DocWatts

4Chan, for those of you lucky enough not to know, is an online message board where incels, white nationalists, and Nazis would go to look at porn, post memes, and share brain-rot conspiracy theories. In short : a breeding ground for online extremists, some of whom went on to become right-wing terrorists. Adam Conover has a fascinating discussion with journalist Elle Reeve, about how 4Chan culture went from being a fringe corner of the Internet to the mainstream culture of the Republican Party

The more interesting question is whether IQ is mainly indicative of one's ability to take IQ tests, or whether it points to something more substantive about a person's intelligence. (I don't have a horse in the game here, largely agnostic on the value of IQ tests).

'Scum and villainy' makes them sound way cooler than they are. Socially awkward, basement-dwelling racists with self esteem issues is closer to the mark.

Appreciate it! And thanks for the book suggestion. 'Metamodernism - The Future of Theory' hasn't been on my radar, but I definitely want to check it out. And the Facebook group as well, would be happy to post there.

I thought I might share this write-up from my philosophy book, 7 Provisional Truths. This section is a follow up to a previous post where I distinguish genuine science from scientism, as part of a broader exploration of conceptual distinctions. (That previous write-up is here: Transcendental Illusions- The Scientism Trap ) In this section, I explore the idea that our conceptual categories are indeed 'real', rather than 'imaginary'. But not in the sense that they point to 'objective' features of a mind-independent Reality. Instead, I suggest that conceptual distinctions are 'Interactionally real'. That they have substance because they’re grounded in our shared experience of Reality. I also explore how we can make a meaningful differentiation between 'Interactionally real' phenomena and 'imaginary' experiences (such as dreams and hallucinations). _________________________________________________________ Categories As Interactional Realities Our exploration into the nature of categories has carved a path through certain entrenched intuitions about everyday reality. The journey, however, has been fraught with obstacles that have the potential to trip up this newfound understanding. Our first major hurdle was to recognize that human limitations aren’t a bug but an essential feature of how we categorize. And our second was to reconcile this experientially-grounded approach to categories with the scientific method. Having cleared these obstacles, our task at this juncture is to take a snapshot of our implicit, folk-understanding of what qualifies as ‘real’. Developing this image will reveal how this conventional wisdom shapes our intuitions about what these categories ultimately mean in the grand scheme of things. Right at the outset, however, a perplexing question emerges. This conundrum arises from our rejection of Transcendental assumptions. In essence, if our conceptual categories aren’t a retrieval of absolute features of a mind-independent Reality, then what, if anything, makes the distinctions they embody ‘real’? The short answer? These distinctions are ‘real’. Just not in the absolute, mind-independent sense espoused by Transcendental viewpoints. Instead, our conceptual distinctions are ‘real’ in a different way; they’re interactionally real. They have substance because they’re grounded in our shared experience of Reality, distilling actionable generalizations that are attuned to our needs, capacities, and interests. These generalizations matter because they’re how we reflect upon our embodied experience. In essence, they’re the basis for the mental models that allow us to draw inferences, predict patterns, and solve problems. Essentially, they’re the key hallmarks of our distinctly human brand of intelligence; refined yet rooted in our shared evolutionary heritage with other animals. Crucially, this grounding within a shared, experiential Reality is what allows us to meaningfully differentiate these interactional realities from ‘imaginary' phenomena. Consider dreams and hallucinations, to list a familiar example. Though these mental phenomena may echo aspects of our shared world, their connection to it is inherently tenuous and inconsistent. The erratic nature of what we encounter within these domains renders them too unreliable to serve as a stable conduit to our shared, experiential Reality. If we return our gaze to the conventional wisdom about categories, the unrealistic assumptions of this familiar folk-theory come more clearly into focus. The crux of the matter is that our conceptual distinctions aren’t a glimpse into a ‘neutral’ Reality that exists apart from us. When this goes unacknowledged, it’s all too easy to treat these distinctions as if they’re variables in a universal equation with one right answer. Where it’s imagined that Reality will spill its secrets to whoever cracks this universal cipher. While this makes for an alluring metaphor, it’s a misunderstanding of our situation within the world. While we certainly have access to a staggering array of stable truths about our universe, the core illusion comes from how this relationship is framed. The crux of the matter is that Reality isn’t a ‘problem’ that can be ‘solved’. We put these distinctions into the world. They exist for us, inseparable from how we interact with Reality. By dropping this insistence that our categories are only ‘real’ insofar as they correspond to mind-independent features of Reality, we clear the fog that obscures their true purpose. Which is to help us grapple with our existential situation within Reality. Bottom line: ‘Transcendental Categories’, step aside. ‘Interactional Categories’, take the stage. For we conclude by sweeping into an existential tango with our intuitions about the ‘realness’ of the everyday world.

