Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."
User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8d ago
Hobby readers read ‘with all their attention’ too. And their hobby of reading is ‘part and parcel of their lives’ too.
I disagree, for at least some subset of "hobby readers". I think there are many people who are poor readers, or who read with only partial attention. Case in point.
And surely it's gotten even worse since the introduction of smartphones.
but it’s not the superiority that bothers me. It’s the hostility to joy, beauty, meaning, life.
There's nothing that is hostile to joy or beauty in the conception of a meaningful life that Adorno sketched in the passage I originally quoted. In fact I think it's very beautiful. That's why I originally quoted it.
I still think “reading with all my attention” is pretentious
I don't think it's pretentious. I think it's a concept that should be taken very seriously.
describing something as “part and parcel of my life” is trite
It is not.
I believe these are our most substantive points of disagreement. I'm happy to discuss any of these points further.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8d ago
Consider that there are quite a lot of people, now mostly on the intellectual left, who seem to spend so much time discussing how elevated and clever and sophisticated they are
I think the amount that academic Marxist philosophers reference their own intelligence is about on par with how often Motte posters reference their own intelligence. Probably less, actually.
Anyway, this statement:
It is to believe, axiomatically, that ordinary people’s lives have worth and meaning as they are
Seems to be in tension with this statement:
This isn’t to say that there is no such thing as a good life or a bad life
If it is possible to make mistakes and live a meaningless life, how can you know a priori that "ordinary people" are living meaningful lives? How do you know that they're not making the types of mistakes that you've already admitted are possible? Don't we have to look at the facts and see how people are actually living, rather than simply believing it as an article of faith that people are making all the right decisions?
Perhaps, you might say, you have looked at the facts, and you have concluded that ordinary people are generally living meaningful lives. You believe that Adorno has looked at the same facts and come to a different judgement. And that's fine! That's a substantive point of disagreement that we can have a further discussion about. All I'm saying is that we should make the conversation about that, rather than Adorno's arrogance or elitism.
only a deep suspicion of letting those things be defined by elite ‘sophisticated’ weirdos
No one is saying that you have to "let" anybody define anything.
I've run into this sort of objection a few times on TheMotte and it's possible that it stems from a cultural difference between the humanities and technical fields.
In STEM fields, when you cite a published paper and say "X made Y claim in Z paper", this is roughly equivalent to an assertion that there is strong evidence that Y claim is true, because it made it through peer review and was published in a reputable journal. Although there are many caveats, there is a certain presumption that the top scientists getting published are authorities and we should believe what they say. They're contributing to a stable body of knowledge whose integrity is validated by the scientific community, and the role of the student is to absorb this knowledge rather than trying to poke holes in it.
In philosophy, the presumption of authority is much weaker. Students don't go into philosophy class and get taught "living a meaningful life is X Y Z because Adorno said so". The presentation is more like "Adorno said living a meaningful life is X Y Z... ok, now here's next week's reading, also by a famous philosopher, which says the exact opposite". You're supposed to talk back to the text. You're supposed to challenge his definitions and his framing. That's a good thing. That's the process working as intended. You don't have to "let" him define anything because you're free to disagree with anything and everything he says.
I can't say there's no presumption of authority in philosophy, if for no other reason than the fact that published philosophers have spent a lot of time working on the questions they're addressing, so they've probably gotten better at it than people who haven't spent the same amount of time. But in general a philosophy text should be approached as a potential partner in a dialogue, rather than as something from which you are supposed to extract verifiable, concrete information.
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.“
I don't agree with this statement either. But just because he says some things that are incorrect doesn't mean he can't also say some things that are correct.
But he implied that those who read 'as a hobby' , ie most people, always read carelessly, while he never reads carelessly. That is an unproven, absolute and pointless claim of superiority.
Let's address the root of the issue instead of quibbling over the interpretation of the text. Let's grant that Adorno thinks he's smarter (or a better reader, or just plain better) than everyone else.
...so what? Why does that upset you? Why the visceral reaction?
There are lots of intelligent and skilled people who also happen to be very arrogant. But that doesn't actually detract from the quality of their work. If you refuse to listen to anyone who thinks they're smarter than you, you're gonna have a rough time.
Stephen Wolfram (known for having a huge ego) thinks he's smarter than me (and it's very probable that he is), but that didn't deter my interest in his newest article on machine-generated proofs. I am confident (and in fact I believe it's been explicitly confirmed on one or two occasions) that there are members of this forum who have read my posts, found them lacking, and consequently judge themselves to be wiser and more intelligent than I am. But I harbor no ill will towards them, and as long as they keep writing good posts, I'll continue to read and appreciate their work.
