6 ms·

Neil Postman: "Puffs of smoke are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of existence, and even if they were not, a Cherokee philosopher would ru

• pxmpxm 5y ago
  That is brilliant. My immediate response in this context is the back button - if you haven't given much thought to the medium, you likely haven't given much thought to the content itself.
  • hobs 5y ago
    Why? I must be missing something because Native Americans definitely had philosophy, oral traditions, and the like - smoke didn't change that and a vaguely racist comment about how they wouldn't be able to form thoughts because they didn't have some special medium for doing so just comes off as that. Socrates didn't really write stuff down...
    • pxmpxm 5y ago
      The point has to do with Twitter, sir. Nice Rorschach there with your quip about racism, however. You may want to think about that a bit.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • hobs 5y ago
        137 characters - too small to be considered as thoughts as your message would fit in a tweet.
    • arcbyte 5y ago
      It's an analogy.
    • Chris2048 5y ago
      It doesn't say anything about "wouldn't be able to form thoughts", in fact it explicitly refers to smoke as a medium being insufficient.
    • batch12 5y ago
      The comment had nothing to do with forming thoughts, but instead how thoughts can be meaningfully conveyed. If the mention of a minority or Native American technique in the analogy makes you close your mind before being able to understand: Telegrams are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of existence, and even if they were not, a frontier philosopher would run short of either money or time long before he reached his second axiom. You cannot use telegrams to do philosophy. Its form excludes the content.
      • ummwhat 5y ago
        .. / ..-. --- .-. / --- -. . / -... . --. / - --- / -.. .. ..-. ..-. . .-. .-.-.- / .-- .... .- - . ...- . .-. / .--. .... .. .-.. --- ... --- .--. .... . .-. / ... .- .. -.. / - .... .. ... / .--. .-. --- ..-. --- ..- -. -.. .-.. -.-- / ..- -. -.. . .-. . ... - .. -- .- - . ... / - .... . / -... .- -. -.. .-- .. -.. - .... / --- ..-. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . .-.-.-
        • YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
          To add to this - . .-.. . --. .-. .- -- ... / .-- . .-. . / --- -. .-.. -.-- / ... .... --- .-. - / -... . -.-. .- ..- ... . / .. - / -.-. --- ... - / - --- --- / -- ..- -.-. .... / - --- / ... . -. -.. / .- -. / . -. - .. .-. . / . ... ... .- -.-- / .- ..-. - . .-. / .- .-.. .-.. --..-- / -. --- - / -... . -.-. .- ..- ... . / -- --- .-. ... . / .. - ... . .-.. ..-. / .. ... / .-.. .- -.-. -.- .. -. --. / .. -. / . -..- .--. .-. . ... ... .. ...- .. - -.-- .-.-.- / -- --- .-. ... . / .. ... / .--- ..- ... - / .- / ... -.-- ... - . -- / - --- / . -. -.-. --- -.. . / .... ..- -- .- -. / .-.. .- -. --. ..- .- --. . .-.-.- / .. - / .. ... / - .... . / .... ..- -- .- -. / .-.. .- -. --. ..- .- --. . / - .... .- - / -.. --- . ... / - .... . / .-. . .- .-.. / .-- --- .-. -.- --..-- / -. --- - / .. - ... / . -. -.-. --- -.. .. -. --. .-.-.-
          • ummwhat 5y ago
            .. -. ..-. --- .-. -- .- - .. --- -. / .. ... / .--. .... -.-- ... .. -.-. .- .-.. / ..-. ..- .-.. .-.. / ... - --- .--.
    • psyc 5y ago
      You’re inserting intent that isn’t in the text - a sign of our times. It only says such thoughts can’t be transmitted via smoke signal. Here it’s used to say, “Fuck Tweet threads.”
      • hobs 5y ago
        And yet, they can be used to transmit such thoughts and the Native's communication is used as a frame - so what was that about me inserting things again?
        • lupire 5y ago
          The problem here is you assuming that someone thinks that Natives only communicate via smoke signals.
        • psyc 5y ago
          So can Twitter threads. The bit about wood and blankets alludes to impracticality. It’s not about information theory. Why shouldn’t smoke signals be the frame? It’s an analogy. Why do you feel smoke signals are taboo for that purpose?
    • twomoonsbysurf 5y ago
      Hahaha. As a Mexican, I find the American focus on racism so simultaneously hilarious and unnecessary. In Mexico, we don't have clean water in our faucets. Electricity and the internet shuts off, randomly due to infrastructure problems or maintenance. And yet, we are humorous. We make fun of each other. And yes, this includes racial and cultural differences which we laugh at, in poking fun at each other, together. In England they might call it "taking the piss out of you". In Mexico, it's normal. And yet in the US, there's not these "third world problems", So the aspect of "simultaneously hilarious and unnecessary" I mention is regarding how people in the US, since they don't have "third world problems", they make their own problems to create drama about... I suppose so that they can feel some sort of relevance of a struggle. In doing so, they reduce the capacity of dialogue, and they ruin and potential existence of Humor in a conversation -- because people are expected to walk on egg shells on certain topics. It really destroys the fun in conversations when you have to worry about "oh my goodness, I am risking talking about something that's not politically correct! Someone who isn't actually related to the conversation content might pretend to be offended for the sake of some other non-existing-in-the-conversation person to show off their virtuous nature".
