Geoff > Status Update

You know, I'm thinking more and more that Altemeyer's analysis in The Authoritarians is correct. If you're brought up as a creationist, that sure gives you a head start on denying the existence of an objective reality and just accepting the statements of authority figures.

Manny wrote: "You know, I'm thinking more and more that Altemeyer's analysis in The Authoritarians is correct. If you're brought up as a creationist, that sure gives you a head start on denying the existence of ..."

Why? Because most of the rest of us accept evolution on the basis of the statements of authority figures too. Sure, I think it sounds like it makes sense. But Creationists think that their theory sounds like it makes sense too, and it's hard to deny that there are intuitively attractively elements to their theory too. Sure, I've heard from lots of scientists who are pro-evolution. I've been to pro-evolution museums and watched pro-evolution documentaries. But the Creationists have heard from lots of scientists who are anti-evolution, and have been to anti-evolution museums and have watched anti-evolution documentaries!

There are only two key differences:
a) if I were to assemble all the true evidence together and analyse it thoroughly, I would be convinced that evolution is true;
and
b) 'our' scientists are real scientists who abide (mostly) by the scientific method, whereas 'their' scientists are frauds who rely on faked evidence and poor interpretational skills.

But how do I know either of those are true? There are two ways I can know the first one - I can find out for myself, or someone can tell me. But it would be very hard to find out for myself - to really look at ALL the evidence, including all the evidence about whether each piece of evidence is real or fake, piece by piece, and all the evidence for those pieces of evidence, and so on. In fact, unless I go back in time to before other people started digging up fossils and single-handedly excavated them all myself, becoming a world-leading expert not only in palaeontology and biology but also geology and physics and chemistry and all the finnicky subfields around the specific investigatory technologies and apparatuses, then I basically can't do it at all, without relying on people I trust (and why trust them?). So in practice we all have to rely on trust - and 99.999% of us have to take almost all of it on trust. [And our common sense and amateur analysis - but let's be honest, those are hardly reliable]. And likewise, we must in practice rely on trust in judging scientists, as we can hardly audit them all in person. Even to the extent we have any evidence-based opinions on the respectability of an individual scientist, it will rely on second-hand reports of their activities, and generally from non-disinterested sources.

Well, I read The Genesis Flood, since I was curious to see for myself how strong the case was for creationism. It's not even internally consistent, and neglects elementary principles of physics that you'd expect the average high school student to be familiar with. So I don't think my disdain for the subject is only based on subjective opinion and choice of authority figure.

I'm working hard on thinking that this is an exciting opportunity for science and philosophy...

Manny wrote: "Well, call me old-fashioned, but I think there's a lot to be said for the naive realist position that there actually is an objective world out there."

There may well be an objective, absolute world. But that doesn't ensure that it's possible for humans to have objective, absolute knowledge about any of it, let alone all of it.


On epistemology: I really don't share your faith in the magical powers of epistemologists, although I do appreciate the baldness of your irony - taking it on trust that epistemologists have an answer, and appealing to the mere existence of an authority!

Ultimately, taking western epistemology in a traditional sense, however, there are only two viable sources of direct personal knowledge: experience and abstract reasoning.

Both these sources have been greatly undermined over the centuries. How much objective knowledge can really be gleaned from experience, for example - don't our preconceptions invariably shape our experiences? But even if those problems all went away, they don't address the broader issue. Because what we can learn from direct personal experiment is, in practice, extremely limited. And what we can learn about the external world through pure reason is likewise extremely limited. And attempts to advance our knowledge through either of these channels directly are fraught with practical difficulties. Pizzagate is an example of traditional epistemology in action: abstract theorising with no basis in reality, but with real-world effects, followed by a bold attempt at empirical investigation, also with consequences.

[Theoretical epistemology operates in a vacuum. Practical epistemology operates in a market: all of our actions in seeking the truth have their own costs, and the cost of rigourous fact finding is often greater than the cost of being moderately wrong would have been.]

So if neither reason nor direct experience is enough to support our theorising about the world - theorising that is necessary for our lives in the modern world - we are forced to rely on trust. And we cannot simply trust reliable people - without knowing the facts about the world ourselves, we cannot rationally judge who is, and who is not, trustworthy.

But I agree it's a fascinating area for philosophy - I think that what is needed is a combination of the rigour of analyticism with the political and sociological engagement of continentalism. It's not a coincidence that Rorty was mentioned.

