7 ms·

_why is a role, not a person

48 points by athesyn 14y ago

killwhitey 14y ago
>So what makes a zebra a zebra then? I don’t want to get into it, but basically, I take the position that you can’t define something by what it is, you have to define it by what it does. I like that the author doesn't embarrass himself by attempting to define a Zebra by what it does.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  Haha. :) On a more serious note: philosophers who use a process-based ontology/metaphysics would be a little more careful with words: you're defined by your position in given historical processes. Some of these, of course, are initiated by you, hence 'what you do.' So in the case of a zebra, it's a zebra because it's genesis lies in a historical process: zebras giving birth. If you have two parents who are zebras, then you're a zebra. The first zebras became zebras once they are unable to sexually reproduce with another species, I forget the exact biology term here. For another example, I'm a citizen of the United States because I'm part of a historical process by which people are born in a particular space, both geographical and political, over a certain time period. I don't possess some sort of intrinsic US-ian property. If you're interested in this kind of thing, Whitehead, Deleuze, and more recently, de Landa (who I adapted the zebra example from) are all materialists who replace identity with process.
  - garblegarble 14y ago
    >I forget the exact biology term here I think "speciation" is the word you're looking for. No idea why I remember that!
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      Yes, when I tried to look that up, I mis-spelled it so poorly that Google couldn't help me out. Thank you. I feel like there was another related terms, specifically about the point where reproduction can't happen. "genesis" was in there somewhere, I thought. Regardless, thanks.
  - tedkimble 14y ago
    Deleuzian materialists on HN! Deleuze and de Landa were my primary inspirations during graduate architecture school. I wrote about how such thinking might be incorporated into a web design.[1] [1]: http://kimble.co/2012/bottom-up-web-design-and-the-materiality-of-the-web.html http://kimble.co/2012/bottom-up-web-design-and-the-materiali...
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      Haha, the soap bubble: yep, that's de Landa alright. Great post, I really enjoyed it. You know, something about de Landa bothers me a bit, maybe you can chew on this and sometime, we'll discuss it: he wants to "de-postmodernize Deleueze" (even though he's careful that Deleuze isn't pomo, just that he uses dense words), but I'm not entirely sure that you can really separate, say, A Thousand Plateaus from the performative properties of the text. It seems strange to me that a materialist would want to remove the ideas from the primary material that they came from. That said, he does a damn good job of making it a bit more accessible, especially to technologists.
  - davesims 14y ago
    Great references Steve -- also check out Whitehead contemporary Henri Bergson, who I think is criminally overlooked in this category, and a huge influence on Deleuze.
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      Yep, Bergson in general is on my list, but as with anything, it's hard to get through everything: obviously, multiplicity is very important to Deleuze! I don't have anything specific yet, though: what would you suggest?
- throwaway528356 14y ago
  What does a zebra do - act zebra-like. But what in that, specifically, makes it a zebra? The fact that by its acts, dress, behavior, looks, etc, it convinces it us to name it a zebra. What a zebra does, then, is convince us that it is a zebra. This is what separates it from horses or, indeed, monkeys.
michaelfeathers 14y ago
It's turtles all the way down.. 'The Ego Trick' by Julian Baginni is a good book on the subject (no pun intended).
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  I will check out that book. I really like books that cross over philosophy/sociology/anthropology, so it seems neat. Thank you for the recommendation.
- jfarmer 14y ago
  Also The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Life http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_E...
michaelfeathers 14y ago
It's turtles all the way down.. 'The Ego Trick' by Julian Baginni is a good book on the subject (no pun intended).
nicholassmith 14y ago
Interesting take on it, similar in some regards to what Nolan did at the end of The Dark Knight Rises. _why is essentially a symbol of the ruby community, anyone can be _why, is it important who's underneath the mask? For some people yes, there's a mystery to be solved, for others it's enough that they're there doing what they're doing, and by adopting the mask they obviously want to remain behind it. I'm on the fence, mostly as I came to ruby and RoR long after the _why era, but I get why someone might value their privacy and remain hidden whilst working in public.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  I think it's important only in that Subject was the best ever _why, and the one who created the concept. I also do not want someone to literally pick up the name and 'adopt the mask.' I mean that if we want to truly understand his work, we should keep that joy alive, and occasionally have a moment of becoming-_why. But just a moment. I do not think that it's often appropriate; I maintain quite a bit of _why's code these days, and we've had to throw much of it out straight-away. Creative, artsy C code doesn't do much for maintainability, even though it was the genesis of many great ideas.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Oh I know, that's why I said similarities rather than out and out. More as in _why was important as a symbol to the community because anyone can be _why, and anyone can contribute that joy and momentum to the community. Does it matter who the man was? Or is? Or could be? He was just a guy at the end of the day, and we can all essentially be him for a while.
- fogus 14y ago
  > anyone can be _why Except when they try they're not very interesting; unlike `Subject`.
guest 14y ago
It's the dread pirate ruby!
hipsterelitist 14y ago
_why is both an attempt at a symbol and a person. Most of the interest around the persona was generated by the eccentricity in hiding as much as (if not more than) around the other theatrics and unique works created. That's not how you create a symbol, that's how you create curiosity and interest. I know its a dirty word, but its marketing (and marketing that the ruby community needed, it certainly helped to popularize things in the early days). In going into hiding and ripping away his works, he actively destroyed the symbol and very concretely attached it to the actions and whims of one man. Its nice to think that it could be a symbol, and maybe it is... but it would only be due to the actions and desires of the ruby community.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  I was discussing this with someone earlier on IM: I think that there's also a lot of fruit in a "_why as myth" angle. He himself said what you said, in the Poignant Guide, the part where he talks about his own suicide: > Blix was right. I’m in so [sic, should be 'no'] shape to write this book. > Goodbye until I can shake this. > > Aw, come on!!! You're leaving us here?? > > Ha! I was right! He flipped his lid! He's all burned out > and he's going to shoot himself in the head! > > But what about us? This doesn't bode well for us. > > Oh, *we'll* be fine. We're famous. Other people _will_ sketch > our likeness. > > We'll be twice as famous when he's gone. People can be > so idolatrous with their mourning! http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-6.html http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-6.htm...
waxjar 14y ago
I feel like OP read a psychological / philosophical book and feels the need to share his newly gained insights. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, I just think it's not very relevant on Hacker News. The guy simply likes to be anonymous. So do I. There's not that much to it. Woopdeedoo.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  For what it's worth, I have been maintaining more of _why's code than anyone else over the last few years, and no, I didn't 'read a psychological/philosophical book,' I read lots of them. ;) This stuff is broadly applicable across all of technology, not just _why: I happen to believe that grokking Deleuze/de Landa is incredibly important for technologists, especially on the web. That said, you are entitled to your opinion that "there's not that much to it," but I have too much evidence to believe that's the case. I just hinted at it here; when you need to summarize an entire school of thought _and_ share how to apply it, it can get a bit lengthy, and I wasn't in the mood for that, but did have many people asking me "what do you think about the possible return of _why."
  - gbog 14y ago
    I have been asked to explain French postmodernism more than twice, and read Lacan aloud and in French in front of wannabe Chinese psychoanalysts, understanding this is out of reach even for native speakers. I mean, each sentence has 5+ possible interpretation, and floats like a cloud of smoke. What you read in English can only be one interpretation among many. Artaud, however, is very straightforward, a kid would understand: it is mostly naked scatologic poetry.
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      > read Lacan aloud and in French in front of wannabe Chinese psychoanalysts, That sounds pretty damn unfortunate. > Artaud, however I haven't read Artaud directly, but I just wanted to mention that while D&G take the imagery of the BwO from Artaud, it's pretty much just those words: they fully develop in into its own concept (as well as the very-nearly-identical 'plane of immanence') over a few books, so it's much more Lacan (though Anti-Oedipus is a polemic against psychoanalysis, sooo) than scatologic poetry. Though they did digress into some of that silliness sometimes.
timinman 14y ago
I think that is a little too deep. I think _why is a nickname. Lots of people on the Internet use nicknames. He's posting stuff to his domain again, and people who are excited about that don't need to be told not to be.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  > people who are excited about that don't need to be told not to be. Whoah, if you got "Don't be excited" out of this, then I've failed: I am trying to not get too excited, just in case, but it's certainly exciting. At the end of the Poignant Guide, _why talks about his own return: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-7.html http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-7.htm... > Don't "hi" us!! Where have you _been_? > > Just Around. > > ... > > What about us? Do we have to take a nap? > > No no! We got chapter eight... I don't want to read too much into the emphasis placed on the 'U' in 'around'... Seeing a great actor pick up his most famous role and re-take the stage is certainly a reason for excitement.
atomical 14y ago
"I use very different terms than when I’m speaking with my Republican ‘Murican relatives." I don't know why people feel the need to do this. Someone has different political beliefs. Deal with it.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  To do what? I made no value judgement on their politics. I certainly can if you'd like. ;)
  - atomical 14y ago
    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muricans http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muricans "Inhabitants of The United States of America. Typically uneducated and/or ignorant, they tend to have conservative political stances, speak only American English (no foreign languages), tend to only live and travel exclusively inside the United States, have strict religious ethical codes and practices, and rarely understand or mingle with people of other cultures, races, or ethnicities. Merikans are often disliked by citizens of other Nations and tend to be parodied in foreign television, movies, or other media. They tend to also be disliked by many other Americans."
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      Right. That is my family. They literally say 'murrican' instead of American. They watch Fox News, read every Glenn Beck book, and were birthers. They think I'm a homosexual because I wear skinny jeans. They fit every single one of those stereotypes. None of these things are judgements: they're statements of facts. They'd think that all of these qualifiers were positive. You can imagine what happens when I bring up anything French.
      - atomical 14y ago
        It's derogatory term in the way it is used. When I lived in Korea one of my co-workers didn't have a problem with the slur gook. She equated it to mean people of rice. That doesn't mean that gook is no longer a derogatory term. When people use the term Murrican they really mean, "Those people down south who are dumb as shit."
tehwalrus 14y ago
uhhh, as with most existentialist nonsense, this does not follow. _why was/is a name (or alias), not a role - it refers to a particular (awesome) dude, not a class of awesome dudes. We don't all start calling each other "Steve Jobs" when we put on black polo-necks and start being mean to each other. You can redefine it as a role if you want, but that's a semantic change to English that I can disagree with (and will.)
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  Deleuze was not an existentialist, to get that out of the way. He specifically thought that Hegel and dialectics was terrible, but I'll just leave it at this. Just because it is an alias does not mean that it cannot also be a role: roles have names, you know. ;) > We don't all start calling each other "Steve Jobs" when we put on black polo-necks and start being mean to each other. This is not even close to what I mean. You would say that someone that does that is 'acting like Steve Jobs' though, no?
  - tehwalrus 14y ago
    I'm quite happy for you to say 'this person is acting like _why' :)
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > You would say that someone that does that is 'acting like Steve Jobs' though, no? Right, metonymy is a rhetorical device that can be used for figures such as _why, but that doesn't mean that the figure is [just] a metonymic structure and not a person.
    - zem 14y ago
      are you saying that "_why" is a metonym for the Man Himself? i don't think that's valid (in a linguistic sense) - he was _why in a much deeper sense than "_why" being some small part of him that was used as a stand-in for the whole. a metonym can derive from a role, but the role is not the metonym.
- 14y ago
davesims 14y ago
This comment will probably be met with a bit of derision, and maybe deservedly so. It is admittedly over-analyzing a bit of micro-community ephemera that probably doesn't warrant such high-falutin' pretense to intellectualism. I can only beg off that I've always seen philosophy as kind of the ultimate 'hack' as it were, and when someone starts intersecting the two worlds of philosophy and software I get really intrigued and find myself compelled to over-comment. The following will not be to everyone's taste, I am mainly responding to Steve here -- and just as an aside, he's invoking some pretty ancient philosophical discussions and doing it well. For those of you bored with such, this is not for you... That said: I think the trick here is to be careful that we not confuse process philosophy (Whitehead, Bergson, Hartshorne) for pure nominalism, or the pure separation of identity/name/essence from its object. Process philosophers, as I read them, as a general category try to bridge the tension between idealism (the reification of essence or form into an eternal fact) and nominalism (the view that all names/essences are purely ad hoc and never actually representative of the substances they attempt to indicate). It's not that process philosophers reject essences out of hand, but that they attempt to find more descriptive language that accounts for the constant motion and change of substances. So Bergson had the notion of "Duration" and Whitehead had "occasions" and "ingressions." Names, essences in the process view expanded further along the ontological spectrum than the ad hoc naming of Occam/nominalism, but never so far as Platonic 'ideals' which are eternal and unchanging. It's really, at the bottom of it, not that far from Aristotle himself, but with language that pulls notions of essence further toward immediacy and the Heraclitean flux (i.e., You can't step in the same river twice -- or maybe even once). All this to say, I wonder if the notion of a 'role' is truly descriptive here -- the role itself changes, as does Subject. The idea of "_why" as a free-floating identity actually, to my mind, moves it further towards an Idealism rather than the process/duration ideas you seem to be advocating. "_why" in this scheme becomes almost a pure abstraction devoid of the context of having been invented and inhabited by Subject. Questions of essence always become arcane and you can chase this rabbit down countless holes. For the issue at hand, to me it becomes a question of execution rather than definitions. "_why" as a role is only as abstract as Subject makes it. Compare with, say Bob Dylan, who to my mind has spent most of his career negotiating the same dilemma. There's no question that "Dylan" is a character that Robert Zimmerman has been playing and inhabiting for decades, with varying degrees of theater and overlap between real autobiography and pure myth-making. _why/Subject is playing a similar game here probably for similar reasons, and the connection between the two and how much real biography and myth-making is really up to Subject. In other words, I don't think the idea of "_why" as a free-floating 'role' is completely adequate here -- the narrative is too entangled in the community's mind with Subject for it to become purely abstract/theatrical/literary and divorced from its creator. We're not going to see _why fan-fiction any time soon, and I suspect if anyone else starting writing in the voice of _why, it would quickly be spotted and met with opprobrium. Whatever distance between Subject and the _why role there is remains in the hands of Subject and in the nuance of how he executes the theater of it. For me personally I've been fascinated with his creative persona since I read the Poignant Guide many years ago and love his creative integrity and sense of whimsy and fun. Totally unique in the software world, and one of the big reasons I was attracted to Ruby in the first place. It'll be fun to see how/if Subject plays this out.
bitwize 14y ago
Coming up next on Obscure Subculture News, the shocking revelation: Gabe and Tycho aren't people. They're cartoon characters.

48 points by athesyn 14y ago

>So what makes a zebra a zebra then? I don’t want to get into it, but basically, I take the position that you can’t define something by what it is, you have to define it by what it does. I like that the author doesn't embarrass himself by attempting to define a Zebra by what it does.

steveklabnik 14y ago
Haha. :) On a more serious note: philosophers who use a process-based ontology/metaphysics would be a little more careful with words: you're defined by your position in given historical processes. Some of these, of course, are initiated by you, hence 'what you do.' So in the case of a zebra, it's a zebra because it's genesis lies in a historical process: zebras giving birth. If you have two parents who are zebras, then you're a zebra. The first zebras became zebras once they are unable to sexually reproduce with another species, I forget the exact biology term here. For another example, I'm a citizen of the United States because I'm part of a historical process by which people are born in a particular space, both geographical and political, over a certain time period. I don't possess some sort of intrinsic US-ian property. If you're interested in this kind of thing, Whitehead, Deleuze, and more recently, de Landa (who I adapted the zebra example from) are all materialists who replace identity with process.
- garblegarble 14y ago
  >I forget the exact biology term here I think "speciation" is the word you're looking for. No idea why I remember that!
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    Yes, when I tried to look that up, I mis-spelled it so poorly that Google couldn't help me out. Thank you. I feel like there was another related terms, specifically about the point where reproduction can't happen. "genesis" was in there somewhere, I thought. Regardless, thanks.
- tedkimble 14y ago
  Deleuzian materialists on HN! Deleuze and de Landa were my primary inspirations during graduate architecture school. I wrote about how such thinking might be incorporated into a web design.[1] [1]: http://kimble.co/2012/bottom-up-web-design-and-the-materiality-of-the-web.html http://kimble.co/2012/bottom-up-web-design-and-the-materiali...
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    Haha, the soap bubble: yep, that's de Landa alright. Great post, I really enjoyed it. You know, something about de Landa bothers me a bit, maybe you can chew on this and sometime, we'll discuss it: he wants to "de-postmodernize Deleueze" (even though he's careful that Deleuze isn't pomo, just that he uses dense words), but I'm not entirely sure that you can really separate, say, A Thousand Plateaus from the performative properties of the text. It seems strange to me that a materialist would want to remove the ideas from the primary material that they came from. That said, he does a damn good job of making it a bit more accessible, especially to technologists.
- davesims 14y ago
  Great references Steve -- also check out Whitehead contemporary Henri Bergson, who I think is criminally overlooked in this category, and a huge influence on Deleuze.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    Yep, Bergson in general is on my list, but as with anything, it's hard to get through everything: obviously, multiplicity is very important to Deleuze! I don't have anything specific yet, though: what would you suggest?
throwaway528356 14y ago
What does a zebra do - act zebra-like. But what in that, specifically, makes it a zebra? The fact that by its acts, dress, behavior, looks, etc, it convinces it us to name it a zebra. What a zebra does, then, is convince us that it is a zebra. This is what separates it from horses or, indeed, monkeys.

michaelfeathers 14y ago

It's turtles all the way down.. 'The Ego Trick' by Julian Baginni is a good book on the subject (no pun intended).

steveklabnik 14y ago
I will check out that book. I really like books that cross over philosophy/sociology/anthropology, so it seems neat. Thank you for the recommendation.
jfarmer 14y ago
Also The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Everyday_Life http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_E...

michaelfeathers 14y ago

It's turtles all the way down.. 'The Ego Trick' by Julian Baginni is a good book on the subject (no pun intended).

nicholassmith 14y ago

Interesting take on it, similar in some regards to what Nolan did at the end of The Dark Knight Rises. _why is essentially a symbol of the ruby community, anyone can be _why, is it important who's underneath the mask? For some people yes, there's a mystery to be solved, for others it's enough that they're there doing what they're doing, and by adopting the mask they obviously want to remain behind it. I'm on the fence, mostly as I came to ruby and RoR long after the _why era, but I get why someone might value their privacy and remain hidden whilst working in public.

steveklabnik 14y ago
I think it's important only in that Subject was the best ever _why, and the one who created the concept. I also do not want someone to literally pick up the name and 'adopt the mask.' I mean that if we want to truly understand his work, we should keep that joy alive, and occasionally have a moment of becoming-_why. But just a moment. I do not think that it's often appropriate; I maintain quite a bit of _why's code these days, and we've had to throw much of it out straight-away. Creative, artsy C code doesn't do much for maintainability, even though it was the genesis of many great ideas.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Oh I know, that's why I said similarities rather than out and out. More as in _why was important as a symbol to the community because anyone can be _why, and anyone can contribute that joy and momentum to the community. Does it matter who the man was? Or is? Or could be? He was just a guy at the end of the day, and we can all essentially be him for a while.
fogus 14y ago
> anyone can be _why Except when they try they're not very interesting; unlike `Subject`.

guest 14y ago

It's the dread pirate ruby!

hipsterelitist 14y ago

_why is both an attempt at a symbol and a person. Most of the interest around the persona was generated by the eccentricity in hiding as much as (if not more than) around the other theatrics and unique works created. That's not how you create a symbol, that's how you create curiosity and interest. I know its a dirty word, but its marketing (and marketing that the ruby community needed, it certainly helped to popularize things in the early days). In going into hiding and ripping away his works, he actively destroyed the symbol and very concretely attached it to the actions and whims of one man. Its nice to think that it could be a symbol, and maybe it is... but it would only be due to the actions and desires of the ruby community.

steveklabnik 14y ago
I was discussing this with someone earlier on IM: I think that there's also a lot of fruit in a "_why as myth" angle. He himself said what you said, in the Poignant Guide, the part where he talks about his own suicide: > Blix was right. I’m in so [sic, should be 'no'] shape to write this book. > Goodbye until I can shake this. > > Aw, come on!!! You're leaving us here?? > > Ha! I was right! He flipped his lid! He's all burned out > and he's going to shoot himself in the head! > > But what about us? This doesn't bode well for us. > > Oh, *we'll* be fine. We're famous. Other people _will_ sketch > our likeness. > > We'll be twice as famous when he's gone. People can be > so idolatrous with their mourning! http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-6.html http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-6.htm...

waxjar 14y ago

I feel like OP read a psychological / philosophical book and feels the need to share his newly gained insights. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, I just think it's not very relevant on Hacker News. The guy simply likes to be anonymous. So do I. There's not that much to it. Woopdeedoo.

steveklabnik 14y ago
For what it's worth, I have been maintaining more of _why's code than anyone else over the last few years, and no, I didn't 'read a psychological/philosophical book,' I read lots of them. ;) This stuff is broadly applicable across all of technology, not just _why: I happen to believe that grokking Deleuze/de Landa is incredibly important for technologists, especially on the web. That said, you are entitled to your opinion that "there's not that much to it," but I have too much evidence to believe that's the case. I just hinted at it here; when you need to summarize an entire school of thought _and_ share how to apply it, it can get a bit lengthy, and I wasn't in the mood for that, but did have many people asking me "what do you think about the possible return of _why."
- gbog 14y ago
  I have been asked to explain French postmodernism more than twice, and read Lacan aloud and in French in front of wannabe Chinese psychoanalysts, understanding this is out of reach even for native speakers. I mean, each sentence has 5+ possible interpretation, and floats like a cloud of smoke. What you read in English can only be one interpretation among many. Artaud, however, is very straightforward, a kid would understand: it is mostly naked scatologic poetry.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    > read Lacan aloud and in French in front of wannabe Chinese psychoanalysts, That sounds pretty damn unfortunate. > Artaud, however I haven't read Artaud directly, but I just wanted to mention that while D&G take the imagery of the BwO from Artaud, it's pretty much just those words: they fully develop in into its own concept (as well as the very-nearly-identical 'plane of immanence') over a few books, so it's much more Lacan (though Anti-Oedipus is a polemic against psychoanalysis, sooo) than scatologic poetry. Though they did digress into some of that silliness sometimes.

timinman 14y ago

I think that is a little too deep. I think _why is a nickname. Lots of people on the Internet use nicknames. He's posting stuff to his domain again, and people who are excited about that don't need to be told not to be.

steveklabnik 14y ago
> people who are excited about that don't need to be told not to be. Whoah, if you got "Don't be excited" out of this, then I've failed: I am trying to not get too excited, just in case, but it's certainly exciting. At the end of the Poignant Guide, _why talks about his own return: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-7.html http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-7.htm... > Don't "hi" us!! Where have you _been_? > > Just Around. > > ... > > What about us? Do we have to take a nap? > > No no! We got chapter eight... I don't want to read too much into the emphasis placed on the 'U' in 'around'... Seeing a great actor pick up his most famous role and re-take the stage is certainly a reason for excitement.

atomical 14y ago

"I use very different terms than when I’m speaking with my Republican ‘Murican relatives." I don't know why people feel the need to do this. Someone has different political beliefs. Deal with it.

steveklabnik 14y ago
To do what? I made no value judgement on their politics. I certainly can if you'd like. ;)
- atomical 14y ago
  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muricans http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=muricans "Inhabitants of The United States of America. Typically uneducated and/or ignorant, they tend to have conservative political stances, speak only American English (no foreign languages), tend to only live and travel exclusively inside the United States, have strict religious ethical codes and practices, and rarely understand or mingle with people of other cultures, races, or ethnicities. Merikans are often disliked by citizens of other Nations and tend to be parodied in foreign television, movies, or other media. They tend to also be disliked by many other Americans."
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    Right. That is my family. They literally say 'murrican' instead of American. They watch Fox News, read every Glenn Beck book, and were birthers. They think I'm a homosexual because I wear skinny jeans. They fit every single one of those stereotypes. None of these things are judgements: they're statements of facts. They'd think that all of these qualifiers were positive. You can imagine what happens when I bring up anything French.
    - atomical 14y ago
      It's derogatory term in the way it is used. When I lived in Korea one of my co-workers didn't have a problem with the slur gook. She equated it to mean people of rice. That doesn't mean that gook is no longer a derogatory term. When people use the term Murrican they really mean, "Those people down south who are dumb as shit."

tehwalrus 14y ago

uhhh, as with most existentialist nonsense, this does not follow. _why was/is a name (or alias), not a role - it refers to a particular (awesome) dude, not a class of awesome dudes. We don't all start calling each other "Steve Jobs" when we put on black polo-necks and start being mean to each other. You can redefine it as a role if you want, but that's a semantic change to English that I can disagree with (and will.)

steveklabnik 14y ago
Deleuze was not an existentialist, to get that out of the way. He specifically thought that Hegel and dialectics was terrible, but I'll just leave it at this. Just because it is an alias does not mean that it cannot also be a role: roles have names, you know. ;) > We don't all start calling each other "Steve Jobs" when we put on black polo-necks and start being mean to each other. This is not even close to what I mean. You would say that someone that does that is 'acting like Steve Jobs' though, no?
- tehwalrus 14y ago
  I'm quite happy for you to say 'this person is acting like _why' :)
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > You would say that someone that does that is 'acting like Steve Jobs' though, no? Right, metonymy is a rhetorical device that can be used for figures such as _why, but that doesn't mean that the figure is [just] a metonymic structure and not a person.
  - zem 14y ago
    are you saying that "_why" is a metonym for the Man Himself? i don't think that's valid (in a linguistic sense) - he was _why in a much deeper sense than "_why" being some small part of him that was used as a stand-in for the whole. a metonym can derive from a role, but the role is not the metonym.
14y ago

davesims 14y ago

This comment will probably be met with a bit of derision, and maybe deservedly so. It is admittedly over-analyzing a bit of micro-community ephemera that probably doesn't warrant such high-falutin' pretense to intellectualism. I can only beg off that I've always seen philosophy as kind of the ultimate 'hack' as it were, and when someone starts intersecting the two worlds of philosophy and software I get really intrigued and find myself compelled to over-comment. The following will not be to everyone's taste, I am mainly responding to Steve here -- and just as an aside, he's invoking some pretty ancient philosophical discussions and doing it well. For those of you bored with such, this is not for you... That said: I think the trick here is to be careful that we not confuse process philosophy (Whitehead, Bergson, Hartshorne) for pure nominalism, or the pure separation of identity/name/essence from its object. Process philosophers, as I read them, as a general category try to bridge the tension between idealism (the reification of essence or form into an eternal fact) and nominalism (the view that all names/essences are purely ad hoc and never actually representative of the substances they attempt to indicate). It's not that process philosophers reject essences out of hand, but that they attempt to find more descriptive language that accounts for the constant motion and change of substances. So Bergson had the notion of "Duration" and Whitehead had "occasions" and "ingressions." Names, essences in the process view expanded further along the ontological spectrum than the ad hoc naming of Occam/nominalism, but never so far as Platonic 'ideals' which are eternal and unchanging. It's really, at the bottom of it, not that far from Aristotle himself, but with language that pulls notions of essence further toward immediacy and the Heraclitean flux (i.e., You can't step in the same river twice -- or maybe even once). All this to say, I wonder if the notion of a 'role' is truly descriptive here -- the role itself changes, as does Subject. The idea of "_why" as a free-floating identity actually, to my mind, moves it further towards an Idealism rather than the process/duration ideas you seem to be advocating. "_why" in this scheme becomes almost a pure abstraction devoid of the context of having been invented and inhabited by Subject. Questions of essence always become arcane and you can chase this rabbit down countless holes. For the issue at hand, to me it becomes a question of execution rather than definitions. "_why" as a role is only as abstract as Subject makes it. Compare with, say Bob Dylan, who to my mind has spent most of his career negotiating the same dilemma. There's no question that "Dylan" is a character that Robert Zimmerman has been playing and inhabiting for decades, with varying degrees of theater and overlap between real autobiography and pure myth-making. _why/Subject is playing a similar game here probably for similar reasons, and the connection between the two and how much real biography and myth-making is really up to Subject. In other words, I don't think the idea of "_why" as a free-floating 'role' is completely adequate here -- the narrative is too entangled in the community's mind with Subject for it to become purely abstract/theatrical/literary and divorced from its creator. We're not going to see _why fan-fiction any time soon, and I suspect if anyone else starting writing in the voice of _why, it would quickly be spotted and met with opprobrium. Whatever distance between Subject and the _why role there is remains in the hands of Subject and in the nuance of how he executes the theater of it. For me personally I've been fascinated with his creative persona since I read the Poignant Guide many years ago and love his creative integrity and sense of whimsy and fun. Totally unique in the software world, and one of the big reasons I was attracted to Ruby in the first place. It'll be fun to see how/if Subject plays this out.

bitwize 14y ago

Coming up next on Obscure Subculture News, the shocking revelation: Gabe and Tycho aren't people. They're cartoon characters.