Jordan Peterson / Cathy Newman debate

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The nazi angle is too far up in nosebleed for me to follow. Maybe the only helpful thing I could offer - he would be offering antiquated advice if he told people to go back to church. If he's just pointing people at their firmware and telling them it exists and creates problems with or without their knowing that really won't be wrapped up with an expiration date until we've raked the whole human genome several dozen times with CRISPR Cas-9 to remove our worst defects.

On a side note - have you listened much to Bret or Eric Weinstein yet?


He doesn't gloat over it or consider it a good thing - rather it's a problem that needs to be dealt with in the context that it's what nature does and if allowed to go unchecked enough people stack up on the bottom to cause revolution. He says that time and time again.

I'm not going to share this cut as a pane because ThinkClub handled this in a bit of a tacky/click-bate way but, something really funny at 1:30 is a tweet from Richard Dawkins talking about how seminal The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt is, repeating the word 'seminal' several times. On one hand I'm a bit surprised he hadn't read it yet, it's at least six years old as far as I know but also I find it funny because so much of what Jonathan Haidt is talking about in that book is part-in-parcel with IDW thought. Maybe a few good words and Eric will give him is membership card and official secret handshake!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oVcptMYvQE

not enough too have opinions.

what I'm trying to sayabout the Nazi thing is that there were more Nazis than just Hitler. And that not all of them were raving lunatics, but the majority was regular people who had gone through a period of economic and cultural turmoil, all toohappy to have someone give them a narrative that made sense to them and allowed them to keep holding the beliefs they had before the period of turmoil.
All problems that came through losing ww1, the great depression, and the sudden instability of a less rigid social hierarchy that came with the end of monarchy were compressed into one enemy- the jew.

peterson is not a raving lunatic. and when asked, he tends to be evasive etc. - but the western world is going through a time of crisis - capitalism no longer boes hand in hand with liberal democracy, globalization made economic hierarchies way more fluid, and there's a class of people who is definitely not profiting economically and their traditional, social values are not made for coping with this kind of change.
In comes Peterson, offering an enemy that is vague enough to stand in for all other problems: the marxist post-modernist.



He doesn't gloat over it or consider it a good thing - rather it's a problem that needs to be dealt with in the context that it's what nature does and if allowed to go unchecked enough people stack up on the bottom to cause revolution. He says that time and time again.[/quote]


well....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0iL0ixoZYo

here's the thing: Marx concludes that crises are inherent to the capitalist system, and that capital tends to accumulate.
JP says, it's the Pareto principle.
Marx has some analysis on what probably will happen (he doesn't say: go out and kill the capitalists), - his analysis is that workers will take over.
Jordan peterson says: it's the Pareto principle, not capitalism. It's a problem, and we need to do something to keep this in check.
well, as I see it, capitalism seems to be a system that allows the pareto principle to work. no contradiction there.
and there's something that needs to be done. no contradiction there either.
JP insists that " we don't know what to do about it" - and that enforced redistribution doesn't fix the problem. well, to me sounds like JP is agreeing that the problem is inherent to the system, but he does not want to consider changing the system.
fair enough.
But at the same time, he insists that Marx got everything wrong and that the marxist postmodernists are the enemies of civil society, for psychological reasons (resentment, most of all).

he says the leftists must be listened to, that inequality drives crime, but also he says the leftists are marxists and wrong.

I'm thinking Barnum effect...

I'd really recommend working on that, as well as Jonathan Haidt. I tend to worry that people who talk like this tend to love the outliers and questionable voices who help buttress their views to the contrary but make a point never to have heard of or listened to the more credible or less controversial ones. I'm not saying you, it's just a pattern I've noticed and one you may want to do what you can to deliberately avoid falling into.



These are problems that seem to come from having listened to Peterson 'a little bit' for most people. I could talk about how many times he's pointed out fascism, whether in German, Italian, or Chilean form, as a pathology of excess order but I can't tell if that's pointing out his coverage or whether it sounds too much like backpeddling (especially where appearances probably mean a lot more than up or down facts).