The perspective is different. Traditional epistemology operates from an individualistic assumption. What we are talking about here is a social epistemology. I think a key concept here is the idea of 'the truth' or 'facts' as something collaboratively constructed through culture, a shared narrative, or language. When a subculture has constructed its own aberrant fact-language, it becomes impossible for us even to disprove it from the outside, like trying to argue against someone speaking Russian when we ourselves only speak English.

[this isn't the first time this has been an issue politically. This concept of the cultural construction of a shared truth, and specifically in this case the construction of a shared history, is what underlay the original Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in Chile. The idea was that in order to bring peace, there had to be a shared history, which meant that the perpetrators of atrocities had to feel safe to unravel their own histories honestly, and on a massive scale. If they could not express their truths openly in front of the liberals for fear of prosecution, they would be forced to maintain lies, an alternative history of the dictatorship that would have nurtured resentment and hatred in their followers. T&R was a lancing, as it were, of a social-psychological boil, preventing a collective repression that would sublimate into new political dangers. I wonder whether to a more chronic, less acute degree that's also partly what's going on with some people on the right: alternate histories constructed in response to repression. [e.g. many people don't want to be ruled by a woman, but don't feel they can say so openly, so are forced to construct other reasons to justify their opposition.] That's certainly not all of it, but it may be an element.]

Manny wrote: "Well, I read The Genesis Flood, since I was curious to see for myself how strong the case was for creationism. It's not even internally consistent, and neglects elementary principles of physics tha..."

Did you prove these elementary principles of physics by yourself from first principles, or did smeone else make you aware of them? And would you still expect a schoolchild in a highly religious, creationist, anti-secular-science homeschooled environment to be aware of these principles?

Personally, I was very good at physics at school - but if you discount the knowledge I got from textbooks and the knowledge I got from teachers, and parents, and only gave me the knowledge I could genuinely glean from our halfhearted hands-on experiments, shorn of any interpretation or explanation by authority figures, I think there would be very, very little left that I was confident that I definitely "knew" on my own recognisances.

Wastrel, you are being a very conscientious Devil's Advocate.

I should say that I'm not expressing a naive faith in epistemologists. I am rather daring them to get involved in this debate, where their talents ought to be useful, should they in fact exist.

Come and have a go if you're hard enough.

My take on evolution is:

We all got here somehow. If we start thinking with a blank slate, evolution is a damn sight more logical than creation.

Evidence, though incomplete, exists for evolution. What exists for creation? Not a damn thing.

This interview with the creator of a fake news network was interesting.

Manny wrote: "This interview with the creator of a fake news network was interesting."

"The idea was to make the sites look as legit as possible so the home page is going to be local news and local forecast, local sports, some obituaries and things of that nature, and then the actual fake news stories were going to be buried off the home page."

There's a part of me that tends to think the spread of disinformation is just a byproduct of the world we've created. But it's also good for all of us to be reminded, as this interview does, that there are people doing this intentionally. One of the phrases that I remember from the Arendt quote is something like 'nothing is true, and everything is possible', also used as a title by Peter Pomerantsev in a recently-published book about Russian propaganda. The idea adapted to the modern day seems to be that it's now just about impossible for authoritarian governments to hunt down every copy of say, Solzhenitsyn; so the next best thing is to flood the electorate with so much garbage that people are willing to entertain just about anything, unsure which sources of information are legitimate. Grant the same amount of credibility to Breitbart as to the New York Times, and we're allowing ourselves to be played.

I think the original context here was about this guy who walked into a DC pizza place with a gun, because he thought Hillary Clinton and Podesta were running a child prostitution ring. So Wastrel, I agree with you that in general it's a good thing to question our assumptions. But also be aware that stories like this, about the pizza place, are generated intentionally. They're not going to go away- they're going to get slicker and slicker, and more ingenious in their tactics. Entertain each one openly and fairly, and you do exactly what the creators of these "articles" want you to do. There are certain things- like the story about Clinton and Podesta- that I feel totally comfortable dismissing out of hand, unless there's legitimate evidence to the contrary.

Just came across this in my dear old Adorno

"The confounding of truth and lies, making it almost impossible to maintain a distinction, and a labour of Sisyphus to hold onto the simplest piece of knowledge, marks the victory in the field of logical organization of the principle that lies crushed on that of battle. The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power, a process that truth itself cannot escape if it is not to be annihilated by power, not only suppresses truth as in earlier despotic orders, but has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false, which the hirelings of logic were in any case diligently working to abolish. So Hitler, of whom no-one can say whether he died or escaped, survives."

