A Bored Wiseacre @wasneeplus - Tumblr Blog

Why Bojack Horseman season 5 was disappointing

So it ends with a car slowly disappearing into a tunnel. The driver is probably just as confused about her motives as I am in that moment. The music plays, the camera zooms out, the credits roll, the curtain falls. And here I am, feeling more conflicted than I’ve ever felt before about a piece of media.

By now it’s well known what kind of heights the Netflix show Bojack Horseman can sore to when it’s in its element. This show is truly something special. I’ve never seen anything that can touch me, delight me and, at the same time, depress me the way this show can. Catch me at the right time and you might even hear me confess to this being my favourite show of all time. So rest assured that everything I’m about to say I say out of love, and because of the incredibly high standards the show has set for itself. That being said, I do think my complaints are legitimate, and there were enough serious shortcomings to make me feel very disappointed in season 5.

#bojack horseman #bojack season 5 #netflix

Response to the Alt-Right Playbook, part 2

After watching the entire video a few times I can confidently say that this appears to be one of the most cynical videos I have ever seen. I say it like this because while watching I got the distinct impression that the mindless, soulless almost zombie like victims of primal impulses that you paint your opposition as is not supposed to refer to me, but rather that you are talking about a very small, very specific percentage of said opposition, only to be rudely awakened by a remark like...

So it’s kind of funny, right, how many of these folks self identify as rationalists

So either you are talking about some insignificant portion of people that would make the kind of statement at the beginning of your video and you’re just careless in making that clear, or you genuinely think everyone opposed to your position is like that. That last case would not only be a testament to your cynicism, one is tempted to call it misanthropy considering how many people disagree with you, but to your unbelievable arrogance, thinking that no one can genuinely hold a different opinion from you on these issues. It is kind of amazing, I have to admit. In fact, from now on I will refer to your specific kind of delusion as Ideological Solipsism: the belief that there simply exist no other viewpoints outside the one your mind can produce on any given issue.

innuendostudios

New video essay! Internet reactionaries argue as though they have no core beliefs at all, and will just say anything to own the libs. So are they nihilists, or is there more going on?

You can ensure this series continues by backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Lees verder

wasneeplus

Started writing a comprehensive refutation

Responding to the Alt-Right playbook, part 1

Disclaimer: I wrote this after seeing the first four minutes of the video. While watching the rest I noticed a few things I bring up are addressed later, though in such a way as to lead to even more questions. Still, I think most of it stands, and it’s still useful as a kind of stream of consciousness response, so I’ll leave it untouched.

Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning when I just finished reading my newspaper, I will enjoy myself with a few infuriating youtube videos. Lately I’ve been quite disillusioned by the part of youtube calling itself liberal spouting nationalist propaganda at my beloved European project, so I’ve switched to some corners of the website which are friendlier to my blood pressure. That’s how I came across a video called "The Alt-Right Playbook: The Card Says Moops” by Innuendo Studios. Apparently he is somewhat of a big deal with his 150k plus subscribers, though I never heard of him. Just two minutes into the video though I knew I was going to write this response. While it didn’t make me angry the way I might have been in the past, there’s just so much wrong here, I cant bottle this up any longer.

#innuendo studios #alt-right #chan culture #SJW

Razor, nationalism and WWI

It might just be my particular bubble which gives me this impression, but at least on the internet the political right appears to be on the rise. Not just in the sheer number of people aligning themselves with these ideas, but also in peoples heads, where right wing ideas seem to become more and more centra lto people’s worldviews. I came across one rather shocking example today. Razorfist uploaded one of his articulate rants about current affairs. This time the target was those who see te rise of nationalism as one of the primary causes of the first world war.

Now, Razorfist has proven before that he is willing to bend the truth to suit his narrative. One example that sticks out in my mind is when he accused Al Gore of predicting the world would end in 2010, even though in the very same video he showed an article with mister Gore’s actual prediction: in the movie An Inconvenient Truth he stated that the warming process would reach a point of no return in 2010, which was consistent with the scientific consensus at that time. The fact that this prediction turned out to be off doesn’t change the fact that in this particular case Razor does not have the science on his side, yet he displays the kind of confidence in his statements that would make you suspect he does.

