philosophy is pretentious?

Sure. But how do you determine what is the correct action to take, in a dire situation? And how does one determine what a dire situation even is? Countless issues are shoved in our face each and every day, and so, how can we possibly know which one is the correct one to focus on? We don't, because the ones that we focus on are the ones that we, individually, care about. And too us, every one of those views is correct. Otherwise, we wouldn't have those beliefs in the first place.

I get what you are saying though, that certain ministries or government operations should be erected to tackle certain objectives. There is an argument both for and against this, and many of them are well articulated. But all I'm saying, is that, in determining what one gets the time of day, will be a value judgment from conflicting interests who all believe that they are correct. And so, it needs to be considered carefully.

@DreamWindow if its a matter of science then leave it to top scientists or scientific consensus on the specific field

That's a good example of what I'm talking about, actually. There is an argument that ringing the alarm bells, and imposing ones view, is actually worse for the cause in the long run. To anyone who doesn't share that exact value system, the threat of that person imposing their values on them is inherently worse than what is gained.

People's lives are not matters of science. And that's exactly what policy is, it's a set of incentives and constraints that influence how people affected by them live their lives. Does an individual not know how they will be affected by a certain policy better than a scientist does? The answer is obviously yes, they do. But the imposition of that policy is forced upon that person regardless of whether they want it or not. And there's not even a guarantee that any policy implemented by some scientist will succeed in it's intended purpose, since, there are plenty of institutions erected by governments that actually fail at their intended purpose, or make it worse. I know it's emotionally vindicating to advocate for radical change, but there is often the argument that radical change could, and likely will, make many people worse off in the process. Especially if it's handled by people who don't have any accountability to the people that they affect.

@DreamWindow Hurting the cause isn't even the worst outcome. That would be the alarmist actually getting what they want, some dystopian law gets passed using the panic created, and then it turns out to be ineffective, because what people actually wanted to achieve is feel good about doing something, instead of actually solving the issue.

I completely argee.



Exactly. But you believe that your value judgment is the one that should be followed, as informed, or as correct as you believe it to be. Just as all of us do. But to those who are affected by those policies, it's not so clear that those special interests who are making changes, actually have the interests of people on the ground in mind. Especially when they are drastically changing the way people on the ground live their lives. It is not obvious to me, that the simple 9-5 worker would choose a policy that drastically threatens their employment status, their transportation, or any other policy that drastically changes the way they live their life, in favour of more moderate policies that benefit their own interests, on the ground. All a dictatorship would do, is bypass the persuasion process, and put that power into the hands of people who are not accountable to the people that they affect. And I don't think that's a good trade off.

@DreamWindow i get it you do not trust climate scientists even if there is scientific consensus already

how much real danger do you need to have in order to believe in science though? you do not have all the time in the world for dire situations all the time

its the same with covid if only the world acted quickly it will not be endemic too like right now

Do you not care about how these policies influence people, then, is that it? You just want to do whatever they say, regardless of whether or not it affects the working class?
See, I can do that too! If you recall, I said that scientists have their place in society, and that a dictatorship would not be a good trade off when it comes to tackling climate issues. Rather, they should be handled with input from scientists, using moderate changes, rather than sweeping ones that affect many people's lives. I would hold that position regardless of scientific merit, or whatever else, based on my personal value judgment and assessment of past dictatorships. Even if I didn't "believe in science" as you say, it's a very weak argument, because I wouldn't value that in the first place.


Danger? You want to talk about danger? How much will you take from us, before you are satisfied? How much will you impede on the rights of the individuals before you believe in what is right?
See? It's just that easy to make this kind of argument. But if you don't value the same thing I do, or value it on the same level as I do, then it's an argument that changes nothing. We could have a discussion on where the line should be drawn, and if we were to appeal to each others value systems, maybe we could come up with a cozy middle ground for where the line should be drawn. But many people don't want to do that, these days, because it's easier just to spout rhetoric from one's chosen side.

@DreamWindow you want moderate changes of a dire situation like worsening climate change and even pandemic ok no wonder its getting worse the time for moderate actions on this things is surely gone or going to be gone soon

no wonder youre against lockdowns during the pandemic anyway believing in moderate actions always is ridiculous to me the severity of action depends on the severity of the situation thats what i value or believe in

@deg Panicking and proposing worse solutions than the problem ain't helping anyone...

And here we go, a discussion meant to be about the subject of whether philosophy is pretentious or not, has been just derailed by a randomly mentioned climate change and pandemics stuff. ;P Nothing new, yet still a shame.

