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elodieunderglass · 8 months ago

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Hi! I was wondering if you could help me out with a word I've forgotten? I'm trying to remember the name for a concept that (I think) talks about how people better understand or process Things once they have vocabulary to describe it - I've heard it talked about in regards to the colour orange, or coercive control, etc.

long story short i've just read a paper saying ancient Greeks and Romans weren't racist bc they had no word for racism and am trying to form an argument against!

(no worries if this is unanswerable, i'm aware its a bit of a long shot but you struck me as a person who Knows Things)

That’s extremely kind and funny of you. i don’t know much but i am ok at synthesis.

I think you might be thinking of the concepts loosely called the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”, which describes something called “linguistic determinism.” This idea has been “disproven”, as it is just too reductionist as a concept - people are clearly perfectly capable of having experiences that are tough to describe with words. There will be plenty of papers showing how this reasoning is applied.

but it is still commonly thrown around and still considered a useful teaching framework. That’s why you’ll see it referenced online as if it is fresh, new, and applicable - people learn about it every year in college. Also, elements of the framework are probably perfectly sound. It definitely seems to be the case that language shapes brains; it just doesn’t seem to be the case that humans who don’t have specific words for them can’t experience orange, or the future.

(Many things in college are taught using teaching frameworks that may not be, technically, true; the framework is intended to give a critical structure for interpreting information. Then, when we later find evidence that disproves the hypothesis, that single piece of information doesn’t destroy our expensive college education; what we paid for is the framework. This is mostly frustrating in the sciences, when fresh crops of undergraduate students crash around on social media, grappling with their first exposure to (complex concept) and how it’s DIFFERENT to what they learned BEFORE and their teachers LIED TO EVERYBODY and they’re going to save the world from POP SCIENCE by telling the TRUTH. You’ll notice that these TOTALLY NEW INFORMATION reveals map along the semester schedule. The thing here is that getting new information, or information being different from what you were previously told, does not cancel out the fact that you are getting what you pay for - an education. Learning new facts that change our relationships to hypotheses isn’t a ✨huge betrayal ✨ , but the expected process of academia. Anyway.)

You have an interesting response here, and can start by looking at the ways that Sapir-Whorf has been disproved. There will be loads of literature on that.

However, it would be interesting to look at the argument as an unpicking of the other side’s rather weird, ritualistic superstitious belief that a behavior doesn’t exist if the creatures doing it can’t describe it. It is not on the ancient Greeks and Romans to categorise and interpret their behavior for a modern educated audience. They do not have the wherewithal to do so. They are also fucking dead. We can name the behaviors we see, and describe their impacts, however the hell we like.

Sure, the ancient Greeks used “cancer” to refer to lumpy veiny tumors. We can infer that they still had blood cancer, because their medical texts describe leukaemia and their corpses have evidence of it - they just didn’t know it was cancer. But we do, so we can call it cancer. Just because Homer said “the wine-dark sea” in a flight of girlish whimsy doesn’t mean he was unable to distinguish grape juice from saltwater, which we know, because we can observe that he was an intelligent wordsmith perfectly capable of talking about wine and oceans in other contexts. We are the people who get to stand at our point of history with our words, and name things like “this person probably died of leukaemia” and “poets say things that aren’t necessarily literal” and “this behaviour was racist” and “that’s gay” and “togas kinda slay tho” despite Ancient Greeks having different concepts of cancer, wittiness, prejudice, homosexuality, and slaying than we do today.

Now just to caveat that people do get muddled about the concept of racism. Our understanding of racism from here - this point of history, with these words, probably from the West - is heavily influenced by how we see racism around us today: white supremacy and the construct of “whiteness,” European colonial expansion, transatlantic chattel slavery, orientalism, evangelism, 20th century racial science, and so on. This is the picture of racism that really dominates our current discourse, so people often mistake it for the definition of racism. (Perhaps in a linguistic-deterministic sort of way after all.) As a result, muddled-up people often say things like “I can’t be racist because I’m not a white American who throws slurs at black American people,” while being an Indian person in the UK who votes for vile anti-immigration practices, or a Polish person with a horrible attitude about the Roma. Many people genuinely hold this very kindergarten idea of racism; if your opponent does as well, they’re probably thinking something like “Ancient Greek and Roman people didn’t have a concept of white supremacy, because whiteness hadn’t been invented yet, so how could they be racist?” And that’s unsound reasoning in a separate sense.

