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What the hell does that have to do with white supremacy? Rationality is available to anyone regardless of race, and isn't exclusively a creation of white people

What the hell does that have to do with white supremacy? Rationality is available to anyone regardless of race, and isn't exclusively a creation of white people either. You called it a "Western" tradition of thought and I was merely echoing your words. In truth, "the East" contributed a lot, many people in "the West" don't value rationality, and many people elsewhere do. Our rational view of the world is a shared achievement and inheritance by and for anyone who chooses to contribute.

ultrasounder 8y ago
Upvoted!.
buchhalter37 8y ago
Did you edit your comment to remove the condescending remark about my new HN account? Wow. Well I’m glad to hear that “the East” had something to contribute too!
- rwnspace 8y ago
  Please, it's quite obvious your intent is in part to generate emotion and not purely 'informed exchange'. Your tone is not appropriate to this community. Some things I've learned here: give your fellow conversationalists as much benefit of the doubt as you can. It's wise to avoid tactics of rhetoric such as reductio ad absurdum. Try explain your thoughts in such a way that we do not have to guess. I'm actually quite sure you have something interesting to contribute, but please, politeness is important here.
  - buchhalter37 8y ago
    Apologies for the sarcasm. I felt that the previous comment was very much ad hominem and the edit was particularly insidious. But you’re right, no excuse for bad form here :)
    - dkersten 8y ago
      Or he edited it out because after reflection he realised t didn’t add anything useful? That often happens to me — I write something more snarky than I meant to and only realise after the fact and then edit my comment to remove it. My intent, when I do this, is not one of malice.
    - leereeves 8y ago
      Do you not feel your initial comment was ad hominem? "Listening to Joscha Bach is like listening to the screams of computer scientists as they are slowly squeezed to death." I initially reacted to that and replied more harshly than I should have, so I edited the comment slightly to remove the emotion. What's insidious about that?
pantalaimon 8y ago
[this comment was written in response to the parent, which was [flagged] while I was typing] I find the backlash Joscha receives (also in this talk) from the Social Justice community surprising, given that afaik he never took a stand on the issue. Let me attempt an explanation, using ideas from this talk. If a god is a virtual entity that 'runs' next to your consciousness with properties of being omnipotent (knows all your thoughts) and that it judges you for your behavior, you can also have a Beelzebub as a virtual entity that is not quite as omnipotent, but tries to inject 'bad' thoughts into your brain. But since it is not omnipotent, you can fight it. Now for these kind of entities to be successful they need to have additional properties to protect themselves, similar to biological organisms. Any thought questioning it is a threat to such virtual entity and therefore for such entity to be successful, it must have the property that any thought questioning it must be evil. They also need additional properties to encourage spreading and to avoid mutations. Rationality has proven to be a good antidote to such entities, so it's just natural that new entities will evolve that have developed properties that give them immunity to that. I think 'patriarchy' is such a Beelzebub. To simplify it: Rationalist arguments were mostly developed by white men, and thus are thoughts connected to the Beelzebub.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  Either your view of patriarchy is misconstrued, or you've heard about it from a source unfamiliar to me or indeed social science researchers who take the concept very seriously. Before talking about it being an idea which cannot be challenged, I'd also draw your attention to the very challenging debates in social science and philosophy which do question it. Their inaccessibility to laypeople (including me) is something to be improved on, perhaps, but I don't think we can say it's such a concept as you are describing it to me, short of a mass academic conspiracy. The understanding of this current rationality as purely an antidote to pernicious ideas and mysticism is a relatively new one; in fact, in the 60s and 70s a big argument in critical theory was that by deplacing religion as a bearer of objective rationality, science took up a semi-religious role itself, and questions of morality or things that natural science (as opposed to the science of philosophy) could not answer were brushed aside as too mystical to be worthy of consideration, and consigned to the same dustbin us 'rational' people dumped religion in. This is also shown in the anti-positivism controversy, that is to say to what extent we can apply the methods of natural science to the social sciences. Your characterisation of patriarchy (which seems to stem from positivist ideology) seems incomplete in the face of the debate. Are there any scientists who agree with your characterisation? I hadn't even heard of Joscha Bach before viewing the link, so I can't comment on his case in particular.

