What has been done in set theory is an abomination to the principles of sound design — Devans99

Well, you simply have to prove it in mathematics. If you show that either all or some the axioms of ZF are incorrect, then that is that's a positive breakthrough.

Infinity only exists in our minds, not in reality. — Devans99

Does the number 54 exist in reality? Show me where the real 54 is.

Besides, I think infinity is used a lot in math and is a very useful, very logical mathematical object, which is inherent to mathematics in order for it to be logical.

It is never possible to fully define an infinite set - there is not enough paper in the world — Devans99

REALLY? You think that defining something in math is something like 'writing it down'?

This is a very illogical idea: there isn't enough paper to write the finite numbers from 1 to googolplex, hence your reasoning also states that big finite numbers aren't possible. That's illogical.

Maw is referring to the manufactured non-existent crisis that only Trump supporters and the anti-semite alt-right believe in. And that they have found their favorite rich Jew manipulator of all time...again. (Like th other side has the Koch Brothers...but that's obviously different)

A month ago:

]I ask once again, is anyone here willing to believe me that we have an issue at my States Southern border? — "ArguingWAristotleTiff

Beware of the alt-dark side, Tiff.

Infinite sets have no cardinality. — Devans99

Wrong. They do. The cardinality of aleph-null and aleph-1 is not the same.

I do not agree with the bijection procedure as a valid way to compare two things. — Devans99

Really?

So the bijection 1+2=3 you don't agree with? That isn't valid?

How can a procedure that is meant to demonstrate equality produce such obviously wrong results? It is because infinity has no size (it is unmeasurable) so it is impossible to compare the size of infinite sets. — Devans99

Because the proof is a reductio ad absurdum proof.

It has no size. Infinite sets do not have a cardinality. — Devans99

So now you are dismissing totally set theory. Good luck with that.

Ok. Is infinity bigger than 54? Does 54 have size? No?
If 54 has size, then where does infinity loose it?

You see it's two different thing to a) have 'a size' and b) to be measurable. You see, unmeasurability doesn't make other things dissappear.

I'll take another example with the Sorites Paradox. If from a heap of sand you start taking a single grain at a time, at what exact point does it cease to be considered a heap?

Ok, so the answer is that the term 'heap' is vague. But what you do with your argument that there is no size, would be similar to say that there is no weight with the heap. That if you have a grain of sand it has a weight and add one or more to it, the weight increses, however with 'heap' the weight would dissappear as...it's definition vague and hence unmeasurable.

A reasonable, working definition of infinity:

‘A number bigger than any other number’ — Devans99

Well… what is your definition of a number? Numbers you see are used to measure something and when you have something that isn't measurable / countable, you have bit of a problem.

It is clear then that there can only be one such number - if there was a second infinity then both would have to be larger than the other. — Devans99

Well, I'm a proponent of Absolute Infinity, but before going into that, a question:

So what do you then think about Cantor's finding that there are more real numbers than natural numbers? Or said another way, that you cannot put into 1-to-1 correspondence the real numbers with the natural numbers, as you can put the rational numbers with the natural numbers?

This is the cornerstone observation that lead Cantor to argue that there are bigger and bigger infinities.

hey sure do!

And what does it mean when negative PR can so easily overcome the positive?

They all become terrified of offending anyone, they take less risks, and only feel safe while pandering to a common denominator. It's a chilling effect in my view, and is not a good thing for democracy. — VagabondSpectre

And this is the most crucial thing to understand here.

This has NOTHING to do with Post-modernists and Cultural Marxists and especially with snowflake SJWs in Ivy League universities. The absurd discourse is just a symptom. The real issue is just why these issues become so huge? Why do people get fired for absurd reasons? Why do these issues make it to mainstream media?

The problem is the totally illogical fear that comes close to a mass psychosis that institutions have towards their so fragile outward appearance. And the reason of course is that their PR appearance is usually totally made up as the institutions are inherently weak structures. So one employee/ person related somehow to the institution says something in an email and the PR shit-storm explodes. As somehow the person would portray the whole institution to be sexist/racist/misogynist/anti-semitic/whatever. Why? Because if the institution doesn't react, does nothing or the answer is seen as to be too little, it will somehow be interpreted as that what the odd person has said reflects the values and the norms of the whole institution! There's a whole army of PR consultants and professionals ready to jump to 'contain' the crisis, as if something like a serious nuclear accident has happened.

