Ironically, the physicist and philosopher of science Sabine Hossenfelder now says that mathematical physics is too impressed with the beauty of mathematical ideas, particularly string theory. IN fact her book on it is titled Lost in Math - How Beauty Leads Physics Astray.

Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, and elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ones. This is why, Sabine Hossenfelder argues, we have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades. — Wayfarer

Meh. The physicist believes that the best theories are those that are the best tested. Quantum electrodynamics is considered quite ugly, particularly because of renormalization, which Feynman admitted is just a trick. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is, is it right, i.e. does it pass a large number of tests? The notion that theories like QED are dismissed for their ugliness is false.

It's certainly true that "beautiful" theories excite scientists. Typically, a beautiful theory is one that has a) a small number of postulates, b) has uncontroversial (i.e. empirical) postulates, and c) is mathematically or logically elegant, i.e. simple, with small numbers of parameters.

The special theory of relativity, the theory of natural selection, and the thermodynamics are three examples of theories that meet these criteria. Quantum mechanics is an example of one that does not. Nonetheless, while thermodynamics remains useful at a higher level, it is completely derivable from quantum mechanics via statistical mechanics. It's beauty is no barrier to its usurpation.

Be wary of science philosophers pushing interpretations that don't seem to match the facts. As for the slowdown in scientific progress, that's a) overstated and b) misleading. Before modern electromagnetic theory, physics was thought of as basically complete: not much was going on. There then came a flurry of activity that yielded Maxwell's equations, relativity and quantum mechanics. Other philosophers of science have noted that this adheres to a pattern in the progress of physics.

Amen.

Everything material must ultimately be mental, since we live inside our minds, and the world we interact with must therefore also be "in here" with us. — Echarmion

Everything material that we experience must have some mental correlate. It doesn't follow that in order for a thing to materially exist, there must be a mental thing to experience it.

The other question is whether in order for a thing to experience anything, must it have a materialist existence. If the answer is Yes, then we're firmly pointed toward the material as having primacy (since an inexperienced material thing is not ruled out while an immaterial experiencer is). If No, then we're looking at dualism.

The likely answer depends heavily on how seriously you take empirical evidence over beliefs. If you believe immaterial consciousnesses exist, and the empirical evidence for the physical basis of consciousness doesn't move you, either dualism is true or material existence is false. If you take seriously the evidence that mental processes are physical, then either you need two qualitatively different ways of making a mind (material and immaterial) or else materialism is likely true.

But the so-called material world that we actually inhabit is shot-through with meaning, information, none of which is itself material. — Pantagruel

Physically rearranging a configuration of wooden blocks from a straight line to a ring is changing the information stored in that system of blocks without changing any block in its own reference frame. But the state of the block has changed in any fixed frame (position being part of something's state). Each block -- that is, each material constituent of the system -- has changed.

But this is why I prefer to think of things in terms of the "physical" rather than the "material". There seems less ambiguity about whether we're speaking of the inate properties of a thing (which define what that thing is) or the state of the thing.

When I say it's not good enough, you say that just shows how lousy my character is. — Judaka

Actually, yes. I think any decent person would question the morality a guy who says that women in the 50s should just get a hobby and stop whining.

But that's not the real point. Your arrogant and quite stupid assertion is that evidence to justify *my* conclusion has to meet your standard, which, given the above, is a standard that rejects damning evidence. But you're quite wrong about that. It's sufficient to satisfy myself, not some random right-winger with a history of standing by racists til a mod smacks him down. I'm surprised you can't get your head around this. Seems a perfectly simple point.

How he meant them? What a horrible joke, you mean the hysterical performance of how you interpreted quotes with no context and a clear misunderstanding of what he meant by enforced monogamy? — Judaka

I hope that in the sober light of day you reread your post with the word "hysterical" in mind, both in terms of how often you use it, and in terms of the pitch of your post.

I understand exactly his argument for enforced monogamy and misrepresent nothing. That you are okay with his arguments just tells me what kind of person you are. You can scream about it til you're blue in the face; I'm quite satisfied with my conclusions and utterly dissatisfied with yours, and the fevered tone of your posts isn't helping. I will continue to call him what he is, til you vent a spleen if necessary.

I hate autocorrect. Especially after wine.