The act of putting priority on science is inherently a value judgment in of itself. There are many cultures that do not value this at all. And deciding whether or not one approach is superior to the other is also a value judgment. What I am saying, is that facts are always at the discretion of personal values, regardless of what it is. Therefore, a committee who determines and interprets a set of facts will also be applying value judgments in determining the value of that fact, and what should be done about it. There's no one correct reaction to any set of facts. It's all value judgments.



I don't mind it if people try to come up with theories, for example. But typically, when people inject philosophy into something like that, they are just using something popular to spread their own personal agenda.



Agreed. All of it spawns organically, and therefore cannot be dictated by any committee of planners, scientists, or artists, or whatever else. That elitist mentality simply isn't how communities and cultures are formed.

@DreamWindow you want moderate changes of a dire situation like worsening climate change and even pandemic ok no wonder its getting worse the time for moderate actions on this things is surely gone or going to be gone soon

no wonder youre against lockdowns during the pandemic anyway believing in moderate actions always is ridiculous to me the severity of action depends on the severity of the situation thats what i value or believe in

Yes, because I'm not a fascist. But with your fear mongering tactics and love of dictatorships you'd make Mussolini blush.
All kidding aside, you are just proving my point. You believe that you have the correct values, and the correct opinions, and want it imposed on the population by force. Reasonable people are often willing to compromise, but it seems as if you do not have the capacity available to you to think things through logically enough to actually see things from a different perspective.



We should be thankful that you are not dictator.



You seem very passionate about this topic, to the point where you do seem like you are panicking. If you believe that there is zero compromise that can be made, it's reasonable to think this. It seems like you're willing to "call for action" but not willing to actually do anything about it yourself.

And here we go, a discussion meant to be about the subject of whether philosophy is pretentious or not, has been just derailed by a randomly mentioned climate change and pandemics stuff. ;P Nothing new, yet still a shame.

Yes, theorizing itself can be fun, expressional, even a nice mental exercise. But there's a point where theorizing stops becoming theorizing, and rather begins to be just making up stories completely out of touch with the discussed thing. Or sharing plainly delusional nonsense coated with smart looking words put in the wannabe analysis for the sake of making it more refined than it actually is. In most of cases, philosophy is used as the base of such dictionary, but not always. You can also see folks implementing scientific jargon used among historians or political scientists in their academic works. Not to discuss about the actual show, no by any means, lol. Just to make one's word salad look tastier, and pretend it's about facts, not about one's imagination, or delusions, or wishful thinking about a simple story.

When people are pathologically ideological it can be hard to not speak to them without getting derailed. I tried keeping my responses to the purely philosophical angle, but eventually it ends up getting bound in political trash. Guilty as charged. :P



What i think it is, at least on YouTube most of the time, is some grad student who took a degree in philosophy or social science, and realized that they pretty much have a useless degree. And so the only thing they can really do to apply that knowledge is to make these video essays. But yeah about theories, I used to like them all the time, but the older I get, the more I realize that not only are there very many different interpretations of a given work of art, much of the original message also gets lost in translation when changing it from different cultures. So in most cases, there's very little reason to actually get invested in it. And so I've approached them with a bit more skepticism these days.



You mean you are not passionate about this issue, when you write paragraph after paragraph describing how we should erect a dictatorship because of it? Weird flex, but ok.



Of course. Every dictator says they only want to use force for what is "necessary". But it never really stays limited to that, now does it?

@DreamWindow you write more words than me though

im not gonna be surprise if you think all governments are dictators then

@Adnash philosophy can apply to anything so why exclude teenage anime? heck a blank painting is considered art too one time and they apply philosophy to it

@deg I never mentioned excluding teenage anime from discussions about philosophy, though. I mentioned a situation when someone is delusional, but tries to hide their delusions under cute coat of fake intellectualism. Philosophy and its jargon is used here in a bastardised way.

Or, to put it simple: we can talk about how sunny weather is beneficial for the planet in many regions, but it's hard to take seriously someone who has just joined discussion only to, let's say, star mumbling about how we are living inside a giant sphere and the Sun is only an artificial lamp created by aliens (yes, I met that kind of person myself once, lol).

@Adnash should we have an intelligence test then to exclude people from talking about philosophy? should dumb and mentally sick people never do philosophy?