So this video kind of made me laugh. Not the claim itself; certainly the root causes of the first world war are still widely debated so an opinion off the beaten path is sometimes valuable. But the statements he makes in combination with his claim to be a WWI buff, that’s just too much. First, he claims that WWI was the cause of nationalist tendencies, and that they did not exist before that. This displays such an appalling lack of historical insight, I barely know where to start. You see, the idea of the nation is a modern idea if there ever was one. Sure, there’s always been things like tribal loyalty and cultural identity to a degree, but the nation is something different from that. Mainly, the idea of the nation as a sovereign body really had its proper start with the French revolution, before which it only floated around in intellectual circles. The idea was that now there was no king and no religion to unite the masses under a single banner, it needed a new, more abstract concept to rally around. Of course monarchies and religion still existed, but compare that to the middle ages where the idea of the nation didn’t really exist. People belonged to a certain religion, and they were subject to a divinely appointed lord, but they were not part of, say, the German nation.

With the invention of nation states came the modern national army, which relied on conscripts of the civilian population unlike the small, professional armies of the past. The boost that this gave to the military capability of the state made sure that nationalism was adapted quickly by most societies. The idea of the German nation and the Italian nation were born around this time, which both would bear their fruits several decades later. So to say nationalism had nothing to do with causing the first world war is blatantly false: without it there wouldn’t even have been a Germany. Of course one could also point out that the soldiers who volunteered didn’t march into battle for god and king; these were not the crusades in that respect. In the case of France there wasn’t even a king to do any such thing for. They went to war for king and country, for the fatherland, for France and so on. I guess one could respond to this by pointing out that the war had already started by then, which is true, but it amazes me that anyone can think these nationalist sentiments just came out of nowhere right after war was declared.

So what role did nationalism play in the outbreak of WWI? Razor puts te blame squarely on that era’s version of globalisation: the military alliances that characterises the international political landscape at that point. But if that’s true, it is a far cry from what we would recognise as globalisation today. In fact, there was only a globalised society in the economic sense. Yes, there was economic interdependence, which produced the wealthiest society the world had seen up until that point. But in a political sense the nation states all very much acted in their own interest. That’s what the alliances were for, alliances that were far from set in stone by the way, and changed quite frequently. The fact that the both sides ended up with the players they did was by no means a forgone conclusion. I say this to help illustrate that the national governments of that time thought very much in terms of their own national interest, rather than being motivated by some big globalist idea.

Razor takes some potshots at the EU for being a globalist organisation, praising countries like Italy, Hungary and Poland for standing up against them. Can I just say how sickening I find it that people who claim to love democracy and individual freedom choose the side of the Polish and Hungarian governments in their conflicts with the EU? I don’t know where this meme started exactly, but Victor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski are not the good guys in this story from a pro-democracy perspective! Both gentleman have severely harmed the separation of powers in their countries, especially the independence of the courts, and have almost eliminated dissenting voices in the media. They seem to be trying hard to turn their countries into totalitarian states following the Russian model, and the EU is trying to stop them.

Italy is a different story, I admit, but even there it’s hard to sympathise. It was Italy’s (and Greece’s) insistence on a European solution for the migrant problem that started the whole drama. On top of that there were the Berlusconi governments that made an absolute mess of the state finances, which the current government refuses to deal with. All of Italy’s problems are of its own making, and now they try to drag the rest of Europe down with them.

But back on track: saying that the EU bears any resemblance to the alliance system of yor is preposterous. There simply was no overarching political system of any importance in place at that time. Sure, one can argue that war was increasingly becoming an international thing, but it was still driven purely and simply by national interests alone. Even the war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia is a lot more clear cut when you remember that, unlike what Razor insinuates, the latter was never occupied by the former. Serbia, based on nationalist ideology, insisted they had a right to Bosnia, which had been annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908. The assassin who shot the arch-duke Franz Ferdinand was a fanatic nationalist, and the reason that scared the Vienna government was because there were so much more of him.

If you still doubt nationalism was at the root of this whole affair: consider Russia. Russia had no obligation to come to the aid of Serbia, but they considered the country to be in their sphere of influence, and thus protecting it to be a matter of national interest. Things like that are pretty much unthinkable in the Europe of today. The EU has made it that every country has a say in the increasingly more tight nit continent, and no one country can dominate another without getting into trouble with the rest of them, since they all need each other. That is the modern EU, which has stood together for almost seven decades now, and I’ll be damned if that is taken away from us by the short sighted, historically illiterate.