I have a darker opinion on this perhaps. We have hundreds of millions of years of competing for survival in our firmwear. To date we haven't seen any country practice 'true Marxism' or 'true Socialism' because none will, and the only hope of such happening even in the next ten thousands of years is raking the whole human genome with CRISPR Cas-9 progressively, at least a half-dozen to a dozen times globally, to remove enough of that from our programming stacks where the baseline of culture isn't rating everyone's right to exist on a curve.

I really can't escape the sense that people who are ardently pro-Marxism in a way any more expansive than western European or Nordic models of mixed capitalism and strong social programs are really having a private war with reality, one that they're not going to win. They can't accept what's at the boiler plate of this experience, it's too dark either for their tastes or for them to survive what they're personally going through while believing, and they're spilling their cognitive dissonance out on the rest of us in a way that we're asked to take their coping mechanisms as if they were an offering of scientific fact.

I'm not going to say that there aren't more in-roads that can be made with finding better ways to do government programs or using, lets say, AI or other techniques to make them even more helpful and responsive. I think we should look into everything we can to avoid burning most of humanity in the engine of progress simply because they've become 'obsolete' in the work world. At the same time I have very little trust in invasive top-down approaches. Top-down might be a good way to start a sewage system where none previously existed, or a subway system where none existed, or internet where none existed. Government is good at establishing new biomes and frameworks for grassroots to re-fashion in its own way and if it's a system with dangerous byproducts government regulates the confines and limits, that works. This is why I'd be on board with UBI - it's the private individual doing something with the money rather than a bureaucrat deciding what will be done with it. On the other hand top-heavy central planning seems to fail miserably and mostly because it's either unresponsive to local climate or worse, responds in ways that are perceptively insular to those running it.

I don't think any sort of deliberate falsehood or lying is needed to say that on one hand you need the left to establish the safety nets and on the other you need to let creativity run for the sake of innovation. To say that radical deconstructionists are enimical to our western cultural project isn't synonymous with saying that everyone on the left is the problem. This is again part of why I'd have to recommend Bret and Eric Weinstein, and why I'd also recommend looking at interviews like Dave Rubin's with Bret and Eric to also catch what they think of Jordan Peterson and how they'd evaluate where he's coming from.

It won't entirely surprise me if the accusation comes up that Bret and Eric Weinstein and Jonathan Haidt are 'good progressives' like Blair White or Theron Meyer are 'good trannies' or Thomas Sowell and Larry Elder are 'good negros' but we'd have to actually unpack whether or not they're token points of political agreement for the right or a gateway drug to the right or whether they're simply a different part of the left with a different set of ideas on how the left should exercise its function. If Dawkins is singing the praises of Haidt's The Righteous Mind we might have to also sort out whether we'd lump Sam, Richard, Michael Shermer in as 'good atheists'. I worry that with the political climate reality's slipping right through people's fingertips and people are using such ways of thinking to accelerate that unraveling and/or wash their hands of nuance.

A Fear of some kind of Marxist Revolution From the Ivory Tower of Canadian Colleges is just about as Black and White in 'Neurotic' Thinking that i've Seen among any so-called 'Respectable Intellectuals'. Yes, it's Philosophy; but no; no one in the 'Real World' that and who amounts to any real concern is actually pushing an Actual Marxist Ideology as we are not
Seeing any Political Parties rising to anything close to that occasion in reality of how it was twisted before, here.

In this Way, Jordan Peterson sees the World through Preconceived; and yes, very Dark Colored Glasses as Life
as one of Suffering when folks who accommodate the Struggles in Life now at this very moment are Living
in Paradise all around the World they Co-Create; in yes, a 'Post Modernist' way too out of Material Reductionism
too. 'The Guy' Has Suffered from Depression all his life; no 'reason', not to understand this is A Really big reason
why He Views the Human Race as a Species of 'Raping Pillaging Ape', rather than A Bonobo-Like Altruistic
Creature at core that and who at Best Gives and Shares with each other in Much Smaller Societies
as Villages where there is Plentiful Common Binds and Bonds of Meaning and Purpose for folks who
need each other and cannot rely on Tools to Replace the Human Touch For True Human Abundance.

Yes, we are a Sick Society at Large; but still at core are a very Loving Hugging Touching Human
Species when Living in Balance out of the 'chaos' of Material Reductionism where we become
the Tools We Use More than Flesh and Blood Hugs and Touch to Get Subsist Survive Done For Thrive.