@deg See, that's what I meant in my post. You're jumping right now to things that were not mentioned earlier and that are not relevant to the discussion, implying that they have somewhat a degree of relevance to the actual subject. This leads not to contribute to the thread and share thoughts on a discussed topic, but to rather build up narration fitting your own ideas and concepts on what and how should be discussed, without having in mind the aforementioned actual subject, the context, or even fellow folks discussing it. Monologues are fun and all, but such way of debating is quite... ironically... pretentious. :P


On a side note, using the examples of "dumb" and "mentally sick" people like that is really unfortunate and rude. Prolly it was not your intention, but this fragment smells of ableism. Just saying.

@Adnash youre the one throwing words like this people using jargons are delusional not me so youre the one doing ableism

whats the matter if the laymen uses jargons? imitation is part of learning

im beginning to observe that youre judgemental always looking down on anime fans so im not gonna bother more

Philosophers seem to largely agree, given that a majority of philosophers are atheists. I believe it's even more prominent than among scientists. So, philosophers are using reasoned argumentation to get to a conclusion you happen to agree with. Don't see how there's a good example there.


You make reality sound completely subjective. A culture that values alternative medicine that shows no evidence for its efficacy when put under a randomized controlled trial is not on a similar standing with regards to being correct about what's true in the world as one that uses modern medicine with such evidence of efficacy being abundant. The substitute for scientific methodology tends to be things like "it worked for my uncle." There are just better and worse ways at getting at the truth.

Of course, cultures can value ineffective medicines if they want. It just doesn't make the medicine effective, and they are probably valuing it because they have a false impression that it is.

@deg When we are talking about whether something is pretentious or not, then it's crucial to define what is pretentious or not. Using jargon and delusional approach to discussed topic was hinted in many posts, but somehow you are rustled by the ones I wrote.

You also don't seem to know what does "ableism" mean, but you find it so easy to insult others with bringing this nasty behavior after they have just pointed out that your behavior could be arguably inelegant. That's what I did. What you replied it were general statements making me, @DreamWindow, or other folks reply only to see your counter in the form of further short, ambiguous phrases, as if they came from an echo chamber. That's childish, not gonna lie. One is not obliged to reply with wall of texts, but come on. Too general and short reply doesn't help in grasping what was the author's intention.

Then you're seeing what you want to see, not what is actually happening. "Judgemental", "always looking down on anime fans", hah. 🤣 Not that I'm an anime fan myself and I prefer to see inclusiveness to elitism in so-called anime community, or that I have no problem over people enjoying genres I might not be a fan of. Pretty crazy, eh?

I think I remember you using similar ways of conversation before, in a different thread. Gaslighting, overusing fallacies, making the person you don't agree with look as an awful ignorant... Well, while it's something to get used to, let me give you an advice that's rooted in philosophy: according to Schopenhauer, eristic argument ain't a way to have a good convo.

When people are pathologically ideological it can be hard to not speak to them without getting derailed. I tried keeping my responses to the purely philosophical angle, but eventually it ends up getting bound in political trash. Guilty as charged. :P



What i think it is, at least on YouTube most of the time, is some grad student who took a degree in philosophy or social science, and realized that they pretty much have a useless degree. And so the only thing they can really do to apply that knowledge is to make these video essays. But yeah about theories, I used to like them all the time, but the older I get, the more I realize that not only are there very many different interpretations of a given work of art, much of the original message also gets lost in translation when changing it from different cultures. So in most cases, there's very little reason to actually get invested in it. And so I've approached them with a bit more skepticism these days.



You mean you are not passionate about this issue, when you write paragraph after paragraph describing how we should erect a dictatorship because of it? Weird flex, but ok.



Of course. Every dictator says they only want to use force for what is "necessary". But it never really stays limited to that, now does it?

That's true... I mostly, or to be fair - entirely, referred to that one post mentioning climate change and pandemics out of nowhere. In a thread about whether philosophy is pretentious or not. As if there were no other threads to talk about it. I've noticed that some folks must quite enjoy "contributing" to threads like that. Possibly they do it unintentionally. That's what I want to believe in anyway, haha.

While I don't want to sound judgemental or ignorant here, sometimes similar thought has also slipped through my mind. That many people passionate in such activities, I mean extreme overthinking while analyzing stuff belonging to popular culture, might be just might-have-been scientists who didn't become an actual researcher working at the college, so they want to compensate (not to say to cope) their failures (even if it wasn't fully their fault) by using their acquired skills with something rather simple and popular. Why broaden your knowledge in a niche subject, when you can use it to craft a fanfic-like text or video on YouTube, and call it as "complex analysis"? :P

Ayy, yes. It can be especially seen among Western manga fans analyzing the source material with ignoring language differences (and thus, possible translation errors); cultural differences; trends where it comes to literature, storytelling, modulation; and so on.