Geoff wrote: "Just came across this in my dear old Adorno

"The confounding of truth and lies, making it almost impossible to maintain a distinction, and a labour of Sisyphus to hold onto the simplest piece of k..."

That really goes to the heart of it. "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power..." I'm surprised I haven't seen that phrase before. I must read some Adorno.

I'm thinking Minima Moralia should be required reading for those looking to sanely navigate the reign of Trump the First.

Knausgård is a huge fan, as you'll see when you get to the last two volumes of Min kamp. I really must check this guy out.

interesting article that quotes Adorno here:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cult...

i'll have to get around to reading him as well.

Holy shit, that's the same quote I found at lunch today!

i think it's a sign that we're all in this together.

Gramsci is also very relevant here. He sees the creation of a new 'common sense' as the intellectual side of politics

"To work incessantly to raise the intellectual level of ever-growing strata of the populace, in other words, to give a personality to the amorphous mass element. This means working to produce elites of intellectuals of a new type which arise directly out of the masses, but remain in contact with them to become, as it were, the whalebone of the corset.

"{This} is what really modifies the 'ideological panorama' of the age. But these elites cannot be formed or developed without a hierarchy of authority and intellectual competence growing up within them. The culmination of this process can be a great individual philosopher. But he must be capable of re-living concretely the demands of the massive ideological community and of understanding that this cannot have the flexibility of movement proper to an individual brain, and must succeed in giving formal elaboration to the collective doctrine in the most relevant fashion, and the one most suited to the modes of thought of a collective thinker."

Holy shit, dude who wrote that article and me have been reading and thinking the same things at the same time! Am I him? Or is he me?!

Their respective understandings of the role of the intellectual differ here; Adorno, I think, saw his theorizing as a preserve of an isolated intellectual class. Ironically, however, against his own will, it did have a major impact on mass movements near the end of his life.

David wrote: "Their respective understandings of the role of the intellectual differ here; Adorno, I think, saw his theorizing as a preserve of an isolated intellectual class. Ironically, however, against his ow..."

Yeah I'm gathering Adorno did not have much faith in the masses. But even less in the ruling class. A lovely burning pessimism.

Geoff wrote: "Yeah I'm gathering Adorno did not have much faith in the masses. But even less in the ruling class. A lovely burning pessimism. "

If you can't be a populist (for reasons of temperament or whatever), at least be sure to despise the elites.

Amen

574 comments before someone mentioned Knausgard. What's going on Manny? You're slipping.

I'm sorry howl. I've been neglecting this thread. Karl Ove will dock my salary if he finds out, please don't tell him!

David Frum doesn't really strike me as a punk. I guess it's a place for everyone : )

https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/...

Hadrian wrote: "There was a death threat made against a Muslim woman in the town where I live. He said he wanted her to take off her hijab or he'd burn it off. This was not a block away from where I had lunch that..."

That's horrible.

Just as horrible? The numerous death threats MANY electors are receiving if they cast their REQUIRED vote for Trump. Any mention of that in this thread?

I'll show myself back out now.

Did anyone show up to their places of employment firing an assault rifle?

Geoff wrote: "Did anyone show up to their places of employment firing an assault rifle?"

Oh right, I guess that makes the threat less real for those being threatened.

Again, let's not lose sight that BOTH sides are doing horrible things in this election's aftermath. The lengths the left are going to are absolutely absurd and the number of perpetrators is truly frightening. I am far more concerned with what liberals are doing than anyone in the Alt Right (and before an idiot here asks, no just because I voted for Trump doesn't mean I'm Alt-right or want anything to do with them).

I do find it funny how much airtime pizzagate it getting in this thread.

Did you read the thread? It's because I frequent that place. I could have been there. Me or people I love.

Why is it funny?
Geoff lives by DC. He goes to Comet pizza.

Nick wrote: "Again, let's not lose sight that BOTH sides are doing horrible things in this election's aftermath."

Only one side has the Boss encouraging them on.... all during the campaign.