And Ironically, at Least, Jordan Peterson Understands, at least, A Very Basic Core Need of Human Beings to
Bind and Bond over Narrating Stories of Life that actually Bring a Bond of Binds Full of Meaning and Purpose
where the Holy and Sacred are not just Words but Divine Feelings and Senses of Agape Love for not only each
other but the Rest of Existence too; A State of Being Love that is Real and Agape for all too; in other words, what
Sam Harris in the attached Video might Metaphor as 'The Kiss of Jesus' that sadly and truthfully some folks
who are too trapped in the Frontal Neo-Cortex of their 'left brain thinking verbal speak mind' may never
come to actually experience any other way but through External Psychedelic Substances to Give them
A Boost away from a very limited area of their Human Potential in both Greater Mind and Body
Balance.

Science is catching up in terms of "Transient Hypo-Frontality"; and even Sam Harris admits that
Folks experience 'this oneness' in Church when 'Properly' Ascending and Transcending the
Neo-Cortical Way of 'think' in 'Mechanical Cognition' that brings forth many of the Tools we
use now; and have in metaphor become too, as extensions of our Flesh and Blood as Science
Shows, this is a 'real thing' too; As it's also true in terms like 'Autotelic'; so far away from what Jordan
Peterson sees as A Nasty Struggle of Life; some Humans Actually Find a Practice of Life through Seek and Find
in what they tailor to work for them; A Way Of Life wHere they through Relative Free Will Generate their own Intrinsic
Rewards in a Cocktail of all Five Pleasurable Neurochemicals at Hand within always in this Generation now with yes,
Neurohormones to boot to Satisfy the Passions and Lusts of Life too in 'Shadow Balance' with this Agape Feeling and Sense of Being Always in the Eternal Now Of Love. Jordan Peterson, Speaks to this Greater Human Reality too but I Highlight Speak more than Experience; for, if, He actually experienced this Real Science Assessed Kingdom of Heaven now
His outlook would not be depressed; and his give and share would be much more smile than frown. True, still, now, yes,
Jordan
Peterson
Struggles
and i for one
can and will surely
relate to that Hell spent
tHere as a shut-in in my
Bedroom For 66 Months
with the worst of Depressions
and Severe Anxieties understood to
Humankind too along with Pain Beyond
what most folks can possibly understand
with Type Two Trigeminal Neuralgia from Wake to Sleep;
And i must admit in my View, the World S88ked then too; but it was just as true today as it was then that other folks
Were Living in their own Style of Heaven now with or without many Goods of Capitalism too; but always with a Few Good Friends that they could and can and will Feel a Warm and Fuzzy Connection with of 'Real Love' too. There truly are many
Nuances of Life; Ranging from DaRk Abyss Black Nights to Years of the Soul through Purgatory Grey SHades now
to Beyond Rainbow Nuancing Colors and Flavors of Heaven now too. No Doubt to me; Jordan Lives in Purgatory
Now; no doubt, some folks live in the Depths of Hell now; and also, no doubt that some folks Live in Heaven just
Now for the Sake of Doing Heaven Now Without Regard to taking anything more than they give from anyone
still as this is A Human Way that works; and we still Live in A Country that Paves the way for
those who individually find it. But to lose a way, in not insuring more People find their
Way to Heaven is simply Ignorance of the Potential of Heaven yet, still to be, now.

In Years Past, many folks would have named me insane for speaking like
this; but i can point to research studies that back every F in thing i say
up as about as close to the Facts of Real Life in Love as they get.
In Years past, before then, Folks would have cherished more of
This Way of Life Simply for they were Naturally Lost from all
the Tools; all the Clothes of the Labyrinth of
Cultures Grown so Large away from the
All Natural Force of Love within
N A K E D Free in metaphor
to give and share so much
more than a Tool';
A Cold
Trumpian Tool;
True too, Trump overall is a 'Gift'
To Free 'Verse' coming out of DaRk into Light too.

I Would Love to Chat with Jordan one day; but sadly
he is still too much in a 'butthurt state of mind and body
and soul'; to likely understand half of what i feel and sense of ReaLiTY Still;

So Much More than Speak, 'it is'.

