Worst philosophies

As a self-describe postmodernist at this point (it was a long journey to arrive here though - I no longer see as valid the pretensions of universality and universal applicability and/or idealist aspirations of the whole laundry list of ideologies, some of which I formerly subscribed to for years), it isn't really about "excusing evil", because you cannot "excuse" a wholly fictional concept to begin with. The entire basis for it as a concept is purely mythological, unscientific/non-biologically based, and not rooted in any tangible material reality.

"Evil" in the sense as thought of or defined by most is about as useful for attribution or an explanation for actions or behavior as the old Ancient Greek pantheon like Zeus and the like are for explaining meteorological phenomena like lightning.

But as a term it's not and never was intended to explain so much as to attribute blame in a simplistic way, insult, and othering individuals and categories of people. And also to vilify and demonize so as to secure community/popular support and approval for killing or otherwise harming those whom the label has been applied to.

@Zarutaku I mean maybe there is some alien civilization out there that invented a math equivalent to ours, but a circle is not a physical object.
A rock will continue to exist without us, a circle is something we made up.
Sure there might be a circle shaped rock, and its shape will not change whether we call it a circle or not, but without anyone having a concept of what a circle or length even is, you can't talk about that.

Socialism is definitely the worst whether it's National Socialism or Marxism-Leninism or what ever misleading names its brainwashed followers try to tack
It is the worst idea that's ever been conceived, and led to the deaths of millions of people who would not have died had socialism not been attempted.
The only people who want socialism are young people WHO THINK THEY'RE GOING TO BE THE RULERS hahahahahaha


The only other philosophy as bad as socialism is probably ATHEISM, but it seems to be followed by the same people who believe in socialism so it goes hand in hand with general inhumane awfulness.

@JaniSIr as someone who has a master's degree in physics, it is very clear you are poorly educated about this sort of thing, so please stop talking about it lol

@0207xander Prove it.
If you don't have any interest in making an argument, just pull credentials, the least you can do is prove it.

@JaniSIr prove what? that math is discovered, not invented? or that fundamental constants exist? Do some reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_constant

Any entity (including aliens) that experiences the world in the optical spectrum of EM waves (which is highly probably since depth perception and color discernment would be important to survival for most species on any planet) would be able to understand what a circle is very easily. They could just look up at whatever star they are orbiting and it would make a circle in the sky. Or whatever moon orbits them, etc etc. The idea that the 2D plane and shapes could be unique to humans is ridiculous, and if you disagree, the least you can do is prove it.

Math is the fundamental language of the universe. It is uniform for all species. The only thing that changes is the definition of units, but not how those units relate. i.e. one ml of water will have one gram of mass on every planet in the universe, but its weight will change

@0207xander No, you have a physics degree. I don't believe it.

Also your explanation is backwards, the object existed first, not the concept of a circle.

@JaniSIr why would i dox myself for you xD i have a master's degree in astrodynamics, which is a field of physics (or engineering depending on the program). I'm not gonna take a picture of my degree with my full name and school on it just to satisfy your ego about being corrected on a forum lol

No idea what your point is. Are you trying to say that conceptualizing a 2D plane is something you do not think other intelligent species are capable of? Any spcies that is capable of 2D perception would be able to create a shape with no sides (circle), 3 sides (triangle), 4 sides (rectangle), etc. It is foundational to the visual-spatial experience to perceive shapes. Circles are universal

@0207xander I mean you shouldn't, but don't bring it up in an Internet argument if you aren't going to.

The keyword is "intelligent species", most of the universe is unthinking, so while you can argue it's pretty self evident that aliens (if they exist) could have circle defined, they are still just approximate descriptions of something that existed before. Circle is just a label on some physical object with many imperfections.

@LoveYourSmile I can expand on the quantum mechanics thing if you want. You are worth talking to, and have no need to git gud as you are already there.

@JaniSIr i can do whatever i want and literally tens of thousands of people have master's degrees in physics. i don't know why you're so incredulous that i would have one. If you doubt me, you can try to expose me for not knowing what I'm talking about, but we both know you can't since it's clear you do not understand physics

Just because a species has not evolved the intelligence to conceptualize a circle does not mean it is not fundamental. Any species capable of 2D visualization and language will eventually define geometrical concepts, and a circle is the definition of a "shape with all sides equidistant from the center" and there are many circles that appear in nature. Again, you have no clue what you are talking about lol

"Well, now this is positively interesting," said the professor, shaking with laughter. "Why is it that with you, whatever one reaches for - there is nothing there!"