Some fanmade theories I read in the past were quite fun and interesting, even if reading them in general have never been one of my hobbies, lol. The thing is, some people at some point began to further overthink everything suggested in a fantheory. That led to them building up more like an alternative version of the existing story, not a theory about the source material's actual plot. In some cases, like in Attack on Titan manga fanbase's case, such mental gymnastics made a lot of fans think that this or that headcanon was the actual story and if the story doesn't follow it, then it was faulty.

Well, he can't make any threads dedicated to climate change, since they'd just get locked, so a thread like this is a way to sort of skirt the rules on that front, since mods don't usually check these long form arguments. Not that any of this was planned. I just thought I'd bear some responsibility, since I was engaging in it, but I'll take the pass! ;D @deg just so I'm not talking behind anyone's back.



Yeah that's what I think. Obviously it's different for some people. I do believe that some people are just obsessed with the material, that they learn on their own time, and try to incorporate it into something that they are fixated on. Which... is arguably more sad? I don't know. Not to say there's never any good content that comes out of it, but most of the time, it's not exactly profound anymore when every essay begins with something about neoliberalism or some shit.



Oh, I've totally seen that kind of thing before. Yeah it can get out of hand. What's worse, is when there is no definitive interpretation from the artist, and things are left open ended. I am a fan of one game that has zero dialogue and zero story, so it's pretty much all up to interpretation, but some people like to claim that popular fan theories as fact. It drives me crazy.



It's like he starts discussions, but doesn't actually want to hear other people's input.

Ahh, it makes sense then.

Funny enough, I support the climate change awareness and taking measurements to stop its devastating consequences on humans in particular and on the world's environment as a whole. Yet, I don't think that radical happenings aimed to "spread the word by vandalism", coming usually from so-called "climate activists", are the way to educate people. They do more harm than good, and make the whole subject look like something attracting extremists, instead of being inclusive enough to result in educating the masses.

Less obnoxious, yet still not helpful at all, is too far going alarmist approach, with mentioning said things in places that are not the best ones to talk about them. Or to put it simpler: if someone likes fried chicken, then it'd be at least awkward to enter, let's say, an anime convention and yell about how fried chicken is top-tier food. Sure, one might do that, but one shouldn't be surprised when folks start to ask "eeer okay, but what does it have to do with our convention?".

The saddest part is howany of those "intellectual takes on [insert something]" look as if they were AI generated, or at least copypasted with small changes in vocabulary. Similar arguments, just referring to different groups or ideologies, with using a lot of buzzwords pretending to be disguised as a jargon used among scholars. Fascist, communist, modernist, liberal, (yadda yadda) - these words differ a lot from each other when it comes to their meaning, origins, linguistics, and many more, yet you can pretty much see people using them in so ambiguous and generic way that their original meaning is washed away.

That's why you can pick up a random "in-depth philosophical anime analysis" and just swap them as much as you like, and you will still end up with a text presenting similar (low) intellectual quality and/or significance. Just the leading topic may differ, but most of said analysis is the same, when in fact it shouldn't be, because the fact that two different ideologies belong to one branch of study (political studies) doesn't meant they are the same, or even similar.

Well... But they can be treated like that, if someone wants to dwell into metaphysics and wonder about stuff like "what if freedom was slavery, and slavery was freedom". Ironically, I actually heard this line from one of my friend's colleagues, who was a philosophy graduate, lol. So it's not like philosophical pretentiousness is a rare thing usually encountered only on the Internet. :P

@DreamWindow

just to be clear about my stance on global warming is it radical to have carbon tax for the rich then use those funds to make carbon dioxide removal technologies (no planting trees is not enough since you need a forest the size of america to suck enough carbon in the air) and even research on climate engineering like solar sunshade?

@deg That's rather pointless, any energy you invest into removing carbon would have been better just used directly, reducing the need to burn coal. You are trying to fight entropy.

@JaniSIr you know the greenhouse effect? im confuse by your comment

@JaniSIr you know the greenhouse effect? im confuse by your comment

@deg Entropy. You will need to expend more energy to bind that carbon than you initially gained from burning it.