I think there's a massive overlap between what you're talking about and what I'm talking about wherein a company becomes a resource for a small number of people to extract money and move on. There are other factors, for instance creating demand for useless products which is less like trade and more like welfare. But a trader who owns the means of production and who successfully aggregates wealth by those means doesn't strike me as a corruption of the market, just an undesirable possibility of the market. Owning one's means of production, having workers... these are as old as markets themselves, surely.

Your ideology prevents you from seeing this. — Banno

I don't know. I suspect whatever his ideology he'd be equally blind. His precise ideology just means he's blind and vile.

Capitalism is a disruption of the market. — Pfhorrest

In its current guise, certainly. Divorcing the fate of the company from the date of the trader has corrupted it immensely. When it can be in the trader's interest to destroy his own company, market forces are rather irrelevant.

:rofl:

I believe this would be like saying that Democrats are still the party of slavery. Most conservatives I've spoken with are for maximum opportunity for all. As a matter of fact, I am not sure I've ever met anybody who would against this. — synthesis

That was precisely my point: conservatives are not strictly regressives. While they tend to oppose progress, like ending slavery, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, they tend to affirm those things once they've lost the fight.

I get that you believe the system needs to be "optimized." Unfortunately, the system is optimized (for the few). This is pretty much the only way systems work. — synthesis

That's an ideological belief, not an empirical fact. The most progressive countries in the world have iteratively achieved, to good measure at least, precisely what you hold to be impossible. These countries also tend to report the highest qualities of life in the world. They were not born that way: it was achieved by incremental improvement over time. The obstacle to other countries achieving the same is typically conservativism.

Whereas there will come a day where people will probably not care if a person is white, black, brown, purple or green — synthesis

Amen. Except the purple ones. They can't handle equality; they wouldn't know what to do with it.

Should we make women have 50% male friends and 50% female friends. — synthesis

No one is trying to make anyone do this.

Love is an umbrella term for several different things: attraction, attachment, commitment. Check out Helen Fisher. I recall she did a TED talk on the subject that was quite good.

For me, love is not wanting to be without my partner for a second (okay, maybe an hour), and wanting to support them through their own ambitions in life.

And fucking. Quite a lot of it is about fucking.

Conservatism is about preserving — synthesis

Yes, not regressing. Regressive and conservative politics are not the same thing. Someone who wants to repeal women's right to vote is not conservative: they are regressive.

Saying that they are on the wrong side of history is denying the success that the U.S. has had over the past 244 years. — synthesis

No, saying that they were on the wrong side of history wrt e.g. civil rights just says they were wrong irrespective of their successes. Success is not a measure of correctness.

Identity politics and intolerance will only lead to further division making the process of debate and compromise difficult, at best. — synthesis

I think you've been reading extremists and now have an extreme idea of progression. It isn't about identity politics (although there's ample identity politics as well). It's about optimising the system to work for more people. "Identity politics" has become a term that extremists use to denounce any idea that seeks to address systematic bias. Real identity politics is about individualism. One can progress in that direction, but there are other, better directions. For instance, "progressive taxation" has nothing to do with identity politics.

It will be interesting to watch the progressives in America as they seem Hell-bent on canceling conservative thinking all-together. If their strategy is successful and they are allowed to implement widespread change, the results will be just as poor as if the conservatives tried to roll back to the clock thereby retarding society from moving forward. — synthesis

I'm not really sure this is about extremism. Conservativism isn't generally about trying to "roll back the clock". While it's generally on the wrong side of history on everything (slavery, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, etc.), being conservative it tends to affirm its own defeats, for the most part anyway. They're not apt to remove women's right to vote or start slave trading. The extremists aren't e.g. the Republicans, but the Magamaniacs and Brexiteers. Also, saying that if progressives got their way everything would be bad is just saying that progressives are wrong.

Cheers for the link, I'll read it soon (wine, takeaway and film night). Yes, as I wrote the previous, my mind too was whirring as to how one would do it but I concluded that, if we fail to do as you suggest in a hierarchical state with top-down law enforcement, I don't hold much hope for any other structure. But I'll get back to you on your website, which I've bookmarked.

Basically, Do you believe some people require a larger effort in self reflection, meditation and self-directed positive cognitive training to maintain the same good traits/values as someone who just does it in the first place without thinking? — Benj96

Yes. People aren't responsible for they're upbringing but that are responsible for questioning their beliefs. Someone who understands on a cognitive level that their reactions might not be good and tempers them is admirable imo, precisely because challenging your own beliefs is tougher than acting on them.