Sorry for the obscure quote, I'm just watching vaguely round ripples on the surface of a vaguely round lake, left by vaguely round raindrops, and I'm curious what objectively exists at all.

Cogito ergo sum... vaguely.

PS: Cool thread!

What's so bad about hyper individualism?



ouch

@0207xander We aren't even talking about anything that you would have learned in university, this is a philosophy topic, so your degree is useless anyway.

There are no actual circles on nature, only vaguely round objects.
The circle is a label that has been invented to communicate about those with each other in an efficient manner.

@JaniSIr i am done talking to a chud who asserts what you do and don't learn in university despite never taking a college physics class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Yes there are, you are wrong. Have a blessed week brother. I don't know why I even bother wasting my time with people like you lol

@0207xander I did take a university physics class...
And if someone taught philosophy of language in a physics class instead of math, then they should be fired lol

@JaniSIr You should have ignored this guy. Again, really, physics is embarrassed. You actually have the better of the philosophy; dude doesn't understand he's trying to make a transcendental argument for the existence of an idea, using crassly empirical methods. He has done nothing more than say that math exists, which is quite different from saying mathematical objects have some kind of ontological reality out there. You are actually using empiricism and science correctly.

You're wrong, though, that doing physics doesn't teach one philosophy, because the methods of physics are based in philosophy and bring up the kinds of analyses of what exists that are at home in both. And even in difficult physics, sometimes language problems show up; if what actually exists is beyond our current ability to express (e.g., space and time being "relative," or mass not being conserved), we can get stuck not understanding what the universe is actually doing, because we don't have the words for it.

This guy clearly didn't learn any philosophical awareness from his studies though; though this is unfortunately common in science, in physics it is especially prevalent among those doing astronomy (who also are the worst at math among us).

@auroraloose In my defense, I was pretty bored. ><

Language should eventually catch up, if there is something that needs expressing, people should figure it out how to say it eventually.

Astronomy is a pretty based field normally though. I liked it.

@LoveYourSmile I'm not doubting the existence of the external world, really the issue is that people confuse the real world with our models of it.

Ps. Thx

@JaniSIr Serious astrophysics is good. But the field got inflated by the ease of doing data analysis to the massive datasets we started producing, and the flashiness of space given the space race in the 20th century created the niche of popular astrophysicists who were idiots when it came to philosophy (Carl Sagan, who even so is still infinitely superior to that obnoxious ignoramus, Neil deGrasse Tyson). But even Tyson is just the winner among the bunch of astro morons; he wrote maybe 12 papers, only like two first-author, and understood that he couldn't make it in research and so became a popularizer. He is now a scourge upon knowledge, but thousands of even dumber grad students in astrophysics are made in his image, so that you find astrobarbarism everywhere. There is a glut of people in astrophysics, and it takes up more research money than it actually deserves as a field.

@0207xander I did take a university physics class...
And if someone taught philosophy of language in a physics class instead of math, then they should be fired lol

@JaniSIr You should have ignored this guy. Again, really, physics is embarrassed. You actually have the better of the philosophy; dude doesn't understand he's trying to make a transcendental argument for the existence of an idea, using crassly empirical methods. He has done nothing more than say that math exists, which is quite different from saying mathematical objects have some kind of ontological reality out there. You are actually using empiricism and science correctly.

You're wrong, though, that doing physics doesn't teach one philosophy, because the methods of physics are based in philosophy and bring up the kinds of analyses of what exists that are at home in both. And even in difficult physics, sometimes language problems show up; if what actually exists is beyond our current ability to express (e.g., space and time being "relative," or mass not being conserved), we can get stuck not understanding what the universe is actually doing, because we don't have the words for it.

This guy clearly didn't learn any philosophical awareness from his studies though; though this is unfortunately common in science, in physics it is especially prevalent among those doing astronomy (who also are the worst at math among us).