So the simple response (especially in a corporation) that is 'the best thing' to do, is to fire the person. By doing this the event creates this illusion of an environment among employees that they are walking on eggshells and a simple comment in an email can devastate their whole career and life. But who cares about that.

So yeah, it is a problem for democracy.

And the problem started with institutions like corporation etc. creating PR departments. Political parties are naturally even more prone to this. And if someone thinks that this is only right-wing biased view (because the thread is about Roger Scruton), just think about the typical event where a muslim liberal or leftist politician criticizes Israel and get the wrath of being an anti-semite.

Cantor avoids the paradox simply by having larger and larger infinities and not referring to the set of sets as you do above.

The paradox is rigorously avoided also by the axioms of ZF-logic. Some of the axioms are there basically only to deal with the paradox.

Of course when you think of it, the issue of the nature of infinities is open as there is no true answer to the Continuum Hypothesis, which basically shows we don't have any idea of just how infities work and we simply take it as an axiom as it's very useful in math.

when we treat the existence of ideas and viewpoints as themselves harmful and a threat, and therefore seek to prevent others from hearing or expressing them via applied social pressure, then we're drawing a rather aggressive line in the sand — VagabondSpectre

But it sure works, because the institutions fear those PR shit-storms so much!

I alwys laugh till tears roll down my goiter when I read yanks discussing Marxism. — Ricardoc

Virgins can talk about sex too, you know.

And why not?

As the term is conventionally defined in philosophy, why aren't physics claims metaphysical claims? — Terrapin Station

Objectivity I say. That you can test them if the assumption is correct or false.

A long-standing assumption in philosophy is that there is a need for metaphysics. But is it true? Why do we need to sort out whether the universe is material, non-material, both, or neither?

What do you think? Terrapin Station — frank

I think it is extremely important to understand 'what is behind physics' and there indeed is a need for metaphysics.

As the term itself is defined, you simply cannot get answers to metaphysical questions in the same way as you can for ordinary physics, science, etc. Yet that doesn't meant that the metaphysical questions wouldn't have importance.

Perhaps the problem is that we simply use the meta- definition far too easily in things that don't have anything to do with the metaphysical, like with metascripting or metatext. When you look at the definitions for metatext, there is nothing metaphysical about the subject.

From personal experience, whenever I have brought up ''post-modernist'' thinkers (e.g. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, etc.) there has always been a look of caution if not outright trepidation in the eyes of my philosophy professors. — philosophy

Nietzsche and Heidegger post-modernists?
_ _ _

Literary departments don't study philosophy, they use the views and methods of philosophers. In Philosophy departments one studies philosophy and the writing of philosophers.

It's a huge difference.

As I said (was it here or on another thread), this makes the viewpoint totally different and especially the students may have only a superficial understanding of the philosophy and especially lack the ability to put one philosopher or school in an broader context. Of course one obvious reason for postmodernism to thrive in the literary departments is the close relationship of postmodernist thinking to literary studies. If we talk about Heidegger or Nietzsche, their philosophy goes far beyond just these studies.

I think this is about right. Having read a few of Scruton's books, I would defend him as a subtle and humane thinker. However, I wouldn't defend his long-standing anti-immigrant views or his anti-anti-smoking writings, and I often disagree with him, e.g., on sex, politics, and music. But mostly I'd want to see these things addressed in debate, certainly not with offence-finding witch-hunts, misrepresentation and banishment beyond the pale. — jamalrob

Scruton is a traditional conservative thinker and his hounding just shows that traditional English conservatism isn't so hip (never has been). What a surprise that leftists find him annoying.

Really ? Like this ? On Foxhunting: ---- No mention of the fox. — Amity

Ah! And we hit the jackpot: Scruton is for Fox hunting! He obviously likes the sport.

Oh God, he is the incarnation of evil.

Learning typing is a somewhat regressive. It's these things that were you just learn by repeating the thing. You cannot sit an think and get the hang of it just by using your brain. I assume this is at least partly the reason for your argument about the 'cult of the mechanist'.