Not his fault alone;
Life's like that too; it's
Not Fair; And That is what mostly
Drives Folks to Lift others up who've Made The Currency; "The Law''; Yes, The Grade of LoVE.

And So Many Folks Live in this Place of Heaven who have no Way to ARTiculate it;
even close to those who are so-called
Smart
with
neither
Art of heART
or that other 'thing', smART.
Meanwhile, Folks Like Jordan, continue to sink in Ivory Towers of Spiffy Words
with little to no Essence of 'SoUL ReaL', NoW as LoVE.

He Has A Much Greater Human Potential, now too.
I Feel and Sense He Feels and Senses it Vaguely; but still, As Real As 'it' Gets Now 'more real'; to Borrow a Quote from him too that rarely makes sense or 'feel more' to other 'Left Brain Stuck in Speak Folks', too; lost from another side of an
Opaque Window of 'Human All Natural SouL More, Now''; Yes, to be Clear; i Spent Years like 'this' And That s88ked too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOET9n8wnmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk_sAHh9s08

I enjoy listening to 'these' YouTube Events; particularly the Latest ones by Peterson and Harris as they both keep each other ''Honest"; and to be clear I sense and feel that both of them really Believe in their Philosophies and Politics and
Spirituality; and are not in this strictly for a Money Making Project of whatever it takes as that is mostly what You
Tube and just about everything else is all about beyond those who Truly Seek what they Name as Truth as Love.

On the other Hand, this entire '2 Hours Plus Ted Talk' And Politics and Spirituality And in General Philosophy Talk
is in itself Bait for Intellectual Elites above and beyond the Assessed Science Average of Modernized Commercialized
Attention Spans of Less than the Average Gold Fish in Studies that are Real in Terms of Human Attention Span now.

But see, there is still another Hand Still; while I will easily Breeze through one of these 2 Hour Intellectual Events
to Stimulate the Dopamine in my Mind as Hell no I don't need any Serotonin or Oxytocin as a Literal so-called
Public Dance Legend will get even too much at a Place Like Super Walmart after doing that for Close to 10K
Miles in 5 Years now where if it gets like that I move on to Dance Solo in my Back Yard with Sand and Sun.
True; I don't 'need' Dopamine either but the More the Merrier when one Does it in Balance as all things in Life.

Some folks are just coming to these 'Intellectual Giants' as they Have become their Priests and
Pastors and these are the Weekly to Even Daily Sermons online for Free as they may if they
Care to Contribute to the Coffers of the Pod Cast Baskets as Folks Like Jordan
Smash the 'other' side Pejoratively so in Political Slang Like 'those' Leftists, those
Lefties and those 'Marxists' some more as of course while Jordan may not realize it
this gives him a little 'Lobster Boost' in his obvious deficit of 'Little Man' Disease of Low
in Serotonin whereas you won't see Sam Harris or someone Like Jonathan Haidt doing this as they
Obviously are Confident Men in their own skin who are not so Pre-Disposed to the Lack of Serotonin
Inherent in Many Mental Associated Disorders in both Mind and Body Way. People with these issues of the
Need for a Tribal Boost Naturally Gravitate toward Jordan as that is an Inherent Part of what is Empty in his Human
Nature that he really doesn't try to avoid in the the Fact that he's had this Lifelong Problem as Probably an Outcast when
Young, who still Hasn't truly Looked within; spent enough time alone to get his self all filled up as one Force of Human
Nature Balance. It's Obvious Sam Harris and Jonathan Haidt have their 'Stuff' Together as they don't get nearly as
Bent out of Shape with the Frustrations and Aggressions that naturally come when a Person Feels Empty inside
as that applies to Neuro-Chemicals and Neuro-Hormones that come through Nature and the Nurture now of
Environment too; it's easy to see from Non-Verbal Language for those who pick up less and more of Human
Nature and Nurture too. It's True too, the Autism Extending Phenotype is Strong for most all of these Dudes
as of course they are Systemizing Scientists too; with the Rubin Dude not so much; or the Rogan
Dude too, as More Intellectual Light Weights obvious to see too although they are a little more
Loose about Life as Any Comedian Naturally Comes to be for the Sake of their Neuro-Chemistry too.