@XMGA030

Individualism can be a healthy way of navigating the world as long as it's balanced with a level of empathy and understanding of others. Rand's philosophy promotes individualism to an extent that promotes selfishness as one of mankind's greatest virtues and empathy and altruism as being weakness. It's sociopathic.

@auroraloose dude does understand and while dude cannot verify a devil's proof of alternate ways in which space is observed, certain mathematical principles do have ontological realities, such as how the visual spectrum of light is perceived. If you have some proof of the contrary I am aware of I would love to see it!

Yes of course I am correct about physics involving philosophy

What philosophy did I miss, exactly? And do you think astrodynamics and astronomy are the same field? Oh my. Might be time to google. I don't do any astronomy at all, and all I do is ODE's, linear algebra, and perturbed dynamics. That would be quite embarrassing if you got those confused and thought what I did was observational and dataset analysis.

@LoveLikeBlood
I haven't read rand (too absorbed in veblen, hume and durkheim right now) and I'm aware of her notoriety, but "sociopathic" is a loaded term and not clearly saying anything. Was she actually championing criminal or unethical behaviors, i.e. "sociopathic," or are we just dealing in insinuations and moral outrage here? Hold on...



Screw it. I'm buying her books. Whatever has spooked the herd this bad must be good.

@LoveLikeBlood
I haven't read rand (too absorbed in veblen, hume and durkheim right now) and I'm aware of her notoriety, but "sociopathic" is a loaded term and not clearly saying anything. Was she actually championing criminal or unethical behaviors, i.e. "sociopathic," or are we just dealing in insinuations and moral outrage here? Hold on...



Screw it. I'm buying her books. Whatever has spooked the herd this bad must be good.

@XMGA030 Somebody who reads!

I had to drop Durkheim; The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life was interesting, but Durkheim is just too full of the early 20th-century positivist science supremacism that sounds idiotic and tiresome these days.

Atlas Shrugged is basically a philosophy action adventure. Rand is wrong about the ultimate virtue of selfishness, but she's damned right about how lazy and corrupt people can be. As a physicist I could not get enough of her train cinematic universe. I have not experienced this or attempted to experience it, but I think she is right that experiencing a train can give you an orgasm.

@auroraloose


I'm halfway through "On Suicide" and haven't encountered much of that junk; where it exists it's more of an undercurrent. Mostly he's keeping his bias to himself and writing pure analysis, with lots of punchy lines and quotes that are even lol-worthy sometimes.



She was hated decades before that game was made. Bioshock did not start this, lol.

And I don't see the logic in reason #2. What's wrong about giving away books, even if publik schools are involved? I know you're implying that objectivism is bad (and school children are helpless dolts who need to be protected from ideas, 🙄), but you're not explaining how it's bad.

This is not the way to answer a question.

@JaniSIr More seriously, what is real world? Matter is objective reality given to us in sensation, independent of our consciousness, and existing outside it, huh?

Now, most philosophies feel like a bullshit in that regard anyway, because they are self-reflective by the definition. And Forms is just the same bullshit with a good load of metaphorical and mystical flair (let's write it off to old times and lack of proper way of thoughts promotion such as Facebook algorithms).

But as aurora wrote, circle somewhat manifests itself in nature. So, it's rather a discovered than an invented abstraction. As close to a true Form as it could be. Same works with the most intuitive math concepts tbh.

If you strip away the metaphysics, Forms and shadows look like a naive version of what we now call homotopy: different appearances that actually belong to the same deeper equivalence. And since we perceive such equivalences directly in sensation, it's not mystical at all - just topology in disguise.

I honestly believe gentlemen shouldn't argue that much over philosophy - it's bad for their testicles. Don't ask me why: nature has mysteries like that, same way religion and ladies' leg hair seem correlated.

But what is my recommendation worth, when I can't clearly define what is me, haha. So feel free to disregard, as always.

No, but it helped bring to the mainstream today that I would argue is the primary reason people may know of her today. She was not that famous as a political thinker, all things considered. I think for many people today, this was either their introduction to her or they knew someone who was introduced to her via Bioshock of all places.

I cannot stress enough that Bioshock was incredibly influential as a video game, and it is within young men of yesteryear and today that are the biggest proponents of objectivism. These groups are often the biggest demographic in video games.



