Thank you!

How does one engage you in an analysis of my proposal? — Hippyhead

It's very silly.

(1) Whether someone is a mod or not, the same rules apply regarding conduct.
(2) Regulating conduct is more a matter of enforcing basic civility while allowing for shirtness and putdowns. Things will get heated. People will find others frustrating for good reasons and stupid ones.
(3) Staff can't enforce an academic standard of quality for everything even if we wanted to. We're hobbyists that have been at it for a while, that's about it.
(4) Even if you do make an academic strength discussion of something, that doesn't mean everyone who wants to join in can write like that or even wants to, and they shouldn't be excluded.
(5) It's an open access forum. Forum members span hobbyists, people with graduate philosophy degrees, people with undergraduate degrees and people just getting interested in the discipline... Consistent academic standards are unsuitable.

If by "high quality", you mean something more nebulous than "the kind of thing that would appear on a philosophy blog or in a paper", I don't really know what you're talking about.

1) be an easily discovered example of what other members should shoot for and, — Hippyhead

Sometimes I do this, sometimes I don't. I have a lot of hats. Maybe 50% of them are asshole shaped. I can write good posts sometimes.

2) so that interesting new visitors we'd all like to chat with will immediately discover a good reason to hang around. — Hippyhead

That's for the visitors to judge, not me.

Put up or shut up? The mods claim to know good quality from poor quality. Let's see a section where the mods demonstrate that they can deliver good quality. — Hippyhead

You know you can go back through a poster's posting history right? If you go to someone's profile and click on discussions, you'll see the threads they started.

Here's mine. Smite me oh mighty smiter.

If you want syllogisms rather than polemic, though I doubt a syllogism will be particularly effective.

(1) The discovery of facts requires interpretation (of information, evidence...).
(2) Interpretation requires narrativisation, emphasising some things over others, selection of relevant detail.
(3) The discovery of facts requires narrativisation, emphasising some things over others and selection of relevant detail. (from 1,2, MP)

From what I understand of your notion of arrangement, an arrangement is a mapping from the collection of all facts to a subset. The mapping will be done in a manner that involves judgements of relevance, questions of emphasis, flow of story etc...

Using that notion of arrangement, you separate accounts from truths:

It is not a flaw, it is an unavoidable consequence of intelligence, that you are able to arrange truths, interpret them and argue the meaning of what you've brought forward is an amazing thing. And it cannot be contested by truth alone. — Judaka

I do not contest the claim that some conflicts cannot be contested by truth alone; some people disagree on right and wrong. What I contest is how you are using the notion of arrangement to separate truths from stories using them, based on the argument above. An arrangement is not a mapping from facts alone to interpretations, it's a productive relationship from facts and interpretations to facts and interpretations; you need to interpret+investigate skillfully to speak truthfully and keep falsehood + irrelevance at bay. The facts alone don't do that, you gotta put their interpretations (and their contexts + stories...) in the mix to do anything with them - to link them up and reason and investigate.

And since the facts alone don't do that, and even basic truths require that structure, the resultant picture assuming your framing of "arrangement" is an unduly skeptical one. It demolishes the connection between facts and accounts generating them at the same time as emphasising that all we ever make are accounts (the irremovable subjective element)... So there's no contact between us and the facts wherever it matters.

I am with you that facts under-determine interpretations; I am not with you that the under-determination of interpretations by facts allows you to conclude that (unspecified commonplace things) cannot be decided by facts - because there are judgements of relevance, emphasis and narrativisation that go into the facts themselves through their discovery mechanisms. If you think about facts in a manner that does not separate them from interpretation (hence all this talk about facts guiding interpretation previously...), then it addresses this global underdetermination = cannot be contested using facts thesis. The facts come with interpretations, that makes some facts weigh heavily on some interpretations (eg: refuting them, rendering them implausible...). Relationships between facts and their evidence should be brought out in an account using them; there is a structural symmetry in the domain of the map (facts) and the image of the map (selected subsets) that the notion of an arrangement as you were using it does not portray. The structural symmetry being evidentiary relationships among facts, what interpretations they engender and so on... showing up as lending support in an account through those relationships.