I don't know the context, who are "these" suburban housewives, I imagine he's talking about a small number of people, perhaps even as small as 3-4, who he actually listened to. — Judaka

He was talking about a survey of university-educated women in the '50s, most of whom espoused that sentiment. JP believes, as counterpunch clearly believes, that these women had no right to complain: men say it is good enough for them, therefore they should too. That is oppression.

This quote seems to be from here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html

The same article which states your same misinterpretation of what enforced monogamy is, right? — Judaka

I don't have access to that article. But JP has no qualms with restating his belief that female fertility should be put to use in assuaging male aggression here:

https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-enforced-monogamy/

The idea that female reproduction should be *for* men, to allow them to avoid responsibility for their actions, is an example of objectification of women.

Deciding my sources and dismissing them out of hand is not something I recognise as legitimate argumentation. Why do you?

You said you could justify your comments about JP being sexist and what do you give me? Misinterpretations, a quote about the reliability of a rape accusation and an out of context quote that means shit all. — Judaka

By his own admission, JP's response to his reaction was immediate, and amounts to gaslighting his own patient. I do not just think he is sexist; he should not have been practising psychology. Dismissing rape victims' claims immediately and out of hand has been a huge problem (not for you, obviously) for a long time.

As I said, I don't expect you to see sexism in any of this. If you are, as you say, familiar with JP's arguments, you'll already have come across his sexism and not observed it. But oppression, objectification, gaslighting, and disbelieving women out of hand are uncontroversially sexist behaviours. You asked me if I can defend my terminology: yes, much better than you, apparently. Can I therefore get you to observe and agree with it? Much harder ask. If we could do that, the world would be a much nicer place.

This might be a blow to your ego, but it's not incumbant upon me to defend my terminology to your standard, especially as your standard might be dual. It is incumbent upon me to defend it to reasonable standards and my own, and by any conventional, uncontroversial standard and my own, JP is evidently overtly sexist, i.e. a non-sexist person could not have said the things he said and meant them. I have no interest in trying to convince a person who believes that women should be satisfied with domestic servitude and no autonomy that they're wrong.

I'll check the link later.

I'm not checking the reasonableness of characterisations you made but after you decided Carlos is pro-fascist for not critiquing the groups as you'd like, you'll understand if my expectations here are low. — Judaka

Bitcoin "black people are just more criminal" Carlos? Yeah, perfect case in point, thanks for raising it. [EDIT: Actually, I think that was "The KKK is a non-violent organisation"]

A link or source would be nice, I can't find it. I don't want to comment on this with so little information. — Judaka

I thought you were familiar enough with JP to know when I'm misrepresenting him? It's in his book. Read it, don't read it, just drop the claim to expertise.

He emphatically states the value of having women in the workforce, unimpeded, being able to do whatever they want to do. You are an incredibly untrustworthy narrator, if he's so bad, give me statements which show what you claimed about him to be true. — Judaka

I just did. Are you claiming he didn't say:

it’s so whiny, it’s just enough to drive a modern person mad to listen to these suburban housewives from the late ’50s ensconced in their comfortable secure lives complaining about the fact that they’re bored because they don’t have enough opportunity. It’s like, Jesus get a hobby. For Christ’s sake — Kenosha Kid

? Or is this compatible with his claim to be egalitarian? How? Don't confuse JP being a charlatan with me being unreliable. If you have good reason to refute the wording or the meaning of the evidence, go ahead. Pointing elsewhere is a major copout.

Peterson is not arguing that women should be forced to be housewives. — Judaka

Peterson is describing housewives in the 50s who complained of domestic imprisonment of "whining". That's a "shut up" in my book. As I said, I don't expect you to see this sentiment as sexist -- that would be asking too much -- but I'm not going to pretend it isn't to meet your low standards.

You are just exhibiting more of the same behaviour I've been criticising. — Judaka

Yes, and I'm becoming increasingly aware that the behaviour in question is calling prejudiced people out on their prejudices. There's a logical conclusion.

Nobody forced me to apologise. — Judaka

This isn't the point. The point is that you're exhibiting a pattern of behaviour at losing your shit when a prejudiced person is called out on their prejudice then having to back down when you can't justify yourself. You're doing it again here, using your ignorance (or, more likely, blind eye) of JP's sexism as an excuse for defending it.

I'm not unfamiliar with sensual pleasures, they eventually wear thin. — Pantagruel

Indeed. The distinction between pleasure and craving.



