7 ms·

The meta-positioning habit of mind

85 points by longdefeat 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago
- bsedlm 4y ago
  the _pesky_ thing with "meaning" is that a life that seems meaningful (to them who live it) *IS* meaningful (again, to them who live it)
  - purplerabbit 4y ago
    Many us hold that there is such a thing as real meaning that extends beyond our subjective conceptions. (I'd actually argue that not to believe this is a limited form of solipsism) Put a different way: everyone's life has some vestige of real meaning. And that meaning is probably different from meaning that person perceives their life to have.
    - bsedlm 4y ago
      some of us refuse to let this real meaning be dictated by any entity other than oneself. not to say the meaning is subjective, just to reject all except our own appreciation of this meaning. what I'm trying to say is that, sure, there is a real meaning beyond our own subjective experience AND that I reject any state, authority, ideology, and/or science which would try to tell me what this real objective meaning is or how I can access it. > everyone's life has some vestige of real meaning. maybe my life has just a vestige (a faint remnant) of meaning to you, but I think that for me, my own life has full 100% of possible meaning (and it should be the same for your own life's meaning). that is, unless you let this experience of meaning come to you from some institution or some ideological belief, then your own life will only be vestigially meaningful to yourself.
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
It’s dialectical thinking and phrasing, described in its most basic state in the modern era by Fichte (commonly credited to Hegel). Disciplining oneself to reject all dialectic (harder than it sounds) can go a long way to freeing oneself from a wide variety of crafted narratives.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I think about the introduction of How to be an anti-racist that explicitly sets up a racist/anti-racist dialectic and effectively defines "racism" as "anti-blackism"
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    In any of these examples, it effectively creates a closed-loop definition, cutting off all external references or bases, where the definition of the dialectical terms is set by whomever happens to hold the most power and influence in the topic at hand.
    - yamrzou 4y ago
      Yes, because whoever controls the meaning of words wins: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/a-little-game-theory-on-discursive https://wyclif.substack.com/p/a-little-game-theory-on-discur...
      - PaulHoule 4y ago
        I'm not sure if anybody wins in this case.
        meowkit 4y ago
        Which is the core of why these power games are so dumb yet dangerous. Divisive narrative battles seem to spiral out in a vicious cycle until a group splits into tribes/echo chambers. The large battles continue until one side is conquered (materially - via financial or physical means). And even if a side wins, it is now suspect to splintering and the process starts all over again. I imagine this pattern is very old and it's only now on these rapid time scales enabled by the internet are we able to clearly recognize and discuss it more broadly.
yamrzou 4y ago
Here's my theory on why “discussion detaches from the issue at hand, turning into meta-debates about how we respond to the responses of others, etc.”: I think it's a battle for common knowledge (See: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2410 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2410). Suppose there are two groups, A and B, having a different stance on a given issue. On social media, it's not enough to voice an opinion about the issue at hand. Because the nature of social networks make it easy for opinions that are globally rare to be overrepresented (see: The Majority Illusion In Social Networks — https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03022 https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03022). Therefore, if you're from group A, you want to make sure that your opinion is common knowledge, but also the fact that you're shunning indivduals from group B (to signal that they are a minority or on the wrong side) common knowledge as well. That's why the discussion drifts quickly into those meta-debates.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Yup, consensus reality is the other term I have heard used to describe this.
lijogdfljk 4y ago
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com is new to me, anyone have any thoughts on them?
- bpiche 4y ago
  He's carrying the torch of Ivan Illich, basically. It's a reference to 'Tools for Conviviality'. Illich himself was a minor celebrity in the 70s/80s/90s and appeared on the front cover of The Whole Earth Quarterly or the Coevolution Quarterly once, I forget which issue, but it was about his 'Silence is a Commons' essay. He was a chemist, and a Catholic theologian, and a great humanist philosopher. He sort of ran a commune in Mexico in his later years. I miss him. edit, personal note: I was a big fan as a teenager. My dad has all the Whole Earth issues and had a few Illich books in the basement and I really enjoyed Tools for Conviviality a lot. As well as Medical Nemesis, To Hell With Good Intentions, and Deschooling Society. That one almost made me drop out of high school.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  I've been liking reading his musings on technology and it's effects - with an emphasis on the effects that social media is having on society - essentially making us less convivial.
nathias 4y ago
it's nothing meta about political opposition in discourse
photochemsyn 4y ago
Another revealing term for a phrase like 'anti-anti-antivax' is Orwell's double-plus-ungood. It's in line with a standard tactic in propaganda: Take a complex topic, reduce it to simple statement even a small child could understand, then repeat, repeat, repeat. Twitter is the ideal tool for this approach, with its character-limited format. No wonder that state/corporate PR outfits (aka 'the media') and politicians congregate there. The article does have some good advice, though: Jacobs recommends extending our temporal bandwidth through a deliberate engagement with the past through our reading as well as a deliberate effort to bring the more distant future into our reckoning. This is ideal for addressing the vaccination issue. The first question to ask of any self-styled 'vaccine expert' would be, "What are the 100 top vaccines that have been introduced in the past 100 years, and what are some examples of success and failure in these efforts"? (What I'd expect from Twitter is cherry-pickers finding the best and worst examples to push their own particular agenda, rather than an across-the-board debate). Granted, answering that question in detail would take a whole book, although wikipedia has a decent introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_vaccines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_vaccines Some of the ancient religious views on illness seem to be playing a role here as well, i.e. illness is a divine punishment for human sin, so anyone effecting cures is clearly an agent of dark Satanic power, who should be burned at the stake etc. None of that excuses pharmaceutical manufacturers who run dirty production lines and end up contaminating their vaccines, however: "Viral contamination in biologic manufacture and implications for emerging therapies (2020)" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0507-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0507-2
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  This particular conversation typically conflates two separate questions: 1) is a person's decision to get a vaccine based on (however defined) accurate knowledge of vaccines and how they work? and 2) how can we ensure that individual rights to choose one's own medical and preventative treatments are protected regardless of the perceived answer to #1?
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    3) is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual if that individual makes choices that endanger everyone else?
jum1p 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
avgcorrection 4y ago
Bloggers love to invent words with “meta” in them.
ncr100 4y ago
Meta comment: First HN article for me where Facebook Meta's co-opting of "meta" as its corporate identity had caused me to double-take in confusion, that the title was not in fact concerning Facebook.
galaxyLogic 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book)