The purpose of all the polemic was to portray you as someone who purports to be using "just the facts", but is actually taking a lot of liberties with storytelling. It was intended to use the same idea as in the argument above. I took to posting in that style because it is extremely difficult to convince someone who believes in "just the facts" about anything, regardless of whether they are wrong. Because, you know, they allegedly just believe facts. In my experience, those who emphasize at length about facts in discourse are usually doing so to support their own worldview; it's a backhanded criticism against all that they do not believe. It purports to be an injunction to reason, but it actually functions as a means of rendering ideas invulnerable to critique. Reason as insulator. If you one day decide to waste an evening watching Flat Earthers on Youtube, look out for how much they emphasise the scientific method, skepticism, and conservative interpretation of evidence. I am not kidding you, they really say those things a lot. It's very easy to take on the posture of a rationalist without actually being one.

It is not about people making mistakes, being unreasonable, fallible, biased or whatever else. You are either aware of your involvement in how you have organised the truths, characterised them and interpreted them or you are deludedly believing that the result is also a truth and not something you have created. — Judaka

I talk about what is, the consequences of reality can be considered after. — Judaka

Through which truths are made relevant or important or are known, to how they're characterised or interpreted, a unique story is created. Yet what truths are made relevant or known, how they're characterised and interpreted, all of it happens differently depending on who is telling the story. We can disagree on what is fair, what is reasonable, what is lopsided and because how the story is arranged can all be reasonably disagreed upon, how it should be evaluated can be reasonably disagreed upon as well. — Judaka

Consider that we're talking sufficiently abstractly that any reason, any fact, any justification, any supporting story, any sentimental attachment for anything are being quantified over. We're in precisely the space of reasons where these delusional attachments you speak about are in play. Yet here you speak confidently about "what is"! With no qualification.

You are asking interlocutors to believe that you have surveyed the totality of human reasons and sentiment and filtered "what is" out like a pan full of gold, despite a well written injunction not to when considering such wide ranging topics. Because you have faith that you adhere to:

If my methodology could be whimsically changed to suit my preferences then it would no longer be effective in leading me towards truth and what would be the purpose of it? I rigidly apply high standards for determining the truth because that's how I succeed. If it were not in my benefit to know the truth then I wouldn't try to know it but it's almost never the case. — Judaka

a methodology. A style of interpretation. But it's ultimately a vascillation between degrees of credibility. You are happy, as I have said, to accept that your forebears and inspirations have given you the acuity to speak unqualifiedly of "what is". Whereas those who do not share this methodology will be prone to delusion. Every filter bubble declares its interior reasonable and its exterior irrational and irrelevant, a mechanism you have so well described in the thread.

The point of disagreement regards the consequences of your commitment; skepticism regarding any story told using facts. It seems you want to have a general skepticism that any arrangement of facts; which I take to be an account, or a story told using them; can be true. But your arrangement of facts is "what is"! And you know the Earth is round because it was "proven". Not because you've seen it from space, because you have evaluated evidence and trusted people, and made reasonable inferences based on that information.

Inferences, emphasis, arrangement, knowing what is relevant to what; that's all skill in using facts, it's knowing how to make sense of a part of the world. In one breath you will say it is impossible that the Earth is flat, and that it was proven to be round, in another you will forget what establishes the truth of those things; well reasoned accounts!

It strikes me that your account is trying to disassemble what it is based on. It further strikes me that you do not reason using it when pressed. When it comes down to it, your viewpoint is as dependent upon story as any others' - it's simply a question of skill.

Which speaks to the universal acid criticism; to whom are you addressing your idea? Who have you decided is deluded for believing fanatically in mere stories based on it? As reasoned in another mere story.

Reasonableness, logic, validity, they're all characterisations defined by mutually agreed upon rulesets which function without accordance with reality being necessary. — Judaka

Mutual agreement will not save you. An agreement is simply a shared interpretation. The community of flat earthers shares an interpretation of facts that the Earth is flat.

Impossible. You know full well that X proves B so why this example? — Judaka

I chose that example because it would be obvious to you that X proves B. It's important to pay attention to how X proves B, however.

Is it possible that all evidence that the Earth is round is fabricated to suit an agenda? Yes. So that the Earth is round cannot be derived from the facts alone; it is not like A=A. If we agree that the evidence proves that the Earth is round, what style of proof is it? What is the mode of justification?