I dig the quandary, but I feel like you're conflating two overlapping but distinct questions: what am I for?; how best to live? The latter does not presume the former. Not reproducing because the planet is overpopulated is fine, but it's not a purpose. Likewise, reproducing because your body tells you to is fine, but not a purpose. Both are reactions to what is, as far as the mind is concerned, an external environment. There's no need to rationalise them at all, and certainly no need to rationalise them teleologically and egocentrically.

But if you want to go down that route... my view in a crowded nutshell: We generally identify "I" as our mind, and your problem is about decision-making. What is the mind for? It's a thing that 1) takes facts (bodily stimuli, external stimuli, memories, etc.), 2) projects outcomes based on those, 3) algorithmically determines which outcomes are optimal, and 4) determines which facts to change to realise those outcomes.

(1) is inevitable, (2&4) take practice, (3) takes ethics. Deciding how the world should be is pretty much what constitutes our moral character. Do you maximise your personal advantage or gratification? Do you prioritise your sister over a stranger? Do you absent yourself as much as possible from effecting the world?

Whatever your ethics, if this is what the mind ("I") is for, it makes sense to optimise it's performance. (1) means being vigilant. (2) means thinking things through based on as much information as possible: learn what you can about the consequences of our actions and take your own actions seriously. (4) means competence: try your best.

(3) means knowing what the best outcomes are, which means knowing oneself well. Question your beliefs and culture, familiarise yourself with diverse moral philosophy to consider multiple arguments for and against an given ethics.

The mind is a small part of us. There's more to the brain, and much more to the body, than an algorithmic decision-making machine. You have capacities for empathy, for altruism. You have instinctive ideas of injustice. What are these for? These can advise what sort of outcomes are best.

Anarchism isn't impractical after that, it's just more difficult to keep since there are other possibilities it has to fight against now. — Pfhorrest

I think self-rule is impractical in a society of mobile strangers and diverse moral opinion. I think it would be pretty easy for antisocial elements to just commit a savage burn and move on to the next town. Self-rule requires uniformity of morality to be more than simple might-is-right. Oppression and marginalisation of minorities would be all too easy when justice is majority opinion.

When the mean lifetime was 40 ys and childs dying in infancy was a common thing. — Ansiktsburk

Yep, back when you died of toothache. The life expectancy was below 40 years iirc. Personally I'd take dentistry and medicine over self-rule, but that doesn't mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's a happy medium between strict authoritarianism and anarchism.

Think you can defend your comments about JP? — Judaka

Yes.

Obviously, you do but I've listened to the guy enough for what you're saying to be serious red flags, we do not have the same standards for what is sexist and transphobic. — Judaka

Almost certainly. So what, I have to lower my standards to yours for the sake of your bad politics? No.

JP explicitly champions a sexist social structure, a patriarchy. I don't expect you to see anything wrong with that, that would be asking a lot, but the opinions of others are not constrained by your willful myopia.

Sexism is rife through his writings and teachings. His view of relationships is in terms of utility *for* men, such as his bizarre notions of enforced monogamy to make teenaged boys less likely to shoot up their own school. Don't fancy that socially awkward, aggressive, racist guy in your class? Tough shit, JP says women should arrange themselves to benefit men so that men don't have to control themselves.

(On which, I can't think of a worse indictment of JP than his willful misrepresentation of one of the Columbine shooters as some existential hero, cherry-picking from his diary to avoid the vast quantity of typical violent alt-right-esque racism.)

One of his psychotherapy patients was an alcoholic woman who, in part on account of her alcoholism, had been raped five times. JP quite proudly dismisses her testimony as unreliable. He wasn't saying that men didn't pick her up when she was blotto, just suggests that that doesn't constitute rape. (He also has nothing to say about domestic violence and marital rape in these monogamous relationships he wants to enforce.) This is what I expect from a 'lad', some bloke in a group of blokes whose culture reduces women to posh wanks you can scrape off the nightclub floor. From a psychologist this is awfully misogynistic. For all his anti-pomo objectivism, he embraces the idea when it comes to women saying they are victims of men. There seems to be no difference in his view between not being told and being told when the speaker is a woman.

As for the idea of equality between women and men, JP is not on board:

it’s so whiny, it’s just enough to drive a modern person mad to listen to these suburban housewives from the late ’50s ensconced in their comfortable secure lives complaining about the fact that they’re bored because they don’t have enough opportunity. It’s like, Jesus get a hobby. For Christ’s sake

No, you shouldn't have a life, you should make do with a hobby, woman. Be thankful for your gilded cage.

