful and platonic but it didn't work, and he found the actual formulas through painstaking trial and error, and an open mind for the truth. And Newton built on Kepler, and Einstein as much as he simply thought his poo poo up ex nihilo still knew it had to approximate Newtonian mechanics at low speeds and low gravities (since they broadly worked) which gave him a foothold. But, like I said, philosophy and empiricism working in tandem, not opposed. And yes Einstein was a socialist and a Marxist (more the former than the latter), huge supporter of gay rights, rights of minorities, animal rights... if you gotta pick someone to admire, one of the smartest humans who was also an excellent human being is not a bad shout dex_sda fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 12:55
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ToxicAcne posted:Any place to get started on Keynes? Especially for a noob at economics. i read keynes the return of the master by robert skidelski and it was a pretty good intro to his main ideas and their reception by economists and policymakers. it was written by keynes's most famous biographer and paints a pretty rosy picture of him, but not a bad place to start
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Jan 5, 2021 13:12
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dex_sda posted:if you gotta pick someone to admire, one of the smartest humans who was also an excellent human being is not a bad shout privately einstein was quite the dickhead, but who isn't these days lmfao
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Jan 5, 2021 13:20
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Finicums Wake posted:i read keynes the return of the master by robert skidelski and it was a pretty good intro to his main ideas and their reception by economists and policymakers. it was written by keynes's most famous biographer and paints a pretty rosy picture of him, but not a bad place to start hell yeah added this to my reading list.
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Jan 5, 2021 13:21
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Truga posted:privately einstein was quite the dickhead, but who isn't these days lmfao he had an ego which impacted some scientific posting rivalries but I mean, he was Einstein. At some point smugly saying "I didn't send in the paper to be scrutinised, I sent it to be published" is an appropriate level of self-confidence. He was a nightmare in intimate relationships though, not like a pest or anything but a dickhead for sure
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Jan 5, 2021 13:28
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dex_sda posted:he had an ego which impacted some scientific posting rivalries but I mean, he was Einstein. He was a nightmare in intimate relationships though, not like a pest or anything but a dickhead for sure 1994's IQ with Tim Robbins was not an accurate portrayal of Einstein? 
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Jan 5, 2021 13:30
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dex_sda posted:And yes Einstein was a socialist and a Marxist (more the former than the latter), huge supporter of gay rights, rights of minorities, animal rights... if you gotta pick someone to admire, one of the smartest humans who was also an excellent human being is not a bad shout His first wife was Serbian, and he was a huge piece of poo poo to her, forcing her to abandon her academic career to be a housewife, having her do house chores and solve equations he couldn't be assed to do while never attributing her with anything (mind you, his most famous work was his alone, afaik, but for a lot of his miraculously quick mathematical work he had a convenient home computer at hand), and blamed her for their children's health problems. Avoid idealizing people too much. e: not that she was that great of a person either, lol, but that's besides the point my dad fucked around with this message at 13:45 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 13:30
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Jon Joe posted:President Xi, my people yearn for freedom. china owns for killing billionaires but alas, still languishes in the 'universal access to affordable care' stage of healthcare pls much as we do
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Jan 5, 2021 13:31
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my dad posted:His first was was Serbian, and he was a huge piece of poo poo to her, forcing her to abandon her academic career to be a housewife, having her do house chores and solve equations he couldn't be assed to do while never attributing her with anything (mind you, his most famous work was his alone, afaik, but for a lot of his miraculously quick mathematical work he had a convenient home computer at hand), and blamed her for their children's health problems. Btw, Mileva's contribution is overstated often, she really didn't have that much to do with even the fledgling ideas at the start. He definitely used her as a sounding board and was a piece of poo poo to her in private life, though. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 13:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:hell yeah added this to my reading list. it was written, and i read it, around the time of the financial collapse, so it has a bunch of stuff about that as well iirc
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Jan 5, 2021 13:32
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dex_sda posted:Btw, Mileva's contribution is overstated often, she really didn't have that much to do with even the fledgling ideas at the start. He definitely used her as a sounding board and was a piece of poo poo to her in private life, though. As I said, his most famous theoretical work is his alone, and contributing to that's is what usually gets falsely attributed to her - the real thing that gets ignored because it's much less prestigious is the constant mathematical drugework she had to do on his behalf. It's a lot easier to come forward with your brilliant ideas when someone else spent months double checking your work, rearranging and solving equations, pointing out your fuckups, etc
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Jan 5, 2021 13:40
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my dad posted:As I said, his most famous theoretical work is his alone, and contributing to that's is what usually gets falsely attributed to her - the real thing that gets ignored because it's much less prestigious is the constant mathematical drugework she had to do on his behalf. It's a lot easier to come forward with your brilliant ideas when someone else spent months double checking your work, rearranging and solving equations, pointing out your fuckups, etc I understood what you meant, my point is the calculations from annum mirabilis papers are really quite elementary and without any drudgework, like high-school level at times, so the claim doesn't scan. Now unpaid editor labor for sure and it would have taken considerable amounts of time and saved Einstein a lot of effort and errors and should have been acknowledged, but that's never the thing being bandied about.