That justification is going to require we submit facts to an arrangement. EG: you weigh that the contours of equal force for Newton's law of Gravitation are spheres along with the data of the horizon, measurements of the Earth's curvature, space pictures and so on against the very weak arguments and fabrications of a flat Earther and conclude the only reasonable position is that the Earth is round.

I am sure you will agree with that. However, that you do so only evinces that you selectively apply your position. You invite me to doubt the connection between facts and interpretations; arrangements of facts cannot be true. However, I must precisely arrange the evidence that the Earth is round, emphasize it correctly, and skillfully judge what is relevant and plausible to in order to conclude that the Earth is round. I must partake in emphasising, narrativisation, and arrangement of facts in order to prove that the Earth is round.

Yet here you are quite happy to say other conclusions are impossible. That the Earth is round has been proved. It isn't that other conclusions are impossible; indeed, some people conclude that the Earth is flat; it is simply that their interpretations of facts are deficient. They are unjustified, they see the wrong things as relevant, they tell the wrong stories, they are too implausible. They are wrong.

Were we in a context that usual norms of discourse applied, I would quite happily agree with you that it is impossible that the Earth is flat. When the methods of speaking truth (storytelling!) have their connection to the truths spoken using them blocked? It's all game. And you instinctively resist this conclusion, as you should, because it makes reason die.

The problem here is that just one set of facts can give rise to multiple valid arguments with true premises. How can the truth be self-contradicting? How do you choose what "truth" to subscribe to and does that question dismantle the concept of the truth by itself? Which is pretty much the crux of my OP, you can't say that all of these arrangements are truths while there are so many to choose from, arguing that you should do totally different things or have totally different opinions or perspectives on the same set of facts — Judaka

You are more than willing to privilege shared epistemic standards when it suits your purposes. Whenever something is sufficiently obvious. And reading your position carefully, we know that what is obvious is simply a matter of taste for anything of note.

We need to be able to criticize how stories are told, the truth plays a part; the subjective element that all things are spoken from some perspective plays absolutely none in the abstract. Always a question of how and why.

Which is pretty much the crux of my OP, you can't say that all of these arrangements are truths while there are so many to choose from — Judaka

That's clearly an invalid argument. The number of arrangements doesn't say anything about their quality, only whether there are reasonable accounts does (and how many there are).

Does the fact that we disagree that your conclusions follow from your premises mean that there's no truth of the matter?

Anyway, bringing in the other aspect of what I'm saying. Let's grant that everything you are saying is true. Then consider a bunch of facts X with two interpretations A, B. What you are saying is independent of the quality of justifications between X and A,B, since it applies equally well to all accounts based on facts. So it applies to arbitrary X too. It thereby is entirely useless in every case for deciding on whether A or B or both are reasonable given X. Your concerns are orthogonal to any practice of justification.

Given that some people take X=all the evidence about the shape of the Earth and conclude A=The Earth is flat, and some people conclude B=The Earth is approximately a sphere. The only distinction between concluding A based on X and B based on X is taste in your account. It makes it entirely useless at assessing arguments on their strengths and weaknesses.

Which, ultimately, makes the function of this idea be entirely its discursive role. What ideas you throw the idea at to criticize. It can only be applied based on personal taste - tearing down what you dislike, leaving in place all you like. It's a version of faith, but a shallow one. It works to support any commitments you already have by rendering your tastes the last account standing, the only one you have not applied it to.

What is the nature of a fact? And is it the fact's nature according to only to your interpretation? — Judaka

I think a fact's nature depends on the fact. Aspects of a fact that do not depend on an agent's interpretation, an agent's interpretation simply brings it out. If (1) there's a cup full of coffee on my table and (2) I live alone (3) It's about 10am here then it is reasonable to infer (4) I enjoy drinking coffee.

It's reasonable to infer some statements from facts and not others, whether it is reasonable usually will not be determined by an agent's tastes. Contextual information about the agent (say you're talking to your friend about someone they know intimately) can determine whether it's reasonable to trust them about what they say (regarding their friend).

It's all fallible, being reasonable and fair doesn't ensure you'll speak or believe truth, it just raises the chances.

