Critical Theory is pretty nebulous, non-specific and based on little to no empirical evidence. It is a way of looking at things and asking questions, but not much more.

CRT is use of a pretty flimsy idea applied to a highly contentious subject matter.

It seems to me the whole math thing was initiated by right leaning people based on some absurd idea that mathematics is racist :D

CRT, and CT in general, should be taken too seriously at all. They are just proposals for ways of looking at social interactions and social structures. It is not a ‘theory’ in the sense that evolution is a theory … not even close!

Troll

But not Jainism? What is the difference here? They both say the same thing and Buddhism would not exist without the ascetic Jains.

According to whom/what?

I have/had no issue. Sometime people speak with gravitas and sometimes with glib humour. It just popped into my head and amused me so I posted it :)

How can you end suffering if all life is effectively framed as ‘suffering’ (albeit a weaker sort of ‘disgruntlement’ and/or ‘dissatisfaction’)?

- someone WHO is -

Brain fart when typing :)

I’ll let someone else point out the problems in that before I do.

Have fun chat later maybe.

Funny you say that. One of the last Culture novels Bainks wrote was about an artificial hell.

As for the internet. There are FAR greater shifts coming and you will start to see them bleeding into the public sphere over the next decade or two. CRISPR is real and will shake up everything.

Either way, making far flung predictions is just that. In the here and now ‘freedom’ comes at a price and nothing I can fathom will change that.

In perfect conditions practically ANY political system can be said to work ‘best’.

What do you think about the idea of democracy? Does democracy have a place in a free world or will democracy be outlawed? If there is democracy then necessarily some people will ‘lose out’ for the great good of the masses. Is this okay? To what extent?

Surely in a society that is democratic where people have maximal freedom they can choose not to vote on anything. Some people will vote though and impose their will on others (thus some freedom will be lost).

Then there is the other problem of ‘equality’. People are not equal. Some will have more ‘freedom’ than others. Is that something that can realistically be ‘solved’ - in reality or down some internet/AI rabbit hole? Are we talking Matrix movie level supplication to the machines rather than to our own free will and authorship over our lives?

Take any idea to the extremes and it will turn pretty bad pretty quickly

Too many Schopies :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Fuxkinhug

Not simplistic, but it is an unverified assumption that people will ‘dance, make art and make love’. I do not personally see this as the nature of everyone, nor a particularly large minority let alone majority.

Robots have taken jobs from people who want jobs … but if we fast forward to some hypothetical future where humankind can live a life of Riley … as above maybe?

I enjoyed reading The Culture series of books by Iain Bainks which basically set up human civilization in this guise. A far flung possibility, or maybe not so far flung?

When it comes to predicting the effects of certain technologies it is hard to say much at all. We have certainly been heading in a decent direct for a while in terms of global poverty, disease, famine and child mortality.

I think there is a lot to be said for communal work helping social ties and creating a more peaceful environment. Someone will have to programme the robots … that is a lot of power in the hands of a few. Then maybe we just let the robots rule us? Would the robots then revert to Asimov ‘protection’ of the human species?

Having complete freedom could amount to losing all freedom (see Orwell). Having no responsibility for our basic needs is reverting to a childlike state … is that okay?

Anything taken to an extreme end starts to get messy quickly in my experience.

Aestheticism is not entertainment.

Schopenhauer (THE Schopenhauer) refers to aestheticism as being that which turns away from our inner nature.

I would recommend reading 1984 by George Orwell.

Other than that I just want to point out that ‘absolute freedom’ means ‘absolute responsibility’. No one sane wants to even attempt to take on that burden.

‘Uniting’ people is often comes at great cost to those that refuse to ‘unite’ - often anarchist types. It is an unpleasant contradiction but it is all too human. Aiming for something better is obviously a nice idea … it gets bad when the ‘something better’ is different for everyone, which it usually is.

As for robots and AI you will many people here who would point out several things including the need for humans to feel useful, the fact that there are now billions more people on Earth now than compared to preindustrial times and that your view seems to frame ‘freedom’ as having more leisure time? You have surely heard of people who won the lottery returning to their ‘mundane’ jobs. People like people, and people like to work with people on something.

I do not see how releasing humans for activity and work would create any kind of ‘freedom’ people would want. An Eloi life of The Time Machine perhaps? Is that a freedom you want?

Either way I have no issue with trying to work towards something better. I am just moe conservative minded when it comes to shaking things up for the sake of shaking things up. Destruction is far easier than building something. Trying to build the impossible does seem to be a human occupation though and sometimes we do step beyond our perceived realms of ‘possible’.

Some kind of ‘transcendentalism’ is usually the answer to this.

Then there is the overt problem of sifting through the plethora of transcendental views to find one that seems ‘correct’.

For me life is neither bleak nor wondrous. Ponderous? Certainly seems that way more than anything.

