hardening of ideology — Shawn

Yeah, it exists in case someone is wondering. A good pointer to see what the shenanigans are about see; https://www.csis.org/analysis/ideological-security-national-security

Bona fide is the sine qua non of communication. — unenlightened

If what you're saying is really true, then why aren't more people talking about this? On my own terms, I'll just point out the polarization the world is currently experiencing and with that the hardening of ideology, what should one do about this lack of congeniality in the main stream media?

Just pointing this out; but, are you aware that the legal system will enforce the current presidential run in the US depending on what some random judge says about Trump the playboy? In 2014, when Hillary Clinton was running, she got snubbed the presidency by a mistake by Comey from the FBI a week before the election.

This is necessarily the case as the lie is necessarily parasitic on truthful communication. At the point where one cannot ever trust the response, one stops asking even such paranoid [sic] questions... — unenlightened

Well there is a saying that only the paranoid survive, which I see fully fleshed out about how we arrive at our decisions based on the current information we have. But, if you have to psychologize this response about my attitude towards communication, then I believe that by being paranoid we can, one can say, appreciate the truth and especially with it honesty and credibility, which good faith relies on.

we are, in the west at least, a super litigious society. It is difficult to be convinced in bona fides as a mechanism of trust. — ENOAH

I believe you are right about this, but, can you clarify the litigiousness of which societies?

Rather than risk life and limb, or face some course of violent retaliation, people could often rely on the good faith of their neighbors to get along. — NOS4A2

Or the law?

But Good Faith nowadays proves to be more difficult than knavery. I don't have any developed theory, but I would propose that the reason for this is an increase in the domain of law, it's scope as a pseudo morality, and the thousand-and-one ways with which it allows an authority to intervene our interactions. — NOS4A2

Well if its the law that gets into the way of good moral conduct, then at least it prevents as its primary goal, the reduction of corruption. I think that having the law prevent dictatorships or autocracies from forming is a good thing. Take for example with what happened fairly recently in Poland with the Law and Justice party, perverting the law towards their own favor, and the Civic Coalition resuming power after a long eight years of some nepotism. I believe Viktor Orban is next, in Hungary.

In short, we aren't free enough for Good Faith. — NOS4A2

It's not freedom. Rather apathy and the exploitation of the law itself.

You have surely noticed how people are kind and polite when they need something from you, but very quickly change their attitude once you provide them with help. — SpaceDweller

Interesting observation, please go on... Again, the Romans had something called quid pro quo, which was a virtuous desire based on good faith.

Nowadays people do a tit for tat and call it a day once the transaction is over. Too cold and remorseless.

Well, they constitute quite a bit of society and human interactions and always have, before and after the time of the Roman Republic. — Ciceronianus

In my humble opinion it actually began formally with the Roman Republic with their laws establishing every new dominion of Rome as an ally in terms of laws bestowed upon them upon or becoming a dominion of Rome. The Romans knew what they were doing, as does Biden, who seems to be very much some kind of former member of The Club of Rome. :chin:

So yeah, there is no bona fide either or anything similar like Winner school, human society is becoming very cold and rude centered around money. — SpaceDweller

Yet to make money, there's a lot of shoulders to rub and smooth talking to do. Again, it seems like when you land in a highly competitive environment with lax rules, you tend to find a lot of hustling going on.

Haven't done that for a long time. Had one positive and one really shitty experience in IT contract work. In the latter, a corporation - don't know what size - was ripping off a municipal government, but we got out unscathed. IBM Canada was mostly okay, faith-wise, if not in executive decisions; a couple of other US subsidiaries were more or less inefficient and top-heavy. We always got paid, but were not always happy. — Vera Mont

Yes, it seems that there may be differing types of corporate cultures out there. I wouldn't know how to comment on companies like Google and Apple which take ethics very seriously. Then again, I can only speak from experience and one of the most common saying that I hear US workers say is, "Fake it until you make it." Which leads me to believe that it doesn't always work out due to your circumstances or environment.

Again, it seems like America is the way it is because of competitiveness and with that its most cherished activity being capitalism. Would you agree with my assumptions here?

In a competitive environment, then I suppose there's less gentlemanly behavior.

Maybe if your looking for good faith, it's over at the United Kingdom, no?

But, what about working for a corporation in the US. There doesn't seem to be much bona fide going on there or maybe I'm wrong about this?

Of course. They take place in every supermarket, at every pedestrian crossing, in every bank, school, hospital and home every hour of the day. Were it not so, society would unravel and cease to function. — Vera Mont

Yet, what about all this "hustle culture" stuff going on? I intended for this to be an individual post; but, sure I'm interested in your take...