How can the arrangement of facts in an account have a truth value? What I can agree with is that it can be logical, rational, reasonable, probable and many other things. Are you sure that you are not conflating truth with things of this nature? — Judaka

I don't believe so. Look at the above example, from (1) (2) and (3) it is reasonable to conclude (4). And when it is reasonable to infer a thing on some basis, it is true that it is reasonable to do so. A particularly stark example is that the syllogism: A => B, A, therefore B, requires that A=>B is true. But perhaps you would not see the inference A=>B, A as an arrangement of facts.

Perhaps more precisely, if an arrangement of facts cannot be true by fiat, whether an arrangement of facts renders it reasonable to conclude a claim can be. A paradigmatic instance is a valid argument with true premises.

That is absolutely not how the "subjective" works because whether you like it or not, you are a biological entity and being that as it is, your brain - the tool you think with, is not even remotely close to neutral or unbiased. This bias is largely responsible for the differences and more importantly, the similarities in our interpretation of facts. No matter what one tries to do philosophically, nobody will ever succeed at removing these biases. The biases, do not even accurately distinguish between fact and fiction, let alone the truth value of facts versus arrangements. — Judaka

It seems to me you are conflating the fact that facts require agents for explication (through arrangement + narrativisation + emphasis) for the dependence of facts' relationships upon agents' explication of them. An error like saying whether things fall to the ground when dropped depends upon our scientific accounts of gravity. You need to adopt a story to explicate any aspects of reality; that makes such storytelling error prone. But not all accounts (= fact + arrangement + emphasis + narrative) are equally vindicated - they support their conclusions with different strengths.

Everyone is biased at all times. Biases are not enemies of the truth. As soon as you reason you are possibly in error; but not necessarily in error. Whether you are in errror depends on how you reason, that error is always possible is inherent to reason.

You did a good job in the OP describing a few mechanisms that bias can block the generation of relevant truths. I think you have invalidly inferred from the fact that we are necessarily biased when interpreting anything to the claim that interpretations of facts (with biases) are equally vindicated.

Sometimes a biased conclusion is the only reasonable one.

I have a small concern, how do you define interpretation? I use it here to say: explaining the meaning of something. If you agree with that and we are not talking about epistemology or using interpretations to strip a truth of its status as a truth, then I will be more comfortable about responding properly. I said I might agree with Skepticism but after doing homework on what that is, I don't agree with it, I would use the same criticism as you about it. — Judaka

"Explaining the meaning of a fact" looks like a decent working definition to me. With the caveat that facts usually engender multiple interpretations. I guess for me an interpretation is also an ascription of meaning to a fact. Ascription of meaning to a fact, derivation of explanation from a fact, the direction of fit is somewhat fungible.

In some respects a fact engenders explanations consistent with its nature (fact->agent's explanation), but it is also used with the significance afforded to it by an agent (agent's explanation -> fact). The discursive distinction between a fact and the role a fact plays in an account. I understand the role a fact plays as an expression of the nature of a fact in a context by an agent - that context can be an account, an ideology etc. The fungibility comes, I think, from agents enacting the fact's logical/causal/epistemic relationships to other ideas by leveraging them in an account. The nature of a fact guides an agent in that fact's explication. In truth, I believe facts have relationships to each other that agents may explicate or otherwise use when making an account of something. Prosaically, some facts find others palatable, some distinguish themselves from others, some organize others by their schematic nature. So when you write:

That is not something I'll discuss here but what is nonsense is to defend the arrangement by the truth of what you've arranged. It doesn't address any of the aforementioned choices you've made that have created the arrangement - none of which ever challenge what is and what is not true. — Judaka

I am suspicious that it is a skeptical thesis; the arrangement of facts in an account can be a truth too. A truth in the sense of a valid argument with true premises, or as providing evidence for a statement conjointly. Among countless other inferential relationships. Drawing a strict distinction between a collection of facts and arrangements using them (if indeed you are doing that) looks to sever all facts from any issue they may bear on. Though you may have a technical sense of "arrangement" in mind that avoids the criticism.