True, both Harris and Peterson could use as little more Comedy too but that's not so much Part of 'Left
Brain Thinking' at least per Wet Wit Verses Dry Wit now; hehe. Smiles, in other words most People in the
Real Bell Curve World are living as the Gold Fish that the Environment of Quick Link Shares with Warnings
of TL; you won't Ever Read 'this' for 'we' understand the Average Attention Span of Humans now for the
Deeper Stuff of Life past a McDonald's Hamburger and Fries to go aLong with that in Less than 30
Seconds now of a Mind and Body without tHe Ability to eat more than that at one sitting now.

You See my Friend; I've never Had a Problem understanding anyone on this Internet Site
as there are many Variations of Human Communication Here in Terms off Both Science and
Art that Amuse me, Entertain Me; and even Stimulate my Mind to Greater Depths but I always
Learn More as i ain't scared of anyone's Freedom of Expression now. But on the other hand, if I hadn't
Developed the Real Life Ability to Master my own Emotions in Regulation and Senses in Integration, I
Might do a Butt Hurt Dance Empty Inside when the Nagging Threat of Empty Within comes to visit again.
But it won't for I have so many ways to stay Filled up inside; I'm Like a Speeding Bullet that way in Slow
Motion Per 'Matrix' Movie Metaphor too; hehe. The Best News of all Probably is if a former Gold Fish Attention
Span Dude Like me can do it; other Canaries in the 'Coal Mind' likely can and will too as use it or lose it applies
to everything in Life; Whether or not 'they' Become A Dance Legend in Red States of Public Dance Gulf to Coast
Probably Depends on if they Develop any 'Real Human Ball's; Female and or Male as that comes to be too. It's
Worth Noting for the Incel Variety of Dude too that the Size of a Wallet is down on the Lowest List of what Women
Love most for Fearless is above the 60th Percentile way of Turning Women on and Big Fat Wallets are at about the
Bottom in the Single Digits too. In other, Words too, if Trump went the option I took at his age 'then' His Bus Experience
of Life in Locker Room Talk would be much Different as He Wouldn't have to approach Women at all as they Would
Naturally Gravitate to him like Planets Revolving around a Fearless Sun hehe; and that's easy for me to Prove
with over 2000 photos too in much more than empty Locker Talks On Buses with even smaller men than him.

In other Words; the 'Real Incels', who are spending all their spare time watching these Extended Play Podcasts
and or Video Games would as far as Human Nature and Statistics Go find a way to exude a Non-Verbal way
of Fearless every day now and the Women will be more like Honey Bees than 'Wasps' who sting now. And
no; Hell no; this doesn't even necessarily have any thing to do with 'Chad Looks' too as if one opens up
My Latest Blog Post, I was a Hell of a Lot Better Looking as a 'Chad' at 30 than I am now but the thing is, I was
Obviously in Non-Verbal Speak about as Uncomfortable in my own skin as any male goes and comes now.
I was a Wall Flower in the Bar Dance Halls then no matter how Good Looking I was then as I didn't literally
understand how to even move in a Stance of Fearless until a Few Months in the late 80's Long enough
to Attract the Wife I still have the only Few Months I was truly confident through My late 20's Back then.

I'm not afraid of any opinion, now; and True in terms of Both Dance and Song I Win for this for Fearless
Confidence in Love is at the Core of what Humanity still is at the best of what we can and will be now.
The Evidence Proves it all across my Life Span now and the Science of it is also onboard now. And yes
after I got Married, I got the metaphor of 'fat and lazy' as I thought the Only Real Goal in Life was a Woman
to Love you now. Entropy Started to Set in, when I finally figured out so much Later at 53 that the Secret to
all Real Success is to never leave a Boot Camp of Mind and Body Balance from first to last Blink of Life now;
even if one never went in the First Place as we do have the potential for a Relative Free Will to Co-Create our
Boot-Camps that Successfully Work for us across the Lifespan now; takes effort Real Blood, Sweat and Tears
but the Results in Real Life Evidence Prove the Reward is not only intrinsic but outside of Inside too, now.