#razorfist #EU #European Union #armistace100

Sargon and the EU

Sargon of Akkad is a YouTuber, well known in the political spheres of the website for his anti-feminist views, who I have been following for a long time. I first subscribed to him when his channel had less than 1500 subs, way before gamergate happened and his channel blew up. I've been in support of most of his views for that time. The gamergate consumer revolt, his railing again feminism, his disdain for the alt right, and of course his love for history are all things I could fully get behind. But something has been driving a wedge between us, something I have been meaning to talk about for a long time now.

When the brexit referendum was first announced I genuinely expected him and the rest of our little YouTube enclave to find ourselves on the remain side. I didn't think people as intelligent as Sargon would seriously support such an obviously awful idea as Britain leaving the EU. Image my shock when I found I was as wrong as could be. Sargon turned out to be a very passionate supporter of the leave camp. Allow me to hammer this point in: I was absolutely flabbergasted at the enormous rift that lay between us at this issue. I couldn't even conceive of any reason why someone like him would want to leave the EU!

Clearly there were some things I needed to look into. In the weeks preceding the referendum I argued with a large number of brexiteers online, hoping to get a better understanding of what I was missing about this issue. Sadly, those discussions weren't very fruitful, and generally served to confirm my preconceptions about the anti-EU crowd. Most of them either had based there opinion on misunderstandings and falsehoods, which I then had to correct, or they were complete conspiracy nutters. Tellingly, the last category wasn't nearly as rare as you'd expect. The words New World Order fell more than once, and some even suggested that the EU was founded by the Nazis. The former category often brought the old clichés to the table like the European commission being an all powerful, appointed body.

Even Sargon of Akkad himself, during his debate with Thunderf00t, couldn't formulate any coherent argument against having the EU around. It's strange so many people perceived him to be the victor in that debate. In my view, he either had to concede every point that came up, or he had to admit the very same thing happened in his own country's government as well, and it wouldn't be a reason for him to abolish the UK. He even went so far when asked how the EC could possibly push through plans for its own army to just say "they'll find a way", which is basically saying "I have no idea how this impossible thing will happen, but it will somehow, just trust me on this". Honestly Sargon, I would be more worried about the US post office launching a nuclear strike against India if I were you.

One thing I did learn from all of this is that there is a difference in how me and the brexiteers think about sovereignty. I honestly don't see the value in holding on to sovereign nation states. If we can agree that all that's important is the rights of the individual, we can see by looking at history that a nation state is absolutely no guarantee those rights will be protected. Some have painted this in terms of freedom, but I honestly don't see why a person living in a nation state would be automatically more free than a person living in a federal republic, all other things being the same. I really would like to hear Sargon's perspective on this. What does sovereignty mean to you, and why?

I have been meaning to write this piece for a long time, but what finally pushed me over the edge is the recent kerfuffle around article 13. The thing is, I think I agree with Sargon on this. I just don't trust him anymore to make a sound judgement on anything to do with the EU. So I am in a bit of a pickle about what to believe anymore. Is this a genuinely bad piece of legislation that needs to be killed, or is it just one more thing being terribly blown out of proportion by the anti-EU crowd? When things have progressed so far that this kind of confusion can exist between us, it's time to have a talk. Sargon has never been one to turn down livestream conversations, and maybe I can convince him to have one with me. But if not I would at least like to spark some conversation, one more attempt to figure out what I am missing about the EU. Why do people react so hostile to what I consider one of the greatest achievements of diplomacy in human history? I hope I find out.

#sargon of akkad #european union #eu #europe #brexit #article 13

On Objectivity

”with whose blood were my eyes crafted?”

Seriously?

In response to an old classmate’s response to me, I feel I need to write something on the attainability, and indeed the necessity, of objective conclusions.

Hello, and sorry I haven’t responded to you in a while. I have my reasons, though unlike yours those reasons should be sought more in the realm of rampant hedonism rather than honorabel academic pursuit. I do want to respond to your points about objectivity though. If I can at least get that out of the way then I’ve addressed the issue that most concerns me. So let’s forget all the other points for now, they’ll get their turn. Let’s talk objectivity.