Giving away free books extolling the virtues of your own ideology is in my opinion shady when it is aimed explicitly at middle and high schools, and doubly so for public ones which lacked funds, and the other avenue I imagine people might otherwise be exposed to her without seeking her out themselves.

There are organizations who donate books to schools without necessarily adhering to any political ideology. I think aiming for children is normally pretty shady, especially when one's ideas are already considered fringe political thought.

Of course, her political philosophy is naturally divisive on its own (hence the (in) as in (in)famous), but I do not think many people would remember or know of her today if it were not for these two reasons. More on that, she also is occasionally invoked by conservative and libertarian pundits and influencers, but it is not too today often it seems?

Her actual fictional works help too, I imagine.

@PeripheralVision Maybe I should play Bioshock... I think I have that in my library, but I only ever played Infinite, and I didn't quite enjoy the gunplay in that.

No, but it helped bring to the mainstream today that I would argue is the primary reason people may know of her today. She was not that famous as a political thinker, all things considered. I think for many people today, this was either their introduction to her or they knew someone who was introduced to her via Bioshock of all places.

I cannot stress enough that Bioshock was incredibly influential as a video game, and it is within young men of yesteryear and today that are the biggest proponents of objectivism. These groups are often the biggest demographic in video games.



Giving away free books extolling the virtues of your own ideology is in my opinion shady when it is aimed explicitly at middle and high schools, and doubly so for public ones which lacked funds, and the other avenue I imagine people might otherwise be exposed to her without seeking her out themselves.

There are organizations who donate books to schools without necessarily adhering to any political ideology. I think aiming for children is normally pretty shady, especially when one's ideas are already considered fringe political thought.

Of course, her political philosophy is naturally divisive on its own (hence the (in) as in (in)famous), but I do not think many people would remember or know of her today if it were not for these two reasons. More on that, she also is occasionally invoked by conservative and libertarian pundits and influencers, but it is not too today often it seems?

Her actual fictional works help too, I imagine.

Did it though? I'm just old enough to remember when atlus shrugged was for many years a fairly frequent object of complaint among the mass media and the culture warriors, particularly that it was somehow to blame for the "materialistic" 80s. All the adults with at least a 95IQ knew of the book if they hadn't read it, and, iirc, it was basically required reading in universities back then. Even as late as 1998 an episode of south park was making fun it. If all of that didn't qualify as mainstream, then what does.



All I'm getting from you is the books would be child safe if they were purchased instead. I give up.

Ugh. No. I said basically required reading. I meant reading considered to be essential by any self-respecting student. At least that's the impression one got from word of mouth and movies back in the day. I'm sure you can think of some shitty contemporary example of a "must read" book in the universities to see what I mean.



I dunno. It could be they're just really passionate about spreading the word with no ulterior motives but no one cares about rand-ism so their only real avenue for dissemination is schools, which are always happy to take free books. I also don't know but highly doubt if any teachers anywhere are reading atlus shrugged to a captive audience of schoolkids, because they're too busy imposing their own special interest ideology of "woke" -- something actually predatory.

Anyway, this was fun.

@0207xander You do not understand what I already said, and you are not at the point where you can be talked to; you need to be humbled first.

I saw that you called your field astrodynamics, and it was unwise given the obvious level at which I'm operating to assume potshots like that would work. I called it astronomy because I knew that'd be understood by a general audience, and I didn't feel like getting into weeds when I'm already talking about information and quantum mechanics. What I do know is that listing "ODE's" and "linear algebra" as supposedly impressive things you do is pretty lame. Perturbed dynamics is not (although that could just mean "oh look, I made my equation nonhomogeneous and am running a simulation of what happens," which is also lame), but even then what you described could easily still be data analysis you don't understand. If you told me you were doing general-relativistic MHD in accretion disks I might have actually been impressed, but for the benefit of the rest of the audience even this has a data analysis aspect one could foist on a good undergrad (you gotta look at the black holes through the telescope, after all).

Do you know what qualia are?

And since we're taking potshots: You do know, I assume, that expressing public admiration of Hitler is kind of odd, and indicates at best that one is a juvenile internet troll.

EDIT: And for the benefit of above troll: Whether or not mathematical principles have ontological reality is precisely the question at issue. You can't just bludgeon us over the head and say, "Yes they do! HULK SMASH!" and tell us you understand the philosophy.