The lengths the left are going to are absolutely absurd

If by absurd you mean exhausting all avenues of legal challenge, I agree with you. The chance of an outcome advantageous to the Dems is slim. But since the other side threatened a non=peaceful transfer of power/acceptance of defeat ;; clearly not equivalent.

David wrote: "Why is it funny?
Geoff lives by DC. He goes to Comet pizza."

Not in regards to the potential violence there but rather the morons on reddit who've developed this conspiracy theory. Didn't know Geoff was a frequenter, though can understand his concern.

Obviously any threats of violence are absolutely uncalled for and a scary situation. I'm just pointing out that both sides have been guilty and I really hope it ends.

I get tired of relentless right wing bashing without people looking in the mirror at the actions of their own party.

Nick wrote: "I get tired of relentless right wing bashing without people looking in the mirror at the actions of their own party. "

There's the equivalence. The Dems failed to nominate Sanders. The Republicans failed and nominated Trump. Now the rest of us are sorting it out. The failure of the Repubs here is clearly the starker danger. Since they succeeded.

I've been relentlessly bashing liberals, Hilary Clinton, and the DNC establishment since 11-8.

David wrote: "I've been relentlessly bashing liberals, Hilary Clinton, and the DNC establishment since 11-8."

I've been bashing them longer! At least since Clinton. Maybe since Kennedy.

Yeah, guess I'm partly trying to make up for lost time.

David wrote: "Yeah, guess I'm partly trying to make up for lost time."

Totally know the feeling. I think maybe I did it from both angles ; first with Chomsky then with Zizek (and you know what those two think of each other!)

David wrote: "I've been relentlessly bashing liberals, Hilary Clinton, and the DNC establishment since 11-8."

I meant to say you're exempt from this - you're at least consistent with your bashing of both sides. Then against, you're just a senseless commie ;)

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "David wrote: "Yeah, guess I'm partly trying to make up for lost time."

Totally know the feeling. I feel like I did it from both angles ; first with Chomsky then with Zizek (and you know what those..."

I've thought about reading Chomsky for his linguistics, but can't stand his politics so much I haven't been able to bring myself to the task.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "David wrote: "Yeah, guess I'm partly trying to make up for lost time."

Totally know the feeling. I think maybe I did it from both angles ; first with Chomsky then with Zizek (and you know what tho..."

ha, yes, that's bipartisanship - I'm able to be friends with both followers of Chomsky and followers of Zizek

Seriously tho, most my anger since the election has definitely been directed at *my* side (that is, the side I cast a vote for)

Nick wrote: "I've thought about reading Chomsky for his linguistics, but can't stand his politics so much I haven't been able to bring myself to the task. "

You don't read Chomsky so much for his politics, but to learn what the politics of the Demo=Republicans is. If you're really looking for the equivalence of the two parties, you definitely need to read Chomsky.

David wrote: "Seriously tho, most my anger since the election has definitely been directed at *my* side (that is, the side I cast a vote for) "

Ever since they couldn't get their shit together for the very minimal task of beating W. Yeah, they've been a serious problem.

Poverty of the stimulus, man. Great stuff!!

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "David wrote: "Seriously tho, most my anger since the election has definitely been directed at *my* side (that is, the side I cast a vote for) "

Ever since they couldn't get their shit together for..."

I'm gonna run against Pelosi in the next primary. The inequality in this town is just ridiculous.

(but she doesn't think the party needs a change of direction)

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "David wrote: "Seriously tho, most my anger since the election has definitely been directed at *my* side (that is, the side I cast a vote for) "

Ever since they couldn't get their shit together for..."

I think losing to W for his second term is almost more pathetic and laughable than Trump beating Hillary... seriously, talked about a stacked deck for Dems.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "You don't read Chomsky so much for his ..."
Yeah I'll get around to him sometime soon I'm sure.

This one book is really interesting, and has almost nothing to do with politics On Noam Chomsky: Critical Essays

some of the essays are almost impossible to follow, however, without the requisite technical training - at least for me

David wrote: "This one book is really interesting, and has almost nothing to do with politics On Noam Chomsky: Critical Essays

some of the essays are almost impossible to follow, however, without t..."

Yeah not knowing where to start has been part of the problem. Thanks for the link.

Nick wrote: "Nathan "N.R." wrote: "You don't read Chomsky so much for his ..."
Yeah I'll get around to him sometime soon I'm sure."

And when you do disagree with him, do be sure to follow up on the foot/endnotes. I never have, since I agree with him.....