Racism as the practice of prejudice against an ethnicity, particularly one that is a minority, is a power differential that is perfectly observable in ancient cultures. The beliefs and behaviors will be preserved in written plays, recorded slurs, beauty standards, reactions to foreign marriages, and travel writing. The impacts will be documented in political records, trade agreements, the layouts of historical districts of ancient towns.

You don’t need permission to point out behaviours and impacts. You can point them out in any words you like. You can make up entirely new words to bully the ancient romans with. You are the one at this point of history and your words are the ones that get used.

Pretending that “words” are some kind of an intellect-obscuring magical cloud in the face of actual evidence is just a piece of sophistry (derogatory) on the part of your opponent here. It’s meant to be a distraction. You can dismiss this very flimsy shield pretty quickly and get them in the soft meat of them never reading anything about the actual material topic, while they’re still looking up dictionary definitions or whatever.

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transgenderer · 2 months ago

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ok so maybe im just describing my predicament but i feel like...philosophically you should WANT to be a total reductionist relativist, no meaning but the one we make, no truth but predictions with an explicit algorithm for resolution, etc, BUT you should begrudgingly accept that something like "meaning", something like "nonempirical truth", something like "beauty" are real and exist and are even important. like, i guess i think the latter thing is true but has to be very strenuously argued for. and the greatest unfinished work in philosophy is putting those real-but-difficult-to-argue-for truths on strong footing. but thats hard, so instead people assume it and then do lots of elaboration there. and its like, sure, that elaboration is valid, but is it sound?

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dipperdesperado · 8 months ago

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notes on class analysis beyond class reductionism

In which your favorite anarchist cherry-picks their favorite pieces of identity politics and syncretizes them with his favorite parts of sociological class analysis (with a focus on Marxian conceptions) and center-periphery theories of the same topic… for the sake of abolishing oppression.

Class and economic reduction are some of the worst theoretical and methodological mistakes that we can make in our analysis. Class reductionism is an understanding that the principal unit of analysis for analyzing social conditions is economic class. Other facets of social being, adorned with the dubious “superstructural”[1] labels are seen as unimportant to deal with. Economic reduction is about (1) seeing the “real”[2] determinants of social life as economic and therefore (2) understanding the “base”[3] of society as mechanically determining the elements that exist “superstructurally”. It’s an orientation that talks about inevitable moments of historical development, based on an analysis of the economic situation. When folks rail against Marxist analyses, this tends to be a recurrent target of critique.

This approach has two big issues. While economics are important, and in some cases are good to see as “primary” in a vague sense[4], they don’t paint the full picture. Reality isn't just economic distribution, production, and consumption, even if we decide that the only “reality” we care about is human sociality. This thinking relatedly doesn't allow us to understand the full scope of what revolutionary potentialities exist by way of class analysis. Said otherwise, focusing solely on class analysis makes that mode have to do more lifting than it is capable of doing, rendering it ineffectual, like trying to make a fish win a footrace, just because it is really fast in the water. We can’t just focus on one variable or fact of interest in our analysis, if we want our analysis to capture a sense of complexity. We need the right tools for the right jobs. Alongside this, we have to always keep in mind that we exist in a dialectical relationship[5] with those tools. A separate can of worms can be opened up if we look at the ways that complex adaptive systems function—seeing the Cerberus of capitalism, modernity, and coloniality as such would illuminate that no one element of its functions is “primary”[6]. That kind of linear thinking only serves to encourage fruitless intellectual pursuits and failed revolutionary regimes.

If the working class defined by a specific relationship with the means of production, and we have a class reductionist perspective, it can lead to us assuming ideals and extremes represent the whole[7]. We are trying to apprehend totalities with too limited of a dataset[8]. While class and economics are necessary, they are insufficient in an analysis of social conditions, and of the potential that exists for change along realistic[9] lines.

