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"There is no truth, only power. What I’ve been interpreting as truth and rationality has been my own attempt to align my thinking with the political clique that

"There is no truth, only power. What I’ve been interpreting as truth and rationality has been my own attempt to align my thinking with the political clique that was in power when I was being educated. What I’m interpreting as rising stupidity has been the collapse in power and status of that clique and the political obsolescence of the variety of “truth” and “rationality” I internalized as a child. Those pomo philosophers were right all along." This is a part of it to be sure. This line of thinking is becoming more and more popular and accepted as the only truth is that there is none. The enlightenment era scientific-liberal approach is rapidly disintegrating. But I don't think the pomo philosophers would actually think an entirely new meta-narrative would be constructed from their ideas. In fact their premise was that there are no true meta-narratives. But they've had parts of their ideas cherry picked to advance a new, illiberal agenda.

Der_Einzige 6y ago
A rejection of truth doesn't necessarily imply that scientific-liberalism is bad. I don't think that the post-modernists should be held responsible for encouraging anti-scientific thinking - of course unless your version of science is that science and rationality give us absolute truths of the world. Science can have lots of utility and not find us truth at all. It's a fault of some post modernists for not saying this part out loud as much as they should, and maybe a small handful are the rabid radicals who reject the scientific method as not having any utility, but I don't think that the majority of left-wing post modernists are anti-science per say. I think that they want science to be more narrowly defined and to have a broader understanding of the socio-political ramification of its approaches.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  > Science can have lots of utility and not find us truth at all. It depends how far you want to jump into the rabbit hole. 2+2=4. It does. It always will and always has. It isn't just utility that is useful for building things. It is a universal truth and until someone can prove it actually does not, then it does. No ones lived experience changes this. And it's not just about finding facts and attaching moral or ethical considerations to them. It's about making claims of knowledge in ways that are _falsifiable_. Any claim must have a way of being proven wrong, otherwise it isn't something we should accept into the discourse of what is knowledge and what is not. 2+2=4 is a claim that is falsifiable and therefore valid to propose. > ...but I don't think that the majority of left-wing post modernists are anti-science per say I don't think most right wing people are either - except when it is convenient. People appeal to science until it doesn't help or in fact is detrimental to their cause. Science will make us uncomfortable and I agree that many bad things have been done because "science". But at the minimum, claims from eugenists were falsifiable and in time they have been disproven. And yes I agree, we need to be careful how we interpret things. I love the left's idea that "race is a social construct". I 100% agree it is. Yes, there is DNA that determines race and people are therefore biologically "different" - but it's unimportant. The social constructs that exist made race into something more than it is. It's no more important than nose shape, or eye color, or fingerprint shape, etc.

Der_Einzige 6y ago

A rejection of truth doesn't necessarily imply that scientific-liberalism is bad. I don't think that the post-modernists should be held responsible for encouraging anti-scientific thinking - of course unless your version of science is that science and rationality give us absolute truths of the world. Science can have lots of utility and not find us truth at all. It's a fault of some post modernists for not saying this part out loud as much as they should, and maybe a small handful are the rabid radicals who reject the scientific method as not having any utility, but I don't think that the majority of left-wing post modernists are anti-science per say. I think that they want science to be more narrowly defined and to have a broader understanding of the socio-political ramification of its approaches.

nemo44x 6y ago
> Science can have lots of utility and not find us truth at all. It depends how far you want to jump into the rabbit hole. 2+2=4. It does. It always will and always has. It isn't just utility that is useful for building things. It is a universal truth and until someone can prove it actually does not, then it does. No ones lived experience changes this. And it's not just about finding facts and attaching moral or ethical considerations to them. It's about making claims of knowledge in ways that are _falsifiable_. Any claim must have a way of being proven wrong, otherwise it isn't something we should accept into the discourse of what is knowledge and what is not. 2+2=4 is a claim that is falsifiable and therefore valid to propose. > ...but I don't think that the majority of left-wing post modernists are anti-science per say I don't think most right wing people are either - except when it is convenient. People appeal to science until it doesn't help or in fact is detrimental to their cause. Science will make us uncomfortable and I agree that many bad things have been done because "science". But at the minimum, claims from eugenists were falsifiable and in time they have been disproven. And yes I agree, we need to be careful how we interpret things. I love the left's idea that "race is a social construct". I 100% agree it is. Yes, there is DNA that determines race and people are therefore biologically "different" - but it's unimportant. The social constructs that exist made race into something more than it is. It's no more important than nose shape, or eye color, or fingerprint shape, etc.