Subjectivity

The first thing that strikes me is that you’re applying the concept of subjectivity all wrong. Saying that everything is subjective renders the term completely meaningless. If everything is subjective, then nothing is. We might as well do away with the concept altogether. In order for it to have any practical value as a concept there needs to be a distinction between things that are objective and things that are subjective, and of course there is. As the name implies, subjective refers to anything which source is the subject of the observation, and which can thus be said to possibly be even unique to the subject, though that isn’t a necessity. Objective on the other hand is that which refers to whatever has the object of an observation as its source. Any subject (hereafter called “the observer”) observing the object will have the same objective information to draw conclusions from.

So while the objective factors present in an observation have to be the same for everyone, the subjective factors depend on the observer. This can refer to the observer’s biases, feelings, fantasies etc. You’ll notice that all of those effect only the mind of the specific observer they belong to. That differentiates it from objective information, which exist outside of the minds of all the observers.

Establishing Objective Facts

You claim that anything springing from our mind is inherently subjective, but even that I don’t agree with you. I can easily make a tautological statement like “A thing is a thing that it is” and assume it to be objectively true, because the rules of logic necessitate it to be true. If you don’t agree with me that even logic is objectively valid, then we might as well end our conversation right here, because without that we can’t really say we know anything at all. Hell, we couldn’t even define the concept of knowledge, let alone apply it. But I’m assuming you’re not that far gone.

So now we get to the really juicy bits: how do we know we can trust our observations. How do we know what we think we see reflects objective reality? The simple answer to that is: we don’t. That doesn’t mean we can just dismiss our observation however, because as you undoubtedly noticed, our observations do posses a remarkable degree of consistency. A tree always looks like a tree, something that feels hot always burns us when we touch it, the laws of nature always seem to work the same way when we observe them, no matter who does the observation. So from that we can deduce that these observations do have an objective source, barring some sort of matrix like mass delusion (though even that wouldn’t really matter, but let’s not get into that).

And there is of course a philosophical reason for why there must be some sort of objective, consistent reality. Saying something has objective properties is actually just another way of saying it exists. Something cannot exist without possessing certain properties, and to say it posses properties is saying these are consistent, by definition. For if it’s defining properties cease to exist, it does as well. It cannot have no properties, because it’s properties are the way it manifests itself in our reality. And if everything that exists in our reality has consistent features, than we can formulate consistent natural laws to describe those features. There we have the basis of science.

So that’s how we establish facts. A fact is something that is indisputable based on observation. If all our observations are consistent, and experience has shown that they are, than something that’s objectively verifiable by any observer qualifies as a fact. Anything that then requires inference isn’t technically a fact, but maybe is a law or a theory. I’m assuming you know what those words mean in a scientific context. You said it’s impossible to establish fact in the study of history, which is also not true. It is a fact that the writings of Plutarch exist. It is a fact that we have paintings of what are claimed to be the ruins of Carthage. It is a fact that there are archaeological remains of a city in a place that fits the description of Troy in the Iliad. What we can then infer from that is a different matter of course. But we can establish what possible explanations there might be, and how plausible they are based on previous experience.

Science And Those Who Practice It

So, we have established that the world around us contains objective information, and that our senses are capable of detecting that information. So how do we keep subjective factors from influencing our interpretations of that information? That too is something we can, in theory, never completely exclude, but we can make it practically insignificant. Science is a process specifically designed to eliminate any subjective input. It first and foremost requires the observer to disregard everything but the objective information they can discern, an interpret them relying on logic instead of subjective factors. Next it requires you to design experiments in such a way that it’s practically impossible for the observer to have any influence on the processes observed. A good example of this would be the double blind test. Most importantly though, since I can already hear you objecting to how all of this is the product of a subjective mind, the experiment must be repeatable by anyone and everyone, including people who don’t accept the experiment’s conclusions. They all must be able to come to the same conclusions, even if they don’t want to.