One way for us to supersede these failure points is by way of a commitment to relationality. When I say this, I am referring to an understanding based in looking at the relationships between our loci of interest[10], in a way that prioritizes evidence (credible information sourced from the world) over hypotheses (or inductive, deductive, or abductive conclusions), with a hyper-critical and skeptical stance towards grand narratives. If there is such a thing, we, as far as we know, can only make approximations. While these can improve, even to the extent that our working models provide all that we need to engage in reality, they will always be models. This commitment isn’t modernist (building grand narratives) or postmodernist (critiquing all structures that exist and living within that critique, by way of being unable to surpass the object of critique). It is metamodernist: an orientation that is dialectical and syncretic, taking the critiques found from metamodernism seriously while believing in the existence of a reality, accessing it through a sober assessment of our capacities and limitations.

If we want our theory, method, and practice to be based in what is by way of what we want to be, this is paramount. I see class and economic reduction as prioritizing hypotheses to rationalize with flattering evidence, rather than creating hypotheses that are based on evidence.

A requisite part of this relationality is through having an analysis of positionality. This can be by way of intersectionality[11], interpenetration[12], and/or imbrication[13]. Positionality is an understanding of where you are located, socially, politically, and economically, by way of your identities, properties[14], and experiences. This is looking at the social hierarchies at play and seeing where you are at, in a given moment/period of focus. The "i-words" come in when we use that analysis to inform our practice, bound to a commitment to centering the marginalized.

The center-periphery model as discussed by FARJ is a useful way to stretch class analysis, but mixing models, without explaining points of divergence before we converge can cause confusion. When we use the center-periphery model to discuss society, and an analysis that is based in intersectionality or similar frameworks talk about bringing the margins to the center, we are not asking for “representation” or “maintenance” of the structures social hierarchy as currently formatted. There is a tacit understanding embedded in this analysis that, if we are to, for example, desire a structure that empowers Black women to have multifaceted, sustaining experiences of freedom and self-determination, whatever we build would be radically different than what currently exists. This commitment is a practical way that we can “destroy” the centers of power. This is what actually allows us to (con)federalize[15] power. This is why understanding positionality is important. If each individual’s uniqueness is their own totality, having an understanding of the different elements, identities, and properties that make up who they are (in regards to it being relevant to the analysis) will allow us to see how we relate to power structures. This gives us an understanding of where to plant strategic and tactically effective action. In any given moment or situation, we might be able to take stock of if we are reinforcing or undermining concentrations of power rather than (con)federalizing of power. If, based on our social composition[16], the most marginalized folks don’t feel safe or heard, we’re doing something wrong in our practice that needs to be revised.

To make sure we're clear, this is not to say we focus on identity “alone”. This is why we advocate for using economic and political properties along with identities in our understanding of positionality. We can't ignore any of these elements if we want a complete analysis, and centering the marginalized allows our practice to hold the most liberatory potential. Class analysis, which is what I'll call the focus of traditional/conventional leftism, broadly fixates on two things in my estimation: (1) how class interests align and contradict, leading to class conflict, class warfare, and the potentialities for abolishing class. In this vein, the other part of these potentialities is (2) how to build unity. I think that these are useful starting points, but present some issues. Since class analysis is relatively fixed and general rather than relational, it can easily lead to vulgar conclusions from the analysis, where we hyperfixate on specific, mythologized groups of folks that don't hold up to our expectations in reality. It also has the effect of the things we ask for being limited by a desire to build unity.

Unity, in this case, tends to be based on that overarching conception. “we should do this because of our objective class interests” type shit. Again, while it may be true that as economically dispossessed folks, it would be advantageous for us to have control over the means of production or whatever, that alone isn't connecting with the full breadth of how we experience our lives and has an almost Christianity-faith-based, “searching for salvation” vibe to it. “Follow me and I’ll set you free” type shit. It isn't specific enough, as classes aren't monolithic. We have to struggle through our differences, building solidarity based on a bottom-up understanding of shared needs and desires (and how those interact with and shape personal needs and desires). The unity method by way of the most general elements that unite folks is more top-down, simplifying reality in a way that isn't as useful when we're at the ground level. This makes authoritarianism the only real method of holding it together (as top down means easily lead to top down ends), creating weak movements that are vulnerable to outside actors agitating the differences that exist and are being ignored, widening fissures within the movement. Not to mention the way that people who intuitively or lucidly understand that they don't fit into that mythologized model and thus will not participate. I know that when I look at the labor movement, and see all White dudes (but I see many more kinds of embodiment when actually looking at workplaces), I feel like that’s not a place meant for me.