The reason I shared the original quote was because I thought that it managed to paint a picture, in very few words, of what a meaningful life and a meaningful relation to one's "hobbies" would look like:
Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.
This has stuck with me ever since I first read it. I think it's great, and it's what I try to aspire to be (although the flesh is weak). And it's quite possible to consider this idea in isolation, apart from Adorno's politics, his view of "the masses", his own opinion of himself, etc. If it just doesn't speak to you that's fine. I just want to make it clear that it can be considered in isolation.
I believe people’s lives are meaningful already.
Everyone's life? Is everyone's life equally meaningful? Is it not possible for people to make bad choices and end up doing things that are meaningless?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
9d ago
He worries that he doesn’t come off as cool when he tells people what he does with his time
This is clearly just a rhetorical gesture on Adorno's part to illustrate the attitude he's criticizing. His actual motivation for thinking the way he thinks doesn't have anything to do with fear of being labeled an eccentric.
So when he reads, he reads ‘with all his attention’(as opposed to normal people, who supposedly read distractedly. The point is, he’s better than them, at reading)
Is reading not something that can be done well, as opposed to poorly? Is it not possible to read thoughtfully and carefully, and equally possible to read thoughtlessly and carelessly? (e.g. a student rushing through a novel to cram for an exam, vs someone who chooses to give his full attention to the novel out of genuine interest?)
Adorno was literally paid to read, so ceteris paribus, we'd expect him to be better at it than average, if for no other reason than that he had lots of time to practice.
And he doesn’t have hobbies, he has a meaningful, holistic life. Please.
Do you think that it's possible to lead a meaningful and holistic life, as opposed to one that is not? Maybe it's possible, but not particularly valuable either way, and thus not something to be aspired to? Or do you think that it's both possible and something that is proper to aspire to, but you just have specific issues with Adorno's presentation?
We’re all nerds with nerd hobbies here, but this one unloads his inadequacies and frustrations in the most petty, passive aggressive way possible.
Is "nerd" meant to be a term of self-deprecation here? Do you think that the hobbies you spend your time on are meaningful, or no? (Not that I think that this is the sort of question that could be reduced to a binary choice; but we have to start somewhere.) If you don't think they're meaningful, then that raises the question of why you would persist in doing something that you think is meaningless.
I apologize for the rapid succession of questions, but I want to understand how much of your criticism stems from a disagreement over the object-level points of contention, and how much of it stems from a personal grievance against Adorno.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
10d ago
Even if we lived on a tropical island before capitalism, when two strangers would meet, among the first questions they would ask would be ‘so what do you do to eat?’, and ‘what do you do when you’re not fishing/hunting/gathering?’
But Adorno already said that he has no problem with simply listing the activities he does outside of his working hours. He already said as much in the passage that I quoted. His criticism is directed towards the modern concept of the hobby specifically, as something that is distinct from "things you do when you're not working for sustenance".
Now to be clear, I'm not a Marxist. I'm not even sure that this thing they call "capitalism" actually exists, and even if it does, its power to introduce radical discontinuities in human thought are surely overstated. A concept that is at least analogous to the concept of the hobby undoubtedly predates the written word. But nonetheless, I'm sympathetic to Adorno's argument that there is a certain ideological constellation surrounding the modern concept of the "hobby" that can and should be criticized, and we can and should imagine the division of our time being governed by a different conceptual regime.
People do not think their hobbies are meaningless and worthy of mockery.
I imagine that it varies from individual to individual. But regardless, people can be mistaken about what's meaningful and what's not. It's possible that someone might think that they're doing something meaningful, but in reality they're not. So the individual's conception of their own activity is just one data point to consider.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
10d ago
Imagine some guy lays this on you after you ask him about his hobbies. What an extraordinarily annoying and pretentious thing to say.
I think he's simply correct, and the view he outlined in the passage I quoted is something to be aspired to. Why would you not want to live an integrated life where everything you do is meaningful?
At any rate, even granting that he does have "contempt for the common man", this is certainly not an attitude that's unique to Marxists:
We are surrounded by evidence that the common man is an inferior being but we willfully blind ourselves to it. If we could only stop shackling ourselves to the Great Lie that humans are equal we'd progress a lot faster as a species.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
11d ago
No, I don’t have any thoughts!
I’ve written some posts in the past detailing the reasons why leftists tend to self-select out of spaces like this. I don’t think it’s a problem that can be fixed unfortunately.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
11d ago
There's nothing that inherently elevates fiction books over other forms of entertainment. In fact (multiplayer) video games are intrinsically social and communal in a way that books are not. I've done a lot of traveling and met a lot of people because of video games.