And it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this is exactly what happens. No matter if you try to prove or disprove some hypothesis, a well designed experiment will give you the same result regardless, if properly performed. Of course even if an experiment is properly performed by someone with only the best intentions, there are limits to both human perception and the accuracy of our measuring equipment. Scientists are perfectly aware of this, that’s why we have error analysis after all. That and science always works with degrees of certainty whenever something can’t be said to be absolute fact. It is not true however that scientists’ findings depend on their own subjective beliefs. That’s shown by the fact that so many scientists fail to prove what they set out to, or stumble on discoveries they never dreamed of. Good examples of this would be Johannes Kepler who had to abandon his circular orbit hypothesis after having spent years trying to prove it, or indeed Max Plank’s discovery of the quantum, which opened up entirely new fields of study no one had ever thought possible.

Even if all I have said thus far is complete nonsense, there is still one fact overwhelmingly in science’s favour, regarding it’s ability to accurately, and thus objectively, describe the world, and that is it’s undeniable utility. The world around us is a monument to how well science works in the pursuit of knowledge. Without science, you and I probably wouldn’t even be alive today, let alone enjoying the comfortable lives we do.

Now On The Attack

This is the part where I get to be a bit mean to you and other feminists as well, starting with the the sources you provided me. I have to say you’ve given me quite a reading assignment, and I’m starting to question if it’s worth reading all that. I did enjoy Karen Barrad talking about the meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr (at the beginning of her book “ Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning”), since those are two of my heroes. You know that Woody Allen film “Midnight In Paris”? If that were to happen to me I’d probably be transported to the Germany of that time period and meet people like Heisenberg and Bohr.

I haven’t gotten very far in her book yet, but I’m already confused as to what she means by “the relationship between matter and meaning”, a term that later morphs into “the relationship between science and ethics”. I also want to say that the analogy between Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the relationship between motives and actions fails completely. You see, contrary to the relationship described by the uncertainty principle, more knowledge about someone’s actions gives us more knowledge about someone’s motives (even if that knowledge isn’t absolute), not less. But who knows, she might carry me to understanding as I read on.

An than there is the article by Donna Haraway that you pointed me to called “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, and oh boy do I want to talk about this one. On the author’s wikipedia page I found a delightful excerpt of a review of one of her books, which might as well be about this article. It goes:

This is a book that contradicts itself a hundred times; but that is not a criticism of it, because its author thinks contradictions are a sign of intellectual ferment and vitality. This is a book that systematically distorts and selects historical evidence; but that is not a criticism, because its author thinks that all interpretations are biased, and she regards it as her duty to pick and choose her facts to favor her own brand of politics. This is a book full of vaporous, French-intellectual prose that makes Teilhard de Chardin sound like Ernest Hemingway by comparison; but that is not a criticism, because the author likes that sort of prose and has taken lessons in how to write it, and she thinks that plain, homely speech is part of a conspiracy to oppress the poor. This is a book that clatters around in a dark closet of irrelevancies for 450 pages before it bumps accidentally into its index and stops; but that is not a criticism, either, because its author finds it gratifying and refreshing to bang unrelated facts together as a rebuke to stuffy minds. This book infuriated me; but that is not a defect in it, because it is supposed to infuriate people like me, and the author would have been happier still if I had blown out an artery. In short, this book is flawless, because all its deficiencies are deliberate products of art. Given its assumptions, there is nothing here to criticize. The only course open to a reviewer who dislikes this book as much as I do is to question its author’s fundamental assumptions—which are big-ticket items involving the nature and relationships of language, knowledge, and science.

I cannot belief how poorly this thing is written. It’s offensively bad. That quote at the beginning was just one of many baffling sentences I came across. I get the impression that all the overt sophistry is there to mask it’s nonsensical substance. But crying over the style of the piece won’t get us anywhere. Like the reviewer said, we can only discuss here fundamental ideas, so let’s do that shall we?

Into The Abyss

Now to get really mean. The article starts out pretty normal, with an admission of past biasses, which I first thought meant she was denouncing those. She then argues that scientists aren’t objective as they claim. Now, I haven’t read here sources for this, but from my own experience that’s complete nonsense. I’ve heard these accusations before, from people you really shouldn’t want to associate with. Anyway, her point is that scientist don’t practice what they preach, and thus are not objective. She seems to completely miss the implication that, apparently, they would be objective if they did practice what they preach. So her argument isn’t against science itself but only against those who practise it. She goes on however, acting like she did make a poignant argument against the ability of science to objectively describe reality.