If we want to have folks join our movements, we need to be more specific in our analysis, so that our practice is more accurate and aligns with the world as it is while enabling us to make it as we like. We should specify the conflicts and contradictions that exist in society so that we can see, across sectors and spaces, where the spaces for intervention can arise, or how to take advantage of the ones that exist. By having positionality and any of the “i’s” in mind, and by looking at facilitating expansive conceptions of desire[17], we can actually create movement spaces that are more holistic in their approach.

A way that this type of analysis becomes useful in multiple situations is by understanding how it can fractalize. For the sake of this conversation, we can work with the scales of Macro (class/umbrella identity), Meso (section), Micro (bloc), and Nano (individual).

Macro is at the highest level. When looking at analyzing where someone is in society for the sake of liberatory change, the macro level is the most broad/shallow and common features of groups of people. When people talk about the rich, the proletariat, or any other classes, they are on the macro level. This is useful for us to understand “the meta”[18], and get into all of the stuff that class analysis illuminates: class antagonism, the ways that all of the -isms affect people in a broad sense, and how these things change over a broad timescale.

Meso is us zooming in a bit--instead of looking at just “classes”, used here to mean “types”, we start to understand “sections” of those classes using intersectionality and positionality with more specificity. Rather than just referring to Black people or working people, we may refer to Black young women or German working people. It is understanding that, while we are still at a high level, there is more specificity at play that is useful to have awareness of. Just like there are shared experiences of alienation from the Means of Production for all working class people, we can see how zooming in specifically allows us to see what that actually means for certain sections of whatever unifying element of a given “class”. This is able to let us know that not all workers/genders/racial communities are created monolithically, and within a given community there are sections that have their own interests due to their positionality.

Micro is about looking at actual groups of actual people, seeing the blocs that exist within our subgroups. For example, if we're looking at Black folks, we can see how sections are composed, and we can look at the actual circumstances in an area of interest to see how different sections relate to one another, to see what contradictions are invisibilized by way of not zooming in enough. Rather than sticking at a higher level and saying that there should be unity solely due to one or two shared variables of intersection, there can be an understanding of how people are seen in society as is, with the capacity to try and shift those resonances and dissonances into more beneficial assemblages for the goals of liberation. If there are contradictions between people connected by variables found in the higher level/more general classes, we can start at a bloc level, building our way up towards people seeing and acting in their “class interests”.

Nano is zooming all the way in. It is understanding specific folks, and seeing their specific experiences intimated and imbricated by the above scales. It is easy, especially when trying to understand how to change society, to not look at individuals. But, ignoring individuals, the building blocks of society, will leave good materials on the cutting room floor. I think we should oscillate between more and less individual understandings, so that we can mutualize the relationships between individuals, collectives, and collectives of collectives.

It's worth noting that all of these are connected, and we move from one to another based on what we're trying to understand. If we're looking at the structure of society, then class analysis, in both meanings of the word, is useful. If we're trying to relate to each other as individuals, we need to think about things at that level, not eschewing an awareness of systemic dynamics. We run into a lot of issues if we don't make sure our method is well-suited to our problems that we're trying to understand.

If we can stretch the idea of class to not just be an economic thing, but to focus on positions in social hierarchies, that allows us to understand oppression on different scales from the interpersonal to the societal, and gives us room to think about what it means to be in one position or another. By framing this in ontologies and epistemologies of Black feminisms, we come away with a flexible framework for analyzing those positions, and we can, in every situation, center the marginalized, so that we have a more specific, intentional way to expand our understanding of prefiguration and material solidarity. This points us towards uniting in ways that undermine different social hierarchies that reinforce one another. By having these tools at our disposal, we can create unified action through maximal prefiguration in our practice. If we are making something that works for the least privileged of us, we have much less work to do for the more privileged of us. This also ensures that those folks aren't left behind, the way that they can be when we don't do the work to zoom in enough. If they are at the “center”, there is no “center”. If there is a “center”, then there are marginalized people who are being ignored.