JP supports the patriarchy on the basis of superior male competence and, as with everything JP says, this isn't based on data but on his personal prejudices. He is a Messiah to the sexist, the misogynist, the incel because he exemplifies their beliefs: men are superior, men should be in charge, women should prioritise the needs of men and shut the fuck up.

The problem isn't that I fling names around. The problem is that a huge number of men, like you, see nothing wrong with his sexism, therefore cannot see it as sexism since sexism is bad so can't be this. Likewise with the few racists on this site who I've tussled with who insist on spouting racial propaganda like "blacks are intrinsically more criminal" who nonetheless object to being called racist because they've at least learned that racism is supposed to be bad, therefore can't be this.

I appreciate you're not explicitly pushing sexist or racist sentiments yourself, but your rush to defend sexists and racists rather than their victims speaks ill of you. You did it earlier and had to apologise, claiming ignorance of the topic of the conversation, which I didn't believe. Here you're claiming to be very familiar with JP's words so no such out. It is reasonable to assume that you're familiar with the kind of stuff I've mentioned and you defend his patriarchal, non-egalitarian, rape-dismissive, incel-esque views as perfectly fine and not deserving of the label 'sexist'. I appreciate that you've been gunning for me for a bit, but I think it's appropriate that you take a turn at defending your own statements.

intersectional feminist adjacent...? — Judaka

I was being flippant. I understand the ideas behind intersectional feminism and see worth in them for feminist theory, but since I'm not a feminist, it's largely irrelevant to me. I.F. seems to me largely to be feminism getting it's own house in order, reconstructing its theoretical foundations.

Yet I can also gauge a person's ideologies by how they speak on related topics, even without providing me with concrete proof, with some accuracy. — Judaka

I beg to differ.

Call me lazy or inaccurate, if you want — Judaka

Thank you, but I don't believe that laziness is your problem. You put a lot of effort into an argument, just not useful things.

You write people off with your labels and maybe you're just projecting? — Judaka

What are we saying here, that if I criticise a racist it's really because I'm racist? Ha. Okay. Scraping the bottom of the barrel, there.

You said you don't like JP, I said JP is criticising something like ideologies based around intersectional feminism, which I see you as a part of. — Judaka

It's sort of weird that you own up to the possibility that your terminology is misguided, but merrily stand by it nonetheless. Sure, whatever man, racist intersectional feminist, go with that.

what logic is at play there? — Judaka

The one I've described several times. "This is X. X is like Y. Therefore this is Y."

What's the honest way? — Judaka

For instance, if I had posted any feminist content on the site ever and either at the same time or elsewhere championed critical theory. It would be a reasonable to assume I was an intersectional feminist in that case. Basing a conclusion that I'm any kind of feminist on a sample of zero feminism comments is just pointless.

For the record, I'd say I'm intersectional feminism adjacent, largely because they won't have me. People like you call me a feminist. Feminists call me a misogynist, largely for the same reason. I don't know where I am until I'm accused of being something :D But obviously I'd rather be a feminist than a misogynist, so... thanks, I guess.

Things have to work, and there is no such wonderland as that of Nozick or leftist/rightist Anarchist. But of course, if one can make it work, why not? Just haven't seen it. — Ansiktsburk

Anarchism worked for most of the history of the human race. It just isn't practical now.

Or did I not make one? Whichever it is. — Judaka

You really struggle with chronology.

We're long past the days where feminism referred solely to fighting for women's rights. — Judaka

No we're not. You're conflating critical theory with intersectional feminism, which is precisely the faulty logic I was talking about. Intersectional feminism is concerned with the experiences of women in a way that acknowledges the fact that, statistically, black women have a qualitatively different experience to both black men and the white women who were historically represented by feminism, a difference that yielded black feminism. Likewise that the experiences of queer women are significantly different to those of queer men and the straight women that feminism historically represented, hence queer feminism, and that the experiences of working class women significantly differ from those of working class men and the middle- to upper-class women that feminism historically represented, hence socialist feminism.

It incorporates e.g. critical race theory and queer theory and, in some guises, Marxism; it did not author them, and it does so for the empowerment and liberation of gay, black and working class women respectively, not for gay, black, and working class people generally.

I'm not playing a correlation game. — Judaka

That is precisely what your end of this argument is. Either that or you genuinely don't understand the terms you're employing.