After a bit of trash talking about those who accept the conclusions of science she decides she has demonstrated that she’s proven that science is a mere “power field”, whatever that may be. It is here that I get the impression she is not only using a lot of sociological terms I don’t know, but is deliberately trying to confuse me with lots of big words and awkward sentence structures. It’s a classical writing mistake to think big words make you sound smart. It actually does the opposite, but she doesn’t seem to care. There seems to be a moment of clarity where she realises that denouncing objectivity altogether would leave her without a stick to beat, say, evangelical Christians and their silly beliefs with. What then follows is a bunch of ramblings that I can hardly follow, but I guess the gist of it is that she doesn’t like the scientific method and would rather have a replacement for it, rooted in Marxist and feminist thought.

In the next part, called “the persistence of vision”, she first tries to explain why our vision sense is not fit to collect objective data. In her enthusiasm she forgets to provide any logical arguments for this however. The closest she comes is remarking that in order to see certain electromagnetic phenomena we need to convert it into the visible spectrum first. That’s it. From there here ramblings become even harder to follow, but from what I understand she is arguing for standpoint theory, a decidedly non objective way of viewing the world, and she begins talking about “being accountable” for our observations. Since scientists are already accountable for the truth value of their observations, this leaves me to conclude that she wants them to be accountable for the moral implications of them as well. So if you happen to discover something with moral implications she doesn’t like, better keep it to yourself, you scum bag! I hope I don’t have to explain why this is a terrible idea.

She then makes the typical standpoint theory claim that oppressed people’s knowledge is more valuable than anyone else’s. She admits two important things about this. First that this is based only on a suspicion. Of course there is no logical reason for why this should be the case, but that doesn’t seem to bother her either. Second she, to my amusement, confirms that she values the viewpoints of the oppressed more because they are more likely to agree with her on this issue. There is some sort of circular argument going on there, but I can’t be bothered to dissect it.

In the last part, called “objects as actors”, she goes on a long, convoluted ramble basically saying that impartial observation is itself some form of oppression. This because the object of an experiment is not viewed as an actor but just a resource, or something like that. Why this is supposedly a bad thing I don’t know, but contrary to Donna Haraway I think the implications of that are quite limited. The only thing I walked away with is the feeling that I just took a peek into the abyss that is the mind of a woman who has lost her grip on reality.

Nouveau Creationisme

One thing I didn’t mention in my critique was her mention of the god trick, which you also described to me. If I understand it correctly, it refers to people claiming they have a full understanding of something while they only have partial knowledge. This then invalidates their findings, because in the part that they don’t know could be hidden something that disproves them. This reminds me of something I used to come across very often back when I was arguing with creationists (those are the people you shouldn’t want associate with I mentioned earlier). They had this thing called “the god of the gaps argument” which basically said that the evidence for god could be hiding in the gaps in our knowledge. Of course this can’t be taken serious. There is no reason we can’t make inferences from the things we do know and can see. There is no reason to assume that well established scientific theories might be overthrown by a new discovery somewhere in the future. To my knowledge that has never happened. It could happen of course, but the rarity of such events shows that even then science is still by far the best tool for investigating the natural world.

The most shocking thing you told me however was your answer to what we should base our conclusions on, if not objective data. You said “common sense”. To borrow an argument from a science proponent on youtube, common sense once told people that the sun went around the earth, that heavy objects fall faster than light ones and that metal ships would never float. I’m just going to say it: basing your understanding of the workings and nature of the cosmos on common sense... is stupid! I’m appalled that you would even say something like that. It puts you in the same camp as creationist fraudsters like Kent Hovind, who would go on and on about common sense at his seminars.

The bottom lime is this: saying you can’t know anything for sure is just a cop out. You can talk about subjectivity all you want, but how exactly does that influence the length of a meter? If you think something is inaccurate, don’t just point to where it came from, show how it’s inaccurate.

Conclusion

Wow, I didn’t think I’d go on for this long, but here we are. I also didn’t think I’d be this shocked by everything I’ve found out. You accused me earlier of calling your whole masters a lie. I didn’t think that at the time, honestly I didn’t. I knew I disagreed with quite a few things, but not that it was entirely based on falsehood. Your quick, biting response makes me suspect you get that a lot, and I’m starting to see why. I’ve been pushed more in that direction by our exchange, ironically. I do hope I just stumbled on some really bad examples of your trade, otherwise a harsh conclusion like that seems inescapable.