No. Just asking. Clearly I think your view is a bit naive or maybe overly idealistic/simplistic. That is my first impression. If it offends it offends. That was not why I asked it though and should probably have not done so publicly if I had thought about how it may have been perceived.

No rules means if you have something I want I can kill you and take it with no legal consequences.

I am a ‘kind of’ anarchist myself. As in I oppose authority that contradicts what I believe to be right/good. I even oppose my own views when and where I can. I am not ‘against’ authority per se, just against blindly following rule/laws and figures of ‘authority’ because others do so and it is the general norm.

Pure freedom would be quite a brutal way to live btw - see above for murder. Freedom at no cost is not freedom. I cannot possibly see how it could be. If you believe it can come at no cost then explain how please.

I do believe that ‘anarchy’ is our base state. But from this state we necessarily have to create boundaries (which include rules) so we can live with each other in something approximating a state sporadically shifting towards ‘harmony’.

Conflict seems to be a very necessary state for learning. I think humans are learning ‘machines. Therefore any idea of nullifying ‘conflict’ would be the destruction of humanity. Conflict does not necessarily mean war though. We have managed to adjust to domestic life styles but in evolution of time we have not really had much time to adapt - but ‘adaptation’ is what humans are particularly good at.

I guess the counter this could be ‘why can we not adapt to be peace loving being then?’ I think overall we already are. But conflict will spill over into war sometimes. War today is less prominent than in the past so something is generally okay in that department.

Still abhorrent then. Bye bye.

Are you a teenager?

You can say the same for ‘race’. There is one human race yet the term can be used in a more general manner. ‘Gender’ can mean ‘sex’ and it can mean something else.

Man and woman are markers for ‘sex’ and used as ‘gender’. The problem is how language is put together over time - meaning how people USE the terms.

People adhering to more hard and fast rules will have issue with saying that ‘gender’ is anything but ‘sex’. The general social shifts recently don’t make this at all surprising.

All I know for sure is that a trans woman is a not a woman (that is why the term trans woman exists!), yet I have no issue with referring to a trans woman as she/her because it makes perfect sense to do so. If said person was to tell me they are a woman through and through and insisted that I except they are a woman … well, they cannot do this. It is impossible to make someone agree with you about anything. People can be presented with arguments and evidence, but really it is down to them to make the change or not.

I find all identity politics to be quite vile and oppressive. It is not really too surprising that something like this has surfaced in societies today given that everyone on the planet can more easily than ever before made their voice heard somewhere, find like minds somewhere and be exposed to things they would never normally be exposed to.

All the categories given as examples are in themselves ‘institutional facts’. There is a speck of black within white and vice versa. If not then there would be no possible distinction. Identity politics operates under the guise of ‘liberation’ but really it is about drawing starker and starker lines between people … which some people like either because they feel more ‘the same’ or ‘more different’ (ironically!).

We all die anyway so it doesn’t matter that much :D

Anarchy means to question/oppose authority.

‘Total Freedom’ meaning what?

By the same logic how about someone you is a nazi. That’s diversity!

That is a slippery slope. For instance if someone is perfectly good at their job yet holds some racist views/opinions then does the employer have the right to fire them based only on said views/opinions? I would say no.

In the real world people can just make up another excuse and ‘let them go’ so that is a ‘social consequence’ of not adhering to what most people regard as reasonable social behaviour.

The reason it is a ‘slippery slope’ (more so than my example) is that MANY people have differing views about what is and isn’t a proper manner to speak and behave. Some people can view merely raising a topic as a ‘micro aggression’.

Going back to day-to-day life if you talk to someone with ill intent and ridicule and belittle them THEN act uppity when they punch you in the face … well, you suffer the ‘social consequence’ of your behaviour. The legality of such things is irrelevant too. People act as they see fit to act NOT by some rulebook written by a group of others.

Free speech allows everyone to see where others stand (to a degree) and treat them accordingly. Being ‘fired’ directly for holding opposing views to someone that doesn’t relate to the workload is illegal surely? I am not saying they should not ‘fire’ them only that they should not be allowed to ‘fire’ someone for expressing an opinion about something that doesn’t effect their work. Preaching and politicking … I think that is an area where the employee should be warned to keep such things out of the workplace rather than just fired outright.

This thread needs its own category!

I wouldn’t know where to start with this. All I know is everywhere I look and everything I think about is a messy mess of a mess. Nothing makes ‘sense’ and people seem to just be doing stuff unconsciously all the time … and why this is part of my day-to-day life (this ‘view’) is in and of itself an absurdity.

Ironically (considering your apparent stance) I call the whole thing ‘religious’. Meaning that all ‘facts’ are at different layers of resolution relative to our experiencing self and how we ‘constitute’ ourselves as ‘among’ and ‘apart’ - the intentionality.