This is the main headline right here. Trump and RFK are actually perfect for one another, since they're both opportunistic con artists which are emblematic of the brain rot that's infected a large part of the country. My money is that Trump tries to bump Vance off the ticket for ol' 'brain-worms'. Of course that's probably not legal by this point, when has that ever stopped Trump?

Here's my short list, with the more accessible reads near the top: The Listening Society by Hanzi Frienacht Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn The Varieties Of Spiritual Experience by Yaden Newberg Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff The Embodied Mind by Fransisco Varella Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber

Republican 'Jesus' is like one of those old Star Trek episodes where the characters enter an alternate Reality and encounter their evil goatee'd doppelgangers. 😆

This is as delusional as thinking that Hitler would have treated Jewish people humanely if only he had better advisors in his cabinet. In reality, the Heritage Foundation (which Trump is just a useful idiot for) is trying to destroy the very regulatory agencies that are responsible for keeping poison out of our air and food, and bullets out of our children's bodies.

The Dunning-Krueger effect seems relevant here. Classic example is all of the big brained 110 IQ pseudo- intellectuals who supposedly know more about COVID than an epidemiologist, because they listened to a Joe Rogan podcast. (Actually Joe Rogan himself is an excellent example of this).

As of August 23, Five Thirty Eight is currently giving Harris 58 to 41 odds of winning against Trump. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/ (Make of that what you will. Not sure offhand if this factors in RFK dropping out of the race).

While it's not good, the bump that Trump is actually going to get from his remains to be seen. On the surface, it looks bad, since RFK has been polling around %5. A few things to keep in mind however. 1) Not all of those supposed RFK supporters will even bother to vote. 2) Not all of them will vote for Trump 3) Kamala and the DNC have been knocking it out of the park with consistently good decisions since Biden dropped out. A more realistic assessment is that Trump probably gets a %1 to %2 bump from this, that he's able to sustain into the actual election. Again, not good, but it doesn't do anything to shift the underlying momentum and enthusiasm towards Harris and away from Trump. Also, it's worth keeping in mind that events have been moving so fast that an RFK endorsement may not mean nearly as much as the election gets closer. Trump's criminal sentencing is in a few weeks, it's not out of the realm of possibility that he gets house asset, or even spends time in prison due to violating the terms of a potential parole or suspended sentence. Pundits were declaring that the race was over when Trump got shot, when in reality after a few weeks nobody outside of the MAGA cult really remembers or cares all that much. Quite the contrary, as it doesn't really seem to be having an noticable impact at all in fact. It may have gotten closer, but this is still a VERY winnable race for Dems if they keep up their good decisions going forward.

@Princess Arabia @Jodistrict More detail than you would ever want on exactly what kind of person RFK Jr is, from the excellent Behind the Bastards podcast.

A yellow outlook is great, but that alone isn't sufficient. Obama arguably had some Yellow tendencies, but that didn't necessarily translate into an effective political platform. In practice, he squandered a lot of his political capital trying to compromise with Republicans who were acting in bad faith, and missed an opportunity to be a transformative president. And he didn't leave office with a sustained democratic coalition that could defeat Trump in 2016. Competent Green-Orange politicians of integrity who are able to articulate a vision for the country that can inspire people, and who are willing to fight for it, are what's needed right now.