I see this as a serious problem because the intellectuals have begun to function as a new ruling class. — JerseyFlight

It's a servitor role I think. I'm assuming that intellectual = professional researcher. If you meant something different by it, I dunno what you mean. Hitchens, Krauss, Deepak Chopra, Krishnamurti etc. aren't really ruling class - they have cultural significance but no hands on institutional levers of power.

You have to be able to generate funding for your research. To my knowledge that either comes from technology applications (this research will help deacidify the sea!), funds for social initiatives (this research will help the mentally ill!), or the very rare carte-blanche researcher grants (this academic has a personal brand the institute wants to acquire) + humanitarian/public interest grants (funding for a problem that isn't immediately relevant by a grant institution).

To the extent you define your own research problems, you are mostly separate from state political power. You only have to be able to get funding from the above means. In that situation, you work in obscure research projects and small teams. Alternatively, you are a research leader for an institution already, so your research decrees are aligned with institutional interest by the job title.

To the extent your research problems are defined by others, you are trying to answer questions given to you by other institutions or line managers in the above position. You are part of a command chain larger than the research group or the command chain of the research group. If you're a consultant, you're given a dataset and a problem, your job is to produce a solution and sell confidence in it (at the same time as evaluating risks). Or alternatively your job is to make the problem addressable through data.

There's a real job filter for technical competence nowadays. You simply can't be hired for many jobs nowadays without it. But effectively you become a member of the civil service for a corporation or you're working for an institution to analyze whether it's meeting its goals. You will not set the goals.

Though I believe there is a "division of learning in society" (as spelled out in "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism") - it's a question of who can use the data and for what ends. As a researcher, it isn't your job to define the ends of research. It's your job to be the means of technical problem solving and troubleshooting concepts that aid in that problem solving.

I am not entirely convinced that if you paraphrased the position you are arguing against that it would describe my position. — Judaka

(1) Facts have interpretations.
(2) When someone writes an account of something, they make a choice regarding what is relevant to present.
(3) The point (2) also applies to choice of facts.
(4) There may be multiple interpretations of the same selection of facts.
(5) When someone writes something fact based - IE which uses evidence - someone who reads it need not agree with the interpretations of facts while agreeing with all the facts.
(6) Some people behave as if facts usually have only one interpretation.
(7) That kind of behaviour is a delusion, since complexes of facts have multiple interpretations.

In the background, though not explicated, you seem to have intuitions regarding the arbitrary connection between collections of facts and what interpretations those collections of facts support. Similarly, you seem to be conveying that it's a ultimately a matter of individual caprice to make any organisation of facts in support of any thesis. Individuals who are not aware of how they do that are deluded. People often write accounts that organize facts and posit them as relevant in this deluded manner.

Seem about fair?

So such a hard wedge between fact and interpretation; even if true in principle, is useless in the practice of reasoning about things. Except as a selectively applied powerful acid. — fdrake

And some part of me wonders if extremely strong skepticism is just another form of faith; doubting all that would change my mind. I could be skeptical of every other interpretation besides the one I have already.

I don't know precisely what you mean but it probably is scepticism, to some extent, what I've written, I believe it is the bedrock of nihilism. I don't know, you are baiting me into heavily derailing my own thread here. — Judaka

I'm not baiting you into heavily derailing your own thread. Whatever the facts are, they don't justify any interpretation.

I don't mean that just as snark. The point of saying it is that an intellectual commitment to nihilism that severs facts from interpretations is like a powerful acid. You can use it to destroy whatever you choose to, but as the above shows you can't function without the fungibility of facts and interpretations. You have to act as if the world is how you interpret it - that's what it means to hold beliefs about it.

So such a hard wedge between fact and interpretation; even if true in principle, is useless in the practice of reasoning about things. Except as a selectively applied powerful acid.

I broadly agree with what you've written. Though I think that driving such a hard wedge between fact and interpretation is very close to skepticism.

. Even without ever disagreeing on what is true, you can arrive at a near infinite number of different conclusions — Judaka

How many relevant interpretations can there be of "Some people like petting cats."? If it is a mere fact, what can be disagreed upon regarding it without adding irrelevant detail through the interpretation?

But maybe I'm not following your suggestion? — Kornelius

Nah I think you were following it fine. It's simply a case of my suggestion not being very good!