I can totally empathize with those that find it horrible. But then again, people can find things like gymnastics, cooking or wood crafts horrible too when they have to learn them. They don't have the interest, they notice that others pick it much easier and from all of this, they really get this loathing fear against the whole subject. And when something is as regressive and monotonic as typing, there really aren't many ways to teach it. Or learn it.

The Preppy Progressives transfer their deserved but denied guilt over being nothing without Daddy's Money to those whose opportunities are stolen through that heiristocratic appropriation. With the delusion that they are Born to Rule, they seek distortions of history in order to force Whites to feel guilty. They hate their fathers while continuing to still believe what their fathers told them, before adolescent rebellion on everything else, about their inherited superiority. — TheSageOfMainStreet

Now that the Generation Z has reached the campus and makes it's own sillyness apparent, I always emphasize not to judge a whole generation by it's loudest actors. Yes, stereotypes do tell something true, but shouldn't be generalized. What also ought to be noted that the 'Preppy Progressive' tend to be in the top universities, which have a history of 'being woke'. And why wouldn't they feel so important, when they made the cut to an Ivy League University.

My reality check comes from my job where I meet young conscripts: the millennials and the gen Z. As I've talked about this among my peers and the now retired baby boomers, it's obvious that these serious minded guys and gals of younger generations are just OK. You just have to explain things to them and raise your voice only when they otherwise cannot hear you. Old school military antics will get them confused, the society has changed. Some argue that they are actually far better than the Gen X and baby boomers, who, especially the baby boomers, used a lot of alcohol and didn't take their conscription and military service so seriously.

How could you possibly state honestly that we live in a meritocracy unless you actually believed that the weather in Southern California produced superior individuals? — TheSageOfMainStreet

You obviously don't understand meritocracy and basic economics and actually my point about meritocracy. You see, a meritocracy doesn't mean every is just fine.

First: Wealth,business, good education possibilities and higher income earning usually concentrate. It's not a phenomenon just related to the United States, you see it nearly in every country where typically the Capital region is this giant magnet for commerce and wealth. In the US this is evident too (even if Washington DC isn't so important). Just look a these maps:

Where the Gross Domestic Product is made, with the size by GDP, not geographical size:


Where the top universities are:


Where the billionaires live in the US:



Do you notice the pattern? With the exception of Texas and perhaps Illinois, everything else between California and New York (and the North-East) is fly-over country where people vote Trump. Yet, all of the above are totally possible in a meritocracy. A meritocracy means that there is the possibility of social mobility, it isn't denied, but it surely doesn't mean that the possibilities would be the same everywhere. You likely have to move away from the countryside, if you have been born as a child to some farmers. And here kicks in all the things where a meritocracy starts to get similar to a class system with lower social mobility. There's a multitude of factors why this can indeed happen.

If the educational system breaks down and the school were the poor put their children are a lot worse than where the rich put their own, the end result is obvious. A meritocracy looks for ability, not for representation of the whole population.

No, it's just pointless. Some people are really dug in on this point and it's not productive to argue with them. Impeachment and collusion and obstruction are not the issues on which the election will be decided. — fishfry

Do you really think that this is just about the elections?

Fuck the elections. The Democrats are already a disaster. They have been that since the condescending morons we know since they chose Hillary to be their candidate. Because of what? It was 'her time'? People hated that and Trump got elected. And their condescending attitude towards the MAGA-hatters is the thing why Trumpists love Trump.

No, the issue is your total inability to see this in any other context than as a campaign issue.

When the leader of the sole Superpower is in strange cahoots with the leadership of a country that thinks the US poses an existential threat to itself, it has a lot more effects than the next goddam elections. I'm not a Democrat. I just voted for the conservatives in my country. Be the US president a Republican or a Democrat isn't an issue here. What kind of a trainwreck the foreign policy the US has and will have is the issue. What's the standing of the US in the World is an issue. How effective NATO is an issue, even if my country doesn't belong to NATO. Is the US a justice state or a banana republic is an issue.

Who wins the next elections is another issue.