Let’s try to concretize this with an example. Start anywhere in the process (or at any level of zoom). For clarity, we will start at the macro level. We have two classes, the exploiters and the exploited. We can then cut that up, by way of intersectionality and positionality, to see that each of these groups have subgroups that have different relations to their exploitation or exploiting. This allows us to know that broadly speaking, there are contradictions and tensions within these classes that allow us to either foster more mutuality or sow more division, depending on how we approach things. Once we are aware of this, we can zoom in more to see how, within these classes, there are blocs that add more detail to those contradictions. We can see that blocs of communities are not intrinsically unified by way of their identity[19], and this keys us into the intentionality that has to go into organizing unified action, which I recommend to be based on solidarity (bottom-up) rather than unity (top-down). We can then get to the individual level, where we try to unearth desire, in the expanded sense where someone cultivates their individuality, what I call ego, or what Lorde calls the erotic. From here, we can build back up, having a meaningful and actionable awareness of social composition that tells us how the social world exists. By way of our ideology[20] and theories[21] for how the world can change, we can develop practice that materializes into that change.

[Notes]

[1] In Marxian theories, the superstructure is everything that sits atop the economic mode of production of society. It is everything not economic, from art, to culture, to politics, etc.

[2] As in reality, notating an importance in the physical. This is true in a broad sense, but people tend to leave out things like life belief systems and human action as important unless it relates with a very clear causality to this.

[3] The “economic foundation” of society.

[4] I’m pretty skeptical of focusing on economics unless you’re literally choosing to focus on economics, mainly because of all the ideological, theoretical, methodological, and practical baggage that comes from this.

[5] We exist in a symbiotic (meant in the neutral sense, not the colloquial, “positive”/“beneficial” sense) process with the tools we create and deploy. As we shape the tools from our ideas, the tools shape us right back, pointing us to particular potentialities.

[6] How can primacy exist when all of the elements operate together to create emergent outcomes? The closest we get is when, by way of our commitment to relationality, we see that certain axes of oppression rear their head in a pronounced way that is still propped up by the other axes.

[7] This, when combined with things like Eurocentricity, leads to vulgar dynamics in political struggle, where, for example, “working class” ends up meaning “White working class”, even though POC are much more emblematic of the class.

[8] If we're going to make sweeping statements about society, we should either commit to philosophical inquiry (which doesn’t have the same need for “accuracy” in the scientific sense), or we should do rigorous analysis to understand our context, using phenomenology, sociality, history, science, and culture as our “raw” data.

[9] Changes that can actually happen in the most open sense, where we are not relying on supernatural or physics-defying feats of reality-warping for our goals. It’s a combination of inspiration and analysis, where we are simultaneously thinking about the exciting futures that we want and what we can do now to get there. This is distinct from how some employ “pragmatism”, asking people to “vote harder” or whatever. This is doing things that many people may see as idealistic or impossible, but are possible in actuality, which becomes easier to see as we move away from hegemonic understandings of potentiality.

[10] This is just a funny way of saying the stuff that we’re looking at. This could be anything: “object”, “subject”, “process”, “event”, “phenomena”, and/or “thing”.

[11] The way multiple identities intersect, creating phenomenological “coordinates” that are simultaneously similar to specific variables within that coordinate, but where that specific also creates a unique phenomenological experience that can only be dictated on its own terms.

[12] Seeing how different facets of identity are constantly shifting and bleeding into one another, based on different circumstances.

[13] Identities and social relations overlap and bump up against each other on the edges, and thus are able to be recognized as distinct but interconnected. This shows up in specific practical engagements, where a specific person’s identity, when compared to “normative” modes of being (cishet, white, male), impacts their experiences.