A big part of it has to do with antiqueted Institutions that allow for minority with outsized political power to impose their will on the rest of the country. This is driving polarization because the most extreme factions within the country get an outsized influence on setting the agenda for the rest of the country. In a country with more proportional representation, Christian Nationalists who represent perhaps %20 or 30 of the country wouldn't be able to impose their unpopular policies on everyone else. This would also explain why polarization is worse in the US, because our institutions are more undemocratic than the far more representative parliamentary democracies that exist in Western Europe, Canada, etc. I would highly recommend 'Tyranny of the Minority' by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky who explore this issue in depth. ____________ (Summary From ChatGPT): "Tyranny of the Minority" by Daniel Ziblatt explores the troubling phenomenon in American democracy where electoral minorities are able to dominate the majority due to the structure of counter-majoritarian institutions. Here is a summary of the key points: Counter-Majoritarian Institutions: The book highlights how institutions like the Electoral College, the U.S. Senate's representation system, the filibuster, and a politicized Supreme Court allow a political minority to govern, even when they do not represent the majority of the population. Democratic Challenges: Ziblatt argues that these institutions, designed to protect democracy, are instead enabling a shift towards authoritarianism. This is seen as a particular issue with the Republican Party, which relies on these mechanisms to maintain power despite demographic changes that should diminish their influence. Proposed Reforms: The authors recommend reforms to make American democracy more representative. This includes abolishing the Electoral College, reforming the Senate, and making it easier to amend the Constitution. However, they acknowledge that these reforms face significant obstacles and may not be achievable soon. Global Context: The book compares the U.S. to other democracies, particularly in Latin America, where less counter-majoritarianism has sometimes allowed populism to dismantle democracy. The authors argue that while such institutions can protect against authoritarianism, the U.S. has taken them to an extreme that hampers majority rule (LSE Blogs) (ReVista) (Harvard Gazette). This analysis provides a critical look at the fragility of U.S. democracy and the urgent need for reforms

I'll admit that I'm unfamiliar with Deleuze, but I do find process driven epistemology and ontology to be more insightful than classical rationalism by a good measure. I've found Nietzsche to be a fascinating chimera of real insights, mixed with egoic self-deception. Good writer as well. I wish academic philosophy would take notes on how to make their insights as engaging as Nietzsche did. Rigor and an engaging writing style don't have to be diametrically opposed. I'm agnostic on the value of the will-to-power. I think its utility is entirely dependent upon what other types of insights it's driving towards.

Well we're venturing well-outside of my area of expertise here. But in general first I would try to gauge whether the issue in question is worth having an option on (not everything is). Then I would approach it from a meta-perspective that's informed both by own values, and the expertise of people with domain-specific expertise whose character and motivations I have reason to trust. With that in mind, in forming an initial opinion, I would try to evaluate the spirit of the law in question, and whether that makes sense for the situation in question. I would also approach it with the perspective that Laws are akin to social-technologies, and ask whether the specific social-technology is causing unnecessary social harm or not. I would then try to hold that initial opinion provisionally, and update it as the situation and my own understanding changes.

1) There is and cannot be any generalized rule for relevance determination. I'll go so far and contend that this is a hard constraint imposed upon us by Reality. Any set of rules for determining relevance runs into an infinite regression problem - where you the need rules for determining how to apply the original rules, and then rules for those higher level rules, ad-infinitum. Turtles all the way down Relevance is determined by the needs of the situation. Best we can do is heuristics which are largely tacit, all of which have exceptions. 2) Fortunately for us, we don't need things to be Transcendentally True for sensible decision making. We just need heuristics that are 'good enough' for what we are trying to accomplish. There's an illuminating parallel here to a concept within evolutionary science known as 'satisficing', which refers to the idea that evolutionary adaptions do not need to be optimal - just 'good enough' to be compatible with survival. Likewise, the truth that guides our decisions just needs to be 'good enough' to fit our needs and goals. (And before you ask, what is 'good enough' is situational, there's no explicit rule that's going to be completely applicable to every conceivable situation 😎). In sum, Reality, as it turns out, is quite resistant to our attempts to completely capture it within any formal system. There are limits to epistemology.

Hard agree. But diving into that gets into fundamentals ontological topics like 'being', which would derail this thread faster than a drunk conductor taking a speeding train through a sharp curve 😎

Because the idea that there's a single, correct understanding of Reality is a metaphysical assumption, which is disconnected from our actual lived experience. The notion that our concepts are correct or incorrect to the degree to which they correspond with this 'neutral' God's-eye perspective is what I'm critiquing here. (The philosophical term for this is a 'Correspondence Theory' of truth). We can still arrive at shared forms of understanding because human beings exist within a number of shared contexts, bounded by our common biology. Something like science, for instance, isn't Transcendental, aperspectival Truth. Instead, it's a form of truth that's reflective of human needs, capacities, and interests. Arguments and statements can be more or less correct from within a given purposive context . Basically, truth is always connected to something that's relevant to you for some reason + something you're trying to do or understand. Perspective-dependent does not mean 'arbitrary', nor does it mean that truth is 'subjective'. In other words, critiquing the Transcendental View does not mean that 'anything goes'. If you want to build an airplane that flies, there are certain constraints that you have to adhere to - there's nothing arbitrary or subjective about it. On the other hand, airplane building isn't a feature of Reality that exists apart from minds who have some reason to build airplanes.