For this reason, we cannot simply conclude that (Li) is not true, since we can conclude (Li) is true and, in fact, any proposition we wish. — Kornelius

But I am thinking this explanation may not be satisfactory. Did you have something else in mind? — Kornelius

Something like this; if you conclude that it's true and false, the conjunction of a truth and a falsehood is a false, so it's false. IE, it appears to be an instance of "X and not-X".

I want to follow this but I can't. — Srap Tasmaner

Question motivated by the following insight: for everything else which is both True and False, the conjunction of True and False is simply False. Like "tautology AND contradiction" evaluates to "contradiction".

I'm pretty sure I'm being naive in some way, since evaluating the Liar as simply false is both an obvious approach and undermines a whole literature, but I'm sufficiently lazy that I'm hoping someone in thread can tell me precisely why I'm wrong.

The exception would be that if we define philosophy as having nothing to do with human beings and life in general. — Hippyhead

Philosophy pros are irrational because they don’t focus enough on existential threats. — praxis

I'm genuinely interested to see if anyone here can paraphrase your position correctly. — Judaka

I thought it was about the pragmatic distinction between theory and praxis rather than the theoretical one. You know, doing relevant things vs theorising about what things are relevant to do.

Myself, I prefer my foot. It's bigger, and fills the cavity in a more efficient manner. Very rational! — Hippyhead

I can't deduce the distinction between the two (fists, feet). So perhaps they're the same thing.

I moved this thread to the Lounge btw.

To make matters worse, my mouth is so big I could probably fit 7 guns in there. — Hippyhead

Fortunately I don't have a gun, I just put my fist in my mouth. The empirical method at its finest.

Ok, we might research why I have the gun in my mouth, and why my fellow philosophers generally don't wish to discuss the gun, and what such a lack of interest might say about one's ability to reason, and therefore evaluate quality content. — Hippyhead

I'm still a bit confused how you could contribute to the discussion with a gun in your mouth. It'd make your words a bit muffled, no?

Syllogism = th-ho-gh-thm. Symbolism=th-bo-gh-thm.

They really do sound much the same with a something filling your mouth!

Imagine that I show up for the philosophy club meeting at your house with a loaded gun in my mouth. You're naturally concerned about this and try to talk to me about the gun. But I roll my eyes at your "hysteria", dismiss your concerns, and keep changing the subject to traditional philosophy topics. — Hippyhead

I think I'd try and turn the gun into a research program, rather than try and persuade you to take it out of your mouth.

What I'd really like to do is attempt to integrate a lot more social dimensions, flesh out his class-conflict in light of the intervening 150 years of history. — Pantagruel

I think that's what a lot of Marxist literature does, no? Filling in the gaps and using the same categories to analyse other issues. Did you have a particular thing in mind?

Are you a mathematician? — Pantagruel

Yes, statistician. (Mathematicians don't like it if you call statistics mathematics)

What to do when it comes to natural languages -- there's the rub. — Srap Tasmaner

Thoughts? — Kornelius

1. Assume (Li) is true
2. Then '(Li) is not true' is true (substitution).
3. Then (Li) is not true (T-out)
4. Then (Li) is true and (Li) is not true (from 1 and 3. Contradiction)
5. Then (Li) is not true (reductio 1-4)
6. Then '(Li) is not true' is true (T-in)
7. Then (Li) is true (substitution)
8. Then (Li) is true and (Li) is not true (from 5 and 7. Contradiction). — Kornelius

What blocks:

9. (Li) is not true (8, truth conditions of conjunction).

?

Why can't it just be false?

I'm nearly done all 3 volumes - I'd love to see a full blown global economics simulator based on Marx's principles. — Pantagruel

I don't think that's possible without filling in/inventing lots of extra-textual details. Some of his arguments are relatively easy to put into a theorem-proof form though. The latter's what I'm attempting.

$\forall x \forall y: \forall P ( P(x) \leftrightarrow P(y)) \rightarrow x=y$ isn't
$\forall x \forall y: \forall P (K(P(x)) \leftrightarrow K(P(y))) \rightarrow x=y$ where $K$ is the knowledge operator.