85 points by longdefeat 4y ago

bsedlm 4y ago
the _pesky_ thing with "meaning" is that a life that seems meaningful (to them who live it) *IS* meaningful (again, to them who live it)
- purplerabbit 4y ago
  Many us hold that there is such a thing as real meaning that extends beyond our subjective conceptions. (I'd actually argue that not to believe this is a limited form of solipsism) Put a different way: everyone's life has some vestige of real meaning. And that meaning is probably different from meaning that person perceives their life to have.
  - bsedlm 4y ago
    some of us refuse to let this real meaning be dictated by any entity other than oneself. not to say the meaning is subjective, just to reject all except our own appreciation of this meaning. what I'm trying to say is that, sure, there is a real meaning beyond our own subjective experience AND that I reject any state, authority, ideology, and/or science which would try to tell me what this real objective meaning is or how I can access it. > everyone's life has some vestige of real meaning. maybe my life has just a vestige (a faint remnant) of meaning to you, but I think that for me, my own life has full 100% of possible meaning (and it should be the same for your own life's meaning). that is, unless you let this experience of meaning come to you from some institution or some ideological belief, then your own life will only be vestigially meaningful to yourself.

It’s dialectical thinking and phrasing, described in its most basic state in the modern era by Fichte (commonly credited to Hegel). Disciplining oneself to reject all dialectic (harder than it sounds) can go a long way to freeing oneself from a wide variety of crafted narratives.

PaulHoule 4y ago
I think about the introduction of How to be an anti-racist that explicitly sets up a racist/anti-racist dialectic and effectively defines "racism" as "anti-blackism"
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  In any of these examples, it effectively creates a closed-loop definition, cutting off all external references or bases, where the definition of the dialectical terms is set by whomever happens to hold the most power and influence in the topic at hand.
  - yamrzou 4y ago
    Yes, because whoever controls the meaning of words wins: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/a-little-game-theory-on-discursive https://wyclif.substack.com/p/a-little-game-theory-on-discur...
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      I'm not sure if anybody wins in this case.
      - meowkit 4y ago
        Which is the core of why these power games are so dumb yet dangerous. Divisive narrative battles seem to spiral out in a vicious cycle until a group splits into tribes/echo chambers. The large battles continue until one side is conquered (materially - via financial or physical means). And even if a side wins, it is now suspect to splintering and the process starts all over again. I imagine this pattern is very old and it's only now on these rapid time scales enabled by the internet are we able to clearly recognize and discuss it more broadly.