I've decided to stop arguing with this point. - like I say ... keep it up till election day. See how it works out for you. — fishfry

How does it work for a Dutchman?

Ah! I get it. The retreat to "every political issue is just campaign babble"-argument. Yes, there cannot be any, absolutely any other reason for anyone, especially foreigners, to talk about this issue other than in the realm of the next presidential elections.

Silly season is coming soon up.

Several more paragraphs of Greenwald bashing hardly bear on the topic at hand. — fishfry

Bashing? My point is that journalists have to pick their sides. Not always, but especially when the issue is a hugely political one. When they don't behave so, it's actually their readers/followers and fanbase that are the most wrathful, hence the readers are the ones forcing the journalist to pick one side and the narrative of that side.

Could we do away with money? — Andrew4Handel

We are already doing away with physical money, with the cash and coins.

Yet there are so many upsides to a monetary system than a barter system without money.

The usual issues simply rule and are so awesome to bartering: a legal tender, a medium of change, an unit of account, a store of value, a liquid asset and sometimes a standard of deferred payment.

Until hereditary privileges are identified as the perpetual cause of societal decline, we will keep sliding into the pit. — TheSageOfMainStreet

There was a time when you did have actual hereditary privileges. Yet there is a difference with having classes and having a caste-system. The problem is the meritocratic nature of our society. Even if meritocracy has it obvious positive sides, it does have also the negative sides.

Those born in the 1% have an incredibly illogical twenty times the representation in the present 1% that a rational distribution would result in. — TheSageOfMainStreet

I don't understand exactly what your point is here. Please elaborate.

Foucault is best quoted but never read., Has anyone actually finished a book by Derrida? (Cross out 'finished'.) — Ricardoc

In the 60's it was typical in the leftist Finnish university circles to brag about finishing all volumes of Das Kapital.

But it's an age old philosophy trick to right as difficult as you can. Especially when you don't have much to say. Simplicity isn't something appreciated in academia. I think that Foucault himself admitted this when someone found his talks and opinions (aside a lecture perhaps) quite clear and his books very confusing and difficult.

I was pointing out that suicide and aggression are not due to men apparently “not being able to cope” but due to testosterone (less risk aversion included in this). — I like sushi

All that testosterone among young female teens today, btw.

Where do they teach post-modernism outside of itself as a philosophical foundation? — Christoffer

Oh that's easy. For instance in Social History.

You don't have to have any, absolutely no studies in philosophy, but in social history you do stumble into Foucault. After all, Foucault's famous book The History of Madness is, as the title say, a historical study.

And thus the professor has to give a really short introduction to Foucault and then the history students use postmodernism quite easily. And not in the context of literary criticism, but as part of historiography.

Hey guys, I suddenly had an amazing idea!

Let's all extol the suffering-earned-virtues of our race, gender, and sexual orientation, and then whoever wins the most virtue gets to dictate what the important issues are, what's moral, fair, and who the bad quays are...

Genius, right? — VagabondSpectre

Yeah!

Nietzsche told us about Master and Slave moralities. Those with the Master-morality had strong will and values like 'pride' and 'power' and were competitive whereas those with the Slave morality valued things like kindness, empathy and sympathy and of course were submissive. And thanks to Christian values that slave morality was taking over and making the human race weak where as the Master morality that was praised in Antiquity was dying. So was the trendy thinking in the 19th Century, that really got out of hand in the 20th Century as we all know...

Well, we now have the new hybdrid! So roll over, Nietzsche.

Obviously to counter the toxic Master-morality of the old, the slave-mentality will just not do and thus we have to have the Masterslaves! Hybrids that fight back and not only engage in passive resistance, but teach firmly empathy to all. Yes, these people who have suffered the most compared to anybody ought to be called the Übermensch of the Untermenschen. Those who's priviledge is absolutely non-existent, whose victimhood in intersectional suffering is so great that everybody has to shut up and listen to what they have to say from the mixed-raced lesbian to the worst rich right-wing cis-gendered white male CEO. We can all just bow in front of this new masterclass of misery as we understand our guilt and just how priviledged we are compared to these poor people. And behold those who seek to disagree with the masterslave and shows not enough empathy for the masterslave, he (yes, likely he) has just exposed what a wicked racist nazi bigot he is. :razz:

I suppose the silver lining with Trump is how well the other institutions of Government and the Justice department are standing up against his tyranny. — Wayfarer

Oh don't be so modest.