There is a property P that readily distinguishes vat-world and not-vat-world, namely whether that entity is part of a simulation of a brain in the vat or not. The ability to know whether something is or is not a simulation is different from whether that something is a simulation. If you want to feed that kind of claim into the identity of indiscernibles, you'd need to establish:

$\forall P \forall x \forall y (K(P(x)) \leftrightarrow K(P(y))) \leftrightarrow (P(x) \leftrightarrow P(y))$

which has $K(P(x)) \leftrightarrow P(x)$ as a consequence - and you end up with both infallibilism and that all truths are known, both theorems of that assumption. Not a good situation.

Political enemies? (Drunk manifesto)

If you think a person is your enemy, like you really hate them for personal reasons. That means you've met them, that means you're in similar enough social circles to share structural risks. Every structural risk is a sharable cause. For the populist right; you have more in common with immigrants and the underclass than your leaders. For the populist left; remember you're systems, your actions together speak louder than words alone, get your ass out there however you can. Lethargy is its own special form of hell.

If you think there's only one way to solve a problem and the rest are fucked, regressive or otherwise bullshit - if you agree on the problem, so long as you impose aggregate risks on the conditions that make the problem it will convulse or topple. Keep caring about the same things together. If something is ineffective but it is the only thing you can do do it anyway. That's climbing the stairs out of hell.

If your role is supportive - parents betting with love on their children, teachers who want to educate, honest philanthropists, democratisers and just regulators - you decrease the life costs imposed by the problems you face. It doesn't even matter if you know what they are, you are structural resilience against the suffering imposed by shared risks. That imposes a cost on the costs imposed on you. That's being a net positive all else held equal.

If a person poses enough of a structural risk, impose costs in the most effective way you can muster. There are good reasons states disappear dissidents in vans or body bags or prisons. What applies to their exercise of power applies to yours, the only difference is scale and validation laundering (manufactured consent/indifference).

Take an honest look at yourself and see where you fit into the scheme of things - I'm wearing clothes sanitized ideologically and literally from the blood of the hands that knitted them. Whenever you are complicit, own it, and if you want justice you want your complicity to end and will do whatever you cannot abide not to. I am rotten, rot makes compost.

interpret — Xtrix

He does interpret it, but he doesn't Interpret it. :wink:

Last few books and essays and stuff:

Mindfuck - Christopher Wylie
Invisible Women - Caroline Criado Perez
Fucking Trans Women - Mira Bellweather
Capital Vol. 1 - Marx (reread (more mathematicising the value theory))
1984 - George Orwell
Uruk Machines - samzdat
Communisation and the Value Form Theory - End Notes (reread, accompanying Marx stuff)

Ongoing maths/stats stuff:

Reading these together with accompanying papers, the study will take a while.

{

Causality - Judea Pearl
The Algebra of Open and Interconnected Systems - Brendan Fong
Category Theory for Scientists (using for reference, previously read) - David Spivak
}

Ongoing philosophy:

Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern - J. Sakai

Philosophy has a metagame?

S: Kant and Hume are clear S tiers, budding entrants to The Argument are either skewered by their arguments or defined by how they reject /circumvent them. They are meta-defining. If you can't deal with both, you can't survive.

A: I think that Aristotle is a clear A - defensible responses to Kant and Hume critique (hylomorphic realism + epistemic virtues), and just like any good A tier sufficiently vague to fit pretty much any form of realism of any flavour, which is the meta position. Also has surprising synergy with the theologically inspired low tiers. Aristotle + Heidegger is a standard defensive pivot which can be used along with any variety of mysticism and scientism you like, providing zoning and excellent space control through an illusion of continued relevance and non-redundancy.

B: Nietzsche's a quintessential B-tier, while his arguments rarely fit any meta, if you put him on the team he's a fantastic support. He can peel against the most incisive critical carries with geneological dismissals. Watch out for his ult: re-evaluation of all values - an area of effect ability that allows dismissing any conceptual framework for being boring, launching both Nietzsche and the target out of philosophy as usually practiced, can only be applied when the target is effected by Nietzsche's crowd control ability Geneological Critique.

Wittgenstein is another B tier, who functions very well as a single target damaging ability carry, he can provide devastating criticism of specific points so long as you can make up for the abhorrent hypocrisy of his quietism and naivety using a good support. He provides a very flexible offense, though his defense consists entirely of claiming the opponent is making a grammatical error without ever saying what a grammatical error is.

