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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2932 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I’m still on The Future Does Not Compute. Also trying to catch up on my Shakespeare with The Tempest.

I've decided that undrrstanding Lacanian psychoanalysis will be my next intellectual venture, so right now I am reading Sigmund Freud by Pamela Thurschwell, and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis by Bruce Fink.

The Freud book is to familiarize myself with some of the foundational concepts of psychoanalysis. It seems like a pretty straightforward historical account of Freud's life and an overview of his ideas.

The Fink book has been really fascinating so far. I am coming at this as someone who has no experience with psychoanalysis or therapy in general, and the book provides a lot of insight on the actual theraputic techniques of psychoanalysis, rather than the philosophical ideas behind it. I started inteoducing myself to Lacan by listening to some podcasts on basic concepts, but they still felt like they were avoiding the heart of everything. This book is grounding, which is refreshing.

Just finished the original Planet of the Apes novel. The best scene was a flashback to some human characters when the apes were first taking over the planet. (spoilers) It's different from the movie, instead of the humans wiping themselves out with nukes they just evolved to become lazy and docile over time and the apes stepped in to become the dominant species. Personally I think that's a more interesting idea than the Statue of Liberty on the beach which feels dated now that the cold war is over. It was short and breezy, worth the time if you enjoy 60s scifi.

I learned it's the same author as Bridge over the River Kwai so I might pick that up next.

Hyperion, Men At Arms (Pratchett), the exchange between the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch and the Lutheran theologians in the 1570s (in Latin and Greek, since that's what's free online, so it's slow going), Fear and Trembling.

Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists by David Stove. It's pretty crazy how everyone just sort of nodded along as Popper's falsificationism became the dominant idea in philosophy of science, but hardly any scientists act as though they actually believe in it, because it's absurd.

I'd love if you could elaborate on that sentence, I'm curious.

The fatal premise of falsificationism is the denial that inductive reasoning can be a basis of true knowledge. A theory can never be "confirmed", it can only fail to be falsified. Falsificationism preserves the veneer that science can be based on deductive reasoning alone. A theory that has been falsified is logically impossible to be true*. So one can attempt to define science in a crude way as the set of tested falsifiable theories that have not been falsified.

The cost of this is the denial of objective scientific truth. If general relativity were falsified tomorrow, would you feel comfortable walking out of a fifth-story window? Everybody knows gravity is real. It's obvious. Inductive reasoning works. We now have stronger theoretical justifications for induction than Popper did, but the damage is done.

*Kuhn does a good job of poking holes in this assumption. It's a shame he goes even further off the deep end of denying objective truth.

The cost of this is the denial of objective scientific truth. If general relativity were falsified tomorrow, would you feel comfortable walking out of a fifth-story window?

I think this is false. (heh)

If general relativity were falsified tomorrow, I wouldn't walk out of a fifth story window because I'd still be aware of the obvious phenomenon of falling from heights. Intellectually, however, I might think "I wonder why I fall? That whole General Relativity thing seemed to offer a pretty good explanation, but ever since Quantumfreakonomics falsified it, I guess I just don't know why this whole "falling" things actually happens."

Moreover, I think you may have pulled a fast one by slipping in "objective scientific truth" into your sentence. Popper's problem of demarcation (with falsifiability following from it) are designed as ways to differentiate between science and non-science (especially metaphysics). Falsifiability has to do with logical falsification, less than experimental falsification (although Popper did say it would still retain its validity to some extent within experimentation). All of this phrased differently; falsifiability isn't about being the truth finding tool, rather, it's about evaluating the proposed routes to truth for their scientific (really, logical) validity.

So, your assertion that "The fatal premise of falsificationism is the denial that inductive reasoning can be a basis of true knowledge" I think isn't quite playing nice. "True knowledge" can come from a variety of sources; metaphysics, theoretical physics, pure math, the scientific method, some (including me!) would also add in faith. Popper, I think, would call many of these things non-science but not non-valuable.

And I think this is very important because if we're fighting over what is or is not "science" it follows to ask why defining "science" is so imporant to which it is often responded "science is the only way we can find the capital-T Truth!" which really gets my ears perked up because that's how we, eventually, get coerced into "Following The Science" (what Taleb would call "scientism") and then we end up veering steeply away from Truth.

Finished Isherwood's Berlin Stories. It's fascinating how much his writing improves over the course of the volume, Norris is such a rudimentary character, Sally Bowles is electric and iconic, and Otto Nowak is fascinating. Throughout the book you can feel him improving.

This week I'm hoping to finish War and Peace before I leave for a trip, where I'll try to finish Path Lit By Lightning and maybe start something else.

I finally finished the Flynn autobiography. I had begun an effort post about it though that may never be completed. Worth reading (the book).

What's the books title

My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn

Do you think he was telling the truth about his life? It seems nearly too adventurous to believe, though that may be owing to my shelteredness.

The reviewers say he was overly self critical in the early part (there is no record of his murder trial) and, later, told more accurate truths because his later life was rather more a matter of public record. I dunno. I do think it does not strain credulity to imagine he did live most of it One wouldn't make up indulging in slavery or sex slaves, I imagine. Or maybe one would.

I started reading House To House by David Bellavia. It's a personal account by US Army Staff Sergeant David Bellavia of the battle to re-take Fallujah in 2004 during operation Iraqi Freedom. Reminds me a lot of JTarrou's posts on Violent Class. It's very heavy on the details of the combat that his unit engaged in, not much discussion of any sort of grand strategy, politics, etc. That's clearly the actual experience of the guys on the sharp edge. The kind of thing you don't see written about much.

I noted that the book has a listed co-author, John R. Bruning, who, going by his listed bio, is actually a professional author and journalist. Did he do most of the actual work to transform this into a well-written story? I don't know, but Mr. Bellavia appears to be no slouch in the writing department himself - according to the Amazon bio, he has also been published in "The Philadelphia Inquirer, National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications". So I guess him and JTarrou are part of a relatively small number of people who are actual combat veterans and can also write about it in a highly articulate and insightful way.

I'm only about a third of the way through the book so far. The Amazon summary is all about some truly heroic badass feats that SSG Bellavia pulled off which earned him the Medal of Honor, but I haven't reached that part yet. The first part is more about the daily life of a Staff Sergeant, which is more about looking after the men in your unit, keeping them safe, well-equipped, and well prepared for the fighting to come. Stuff like evaluating who's good at what, putting the right guys in the right positions, making sure they have a good plan for the fight to come and everyone actually knows what it is.

He doesn't seem to have the generalized disdain towards officers. Some are seen as and portrayed as being useless douchenozzles. Others are, or have grown into, being decent quality combat leaders.

I do see portrayed here the notion that many actual soldiers, even highly skilled and experienced soldiers who volunteered to be in the infantry and have been promoted multiple times, are still a little bit reluctant to actually shoot the enemy sometimes. There's a passage near the beginning of the book where SSG Bellavia is on a rooftop during a battle, sees a presumed enemy on a nearby rooftop before they see him, gets him in his sights, but hesitates to fire. He has what sounds like an anxious feeling that the soldier he sees might actually be one of their Iraqi allied forces. He writes of watching the guy spot him, turn to face him, and start raising his own rifle towards him, all while he's dead on in Bellavia's rifle sights. He writes of thinking for a moment that the guy might actually be an ally who is trying to help him by shooting an unseen other enemy that's actually behind him, of wishing he'd just set down the rifle and go back inside. He does in the end manage to shoot the guy before the guy tries to shoot him.

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