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Jan 5, 2021 13:48
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I think we're talking past each other at this point, and I've already derailed the thread enough.
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Jan 5, 2021 13:51
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my dad posted:I think we're talking past each other at this point, and I've already derailed the thread enough. Yeah fair enough. Suffice to say I agree Einstein was an rear end in a top hat to Mileva and she deserved way better than that.
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Jan 5, 2021 13:52
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descartes was such a dumb bitch lol
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Jan 5, 2021 14:46
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dex_sda posted:And yes Einstein was a socialist and a Marxist (more the former than the latter), huge supporter of gay rights, rights of minorities, animal rights... if you gotta pick someone to admire, one of the smartest humans who was also an excellent human being is not a bad shout I think no other historical figure had their politics thrown into obscurity like he had when I tell people that Einstein wrote "Why Socialism?", it works to at least intrigue a lot of people for praxischat
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Jan 5, 2021 16:34
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When did Western Social Democratic parties give up on the goal of ending Capitalism?
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Jan 5, 2021 16:39
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ToxicAcne posted:When did Western Social Democratic parties give up on the goal of ending Capitalism? they really split apart during the first world war but that's an open question. arguably the end of bretton woods in the early 70s was the beginning and then all the labour parties went full neoliberal at the turn of the 70s/80s decade, and then fully escalated to Blairite poo poo in the 90s based on their support of ww1 i think the parties' commitments were pretty insincere
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Jan 5, 2021 16:44
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ToxicAcne posted:When did Western Social Democratic parties give up on the goal of ending Capitalism? I've been posting a bunch of excerpts about the German SPD in the Succ Zone as I go through the book, and their leadership had stopped trying in the 1920s. I think it's earlier than that, because Luxemburg's beef with Kautsky in the early 20th century was about his revisionism that capitalism would go away on its own and so no more need for revolution.
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Jan 5, 2021 16:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've been posting a bunch of excerpts about the German SPD in the Succ Zone as I go through the book, and their leadership had stopped trying in the 1920s. yeah, kautsky was influential in the whole idea that you could just reform away capitalism, hence why jacobin mysteriously references him all the time
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Jan 5, 2021 16:47
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The roots of revisionism in the SPD go back to like the 1890s and Bernstein
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Jan 5, 2021 16:51
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ToxicAcne posted:When did Western Social Democratic parties give up on the goal of ending Capitalism? they didn't, but non-revolutionary socialists like Eduard Bernstein (a major figure in Germany's SPD) were adamant that capitalism could be over by peaceful means through socialism simply being better at providing for society, something he pulled from his considerations on Marx then with the WW2 over you had the global realignment and the social-democratic left was far more acceptable than the communist one in the West, which is why they were able to score important victories. However, after Mai 68, the May of 1968 in France, the socialists of Europe basically folded into a policy of consensual stability which, with Bretton Woods unpegging the dollar guarantee from the United States from the gold, proved to be a fatal mistake to them. the big lesson there: the French socialists and some communists, for some reason, did not intend to seize power even after knowing that de Gaulle fled the country and revolutionary sentiment was high. The general rallied and the rest is loving history. Afterwards, all social-democrats were "well, look at France" and suddenly who is this François Mitterand guy?
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Jan 5, 2021 17:04
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atelier morgan posted:china owns for killing billionaires but alas, still languishes in the 'universal access to affordable care' stage of healthcare pls much as we do My understanding is that while healthcare isn't free in china it's not nearly as expensive as in the us due to insurance companies being under the thumb of the state
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Jan 5, 2021 17:32
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china also still has a large rural population needing the cheap fundamentals of care more than anything very advanced or expensive, so attempting to provide the latter truly universally is probably still mistimed. which is arguably true in the us as well, with the difference that incrementality works better when you have a functioning state.
