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I don't find that a convincing analogy. A more convincing analogy would be something like the theoretical treatise put forward by Shinichi Mochizuki to solve th

I don't find that a convincing analogy. A more convincing analogy would be something like the theoretical treatise put forward by Shinichi Mochizuki to solve the ABC conjecture. He invented entirely new fields of mathematics so obscure, that no one can really be able to fully evaluate his theory yet, and it resists simple explanation even by experts in the field, or Shinichi himself. Peer review relies on peers being able to predictably understand the terminology in a clear manner without ambiguity. You get this in traditional Western philosophy, even as people define new terminology, that adorn axioms and logical rules to buttress its meaning. But if you invent an entirely new terminology that most people don't understand, which is hard for any two people to come away with the same meaning, I'd argue you have not put forward a theory, you've put forward ideas dressed up in technical jargon giving the aura of precision. This isn't a C programmer refusing to learn Haskell. This is a C programmer refusing to learn Brainfuck or INTERCAL.

thwest 12y ago
> This is a C programmer refusing to learn Brainfuck or INTERCAL. Right, and refusing a Brainfuck's assumptions does not deny it turing complete status, or render it unable to produce ELFs. For some, it illuminates the nature of an abstract turing machine. For others it appears to be nothing but sound and fury.
- cromwellian 12y ago
  But it does render its usefulness or utility lower than a simpler construct which offers all of the same benefits, but with lower logical depth. I'm not saying Foucault's wrong, I'm saying that there are other philosophers who have put forward similar ideas in a much more straightforward fashion without the Brainfuck.
  - thwest 12y ago
    Holding philosophy to the standard of utility brings a lot of assumptions to bear on your reading. Conciseness is a virtue that one can overindulge. Many philosophers aren't concerned with providing readers with ideas in the system of efficient exchange of language and labor hours. For many in critical theory the project is the opposite: to show how the systems of exchange and efficiency dominate our meaning-making.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  Yet no one doubts Brainfuck's Turing completeness, and it can be easily demonstrated to anyone with a passing familiarity with the langauge. The post-structuralists, on the other hand, are trolls. They claim grandiose results that fail Chomsky's simple personal test, and similar personal tests of many others, myself included, who have a demonstrated capacity to understand ideas across many fields, including in my case epistemology with a knowing subject, which comes close to some important post-structuralist or post-modernist ideas regarding subjectivity. But the "critical theoretic" political program is so important to post-modernist program they they deliberatly distort their accounts and ideas for the sake of goals that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and results in the whole body of their work being incoherent nonsense with a few gems embedded in it. There are well-meaning people who see the gems and argue passionately that the rest of the mass simply must be meaningful and important, and there are people who correctly observe the incoherence of the mass and miss the gems. These two groups then spend a great deal of time fighting with each other, while those of us who have picked up the gems and moved on are ignored by all.

thwest 12y ago

> This is a C programmer refusing to learn Brainfuck or INTERCAL. Right, and refusing a Brainfuck's assumptions does not deny it turing complete status, or render it unable to produce ELFs. For some, it illuminates the nature of an abstract turing machine. For others it appears to be nothing but sound and fury.

cromwellian 12y ago
But it does render its usefulness or utility lower than a simpler construct which offers all of the same benefits, but with lower logical depth. I'm not saying Foucault's wrong, I'm saying that there are other philosophers who have put forward similar ideas in a much more straightforward fashion without the Brainfuck.
- thwest 12y ago
  Holding philosophy to the standard of utility brings a lot of assumptions to bear on your reading. Conciseness is a virtue that one can overindulge. Many philosophers aren't concerned with providing readers with ideas in the system of efficient exchange of language and labor hours. For many in critical theory the project is the opposite: to show how the systems of exchange and efficiency dominate our meaning-making.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
Yet no one doubts Brainfuck's Turing completeness, and it can be easily demonstrated to anyone with a passing familiarity with the langauge. The post-structuralists, on the other hand, are trolls. They claim grandiose results that fail Chomsky's simple personal test, and similar personal tests of many others, myself included, who have a demonstrated capacity to understand ideas across many fields, including in my case epistemology with a knowing subject, which comes close to some important post-structuralist or post-modernist ideas regarding subjectivity. But the "critical theoretic" political program is so important to post-modernist program they they deliberatly distort their accounts and ideas for the sake of goals that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and results in the whole body of their work being incoherent nonsense with a few gems embedded in it. There are well-meaning people who see the gems and argue passionately that the rest of the mass simply must be meaningful and important, and there are people who correctly observe the incoherence of the mass and miss the gems. These two groups then spend a great deal of time fighting with each other, while those of us who have picked up the gems and moved on are ignored by all.