What I also suspect, however, is that we have become addicted to catastrophe and stories of doom and zombie apocalypse and many believe that the state of humanity is rotten to the core and that meaning has been lost and the end is nigh. — Tom Storm

I take that as a quip at the US. Having said that, I think you are right that some Americans are more fearful and paranoid than other nations. Yeah, just another stereotype; but, it rings true to me.

What do you think?

By the way, I think that if what you're alluding to @Tom Storm, about these sociopaths, and especially psychopaths, then they have some kind of hyper-sublimating tendencies. Many of them turn out to be fantastic CEO's and executives.

How does the sublimation frame help you make sense of people? — Tom Storm

It doesn't in most cases; but, if one were to conjecture, then maybe it is true for the highly stratified individuals in society, especially philosophers, like Marx or Nietzsche's overman. But, I don't have enough information to extrapolate on this line of reasoning, and there are examples of philosophers that floundered when confronted with stuff like philosophical pessimism. Don't want to cherry pick examples here or there.

How do you think it works in Musk’s case? — Tom Storm

Musk seems to be unique in that he overtly states what troubles him in many of his interviews and decides to quickly act on those disliking's in providing solutions to avoid or adapt in a better manner towards, what he calls, "existential threats."

Are you saying that someone who is hyperactive and successful (and probably lucky) has harnessed their anxiety and channeled (sublimated) this into useful enterprises? — Tom Storm

I'm not sure. Again, just psychologizing here and there, I can say that he disclosed on a SNL episode that he suffers from Asperger's, and from what I can gather, might also have ADHD. It would be hard to say whether he is lucky, as he seems to be one of those self-made men in the American folklore.

I think there are various spins to sublimation - depending upon the era of the psychologist. Isn't the idea that it's a defence mechanism involving socially unacceptable impulses or behaviors which are transformed (sublimated) into socially acceptable actions or behaviors? — Tom Storm

Yeah, that's the classic Freudian take on it. But, I see it more as a adaptive defense mechanism, where a person internalizes some disliking about what is going on around them and decides to alter or change the way things are happening or in other words turn a maladaptive behavior into adaptive behavior. I think this is more in line with Maslow rather than Freud or Jung.

The example often used is that of a sociopath who becomes a surgeon - channelling their antisocial urges (cutting people up) and taking risks with life without emotion. — Tom Storm

Not sure if that pertains to sociopaths only, methinks.

Also, if you pay attention to what he says on YouTube, with Joe Rogan, and others, there seems to be something about what he's doing that tyrannizes over other people (allegedly) and especially himself, with his 60 hours work per week on average. I recommend watching some of his interviews to see what I mean by this.

How well do you know Musk in order to arrive at this? — Tom Storm

Well, again, I'm just an armchair psychologist, psychologizing his existential desire to move the world towards electric vehicles, then build tunnels to alleviate congestion on the streets, then build rockets to get to Mars so that we're a multiplanetary species, then develop Artificial Intelligence to direct cars on the road safer or as safely as possible, then buy Twitter, now known as X so he can talk with people around the world about his ambitions without much hesitation and gather interest...

So, yeah, if you get my drift, the guy might have a lot of pent up anxiety, or just desire for lack of a better word. Oh yeah, and some brain device that can make paraplegics and the disabled, not so paraplegic or disabled anymore.

Just my two cents. :chin:

Just as an interesting read:
https://nextpix.medium.com/beyond-sublimation-233388f9407e

It's really turtles all the way down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Is making a point, a desire to feel smart or important?

Just psychologizing here.

Yeah, I don't think I'm making much sense. So, I'm dropping this thread. Sorry for wasting your time, et al.

In the OP, I already stated what needed to be said about my abilities in the domain of logic. Seemingly you missed that part as you keep on demanding some kind of formalism from me, which unfortunately I can't provide. I clarified later that I had only one interest in Gödel numbering, mainly in utilizing the same logic found in linear algebra, specifically operators with matrices. My assumption being that by doing so, you could concise the amount of information required for the readout of the logic needed to ensure the lowest amount of information needed through the logical operators in matrixes for decoding RGB encoding on the matrix logical operator.

If there's nothing fruitful to do with such logic, then sorry for wasting your time.

Start with "Godel numbering in terms of an isomorphism". — TonesInDeepFreeze

Sure, I can try. Given three terms, R, G, B denoting "red, green, blue." I want to create an isomorphism in the domain of linear algebra with those terms, and by doing so, doing the things only linear algebra allows with those terms... Before I go any further, is what I'm saying possible?

Also, given some deliberation, in response to what TonesInDeepFreeze said, I'm not entirely sure if what I am attempting on doing (creating an isomorphism between three terms (R,G,B) in a Gödel numbering schematic to linear algebra is possible). By doing so, I would hope to reduce the amount of information by the logical operators utilized in linear algebra to encode the information required to display color on a screen, as a trivial example.