Of course this conversation is predicated on a distinction between "higher" and "lower" entertainment, and a distinction between "entertainment" and "work" in general. This distinction is dubious:
Time and time again, when questioned or interviewed, one is asked about one’s hobbies. When the illustrated weeklies report on the life of one of those giants of the culture industry, they rarely forego the opportunity to report, with varying degrees of intimacy, on the hobbies of the person in question. I am shocked by the question when I come up against it. I have no hobby. Not that I am the kind of workaholic, who is incapable of doing anything with his time but applying himself industriously to the required task. But, as far as my activities beyond the bounds of my recognised profession are concerned, I take them all, without exception, very seriously. So much so, that I should be horrified by the very idea that they had anything to do with hobbies – preoccupations with which I had become mindlessly infatuated merely in order to kill the time – had I not become hardened by experience to such examples of this now widespread, barbarous mentality. Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
12d ago
Just a quick tip. The mods very literally and explicitly police on tone here. It’s an intentional, foundational part of the rules.
You can argue for virtually any viewpoint that you want, as long as you’re polite and charitable about it.
I’d really like you to stay because we have a shortage of leftists here, but if you don’t moderate your tone, you’re likely to get banned in short order. So please try to be a bit more level-headed in your posts. (Accusing someone of “being afraid they missed the fascism”, being seen as a generally impolite and uncharitable thing to accuse someone of, must be supported with substantial argumentation, rather than simply offered as a one-liner).
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
12d ago
He was already president for 4 years and nothing happened.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
16d ago
I don’t really believe that gravity can just be beaten.
The universe lets you do some very strange things, if you’re able to pay the appropriate cost.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
17d ago
As much as I love 4chan and think it serves an important function in the internet ecosystem, its cultural norms are not conducive to truth-seeking or constructive discourse. Any degree of serious investment in an issue is seen as evidence of being a “tryhard”; any post longer than a paragraph is likely to be met with a “tl;dr faggot”. (This admittedly varies somewhat from board to board.)
It also attracts a lot of “I only failed the math test because I was too lazy to show my work” types - underachievers who chronically overestimate their own intelligence and their level of domain expertise.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
17d ago
I no longer believe in good faith, or shared values in disagreement, or the merits of discourse.
Ok, but are you really engaging in discourse for its "merits"? That's like saying you have sex for the health benefits.
I generally have no problems conversing with people who hate me, who want me dead, who would prefer to see that which I hold dear wiped from the face of the earth (and in fact I would have noticeably fewer conversations if I had such limits in place). I'm not in it to change minds; I'm in it for the love of the game. (And I imagine that you are too, given your prolific posting history.)
I have shown how Socrates could be repulsive: which makes it even more important to explain the fact that he fascinated. - That he discovered a new type of agon, that he was its first fencing master in the noble circles of Athens - this is one thing. He fascinated by appealing to the agonistic drive of the Greeks, - he introduced a variation into the wrestling matches between young men and youths. Socrates was a great erotic too.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
I’d wait for mass layoffs at OpenAI before we take any claims of “AGI achieved internally” seriously.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
Yes. I'm just a big fan of pajamas or anything pajama-like on women.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
our society has become overly permissive
We permit some things and forbid others. Same as every other time and place in history.
increasingly there's a broad sense that all lifestyles are equally valid
That depends on what you mean by "lifestyle" and what you mean by "valid". Out of all the choices that one might make, which ones contribute to your "lifestyle" and which don't? (Your choice of what brand of detergent you use presumably doesn't, but your choice of who you sleep with presumably does). And what would constitute an "invalid" lifestyle? Is it merely, something that is discouraged by your immediate family? Something that is unable to provide a living wage? Something that is outright illegal?
Based on the repressive response from the powers that be, we can surmise that the organizers of the Charlottesville Unite The Right rally did not have a lifestyle that was judged valid by our society. Alex Jones appears to not have had a valid lifestyle either.
Ok, maybe there's still a lot of red tape in politics you might say, but when it comes to sexuality it's all fair game. You can be trans, you can be gay, it's all fine. Well, I have a (straight cis male) friend in his 30s who's dating a 21 year old college student. He doesn't advertise her age much, for obvious reasons, and she's kept his age a secret from her friends as well. They both know what the reactions would be. Is his lifestyle valid?
there's nothing wrong with following the path of least resistance (in terms of effort expended), at all times in every sphere of your life
On the contrary, I think that the hyper-competitive middle class striver mentality is alive and well. This depends to some extent on what social circles you run in, of course. But I've posted on TheMotte multiple times (and again just this week, in fact) about continued cuts at universities to all non-STEM programs. That's what undergrads want anyway, they want what's going to get them a good-paying white collar job. Are these the actions of a society that encourages "doing whatever you want"? Or are these the actions of a society that places a very high premium on economic productivity?