yamrzou 4y ago

Here's my theory on why “discussion detaches from the issue at hand, turning into meta-debates about how we respond to the responses of others, etc.”: I think it's a battle for common knowledge (See: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2410 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2410). Suppose there are two groups, A and B, having a different stance on a given issue. On social media, it's not enough to voice an opinion about the issue at hand. Because the nature of social networks make it easy for opinions that are globally rare to be overrepresented (see: The Majority Illusion In Social Networks — https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03022 https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03022). Therefore, if you're from group A, you want to make sure that your opinion is common knowledge, but also the fact that you're shunning indivduals from group B (to signal that they are a minority or on the wrong side) common knowledge as well. That's why the discussion drifts quickly into those meta-debates.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
Yup, consensus reality is the other term I have heard used to describe this.

lijogdfljk 4y ago

https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com is new to me, anyone have any thoughts on them?

bpiche 4y ago
He's carrying the torch of Ivan Illich, basically. It's a reference to 'Tools for Conviviality'. Illich himself was a minor celebrity in the 70s/80s/90s and appeared on the front cover of The Whole Earth Quarterly or the Coevolution Quarterly once, I forget which issue, but it was about his 'Silence is a Commons' essay. He was a chemist, and a Catholic theologian, and a great humanist philosopher. He sort of ran a commune in Mexico in his later years. I miss him. edit, personal note: I was a big fan as a teenager. My dad has all the Whole Earth issues and had a few Illich books in the basement and I really enjoyed Tools for Conviviality a lot. As well as Medical Nemesis, To Hell With Good Intentions, and Deschooling Society. That one almost made me drop out of high school.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
I've been liking reading his musings on technology and it's effects - with an emphasis on the effects that social media is having on society - essentially making us less convivial.

nathias 4y ago

it's nothing meta about political opposition in discourse

photochemsyn 4y ago

Another revealing term for a phrase like 'anti-anti-antivax' is Orwell's double-plus-ungood. It's in line with a standard tactic in propaganda: Take a complex topic, reduce it to simple statement even a small child could understand, then repeat, repeat, repeat. Twitter is the ideal tool for this approach, with its character-limited format. No wonder that state/corporate PR outfits (aka 'the media') and politicians congregate there. The article does have some good advice, though: Jacobs recommends extending our temporal bandwidth through a deliberate engagement with the past through our reading as well as a deliberate effort to bring the more distant future into our reckoning. This is ideal for addressing the vaccination issue. The first question to ask of any self-styled 'vaccine expert' would be, "What are the 100 top vaccines that have been introduced in the past 100 years, and what are some examples of success and failure in these efforts"? (What I'd expect from Twitter is cherry-pickers finding the best and worst examples to push their own particular agenda, rather than an across-the-board debate). Granted, answering that question in detail would take a whole book, although wikipedia has a decent introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_vaccines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_vaccines Some of the ancient religious views on illness seem to be playing a role here as well, i.e. illness is a divine punishment for human sin, so anyone effecting cures is clearly an agent of dark Satanic power, who should be burned at the stake etc. None of that excuses pharmaceutical manufacturers who run dirty production lines and end up contaminating their vaccines, however: "Viral contamination in biologic manufacture and implications for emerging therapies (2020)" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0507-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0507-2

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
This particular conversation typically conflates two separate questions: 1) is a person's decision to get a vaccine based on (however defined) accurate knowledge of vaccines and how they work? and 2) how can we ensure that individual rights to choose one's own medical and preventative treatments are protected regardless of the perceived answer to #1?
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  3) is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual if that individual makes choices that endanger everyone else?

jum1p 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

avgcorrection 4y ago

Bloggers love to invent words with “meta” in them.

ncr100 4y ago

Meta comment: First HN article for me where Facebook Meta's co-opting of "meta" as its corporate identity had caused me to double-take in confusion, that the title was not in fact concerning Facebook.

galaxyLogic 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book)