Even his absolutely terrible own administration and the hateful backstabbing people in it simply didn't implement his whackiest orders. The true Russophiles were whisked away within days of the start of the administration leaving only Trump to show his adamant devotion to Putin (in places like Helsinki). Russia did actually prone what kind of capitulations they could milk from Trump and didn't get much. Trump didn't withdraw American troops from NATO countries as 'an a friendly gesture'. Trump didn't openly acknowledge Crimea being part of Russia. And Trump's idea of a Russo-American organization to fight cyber attacks was simply passed as a gaffe.

But of course in the next elections this is unimportant. What is important is only the absolute hate that pro-Trump and anti-Trump people have for each other. Oh how these groups loathe the repugnant other side. And that's Trump's shtick: hope that the outrage and hatred of the Democrats erupts in a similar moment as with Hillary when she called Trump supporters "The Deplorables". The was the highpoint of the Trump train in 2016.

Maybe because most people don't understand post-modernism? — Christoffer

Starting from the students who are taught post-modernism, yet don't know anything else about philosophy. Besides, interdisciplinary studies demand too much from ordinary students.

there are no social phenomena - merely what our masters wish us to see. — Ricardoc

The unfortunate truth. This is why academia in the social sciences is dying a slow death. But that's what you get when you throw out objectivity as a method.

You’re watching the destruction of the office of the President of the United States, live and in real time. This is happening. — Wayfarer

Until you get your democrat in power? I think the Presidency will manage on Trump.

...and the observation that the USA seems to have fallen behind the other countries in recent times, and the UK may be showing the same trait. — Pattern-chaser

Yeah well, not actually intended as a jab. :roll:

But actually your point is one reason why we have this disparity. Things have gotten better especially in China and India, it has been somewhat OK like in my country and the US it has been bad for everyone else than just the upper class. Who haven't seen improvement are the blue-collar class, the lower mddle class. I think the support for Trump is one symptom of this.

Of course I'm commenting on the feminism promoted in the United States... — Anaxagoras

Of course. That's this kind of inherent assumption. But it's better to start "In the US feminism is a response to disillusioned white women..". Women's right movement has been a truly universal movement. Would you start talking about the history of the Labour movement and just and only look at the US?

Can you rephrase the question? — Anaxagoras

That just like above, even if it surely was a slip up, one should start from accepting that women's movement was and is quite international. Many times the hot potatoe issues have been something totally different from the Western of US experience, just as in South Korea and Japan. I've not noticed many women-only train cars in the US.

Because of the lack of intersectionality that exists in western feminism, many women of color around the world have identified oppression in relation to the cultural issues respective to their places of origin. — Anaxagoras

Again this is such an American viewpoint. What is the intersectionality of being Korean in South Korea where 96% of the people are Korean? The ethic minorities after the Koreans are 1 million Chinese, about 150 000 Vietnamese and 140 000 Americans. So if we take race into the question, should we look at those that are women and African Americans in South Korea? Especially those who are part of the US Armed Forces confined in the US bases that are basically little America's, it would be quite strange. I guess some can indeed experience also racism, yet I do assume that South Korean feminists are more interested in changing their own Korean culture and it's views at women's roles etc.

What I'm basically trying to say that women's right / feminist movement hasn't gone in various countries at all in the same way as in the US or UK, which btw. are actually far more conservative countries in many ways for example to the Nordic countries. Hence it's better to refer to the US situation and understand that feminism or womens rights tackle with different obstacle in other countries.

Yet the US-centric viewpoint dominates. Especially when you talk about intersectionality, a term coined in the late 1980's and used first talking about being women and black. If you look at countries that are racially and ethnically very homogenous as South Korea, Japan or my country, Finland, which all make the State of Maine to look extremely multicultural, the issue is a bit odd. In these countries the whole race issue thing is more of simply copying the American discussion to an environment where it hasn't at all the same meaning.