Where before the expectation was to dress formally in the office, now "smart casual" rules the day
Sure, you can dress smart casual... as you work nights and weekends (and respond to emails and texts even when you're not "working") to get that big project over the finish line. You wouldn't want to not be a team player, right?
If modern Anglophone has a telos, it's "umm, let people enjoy things??"
It's more like, "be very afraid" - be very afraid of climate change, and systemic racism, and Covid, and... ...how exactly is anyone supposed to have time to enjoy anything with these cataclysmic threats constantly lurking in the background?
Disney and Marvel adults are contemptible
Perhaps. But my reasoning would probably be different from yours. If they are contemptible, it would be because they're simply stupid and empty people, not because there's anything intrinsically wrong with Star Wars or Marvel per se.
Grown adults who don't know how to cook proper meals and eat fast/convenience food for every meal should feel ashamed
I doubt that, say, King Louis XIV knew how to cook for himself. He had people to do it for him. Should he have been ashamed of himself?
("Hard work", "grit", certain senses of "self-reliance" - these are all specifically middle class virtues. They are not universal across all times and places and all cultural strata. The nobility have their virtues and obligations as well, but they are distinct in important ways.)
women wearing snuggies in public
I find that hot so I'm all for it.
there's no longer much of an expectation for people to live and present themselves "authentically"
I see nothing but authenticity everywhere I look. Antifa and BLM rioters, pro-Palestine student protesters, the entire institutional network of leftist apparatchiks - I think that all of these people are perfectly authentic, and they are earnestly dedicated to the causes that they claim to be dedicated to. If you want to analyze the substance of what it is that is being authentically revealed - that's another matter. But you can't accuse them of concealing anything.
Sorry if this comes off as overly critical. But this isn't the first time that I've heard this idea (that our problem is that we've become "too permissive"), and I think it's just a completely deleterious and misguided narrative that presents a significant misdiagnosis of the situation.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
I’m not a lawyer, but I am extremely suspicious about claims of the form “oh yeah [X profession] is a bunch of bullshit, it’s actually really simple and easy but they make it more complicated than it has to be”, because people say it about my own profession (programming) all the time in cases where I know it to be false.
Do you have any examples of legalese that you think could be profitably and straightforwardly simplified?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
Do you genuinely believe that the briefing is about actions that civilians have taken in response to the drones and not about the drones themselves?
Again, I’m not sure if there’s really a precedent for that sort of thing.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
So why is the House Intel committee receiving a classified briefing on the mass hysteria? Is this standard procedure for mass hysteria?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
As a discipline so untethered by constraints
It... depends on what you mean by that. In some sense, yeah, philosophy is more radically free of constraints than any other discipline, in the sense that any foundational premise or assumption is always fair game for critique. If you're a physicist and you think Einstein was wrong, you're a crank. If you're a mathematician and you want to be an ultrafinitist then at best you're engaged in a non-standard project that has little relevance to the work of mainstream professional mathematicians (and at worst you're a crank). But in philosophy, if you want to argue that philosophy itself is dumb and not worth doing and is incapable of generating truth or knowledge (as, arguably, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein held at times), then you're not a crank. You're just doing philosophy, and philosophers will praise you as an insightful and original thinker if you're capable of supporting your position.
But in another sense, it's just as constrained as any other discipline. With few exceptions, the vast majority of Western philosophers past and present have taken themselves to be addressing questions that had correct and incorrect answers, and their goal was to arrive at correct answers and support their positions with arguments and evidence (yes, even the "postmodernists" - the "relativism" of Foucault and Derrida was greatly exaggerated through misreadings of their work).
And, when it comes to breadth, someone like Scott, Cremieux, or even a top 4chan autist is going to have far more of it than a philosophy professor at Oxford.
My use of the word "breadth" may have been misleading there. I meant "breadth" insofar as you can bring a wide range of relevant knowledge and references to bear on a specific question or problem you're addressing. Not in the sense of, you can give me hot takes on a lot of different topics that may or may not be related to your specialty.
To give a concrete example, the work of Ted Sider and Trenton Merricks addresses, in far more meticulous and thorough detail, the problems that Scott outlined in The Categories Were Made For Man.
The modern information network has created polymath monsters
"Polymaths" almost always grossly overestimate their competence.