Correct. My specific point was that distinctions are valid and necessary to epistemology, which is of course a human discipline. Not that conceptual distinctions have an importance that transcends our human perspective, or anything like that. Being coupled to a context and a perspective is a feature - not a bug - of conceptual distinctions.

It's like people who pursue nondualistic spiritual perspectives sometimes forget that distinctions serve a very valid and necessary epistemological purpose. And that they can be used in a flexible way, without the insistence that they're Transcendentally true.

If I were to improvise a laundry list of nonsensical metaphysical distinctions that aren't rooted in anyone's lived experience, that would be a good example of something that's 'imaginary'. Likewise, hallucinations that don't convey reliable information about our shared Reality are also 'imaginary'. Ditto for entities like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, if they're invoked to refer to concrete metaphysical entities (rather than say, a cultural idea). Constructs aren't inherently imaginary. If they didn't convey generally reliable (albeit perspectively limited) information about Reality, they would be useless to us. They're cognitive tools that provide highly focused information to us in a way that's relevant for our specific needs and capacities. Referring to mental constructs as 'imaginary' is reductive and lacks rigour.

Could you elaborate on your use of the term 'illusion', and how it relates to distinctions? I would define 'illusion' in this context as 'self-deception'. If you're contending that distinctions are inherently 'illusions' (correct me if this is a strawman or mischaracterization), I'd say that is bit of a reductive take. As I alluded to in my earlier post, distinctions would be incompatible with survival if they didn't convey generally reliable (albeit perspectivally limited) information about Reality. Distinctions can be used with varying levels of self-awareness about their inherent limitations. Additionally, acknowledging that 'everything is a Construction' isn't wrong, per se, but if you define it so broadly that it includes literally everything, it's hard to analyze it in a rigorous way that facilitates understanding.

I actually wrote a bit on this subject, for the book I'm putting together. On the surface, no - biology isn't a social construct, at least not in the more straightforward way that say 'crime' or 'gender roles' are socially and culturally constructed. But on a deeper level, the conceptual distinctions that biology is derived from are indeed mentally constructed - not 'objective' features of a mind-independent Reality. They instead arise from needs, interests, and capacities of a human vantage point. This is feature - not a bug - of these distinctions. Just because these conceptual distinctions are constructed doesn't make them imaginary, however - and this is a common way that Constructs are misunderstood. Physical objects are actually a good parallel here: __________________________________________________________________________________ Objects Are Mentally Constructed (But Not Imaginary) In essence, objects are a type of interaction which happens between our embodied minds and our surroundings; neither existing ‘out there’ in some external Reality, nor as a pure fabrication of the mind (distinguishing them from hallucinations, which present us with non-existent phenomena). In sum, objects are mentally constructed (but not imaginary). Before proceeding, let’s first clarify what a mental construct is. What a mental construct (or just a construct, for short) refers to is a distinction that our minds create and sustain, which is coupled to some observation about ourselves or our world. If we think more deeply about what an object actually is, it’s our mind’s way of drawing a boundary around some portion of our local Reality. The advantage of carving up Reality in this way is that it allows us to relate to what’s contained within a given boundary in a more concrete way (as a house or as a chair, for example). As such, the boundaries which mark where one object ends and another begins are not arbitrary; rather, they are functional in nature. They are our mind’s way of packaging our surroundings into more manageable ‘chunks’ that are easier to interact with and understand. Because this point can be easily misconstrued, the contention here isn’t that objects are ‘imaginary’ (like how Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are imaginary). Instead, what’s being pointed out is that objects are the products of a cognitive process that puts us in direct contact with the world. As living beings that are adapted for survival, objects would be useless to us if they didn’t convey generally reliable information about Reality. This also explains why there’s a valid distinction between objects and hallucinations, despite both being mentally constructed. Since the former puts us in touch with our surroundings and our environment, while the latter does not. Hence, objects are mentally constructed, but not imaginary.