I'm not bothered you think I'm an intersectional feminist btw. It's the dishonesty of how you got there that's of interest.

Studies support women changing preferences in how men look. The link between jaw width and aggression is totally spurious. That's driven by the fact we're no longer hunter-gatherers chewing hard, uncooked foods. — Benkei

Quite right, the prevalence of a narrower jaw did not arise after the invention of the contraceptive pill: it arose after the advent of agriculture. Once again, agriculture screwed us, this time with dentistry bills. :meh:

Trump might yet avoid his impeachment hearing:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55765516

Gotta say, I agree. Twitter should ban him.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Peterson is a nazi, white supremacist, racist, sexist, evil, bitter professor. — deusidex

He is definitely a sexist bitter professor, or he was bitter, he's raking it in now. He recycles Nazi propaganda but that doesn't make him a Nazi, and I don't think he's a white supremacist. JP's beef is mostly with women and trans people afaik. His arguments on mandating correct rather than censoring incorrect terminology aren't without merit, but nothing you wouldn't hear from an opinionated cab driver.

But I think no less than cultural trappings we should address explicit institutional trappings (perhaps this still falls within your definition of culture) — Giorgi

Absolutely.

I think the U.S. in particular has an ingenious political field which can create a powerful illusion of change and radical reform, while remaining perfectly within the confines of the status quo. — Giorgi

Precisely my thinking about #MeToo (and #TimesUp), which was largely a Hollywood thing. Surface changes made, but nothing structural. The victims remained victims, nothing much changed.

If one is possibly right, they are possibly wrong at the same time. To be right, one must make all possible wrongs and learn from them. — Harry Hindu

Sounds a lot like the falsificationism Pfhorrest advocates: dismiss beliefs as and when they become untenable.

I think the OP has value and my response is more about pragmatism. In mathematics we have axioms, in philosophy a priori knowledge and assumptions, in science we have laws (which are empirical rather than ab initio).

The progress of mathematics and science has been to take those fundamentals and look for new fields in which they can be derived. An axiom in algebra might be a conclusion in set theory; a law of chemistry is a prediction in QED.

The effects are that a given axiom is buttressed on both sides and that the most fundamental axioms tend to become fewer in number and simpler (not always, but usually). Ever more fundamental beliefs tend to refine higher level beliefs, which is to say they give the opportunity to falsify those beliefs.

It is really a mixture of justificationism (the belief has explanatory power), coherentism (the belief can in turn be explained, or is fundamental), and falsificationism (the belief has not been ruled out) that whittles down the number of viable beliefs.

Worst case scenario is that we don't have a viable, explanatory, coherent narrative at all. Next worst is that we have too many, i.e. we have multiple competing theories with incompatible axioms and each are coherent and viable, which only helps in avoiding untrue, incoherent and meaningless beliefs. Third worst is we come up with exactly one and it's wrong but we never find out.

Ani characterised the asili of European culture as dominated by the concepts of separation and control, with separation establishing dichotomies like "man" and "nature", "the European" and "the other", "thought" and "emotion" – separations that in effect end up negating the existence of "the other", who or which becomes subservient to the needs of (European) man.[8] Control is disguised in universalism as in reality "the use of abstract 'universal' formulations in the European experience has been to control people, to impress them, and to intimidate them." — GoldMane

I'm ignorant about her, but this sounds extremely similar to a lot of 20th century European philosophy. It's de Beauvoir, no, applied to the west-east boundary. That doesn't make it wrong, just seems like a continuation of European thinking.

Did you just parrot back the very same thing I just said to you? — Judaka

Kind of, but with respect to chronology. It helps if one of us can follow a conversation we're having.

Call me a fascist, alt-right, racist, I don't care. — Judaka

I didn't say you were alt-right, I said you seemed to be making the exact same kind of bullshit argument that I'd previously bemoaned wherein someone "left" can be described as anything you like as long as you consider it also "left". The example with JP being that anyone who is a feminist is automatically a Marxist. The example with you being that anyone who's anti-fascist and anti-racist is automatically an intersectional feminist.

You're obviously not going to justify your crap arguments. Up to you whether you want to debase yourself.

My argument for why you're most likely an intersectional feminist or at a bare minimum, closely ideologically aligned is not unreasonable. — Judaka

You didn't make one.

All intersectional feminism says is that people experience different levels of privilege and discrimination based on their various political and social identities. — Judaka

Incorrect. Intersectional feminism is somewhat more specific, clue's in the name.