A book is not a book, and a tree is not a tree. Things we experience (or imagine) make up our world. How we ‘feel’ about things matters more than we seem to let on to ourselves. The possession of items or the experiences of items are one and the same yet we split them into distinct categories.

There is a a coffee cup on the table and a glass of chilled water … everything about them is spectacular to observe and contemplate … where did they come from? Who made them? Who designed them? Why that design? Was it given much though? The dried froth around the rim of the cup of coffee I recently finished. How now can I look at this items as merely ‘a glass of water’ and ‘an empty cup of coffee’. I have imbued them with emotional content and for those reading this maybe you too will now look at something near you and imbue thoughts and feelings into items that were previously mundane and never really worthy of note.

There is no end to this. It is horrifically beautiful! It is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’.

@baker The OP is asking what one should do. If you have no answer you have no answer I guess.

If you have an answer then that would be a ‘good life’ of a sorts right? Is a ‘sort of good life’ better than a ‘no sort of good life’? If so and your response is it doesn’t matter because we suffer anyway, then you have not made any meaningful distinction between the two.

So there is no ‘good life’.

I am against antinatalism and, in part, against buddhism.

I have no wish to say much more than that on those topics in this thread.

Me too. The only other one I listen to regularly is Mindscape (my first love was physics after all!)

I reckon there are several points Becker makes where we would be fairly understanding to each other’s attitudes and ideas. I have not read him myself but hope to soon. In terms of existential stuff Camus and absurdism is more my kinda thing.

Do you listen to podcasts? Philosophize This is a really nice series. Well presented and gives a nice overlay of different philosophical thoughts and works.

And the obviousness of ‘feeling/believing’ you are a man ‘trapped’ in a woman’s body (or vice versa) is acknowledging that you do not physically possess a penis and testicles.

The rest is kind of a true Scotsman argument. Someone born in Spain can be considered ‘Scottish’ if they grew up in Scotland in their early years I would say. I would argue against someone who has spent their entire life living in Spain without speaking a word of English suddenly moving to Scotland in their 20’s and declaring they are ‘Scottish’ to be somewhat delusional. The exception would be if they said, I know I Spanish but my whole life I have felt out of place and tried many things to feel at ease in my own skin. Then I visited many countries around the world and to my surprise found that ‘Scotland’ felt like home to me.

For the purpose of social acceptance immigrants are more readily treated as members of their adopted nations with far less resistance. I would imagine those resistant to accepting foreigners as fellow citizens are the ones with an ‘illness’ of a sort. I think it is called ‘tribalism’ :D

Note: Joke! I do not view ‘tribalism’ as an ‘illness’.

In terms of self awareness, simply posing a question to ourselves in our head could be considered ‘a prayer’ as we ask ourselves what to do. Often answers come to us when our thoughts are redirected towards other items.

It is does not take much to see that there is a connection between asking a question (or crying our for an answer) and said question/call being answered by some unseen force within.

A human’s sense of authorship shifts and changes quite a lot. Some people even believe we are just ‘passengers’ of a sort and that the claim to authorship is lain on after the said events.

Morality is absolutely ridiculous and silly. End of story :D

@schopenhauer1 What do you make of Ernst Becker?

And my point here was that the person was quite aware that he had a leg - not delusional. He ‘felt like’ the limb was not his own (and said so) and ‘knew’ that physically it was his limb but still wanted it removed.

The ‘logic’ used by the other person you mentioned claimed that ‘feeling’ is equivalent to ‘knowing/thinking’ something to be a true physical fact hence why I not responding to them for about a month - a little rule I have here that works well for me.

“model”

Bye bye (that means you get a response from me for around a month).

Have fun :)

The link I provided you numb nut :D

From a dictionary:

“A 'dogma' is defined as a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority and held to be incontrovertibly true.”

Truth is not directly what science is about. Science is concerned with how things work by refining proposed rules and laws and making observations.

Dogmatic attitudes have existed amongst science-based persons. Yet when evidence is brought forward they DO NOT deny the evidence. Evidence is taken into account and minds are changed. There is no ‘god’s word’ or ‘scripture’ that cannot be changed.

This is basic stuff.

Note: I am NOT saying that all religious people are aligned with such dogma but enough are to cause problems.

Cannot read it because not willing to give details.

It is obvious to me that people have plenty to offer on subjects they are not experienced in. It is daft to suggest that men cannot talk about women’s rights or that non-jews cannot comment about the holocaust.

If the article addresses why these idea have grown more of late (if they have) then what does it say?

It is nonsense to say only x can talk aboud x is what I meant. Busy atm … will read later …

In the OP

No. That is not the definition I was using at all. It is one plied by religious dogmatic types to justify labelling science as ‘dogmatic’.

Based purely on that snippet it is nonsense. I will read later …