ultrasounder 8y ago

Upvoted!.

buchhalter37 8y ago

Did you edit your comment to remove the condescending remark about my new HN account? Wow. Well I’m glad to hear that “the East” had something to contribute too!

rwnspace 8y ago
Please, it's quite obvious your intent is in part to generate emotion and not purely 'informed exchange'. Your tone is not appropriate to this community. Some things I've learned here: give your fellow conversationalists as much benefit of the doubt as you can. It's wise to avoid tactics of rhetoric such as reductio ad absurdum. Try explain your thoughts in such a way that we do not have to guess. I'm actually quite sure you have something interesting to contribute, but please, politeness is important here.
- buchhalter37 8y ago
  Apologies for the sarcasm. I felt that the previous comment was very much ad hominem and the edit was particularly insidious. But you’re right, no excuse for bad form here :)
  - dkersten 8y ago
    Or he edited it out because after reflection he realised t didn’t add anything useful? That often happens to me — I write something more snarky than I meant to and only realise after the fact and then edit my comment to remove it. My intent, when I do this, is not one of malice.
  - leereeves 8y ago
    Do you not feel your initial comment was ad hominem? "Listening to Joscha Bach is like listening to the screams of computer scientists as they are slowly squeezed to death." I initially reacted to that and replied more harshly than I should have, so I edited the comment slightly to remove the emotion. What's insidious about that?

pantalaimon 8y ago

[this comment was written in response to the parent, which was [flagged] while I was typing] I find the backlash Joscha receives (also in this talk) from the Social Justice community surprising, given that afaik he never took a stand on the issue. Let me attempt an explanation, using ideas from this talk. If a god is a virtual entity that 'runs' next to your consciousness with properties of being omnipotent (knows all your thoughts) and that it judges you for your behavior, you can also have a Beelzebub as a virtual entity that is not quite as omnipotent, but tries to inject 'bad' thoughts into your brain. But since it is not omnipotent, you can fight it. Now for these kind of entities to be successful they need to have additional properties to protect themselves, similar to biological organisms. Any thought questioning it is a threat to such virtual entity and therefore for such entity to be successful, it must have the property that any thought questioning it must be evil. They also need additional properties to encourage spreading and to avoid mutations. Rationality has proven to be a good antidote to such entities, so it's just natural that new entities will evolve that have developed properties that give them immunity to that. I think 'patriarchy' is such a Beelzebub. To simplify it: Rationalist arguments were mostly developed by white men, and thus are thoughts connected to the Beelzebub.

claudiawerner 8y ago
Either your view of patriarchy is misconstrued, or you've heard about it from a source unfamiliar to me or indeed social science researchers who take the concept very seriously. Before talking about it being an idea which cannot be challenged, I'd also draw your attention to the very challenging debates in social science and philosophy which do question it. Their inaccessibility to laypeople (including me) is something to be improved on, perhaps, but I don't think we can say it's such a concept as you are describing it to me, short of a mass academic conspiracy. The understanding of this current rationality as purely an antidote to pernicious ideas and mysticism is a relatively new one; in fact, in the 60s and 70s a big argument in critical theory was that by deplacing religion as a bearer of objective rationality, science took up a semi-religious role itself, and questions of morality or things that natural science (as opposed to the science of philosophy) could not answer were brushed aside as too mystical to be worthy of consideration, and consigned to the same dustbin us 'rational' people dumped religion in. This is also shown in the anti-positivism controversy, that is to say to what extent we can apply the methods of natural science to the social sciences. Your characterisation of patriarchy (which seems to stem from positivist ideology) seems incomplete in the face of the debate. Are there any scientists who agree with your characterisation? I hadn't even heard of Joscha Bach before viewing the link, so I can't comment on his case in particular.