First of all, Russians are extremely wary of media. They, the smart ones, are quite skeptical about the official line. Far more than Americans, actually.

And basically Putin's strategy has been to dominate the TV, yet have a few independent small papers around to show the West that Russia does have free journalism, which explain just why a journalist like Anna Politkovskaya could write all that she did, up to the point when she was killed that is. And if you watch for example Russia Today, it can have quite good journalism on issues that aren't the focus of Russian propaganda. And of course don't criticize Putin etc. And that's the bias.

With the net Russia has had similar objectives as China to create a controlled own Russian internet space and social media hub. And the natural reason is of course the hostile West. Thus we have news articles like this from last February 19th, 2019:

Russia is preparing to temporarily unplug from the internet in a test of the country’s cyberdefence capabilities, according to reports.The disconnection is expected to take place sometime before April as part of the preparations for a draft law aimed at making Russia more digitally independent.

The legislation, known as the Digital Economy National Programme (DENP), was submitted to parliament last year and would “require internet providers to make sure they can operate” if foreign countries attempt to isolate the the Runet, or Russian Internet, according to US news site NPR.
-
Under the plan, Russian ISPs would “redirect web traffic to routing points within the country and rely on its own copy of the Domain Name System (DNS), the directory of domains and addresses that underpins the global internet”, reports science news site TechCrunch.

The BBC says these routing points, which are “essentially a series of thousands of digital networks along which information travels”, are “notoriously the weakest link in the chain” of cybersecurity. Russia wants to “bring those router points that handle data entering or exiting the country within its borders and under its control”, so that it can then “pull up the drawbridge” to external traffic if needed, the broadcaster continues.

See Why Russia wants to disconnect from the internet

'Is going'?

You are referring to the former FSB-director and last Prime Minister of Yeltsin that rose to power by starting the Second Chechen War after the FSB killed 367 Russians in Apartment bombings in suburbs?

(I think Litvinenko, but also Aleksandr Lebed, Andrei Illarionov, Anna Politkovskaya and others made quite evident the case.)

So, that guy 'is' just now going old-school?

Re identity politics, can someone enlighten as to what other kind of politics there is? — unenlightened

Politics with a defined practical necessity where the decisions don't have anything to do with the identity of the people.

Is monetary policy about identity politics? I don't think that loose monetary policy defines the identity of people. You see being a Keynesian or a monetarist doesn't in the same way define your identity.

Or how about transport policy? Do we go with rail or shipping?

Can anyone think of any positives? — Ricardoc

In order to use anything that is 'post', one has to understand and know just what was before it, the thing before the 'post'.

If you know modernism (and obviously you have to know Enlightenment philsophy), then perhaps postmodernism can give you some new critical views that might be positive. The problem is when young students don't know the classics or what modernism was all about, postmodernism just confuses them. All they end up doing is saying things like "Objectivity doesn't exist".

I always remember how my economic history professor got gloomy when a student said that he or she (usually it was a he) had decided to make his Master degree work or Doctoral thesis on something related to Foucault. She knew that most likely the thing wouldn't be finished. Sounds familiar, Ricardoc?

Look, I came from China. Marxism is shi-. — YuZhonglu

Don't be a simpleton (like Peterson) and think that Marxism and the actual Real-World implementation of Marxism are equivalent issues. This isn't about the practical and historical implementation of an ideology! :angry:

Besides, to the Western intellectuals You (the Chinese) looked all so cute with your caps with the Red Star and green overalls waving the Little Red Book of Mao. And then you rode bicycles. Oh, how people just loved it here in the West that you rode bicycles! The streets of China were so different without the cars, which was so nice, so good. Everybody understood, that as there were so many Chinese, You simply could not have cars as we had, that would be an utter disaster. The Chinese simply couldn't have a similar materialist consumption-economy as we enjoyed, which was inherently bad. You were far better than that! You were Communists, or more specifically Maoists. It worked in your society. Hence the view among of the leftist intellectuals was that You were living sensibly and we, in the decadent capitalist West, should feel bad about our lifestyle.

全世界的无产阶级，联合起来！

Don't take yourself so seriously. — Baden

I don't. Sorry if I look like that.