C: Marx is probably a C tier, but that doesn't mean he's weak, it just means you have to build your team around him. He's actually a terrifying hypercarry once it hits the late game, when words start translating into actions and the teamfight starts.

Statistics with fdrake (readers may or may not receive a free car upon reading the post).

But it appears to. — Sir2u

Posters (>0 posts) with fewer than 10 posts: 63%
Posters with fewer than 626 posts: 95%
Posters with a single post ("drive-by"): 25% — SophistiCat

These categories aren't mutually exclusive or exhaustive. If you have 1 post, you have <10 posts. If you have <10 posts, you have <626 posts. A list of percentages is only ensured to add up to 100% when they represent a mutually exclusive and exhaustive collection of properties regarding the same population. Exhaustive means everything is counted, mutually exclusive means things are only counted once.

Example - population of people in each continent except Antartica.

List 1

1 Asia 59.69%
2 Africa 16.36%
3 Europe 9.94%
4 North America 7.79%
5 South America 5.68%
6 Oceania 0.54%

These add to 100% because people who live somewhere in a populated continent live in one of the continents. The list's items exhaustive, it covers all the population (of people in the populated continents).

And if you currently are in Asia, you can't also currently be in Africa or Europe or North America and so on. The list's items are mutually exclusive, you can only ever be in one list item.

If you added Afro-Eurasia to the list - it has 85.90% of the world population. But then it would read:

List 2
1 Asia 59.69%
2 Africa 16.36%
3 Europe 9.94%
4 North America 7.79%
5 South America 5.68%
6 Oceania 0.54%
7 Afro-Eurasia 85.90%

Now they they add up to 185.90%. But if you live in Afro-Eurasia, you can live anywhere in Europe or Asia or... It breaks the mutually exclusive thing. Since Asians, Africans, Europeans are counted in their list entries but also in Afro-Eurasia.

If instead you delete Europe from the original list:

List 3
1 Asia 59.69%
2 Africa 16.36%
3 Europe 9.94%
4 North America 7.79%
5 South America 5.68%
6 Oceania 0.54%

It adds up to 90.06%. This breaks the exhaustive thing - you can live in Europe but not be on the list.

The reason it's generally expected that lists of %s sum to 100% is that lists of % are generally used to represent a mutually exclusive and exhaustive collection of properties (like List 1). Sophisticat's collection of properties don't have that property since:

If you have 1 post, you have <10 posts. If you have <10 posts, you have <626 posts.

Having <626 posts behaves like "being in Afro-Eurasia" in list 2, it contains all the <1 items (since 0 is less than 626) and all the <10 items (since 10 is less than 626).

(Paging @Baden to the thread).

Considering both accounts have exactly the same IP, I changed your name to Kornelius so that annoying 2 won't stick around, I renamed the old account to Kornelius(Old).

The account "Kornelius" and the account "Kornelius2" do not have the same email address registered with their profile unfortunately.

The recovery email is being sent to a different email address, I think. Can you remember the email address associated with the last account? If you can, check it.

Every time there's a western - Asian conflict of some sort someone will always bring out the Chess vs Go strategy paradigm clickbait article. It was done with the Vietmin, it's being done now. The story goes that Chess playing nations think they win if they achieve "the key objective", Go playing nations think they win if they achieve "the greatest overall control". Over the years I've seen maybe... 4 or 5 news stories like that, and I don't remember any of them having any ounce of research in them. Just speculation and trope matching.

Could you elaborate? — Tzeentch

Do you really need me to explain common ways in which animals experience pain through industrial meat production? I thought bins full of baby chickens, force feeding, constant disease, little to no allowed movement etc etc are quite well known.

An argument goes that the effect of an individual's consumption of animal products only negligibly supports the above, so it's permissible to make those decisions. That negligible difference matters pragmatically, but perhaps not morally.

If "causing unnecessary pain" was restricted to "killing" I'd agree with you that it interfaces with the argument. But as stated, it doesn't - the unnecessary pain caused to animals by their consumption doesn't come all at once with their painful (or painless) death.