I see very Little Physical and or Emotional Intelligences Given in any of these Podcasts Formats of Hours Long
Except for words like Meditation and Martial Arts and Rough and Tumble Play. It's easy enough to tell for the
ones who've found something that works for they aren't obviously always in Lobster and or Tribal Mode of
filling up an empty space inside. Real James Bond's Don't go in to Attack Mode unless there is something
worthy to defend like their Flesh and Blood Life for it is only a waste of Human Energy that Proves nothing
more than who is truly weak or strong inside; For it's also True, Neuro-Chemicals and Neuro-Hormones do
not lie or the Behaviors Generated from the Essence of a Lack of all these Sparks of Life Free now. 'Those'
who Master 'them' in Mind and Body Balance win the Turtle Races over the Nervous Rabbits still, in my life too.

But Still, now, I listen for I learn something and Have Plenty of Multi-Tasking Hours to do it; the thing is I Learn
as Much about Human Nature from a Conspiracy YouTube Site as I do for all these Folks with all these Fancy
Credentials too for the 'Crazy' ones will dip into places these folks will never go for they just don't have the time
or focus or Interest too. It's nice not to have to Worry about Money or the Politics of Human Soul when you come
Loaded with
so much
more
than
'Guns and Bullets' and 'Dollar Bills' now
Without 'Real Guns' and 'Bullets' per actual do
of Fearless Love Money; Anyway, thanks for sharing, it was interesting and
Those Interviews with Sam Harris and Peterson are the best yet, i've seen.
Sam Harris has really Got most of his Stuff together but he still lacks the
Emotional/Physical Intelligences to understand that Organized Religion is never going
away for People Go to Hold Hands in what all Social Animals do as a Team Together no matter
what 'it' is; dark or light or so-called Religion and or Politics' that binds and bonds them together in
Symbolic And in Edifice ways of Temples they want to last forever in Symbols They Feel as Holy and Sacred
Full of Meaning and Purpose just to feel the Oxytocin of the Flesh and Blood Touch now as Science shows
Avatar
Life
will never
come close to
Replacing the Human
Flesh and Blood Hug now;
not even in Nasal Sprays of
Oxytocin for Love is Colored More than the Reductionist Parts of Flesh and Blood.
Love is Colored by the Biggest Sexual and Love Organs of all the Entire Mind and Body in Synergy as Force of Love.
When I Hear Sam and Peterson talk about this, I will see they've joined 'The Party'; yes, 'they' Do have That Potential, too..

so.. while I haven't had the time/interest to get into what the Weistein's have to say, I am familiar with Jonathan Haidt.
I like showing his TED talk on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives to my students, followed by a rather weird japanese animated short based on a rather weird Kafka short story (A country doctor, by Koji Yamamura). The student's reactions to this short film are very mixed, some love it and some are very alienated by it, basically illustrating what Haidt is talking about.

I think I'm more interested in the extremes because ... I feel like I don't need the moderate arguments, as I'm thinking moderate thoughts already. I live in one of those moderate European mixed economies and it appears quite obvious that this is a more viable solution than the north-american dog-eat-dog version of capitalism. However, due to international pressures, the social structures here are eroding, and have become less self-evident.
As this way of going about things is in question, there is some need to define things... as in: how much of each ingredient is actually needed for the mix to work. ... and that, of course, turns into a religious discussion, rather than a more sober "let's find out"-approach.

I'm interested in the more extreme ideas because they are other to mine, and I'm trying to get familiar with what I perceive as yet to come here in Europe, with increasing polarization. I think the US is a but ahead, but not far.

Also: reading Marx, and reading on Marx, convinced me that what I see as a major problem of the current capitalist system - ecology- can't be adressed properly, and marxist worker-owned cooperatives won't automatically fix this.
let alone that worker-owned cooperatives come with a boatload of problems that stay unadressed.
so I'm not a marxist. But I don't want to dismiss his writings either, because I think there is a wealth of good ideas about how to think about certain issues, though these ideas may not be without fault or fully apllicable to the world 150 years later.

I think the main point I was getting at though - a lot of the thought structures you're suggesting might be way off in mystic land at least on a secular level find agreement with Bret and Eric as well as Jonathan to an extent.

Someone else I started a thread about recently ('Seven Types of Atheism') who also has very interesting views on the cognitive structure of western society and the blind spots and false certainties we tend to have is John Gray.