I saw a tiny segment as I pointed out above where Peterson got owned and then I made a joke. — Baden

OK, I watched the whole thing and thus I hope I'm not coming off being too concerned of this, but...

There is the issue that Peterson was indeed flabbergasted: because Zizek didn't defend Marxism and didn't try to refute Jordan's arguments. So umm... :chin: And where I personally agree totally with Zizek is his view that the whole idea of Cultural Marxists being the culprit is nonsense. Hopefully Jordan got it, because I've had a problem with that view for a long time.

The simple fact is that the Ivy League Academia isn't lost in PC culture and safe spaces and all the humbug because of postmodernists and/or Cultural Marxists, it's lost there because of feckless administrators that in their 'White Guilt' hypocrisy and their urge please the students (thanks to the competition between universities) have given a small vocal minority, that likely don't actually represent the majority, too much room to play their own 60's fantasy of making similar advances as the civil rights movement did before them. Yeah, MILK THE GUILT!

And same goes to the so politically correct Canadian lawmakers: oh, they are so well hearing the minorities. Yet that doesn't make them marxists, but anyway.

(And of course Slavoj doesn't like the victimhood culture etc. either, but who's looking for agreements between the two.)

Toasted. And moving on... — Baden

Peterson mopping the floor with his opponent as usual. — matt

There ya go. All fixed now. — Baden

Yet an important comment from Zizek was that "This isn't a competition". But of course the Tribalists don't care about that. Philosophy is about winning the argument!

historically, feminism is a response to disillusioned white women in U.S. society who were tired of white male patriarchy. — Anaxagoras

Here we go with the US centrism in everything...

I understand that people tend to shy away from definitions especially definitions that pertain to the discussion of race relations but frankly I believe that the development of feminism is nothing short of addressing not the issues of women in general but more specifically feminism addresses the problems with white women, and the same can be said about the men's rights movement. — Anaxagoras

So what do you think about Feminist movement let's say in South Korea, with the minjung feminist movement? Or the women's suffrage movement in Japan? Those women weren't white.

I believe when we address the evolutionary root causes of oppression whether based on gender or race and allocate that to it being a human problem in which all humans suffer and we try to identify with it on a human level, we can begin to relieve ourselves of the racial and gender specifics and begin to address suffering as a globally human problem and not a gendered one. — Anaxagoras

Perhaps by starting with that women's rights have not been an issue only for European whites right from the start?

So Peterson emphasised the equivocation as a criticism of Marxism, Zizek emphasised the equivocation as signalling the death of Marxism as a political project. — fdrake

Who is a Marxist anymore?

I think that there are many intelligent leftists here, but nobody in the Forum comes close to the old-school Marxists that I grew up in my country. Nobody here talks the old lithurgy. The talk with no meaning that anybody that lived during the Soviet times or visited the Workers Paradise would instantly recognize. That lithurgy sounds so funny today.

I remember Bitter Crank saying that he was in the left circles when he was young and he's older than me, so he would remember. Of course the Euro-Marxists of that time were a different breed from American Marxists.

but it is the lateness rather than any special political talent that allowed them to bypass the steam age, for example. — unenlightened

Taken what you said literally would be very condescending. They still were in the same Century, you know.

I get the feeling that for most of the people, life has become better overall, though it is hard to judge. — unenlightened

Even if I'm not a huge fan of Stephen Pinker, on this issue I do agree with him (even if he ignores the first and second Congo Wars in his statistics).

A lot of things have indeed got better. Looking at the lives of my grandparents who saw a civil war when they were children and were young adults WW2, a lot has been better. We haven't had WW3 as people in the 1980's feared. Violence has fallen, medicine has improved and life expectancy has gone up. At least in my country life expectancy has gone up as in other OECD countries.



And I know saying the above annoys people because we should be critical, we shouldn't stop in trying to make things better and improve the current. Yet that desire to be critical about the present shouldn't make us blind to the improvements that have happened.

RT had a great article about the debate called ‘Crustacean Jung v Cocaine Hegel’: Zizek-Peterson debate blowout sparks meme war:

“You may have your own personal idea of Hell. Mine is an eternity trapped in a room with Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek.” — Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs