2 ms·

Pretty much anything is - buying food, negotiating with an auto driver, asking a girl for a date. As I said, in the broadest interpretation, everything is polit

Pretty much anything is - buying food, negotiating with an auto driver, asking a girl for a date. As I said, in the broadest interpretation, everything is political and the word is now meaningless.

pron 12y ago
This again? The word is not meaningless just because you say it is (after insisting on misinterpreting it). This is a discussion at the intersection of technology and political science, a vast academic field you clearly have no knowledge of and no interest in learning the basics of. Obviously, the complete definition is nuanced. What you said right now is as knowledgable (and -- excuse me -- as intelligent) as someone saying in a discussion of physics, "general relativity is meaningless". I simply don't understand why you even insist on arguing matters in a field of study you have absolutely no clue in, and no interest in. Last time you asked me for papers that you had no intention of reading. So I've found something more manageable for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political). You can manage reading at least that. Then, look up "Politics" in Wikipedia.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  The more ideas a word describes, the less information using it conveys. Similarly, "a human" conveys far less information than "pron", and "an animal" conveys even less information than "a human".
  - pron 12y ago
    Thank you. Nevertheless, the word "political" conveys just as much information as needed to study it as a field -- like the word "physics". Physics covers a lot (in fact, it encompasses politics, too, so it carries even less meaning), and yet there are some things in nature that you'd study through the prism of physics while others through the prism of biology, so the word physics seems to be quite useful to define a field of study. So is the word politics (or political). There are, of course, many sub-types of politics -- as you'd have known if you'd bothered to look it up on Wikipedia. But your intentional ignorance combined with obsessive pedantism makes it very hard to provide the full science with every HN comment. Like I've said so many times: either learn this topic or don't, but why do you insist on flaunting your ignorance with such vigor? You seem almost proud of how little you know and how little you wish to understand.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      If you tell me an action is either physical or political (how you define it), I get no new information. Why waste words on it? No science is necessary for anything I've said - you havent actually made any falsifiable claims. I don't know why you keep bringing it up.
      - pron 12y ago
        The categorization of something as "political" is not meant to be falsifiable or objective, but to serve as a useful tool in studying it. It's exactly like saying that studying planet motion is best done by applying physics, rust is best studied with chemistry (so we say it's a chemical process), and mitosis should best be studied by biologists (i.e., it's a biological process). But all of those are physical, and the latter two are chemical, and yet the categorization helps. Is it always absolute? No. Carbon nanotubes might be studied by both physicists and chemists, and ATP by both biologists and chemists. When we say an action is political, we mean it is best analyzed through political sociology/psychology, i.e. by using the techniques used to study about power dynamics in society, and drawing on the knowledge learned in that field. Usually, those categorizations aren't even contentious. No chemist is offended when we say that metabolism is a biological process, even though it is also chemical. But I think that in this case (of politics), many people -- and especially here on HN -- don't even know what the word means, let alone its academic definition. And consider this. If you were to travel in time to, say, Mesopotamia, and tell them that fire was a chemical process, they won't know what you're talking about. In fact, they may have used the word "chemical" to mean material or something. But you know that the process is really one of reactions among molecules -- they wouldn't even know molecules exist. So too in politics. The power dynamics shaping our society are often hidden from those who aren't trained to see them. When we say "the invention of the fork was a political action that caused..." (we don't, but the invention of the fork was just something I studied once so it came to mind) everybody understand what that means, and no one is offended, because people who know about power in society immediately grasp what we're talking about. Those who don't might either don't understand at all, or even push back -- like you have -- and say something like, "but that was purely technological", which is not too much unlike saying that lightning is a spear of a god. You need to learn -- even a little bit -- to see politics at work, and that Wikipedia article on power is an OK place to start.

Pretty much anything is - buying food, negotiating with an auto driver, asking a girl for a date. As I said, in the broadest interpretation, everything is political and the word is now meaningless.

pron 12y ago

This again? The word is not meaningless just because you say it is (after insisting on misinterpreting it). This is a discussion at the intersection of technology and political science, a vast academic field you clearly have no knowledge of and no interest in learning the basics of. Obviously, the complete definition is nuanced. What you said right now is as knowledgable (and -- excuse me -- as intelligent) as someone saying in a discussion of physics, "general relativity is meaningless". I simply don't understand why you even insist on arguing matters in a field of study you have absolutely no clue in, and no interest in. Last time you asked me for papers that you had no intention of reading. So I've found something more manageable for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political). You can manage reading at least that. Then, look up "Politics" in Wikipedia.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
The more ideas a word describes, the less information using it conveys. Similarly, "a human" conveys far less information than "pron", and "an animal" conveys even less information than "a human".
- pron 12y ago
  Thank you. Nevertheless, the word "political" conveys just as much information as needed to study it as a field -- like the word "physics". Physics covers a lot (in fact, it encompasses politics, too, so it carries even less meaning), and yet there are some things in nature that you'd study through the prism of physics while others through the prism of biology, so the word physics seems to be quite useful to define a field of study. So is the word politics (or political). There are, of course, many sub-types of politics -- as you'd have known if you'd bothered to look it up on Wikipedia. But your intentional ignorance combined with obsessive pedantism makes it very hard to provide the full science with every HN comment. Like I've said so many times: either learn this topic or don't, but why do you insist on flaunting your ignorance with such vigor? You seem almost proud of how little you know and how little you wish to understand.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    If you tell me an action is either physical or political (how you define it), I get no new information. Why waste words on it? No science is necessary for anything I've said - you havent actually made any falsifiable claims. I don't know why you keep bringing it up.
    - pron 12y ago
      The categorization of something as "political" is not meant to be falsifiable or objective, but to serve as a useful tool in studying it. It's exactly like saying that studying planet motion is best done by applying physics, rust is best studied with chemistry (so we say it's a chemical process), and mitosis should best be studied by biologists (i.e., it's a biological process). But all of those are physical, and the latter two are chemical, and yet the categorization helps. Is it always absolute? No. Carbon nanotubes might be studied by both physicists and chemists, and ATP by both biologists and chemists. When we say an action is political, we mean it is best analyzed through political sociology/psychology, i.e. by using the techniques used to study about power dynamics in society, and drawing on the knowledge learned in that field. Usually, those categorizations aren't even contentious. No chemist is offended when we say that metabolism is a biological process, even though it is also chemical. But I think that in this case (of politics), many people -- and especially here on HN -- don't even know what the word means, let alone its academic definition. And consider this. If you were to travel in time to, say, Mesopotamia, and tell them that fire was a chemical process, they won't know what you're talking about. In fact, they may have used the word "chemical" to mean material or something. But you know that the process is really one of reactions among molecules -- they wouldn't even know molecules exist. So too in politics. The power dynamics shaping our society are often hidden from those who aren't trained to see them. When we say "the invention of the fork was a political action that caused..." (we don't, but the invention of the fork was just something I studied once so it came to mind) everybody understand what that means, and no one is offended, because people who know about power in society immediately grasp what we're talking about. Those who don't might either don't understand at all, or even push back -- like you have -- and say something like, "but that was purely technological", which is not too much unlike saying that lightning is a spear of a god. You need to learn -- even a little bit -- to see politics at work, and that Wikipedia article on power is an OK place to start.