• jl6 5y ago
  Yelling on a street corner is a poor medium for philosophy too, but if that’s where the audience is…
• mirconoft 5y ago
  • atombender 5y ago
    Isn't it objectively primitive technology? As for the blankets, it comes from the stereotypical image of person covering a smoldering fire with a blanket to release individual puffs of smoke, as in this [1] sketch. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZXugeBGCfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZXugeBGCfk
  • LudwigNagasena 5y ago
    > Why does he need to mention that smoke signals are primitive? Why blankets? For the same reason he mentions other things: to convey his thought in a precise manner. I don’t understand the criticism.
  • cosmojg 5y ago
    Off-topic, but "Native American" is not the most widely preferred term[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ
• swayvil 5y ago
  Neither is any language for that matter. Empirical reference is central. You don't explain the taste of a lemon. You hand them a lemon. Everests of bullshit have been built upon merely metaphorical understanding.
• simias 5y ago
  It's going to be a predictably nerdy reply but I feel like the issue of smoke signals is not complexity, it's bandwidth. Now maybe if you could put a dozen or so smoke signals in parallel and add error correction codes...
  • thelittlenag 5y ago
    The clacks would like to have a word with you...
  • addaon 5y ago
    I have an image now of someone sky-writing Euclid's axioms.
• willcipriano 5y ago
  This is a better way of expressing a thought that I've had for a couple years now. Indulge me in this thought experiment. Religious figures and scientists both argue over how the universe was created. Religious explanations often posit that some sort of higher power created the universe but fail to provide the story prior to that. The same is true of science with its big bang. I argue that these stories perhaps tell us about the early universe, but not how it was created. Now think for a moment, can you construct a sentence that is at all logical, that doesn't move the goalposts or do any linguistic trickery, that could possibly describe where our universe came from? Don't worry about it being true, just a reasonable sentence that obeys the laws of cause and effect? I believe that human language has not yet reached a point where it could describe anything like that. If that has true we have debated for centuries about a question that even if an individual knew the answer they would be unable to express it to anyone else.
  • psyc 5y ago
    I could say, for example, that our universe was created when a 5th dimensional alien named Parkus Mersson ran universe.jar. But that only expands the notion of universe. I don’t think I can make the kind of statement you mean without regressing to something else that needs explaining. IOW, why is there something rather than nothing.
  • salawat 5y ago
    404. The requested multiversal namespace was not found. Do you wish to create it? Y/N
  • positus 5y ago
    Consider: There is an uncreated God who is self-existent and immutable. He has no end or beginning and contains within Himself fullness of being. From him all things derive their being. He doesn't "exist", he just *is*; that is, His being is underived. Everything else derives their existence from Him. There has never been a time when he has not been, because he is self-existent apart from time; time itself is something He has made. So there wasn't "story prior"; there was just God. This is the God that Christians worship, who added to his eternal nature the nature of a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus testified to this, saying: "Before Abraham and Isaac were, I AM."
• ganzuul 5y ago
  "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible." - Thomas Aquinas
• coldtea 5y ago
  >Puffs of smoke are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of existence Actually you just need to binary encode your mesage using puffs of smoke, something they are perfectly capable of.
• a_shovel 5y ago
  I fail to see the problem. What content does the form of a sequence of tweets exclude? Run-on sentences? Does that sentence really need to be a hundred words long?
• cupofpython 5y ago
  i partially disagree. I agree that formal philosophical axioms as we understand them are out of reach by puffs of smoke, since philosophy tries to begin from a place of as limited context as possible. I disagree that the lack of that formality is an appropriate litmus for the sufficiency of a medium to harbor successful communication. pairing known ideas can create new ideas by guiding a contextualized listener to discover the essence of the idea themself. if a cloud of smoke could represent a well known idea, which it can, and about 10 different smoke shapes are possible (for example).. then after 8 puffs of smoke the shaman can create up to 100000000 distinct chains of ideas to direct his audience to whatever it is he wants to them to understand. with smoke symbols for north south east and west, and the delays between when he creates them having assumed meaning, he could give directions to any location on earth - theoretically - with just two to three puffs of smoke since language is shorthand and referential, it can never contain all the knowledge within itself that is necessary to properly understand it - which is part of the point of the original post. within my tribe, a single word might need a novel to explain to yours, if it is explainable at all. Kind of like being at the bar and something is said and a bunch of people start laughing and all they can communicate to you about it is "you had to be there". the ability to describe details is not the same as the ability to communicate The smoke puff might be nonsense to an outside observer, but after a few carefully selected puffs curated for the perfect audience - you can communicate literally anything. likewise, although i have given up on twitter - i do respect that there is often a mountain of context behind popular tweets. although those tweets might not be saying much to me, there is a tribe out there who have a much deeper experience with it than i do. And timing is a huge part of it, as well as the context of mainstream news, and a bunch of other things depending on the intended audience