It's fine when you just plant trees and such, that doesn't use electricity, but if you already went through the effort to make electricity, using it to remove carbon from air while coal plants still exist, that's just bad...

@deg
He's assuming that if you do anything it will just create more greenhouse gasses. That would only be true in some cases of experiments not where people actually calculated emissions from production, transport, and maintenance.

Not even just the vandalism, but I the notion that people should be content with changing the way that they live their lives is a very tall ask for anyone, especially those who don't have a good standing already, and people expect people to just be okay with a radical change for something that they can't even see the benefit of.
You can see that with @deg and @Meusnier. I don't think it's too unreasonable that people should have the luxury of flying home to their families, or flying abroad in search of new opportunities. I think that would be a damn shame if they lost those opportunities. And there's not even a guarantee that some kind of regime erected to tackle these issues would even be successful. But to people who don't value those things, it can be impossible to reason with them. That's what I was trying to say before, is that people have different value structures, and forcing it on them will cause more harm than good.



Yeah, true. CD does have some level of off topic discussion, but at the end of the day this is an anime site.



Sometimes yeah... often times it doesn't even make sense. I don't know if you've played the Metal Gear Solid games, but the types of video "essays" are filled with this kind of thing. Often times ignoring the logic of the series, in favour of trying to mention a real world political ideology. Sometimes they can line up, but often times, if you use the logic of the series, the arguments fall apart.



LOL that quote is so bad. Not to be evoke the "literally 1984" meme, but "freedom is slavery" is literally Orwellian doublespeak. Like I'm pretty sure they actually use that in the book. The answer to that is simple:
"You can be free or be a slave, but you can't be both."

@JaniSIr I thought so. If people are unironically espousing the rhetoric of the party you know we have problems.

@DreamWindow

just to be clear about my stance on global warming is it radical to have carbon tax for the rich then use those funds to make carbon dioxide removal technologies (no planting trees is not enough since you need a forest the size of america to suck enough carbon in the air) and even research on climate engineering like solar sunshade?

Aye, what that guy said gave me really strong "literally 1984" vibes. I'm 100% sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if said person was a fan of that one book written by George Orwell, lol.

It's an actual quote from "1984". It goes like: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." if I remember correctly. Meh, personally I'm not a fan of George Orwell and his books. Leaving him as an author and focusing more on stuff he created, his books are not bad per se and have a lot of interesting things to offer, but at the same time it's not like they present revolutionary, absolute and final knowledge, like many apologists of George Orwell like to claim sometimes. At least those I met myself, be it in real life or on the Internet. It's of course not George Orwell's fault, but his books became so widely read that their initial meaning started becoming more and more vulgarised, as a mere element of popular culture. Overrated, even. As much as I dislike using this word, it fits here.

Hah, it reminds of me of some discussion I've been seeing in various places, regarding the final episode of Attack on Titan. They were about that "slave to freedom" theme. Leaving the area of anime alone, it's quite an interesting paradox, hehe. Only if elaborated upon, even a little. Because mentioning it for the sake of including it into a discussion might be indeed seen as pretentious. Well, if someone really wants to discuss about philosophic aspects of it, that is.

Before I get into that, I would like to illustrate that you have already suggested to me, multiple times, that we need some kind of drastic action to be taken place. So regardless of what I think on one given policy is largely irrelevant. I do not believe that such a bureaucracy would remain limited to these purposes. Because, regardless of how well meaning they are, they never do. This is made especially worse, when you consider that different people seem to have different solutions. There is no clear consensus for where the line needs to be drawn, until the regime gets in power and actually starts implementing these policies.

But to give you a proper answer, I'll give you an example of one of the policies you outlined above. It's not clear that Carbon Taxes here are actually going to the purposes that you mentioned above, but the implementation of such a tax has already left so many people in the prairies destitute. Businesses closing, unemployment rates increasing, suicide rates increasing, and for what? When does it end? The goalpost keeps moving, in the race for 0 emissions, and people are suffering for it right now. It's not just the "rich" that will pay for this. These are working class people, and honest upstarts who are getting screwed over, for the interests of third parties claiming to speak on behalf of them.

I value rule of law. The only way to have a functioning, stable society, is to have clear rules that everyone should follow. Not rules that arbitrarily change on a whim.

@DreamWindow you will never find any solutions or compromise if you keep thinking in slippery slope fallacy

@DreamWindow you will never find any solutions or compromise if you keep thinking in slippery slope fallacy