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Jan 5, 2021 17:38
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atelier morgan posted:china owns for killing billionaires but alas, still languishes in the 'universal access to affordable care' stage of healthcare pls much as we do i think after the rural/extreme policy initiative raising the overall quality of life is next on the ccp's agenda. they want to make china the world's biggest consumer market and take over from america as the world's economic centre so they're looking to boost wages, reduce housing costs, provide healthcare etc the kind of stuff you can do when you're in the keynesian honeymoon period where the rate of return is high enough that you can siphon off enough profit from capital to do it (+ they have the added advantage of state owned enterprises being a major part of the economy and the freedom to lop off billionaire heads + nationalize whatever when they want it). its still going to lead to internal contradictions though, lets see how they handle it
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Jan 5, 2021 17:52
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Actually lemme just go ahead and post another excerpt about the SPD because it really is a doozyquote:Despite agreement that the socialization of the economy was desirable, the idea receded ever more into the background as a practical matter, dusted off for ritual proclamations at SPD and ADGB congresses. Instead, the SPD followed the trade unions in advocating “economic democracy.” Hilferding’s friend Fritz Naphtali, director of the Free Trade Unions’ Economic Policy Research Institute, developed this program, inspired by ideas of codetermination and workplace democracy fought for by workers in 1918–19.¹¹⁶ At the ADGB congress in 1928, Naphtali argued that a genuinely democratic economy could not be constructed under capitalism but important steps in that direction could be taken. In fact, as Naphtali pointed out, public economic activity had already made inroads against capitalist anarchy and production for profit. Moreover, the market economy’s increasing centralization incited public demands for supervision of production that would culminate in state organs of control on which the trade unions should sit as representatives of the general interest.¹¹⁷ In adopting Naphtali’s program, the ADGB acknowledged that the road to socialism lay in the incremental growth of public intervention in the economy. The majority of Social Democrats agreed.¹¹⁸ This broad, rather vague goal linked economic and political reform but did not inspire the day-to-day practice of the SPD or the ADGB. Their actual social-economic program was Sozialpolitik—above all, an eight-hour day and unemployment insurance. Such policies made the Weimar republic an advanced welfare state for its time and constituted the most significant social-economic gains won by Social Democrats since the revolution. All wings of the party accepted the place of honor accorded Sozialpolitik in propaganda and in the concrete work of SPD Reichstag, state, and municipal deputies.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:04
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"potentially", gently caress
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Jan 5, 2021 18:06
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i studied up a little on the SPD/KPD and death of rosa luxemburg recently, and the biggest detail that stuck out in my mind was this: when the real communists tried to batten down the hatches and fight for a revolution, they were like 30,000 strong and got crushed by the army + freikorps but when the freikorps themselves went off the leash, and the SPD called for the all the workers of the country to resist them by striking + fighting them, that resistance was like a million strong the SPD were obviously pro-capitalism revisionists, but the reason the pro-capitalism revisionists won isn't because of their insuperable conniving evil and rosa's failure to do a sectarian split early enough or something. or at least not solely because of that. the popular will to straight up destroy and remake the country wasn't there, and that's what communism takes
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Jan 5, 2021 18:08
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dead gay comedy forums posted:for some reason, did not intend to seize power even after knowing that de Gaulle fled the country and revolutionary sentiment was high. the reasons are something i went into many pages back, though a lot of people itt will disagree with me. its really 2 factors. first is the position of the french communist party basically refusing to lead any sort of revolutionary movement. this was from a variety of factors including the careerism in the party, the fear of losing their legitimacy and positions of power in the parliament, basically stalinism. the second was a separation of the youth and student movement from the workers and trade unions. at the time a lot of new left ideas tied up in ideas like maoism and foco style revolution were very popular among left youth, it was also present in SDS in the US. these kinds of politics alienated the youth who were in revolt from the rank and file workers and were fairly dismissive of the workers for what they saw as reactionary politics. the trade unions for their part were also dismissive of a lot of the youth because the leadership didnt really want any kind of social revolution and many of the leaders were social democrats at heart or in cases where they were "socialists" they were memebrs of the CP which again had pretty much degenerated into a social democratic party at that point.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:10
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i read the transitional program recently and i think that "The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership." is really the rosetta stone of trotskyism generally. the story again and again is that the conditions were ripe for revolution but the leadership hosed it up, or an actual revolution took place but the leadership hosed it up afterwards. by tragic coincidence, the wrong people were in charge each and every time, and otherwise we would be at brunch right now
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Jan 5, 2021 18:43
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That's the question that I always struggle with. In the West/ Japan, the Social Democratic parties almost always had a much stronger mass base than the Revolutionary Communists. In the few cases where this wasn't true (France and Italy) the Communists were indistinguishable from the Soc Dems. For the light of me, I can't understand the difference between Eurocommunism and Social Democracy. Was this because the SocDems were able to win more material gains for the workers? It can't be just due to the cold war as this divide was present already. Edit: This question lead Bookchin to dismiss the inherent revolutionary potential of the proletariat.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:58
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