My problem with it is that we don't want to focus on seeing a person through these most visible identities, using our assumptions about their levels of privilege or discrimination to prejudice against them. — Judaka

Given the context, it seems more like your problem is one of hypocrisy, in which privileged people should go unchallenged when saying that e.g. racism, misogyny, homophobia don't exist, that whatever conspiracy theories they're peddling to explain data to the contrary ought to be respected as facts, and that anyway those facts don't count.

Racism makes race an issue, not opposing or understanding racism. I'm getting kind of tired of the ridiculous argument that opposing racism is racist. It basically amounts to "I can bang on and on about it but you can't because you're supposed to be colour-blind". Yes, ideally we should be colour-blind. Alas racists make that a future goal not a present reality.

This is the evidence that links you to intersectional feminism — Judaka

It's pretty stupid. Basically exactly as I described above: criticise X, associate X to Y, proceed under the basis that Y has been criticised. For a man who despises the alt-right, you really talk like one. You may as well argue that a chocolate covered strawberry is a chocolate covered banana because it's covered in chocolate.

I've seen you debate people you disagree with politically on this forum, it's not a pleasant sight. — Judaka

I'm sorry that that's what displeases you rather than the racism I object to. Sorry, but not shocked.

Still I don't think there isn't more discuss at the OP's question. — ssu

Did you intend that double negative?

Even it's name tells should what it is. — ssu

The UK is a union. The name is irrelevant.

The UN can have armed forces and basically could go to war against a country (like it did against North Korea), but nobody thinks it's a country. — ssu

Because it's a purely military organisation, not an organisation with a military. But, on that, you don't need to have a military to be a country: Greenland, the Camans, Dominica, Panama, Monaco, Liechtenstein...

But, of course, Antifa activists are the current right-wing version of the Nazi's "Jews": a placeholder for every scary thing they don't like and/or want to scapegoat. — Baden

Notice how Covid arrived shortly after Antifa turned up?

There should be some islands in the pacific where those people could go living, anarcisming each other. — Ansiktsburk

There are several anarchistic groups in the world, some on islands. There were more, but we kind of killed most of them off, or their habitats.

It seems entirely plausible that there could be two communities which face essentially the same problem like bad roads or littering or something like that. — BitconnectCarlos

Indeed. But problems don't arrange themselves around the world like that. The problems in Arusha are not the same as the problems in Manchester which aren't the same as the problems in Grand Rapids.

You'd help out your own community first, and then it's fine to go off the help the other, right? And this is the right thing to do, right? — BitconnectCarlos

That's logistically optimal, since if the two communities are so similar, they'd both have volunteers. No point swapping volunteers. But if the second community had none, it would make perfect sense for those of the first to expand into the second, and not only once all the problems of the first are resolved, which would be a bit twattish.

Does that answer (b)? Essentially, the only reason to help your own town first is that logistically it's amenable to self-organisation. That aside, no, I see no reason to sort out my town's problems before someone else's, and it's not a very useful theoretical construct since the entire point of e.g. volunteering abroad is precisely that they face more difficult problems.

You wish to label me alt-right even though I say I despise the alt-right because you think it sounds right. — Judaka

1. Accuses people of being intersectional feminists based on no evidence.
2. Complains about being labelled alt-right.

You're a real hypocrite. I don't give a fuck what you label yourself, dude, if you walk like a duck...

Remember when Jordan Peterson participated in a debate on Marxism and announced the only book by Marx he had ever read was the Communist Manifesto and that he had only previously read it once before, when he was in college. — Maw

There's an awful lot of similarity between Peterson and Stephen Hicks. Does Canada only have twelve books or something?

Not a lot of people are talking about Bill Clinton clearly falling asleep during the inauguration.



Sleepy Bill.

If all those problems in your community are solved, it makes sense to go to the other community to help them solve it. — BitconnectCarlos

Well a) that isn't how problems arrange themselves, and b) it isn't obvious what a community is. To me, the logical 21st century community is the global community, in which case there's no difference. If my neck of the woods is much the same as another, it makes sense logistically to focus my efforts here and not there, since there has its own contributors. But it doesn't seem to me that East Africa faces the same problems to the same degree in the same way, otherwise, sure, what would be the point of pitching in, or of foreign aid? Some causes lend themselves to local action, some don't. But either or both are good. And neither, as long as you do no harm, us fine too.