They're all sharp and thorough thinkers and, among them, Jordan doesn't look nearly as strange or radical compared to people looking at him as if he were a one-man edifice with no known sensible thinkers half way or 2/3 of the way out to where he is.

These two are particularly good with respect to Bret's ideas:

thanks for picking them out for me, I'll have a closer look tomorrow.

so. I have watched the videos now, and as I expected from my superficial knowledge of Weinstein's position, I largely agree with him, and therefore haven't learned much new.

particularly the first talk, the one at virtual futures (btw., - have a look into the beginning of this event. It was initiated by the acceleratiinist movement of british ohilosoohy of the nineties, which is heavily associated with a guy called Nick Land, who has since turned rightwing tribalist, albeit a weird one living in hong kong or singapore (don't remember which), talking about the importance of national and cultural identity etc) was so spot on my own views that I found it somewhat boring.

I have been thinking lately about what changes need to be made to the current system for it to survive (because it does seem to be working well in harnessing innate human drives), trying to make as few changes as possible to stay realistic.
For that purpose, I had a look into marxism - not because I think equality of outcome is fundamentally a good idea, but much rather because I had been reading that his analysis of capitalism is rather deep.
and it is.
have you seen the debate between petereson and harris, moderated by weinstein?
the discussion about elton john's glass? - well, marx's ideas of "use value","exchange value" and "fetishism" would have made that whole bit obsolete. Peterson and Harris were needlessly debating around "value", unable to work out that they were not talking about one ting, but of many.

so, again, I think Marxist analysis of capitalism introduces a lot of useful concepts. However, socialism does not address ecology, properly, and getting rid of markets would mean getting rid of selection mechanisms. bad idea.
In that respect: would a basic income fix these things? - no. it might help with reducing the unhealthy level inequality, though, but I don't see how it can fix such stupidities like planned obsolescence of commodities.
there needs to be a mechanism to internalize as-of-yet-externalizable costs, namely pollution of all forms.
you could open up a market for carbon sequestration and add the price to undo your carbon footprint on to fossil fuels. Or the price of recycling your electronics.
however, - how do you internalize, even express, say, the price of the destruction of a biotope, or the extinction of a species?
In that respect, I like Bruno Latour's "parliament of things", - an institution, in which non-human entities etc. are given a representative, just like today there are representatives whose job it is to look after the interests of nations-
after all, nations are fictituous.
If we are happy to accept representatives of fictituous constructs, having representatives for other objects, like oceans, or insects, is an interesting idea and technically feasable.

I did and TBH I was a little bummed out with how shallow a lot of it was. I did like that Peterson was attempting to constructively play devils advocate to Sam's moral landscape concept, and I think there was agreement that Sam's ideas needed a lot more implementation practicality and consideration to to be broad based across populations, customs, intelligence ranges, etc.


We might just need a brutal level of accountancy and auditing on all fronts, one which people increasingly can't run from or find new as of yet undiscovered zones of externality to pour their junk off into.

One thing that did hearten me in the last few months was a group conversation 0thouartthat0 had with a few of his friends where one of them was in a field I hadn't previously known existed - ie. something like a science of complex systems (I think he was calling it complexity science). I'd really prefer if we did put more effort into fields like that to see how emergent patterns work in markets, in politics, between people, because I think this is the sort of science that could end up with the bureaucratic teeth to put hard stops in certain things or to be able to warn us of our cultural and political equivalents to global warming.

As of right now though I'm not sure on whether we can reach back into the 18th or 19th centuries for useful information - maybe on the personal levels, maybe for partially formed ideas that, if they match the data, the extent to which they do can be used as a raw unconditioned foundation of sorts but that's about it. Past that we'll really want to make sure we have solid evidence of what's causing what, what the costs of direct interference are, and from there we may be able to come up with good adaptation strategies. Until then, and without that data, the 'what' is still contentious and people have that silly football teams political orientation to how they line up with the arguments and their content.

true, it was not particularly useful in any respect.



here, I have no hope. not only because of the necessary overhead, but also because of corruption. but also because of
what I have to say to the following paragraph



the problem with the science of complexity is nouminality. The noumenon is a term by Immanuel Kant, and refers to the real reality. Kant needed to come up with this term to be able to make a distiction between the reality that our senses mediate to us, and the rest.
Before radioactivity was discovered, radioactivity did not exist. Science helped us discover it, but science isn't done discovering things, making complexity science a sport of elaborate guessing.
I don't want to sound negative on the effort of engaging in studying emergence and so forth, but I will not embrace the hope that that will get us anywhere soon.