I also hope you don’t take all this too personally. We may disagree on quite a lot of things, but I know we also have a lot in common, and I always liked you as a person. So just know this hasn’t diminished my opinion of you in that sense. I hope we can continue our conversation, because despite everything I do feel this was a valuable experience for me so far.

Cheers

#feminism #science #objective reality #phylosophy

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df-MwETjw64)

#sjw #anti sjw #feminism #mra #expogate #gamergate #honey badger

Why feminism is fundamentally incompatible with liberal thought

One of the difficulties with making a statement like the above is pinning down what exactly we mean when we say feminism. Indeed it seems like there is no such thing as a strictly defined set of criteria for who is and isn’t considered a feminist. We have a common dictionary definition which describes feminism as a move towards equality between the sexes. The problem with this is that it would include practically all egalitarian movements, such as humanism and libertarianism, as well as people who define themselves as distinctly anti-feminist. Who also have the definition put forward by certain radical elements within the movement which states that it’s the acknowledgement of women’s humanity, which would make it so that even most raging misogynists would have to be qualified as feminists.

If the term feminist is supposed to have any distinct meaning at all, one that would make sense of the existence of feminist theory or feminist influences in art and literature, it would have to refer to not just the women’s rights movement. It would have to be the ideas that emerged in the sixties, influenced by Marxist philosophy, about the existence of the patriarchy and the relative nature of society. In other words: feminists are firmly on the side of nurture in the nature versus nurture debate. They believe that almost everything about our society is a cultural construct. Specifically, they believe that the differences between men and women in society can not be accounted for by sexual dimorphism. There is a lot more to it than that of course, but I’m not going to try to exactly define the grey mass that is modern feminism, so I’ll leave it there for now.

Taking this view has some interesting consequences however, the same one every leftist ideology struggles with. If humans are basically born as blank slates and everything they become is because of outside influence, than they could be made to be basically any way we desire. All you have to do is expose them to exactly the right stimuli and the right information to produce the desired result. It is tempting to try and use this to change a society, GDR style, by exposing them to nothing but “purified” media. Free of anything that might have harmful influence, while at the same time instilling correct values through ideologically “pure” messages.

In fact, there’s almost no getting around this. If humans are blank slates without an innate sense of right and wrong, than trying to appeal to that is useless. They have to be “programmed” first before there is anything to appeal to. That is, I believe, the exact reason why feminists are so concerned all the time with the messages that media are sending. They have no faith at all in people recognizing right or wrong by themselves. Worse still, they believe the amount of “impure” messages that get trough have a proportional effect on their audience. So absolutely nothing is allowed to get through, lest it affects at least one person who can then transmit these harmful ideas like an intellectual contagion.

All of these observations are nothing new of course, by they do highlight why feminism is so opposed to many values that would come natural to a liberal. Part of liberalism is, after all, trusting people to make their own decisions, which they can only do in any meaningful way if they have access to every bit of information out there. You have to believe people can make the right choice by themselves if presented with all the options. You have to believe people are, by nature, good.

#feminism #marxism #liberalism

I Am A Liberal

Which means I am a strong supporter of the enlightenment tradition, a tradition of scepticism and empiricism. But also a tradition which seeks above all the empowerment of the individual. How this is best accomplished is a point of contention within the liberal movement, but a few things we can all agree upon. It involves trusting people to make their own decisions about their own lives as much as possible, as well as trusting people to bear the consequences of those decisions. This means standing firm for freedom of speech and thought, as well as economic freedom, or in other words, the free market. It also means limiting the power of anything that might threaten that freedom, like any kind of governing or religious authority. To what degree this should be done depends on which liberal you ask, but most agree religion should be a private matter completely separate from the act of governing. A liberal should support equality before the law, involving blind justice rather than social justice.

That’s what liberalism is to me. Yet I have heard it being described as many other things: leftist, socialist, politically correct. Yet it isn’t any of that. So I’ll try doing my part in reclaiming the term, starting by making a few blogposts about it here and hopefully getting constructive discussion on the subject going.

#politics #liberal #liberalism

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