Hey, thanks for responding to my post.

What I had in mind in Gödel numbering, was whether by doing so in terms of a isomorphism, such as linear algebra, whether the Kolmogorov complexity would possibly be lower.

I wanted to give a simple example with the color encoding mechanism behind RGB (red, green, blue) on monitor screens or TV screens. The only problem with this example is that I don't know whether Kolmogorov complexity was established in how RGB is usually encoded, so there might be no point to doing whatever I'm saying to begin with.

Anyway, the hypothesis was that by Gödel numbering each term (RGB) in linear algebra, then the very richness of matrix operators and other logical operators, could contribute to a more "concise" format to encode the complexity of different color schemes from RGB, onto a monitor or TV set.

Anyway, thanks for posting, and I don't have much more to say.

My previous comment doesn't detract from the obscurity of Wittgenstein's writing style; but, only means that he wasn't a philosopher; but, rather a logician doing philosophy.

It's important to point out that Wittgenstein considered himself chiefly as a logician. If his arguments aren't deep and insightful about the nature of philosophy, and people quibble about what he meant all the time, then maybe it is all about misunderstanding something about him, which I doubt is true.

It simply took that long to discover what he meant.

Yes; but, people have psychologies.

Just the tendency of some people (even biographers) to think they can explain a thinker's work based on their imagining of a writer's psychological state. Conjecture. Or even the claim that they know what a writer intended meaning based on the writer's (putative) psychological state. Whatever that means. — Tom Storm

But, philosophy isn't mathematics, in that it isn't self-evident. How do you counter that?

I think it depends on their philosophy. — Leontiskos

Can you specify what you mean by "their philosophy?"

Is this a reference to their narrative or system of thought or something else?

But I recognize that old school criticism would have it that the artist and their life is the context of a work when fully understood. I think this has limited application and is subject to many flights of psychologizing fancy. — Tom Storm

So, goes it. Heidegger just lost the game if you're right. Then again, had the victor had their ways as spoke Thrasymachus, then he would have been idolized by everyone nowadays. Strange counterfactual, eh?

What do you mean about the "psychologizing fancy" part?

I think you have a point. Hence my previous post about (if one gives a shit) reading the Blue and Brown books. But, seemingly the appeal of Witt is so strong that it really directed the minds of many philosophers to decode what he meant.

Even Bertrand Russell (one of his closest friends, apart from Frank Ramsey) got him wrong in his foreword to the Tractatus, according to Wittgenstein.

Dang, this Rorty essay is the gift that keeps on giving... — schopenhauer1

Well, based on what you quoted, and given that Wittgenstein was tired of calling the same thing by different words and definitions, you can see how he moved away from Schop's vision of representation being the matrix where meaning is derived from, in the TLP.

But, it gets even more strange in the Investigations to say that meaning is use.

I won't quote the text anymore; but, there's some clarification about what intent Witt had with the Tractatus, and I think it is correct in saying that the effect had a purpose derived from W's participation in the Vienna Circle (logical positivism):


pg.169

Sure, I'll just provide what Rorty says about Conant.

pg. 174
And, with that, @Wayfarer might look at this differently:

pg. 175

@Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm reading the link you provided on Rorty's take on philosophy as therapy, and am interested in your take on these two passages (if you care to split this off into another thread please feel free to do so):



pg. 168-169
I'm pretty much on board with Conant in how, at least personally, Wittgenstein had an effect on philosophers through the Tractatus. What are your thoughts about what Rorty said about the Tractatus seeming like a self-transformative book?

This gets to one of my confusions with contemporary "philosophy as therapy," and therapy in general. The goal seems to be "to feel good," rather than "to be good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

If you read into it, there's really no norm to it. Again, I treat this as methodological nominalism, which Rorty was getting at in his The Linguistic Turn.

Spot on. But, I see the point here as with the person Wittgenstein, not his writings, no?

You know, the guy who wrote what you said during World War I, actually on the front lines, and baffled Bertrand Russell with his intelligence, and gave away all his money to his family, and designed a house and built it, and was always in his conception a logician (more so than a philosopher), and yada yada...

For what its worth, Wittgenstein wasn't a system builder like most of the other greats in the history of philosophy. He simply had a personality and charisma like none other philosopher.

So, since this matters so much to the individual, then I suppose there's some aura always around the appeal of Wittgenstein, as with other perplexing characters of philosophy (like Socrates or Kant)...

Are you suggesting that I am 'gatekeeping' that thread? I didn't have much to say about Wittgenstein anyway.

Sorry if it seemed like it.