Academia is so stilted that it rarely produces novel thought at all. Who are these radical new idea-smiths, sharpened by years of formal training?
I linked the work of François Kammerer regarding illusionism about consciousness elsewhere in the thread. It's not uncommon for people in internet debates to express skepticism about the hard problem of consciousness, but they tend to be unfamiliar with the existing academic work on the problem, and frankly they usually don't understand what the problem is even about in the first place. Contemporary defenders of illusionism both understand the problem, and they appreciate the severe uphill challenge that illusionism faces, but they still defend the position, which is interesting if nothing else.
Todd McGowan's work on reinterpreting Lacanian psychoanalysis in light of his Zizekian reading of Hegel (part 1 of a brief overview and part 2) made Lacan's work a lot more interesting and accessible than Lacan himself did, and it had a significant and enduring impact on the way I interpret my own actions and the actions of other people.
Chris Cutrone managed to convince me that the Marxist tradition was more intellectually interesting than I previously assumed.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
There's been a lot of interesting work on illusionism about consciousness in recent years. I don't agree with illusionism, but defenders of the position have made strides in showing how such a seemingly implausible position can actually be coherent, and they've helped clarify exactly what's at stake in debates over materialism.
We don't need credentialed elites to tell us the answers to these questions.
So, shifting the focus to philosophy specifically, since that's where I'm more knowledgeable.
A couple points do have to be conceded. Philosophy is simply easier (in certain ways) than STEM subjects, and you can have cogent thoughts about philosophical questions with much less training than you can about scientific questions. It's not uncommon for bright undergraduates to anticipate the major positions and lines of arguments when they're first presented with a philosophical problem.
It also has to be pointed out that the modern research university, and with it the concept of the "academic philosopher", is itself a somewhat recent historical invention. Although institutions of higher learning in some form date back to antiquity, not every canonical philosopher has had institutional support - Spinoza was a lens crafter, Kierkegaard was independently wealthy, Nietzsche held a PhD in an unrelated field and did most of his writing after he left the university. So we know that good work can happen even in the absence of universities.
Nonetheless, in my experience the difference in the quality of thought and breadth of knowledge when you compare credentialed professionals to enthusiastic amateurs is striking. The credentialed professionals are simply better - which makes sense, because if you pay someone to do something for 40+ hours a week every week for years, you'd expect them to get good at it. If you value these questions as highly as I do, and you value high-quality work on these questions, then there is a tangible ROI in paying people to work on this stuff full time.
I love TheMotte dearly, and obviously you can tell from my prolific posting history that I derive a great deal of value from this forum, but I don't come here expecting to be exposed to completely radical new ideas. Which is to be expected; we're just like, a bunch of dudes, there are no requisite technical/academic qualifications for posting here. Most of the things I've encountered in my life that really blew my mind and changed the way I think either came from credentialed sources, or they came from sources that credentialed people recognized as being worthy of attention.
The current dominant ideology inside academia promotes a nihilistic view of the world
It depends on who you're talking about? I suppose the anti-natalists and transhumanists could be plausibly accused of being nihilist, so if that's part of the "dominant ideology" then sure. Wokeists and Marxists in the general case though are definitely not nihilists. You can disagree with them and call them evil, but they're not nihilists. They think that what they're doing is extremely meaningful
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
you think that growing the economy through pursuing advances in science and tech leads to decrease in well-being of the population
My more direct fear is that critical reflection on questions such as: what is "well-being"? to what extent is "well-being" worth pursuing? does it make sense to have a single unified metric of "well-being"? - will cease. Such reflection is naturally at home in humanities departments.
You can argue that we don't need state funding to think about such questions. But a culture that sees no value in the humanities in general is unlikely to find value in these questions in particular.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1mo ago
there is no fundamental conflict between Big Tech and the Woke.
Yeah. If I had written a longer post I would have gone into more nuance, but, the relationship between big tech and woke is very complex. One of my principle criticisms (but certainly not the only one) of big tech is, indeed, their complicity as a vehicle for the dissemination of wokeness.
Unfortunately we do have to be constrained by reality to some extent in terms of political strategizing. I’d like to just say “I’ll support the Good People, where the Good People are the ones who would just do whatever I would do if I was the God King”. But there’s no guarantee that there will be any organized constituency that matches those exact values. So we have to make do with what we have.
I didn’t know that Huemer had written about this, but this same exact thought occurred to me independently. It seems somewhat obvious and I’m surprised that more atheists/materialists don’t bring this up when discussing the possibility of life after death.
If it happened once, it can happen again. Very simple argument.
More options
Context Copy link