I mean... climate science has been doing a good job running simulations, and they are all horrible. And politics and the economy seem to be collectively answering: " but it's only simulations based on data from the past. you aren't certain enough of the exact outcome"
science answers back: " no, we're not. but all outcomes are horrible"

I listened to john gray. and ordered one of his books. he seems to advocate for preparing for "all but the worst" events, in regards to climate change. He is likely correct.
....oh dear, the not too distant future looks bleak.

regarding whether it makes sense to look at 18th or 19th century theories: it depends.
Since world order and economic order fall into the the realms of myths, rather than sciences, having a look at what assumptions and beliefs these myths are based on, and what mythologists have thought about them, to look for models to expand and adapt, rather than come up with models from scratch.
I'm not even going anywhere near implying that Marx got it perfectly right, even on the analysis level, let alone that it still holds for this century.

but he gave me good terms with which to think about different kinds of value - and how to differentiate it from price.
And there is one idea that I got from him, which is to view capital as its own entity. So, when Marx writes that capital tends to accumulate, I find that highly interesting - because it takes individual agency out of the picture. It's not about individual capitalists and the risks they are taking to accumulate personal wealth, but about the systemic setup that leads to money, over the long run, ending up on the side of capital, independently of who owns that capital.
It's a view that immediately makes the argument that "capitalism would work for everyone if people (bankers, capitalists) weren't so greedy" invalid. It's not about individual greed, i.e., personal wealth accumulation.

But about the problem that money is turned into capital (money that has the sole purpose of making more money, however possible, and without any human factors involved. capital doesn't care who owns it. the system, if it were in fact entirely neutral, doesn't work in favour individuals, and would still create this accumulation at the top).

I don't think a workers' revolution is a way to go, because unlike Marx, I think markets are valuable tools.
But I am convinced for now that my thinking got richer through engaging with his ideas, in the way that my thinking got richer from engaging with ancient greek philosophy, even though scientifically, it's all nonsense.

Also, I needed to understand some of the terminology, to understand newer ideas, like those of Guy Debord and Theodor Adorno. They try to marry philosophy of aesthetics with economic systems using Marx's terminology.... which was the thing I was initially interested in.
Or: to answer the question why it seems there's only superhero films in cinema, and why the cinema of the 70s was so much more open and interesting and it all collapsed.

It could be that, like a lot of things in science, this stuff won't tame itself enough to be easily tractable by human cognition or to lend itself to one, two, or even three theories. Being widely read definitely helps one see various angles of various issues and that's almost universally an enriching experience.

I think one of the earliest and maybe most successful partial attacks on the conservatism that I had in my mid 20's (2000's period) was a book by John Ralston Saul that a coworker recommended called Voltaire's Bastards. It was one of those books that was so packed with history I wasn't previously familiar with (Canadian, English, French, and Spanish political history from the late middle ages onward) that it felt like I was learning a new thing or two every page and I think the two most memorable things I took from it were a) the bureaucratic classes and how they acted more to ensconce themselves than be useful to anyone and b) that some kinds of public works, like sewage systems, highways, or railways, aren't best initiated by the private market.

What I do wonder about, occasionally, is where we'll be when we can 3D print in metal more cost effectively. They already do have some printers that companies are using either for very complex parts that are far more expensive to machine and I could see this, as prices drop, also meaning long-tail items wouldn't need to be kept in inventory. I also wonder, if this keeps going on, whether increasing numbers of people will be putting instructions together for the refrigerator that lasts fifty years or longer or the invincible rake or shovel, and it could turn out that a sort of printing maker's movement could turn our culture on it's head with respect to the waste-driven aspect of consumerism. Things generally seem to change not when people realize there's a problem but when competing strategies simply can't be kept out any longer. I also do wonder, if and when 3D printers and print materials for durable goods become more widely available, what kinds of impact that will have on old-fashion capitalism and whether that may mean as well that capital, at least as we've previously thought of it, will become a more squishy category - as we maybe saw the forerunner of with software and apps.