[14] I mean this in both senses of the word: economic property, and features.

[15] (Con)federalism is a mode of social organization that stands in opposition to centralism. While centralism concentrates power within small groups of people and organizational bodies, (con)federalism distributes power to the grassroots level, and connects laterally and “vertically” with other organizational bodies to administer coordination.

[16] The way a class is “composed”, through whatever collective experiences or positionalities unite everyone within. It is, based on a dialectical understanding of how the Cerberus is functioning, looking to see how we can (1) see what ways we are bound to the systems at play in a practical sense, and (2) find ways to holistically sever our selves from that binding, to create new relationships with each other, based on more communistic values.

[17] Desire here is the (spiritual, emotional, physical, rational) needs, wants, and interests of an individual or a collective, in a given moment.

[18] I’m appropriating this term from gaming communities, meant there to talk about the toolset/features that are obviously advantageous to employ, so behavior tends to shift towards using those until the game is rebalanced towards fairness. In our case, we’ll focus on how the meta indicates relationships of power-over, leading to us needing to do the “rebalancing”.

[19] Positionality tells us the ways that solidarity can develop by keying us into where people share or diverge in experiences based on the society in which they exist...it does not show were people's desires lie

[20] The word ideology has a negative connotation…but I think it is honest and useful. I mean it in the basic sense of our foundational assumptions and commitments, that are ideally evidence tested constantly, and revised if evidence demands it, but also allow us to continue working.

[21] Our theories are the ideas that allow us to see if our ideology is accurate; it is the way that we build upon our foundation to see if it stands up to reality.

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scottishcommune · 4 months ago

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Not surprisingly, New Age acolytes of ecology become authentic reductionists. “God,” “Energy,” “Being,” “Love,” “Interconnectedness,” and a whole repertoire of metaphors are invoked that serve to homogenise the particular and divest it of its richness and diversity. When this approach proves too abstract, it is always possible to create a pastiche of ill-digested “paradigms” and theories, regardless of the fact that their premises and logic may conflict with each other. Here eclecticism, which usually clouds radically different ways of thinking and the myth that we all share a “common goal,” becomes the last redoubt for sheer intellectual sloppiness.

The language that the more sophisticated systems theorists use reflects the concepts they bring to their “paradigms.” Complex results are stripped down to their most elemental levels so that they can be handled in physico-mathematical terms. That hypothetico-deductive analyses have immense value in relations that are authentically dynamic or mechanical is not in question here; their value in these domains of knowledge cannot be surpassed. What is troubling is that systems theory tends to become a highly imperialistic ideological approach that stakes out a claim to the totality of development, indeed to reason out and explain virtually all phenomena. If natural evolution, organic metabolism, and personal behavior were systems, then systems theory in all its self-fulfilling grandeur would seem to work admirably. That this “if-then” conversion (and I will have more to say about these later) denudes phenomena of many complex qualities that do not lend themselves to systems analysis is conveniently lost in a shuffle of grandiose metaphors that appeal more to an ever-yielding heart than to a demanding logical mind.

- Murray Bookchin, Thinking Ecologically: A Dialectical Approach

#anarchism #socialism #communalism #solarpunk #social ecology #murray bookchin

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cogentranting · 1 year ago

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Just finished reading The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu (a short story collection) and so here is my ranking of all 19 stories

Ghost Days- I would teach this one (which would entail reading it repeatedly)

Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard- I wish this was a full novel that I could read

The Reborn- It's a really interesting exploration of ideas about memory and identity

Maxwell's Demon- really good blending of historical fiction and fantasy/science fiction

The Hidden Girl- Fun concept, good execution. Would watch this one as a movie or short film.

The Message- A sweet character piece, and some good thematic material

Cutting- This is like a page and a half long, it's not really a story, more of a snippet of an idea but its an interesting idea

Thoughts and Prayers- this story is gut-wrenching and very effective and kind of horrifying

Real Artists- well done but far too close to real life right now to be more than depressing

Staying Behind-- of the Singularity stories this is the most interesting precisely because it's the most human

Memories of My Mother- it works and it is interesting

Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer- In the Singularity stories this one has the most affecting look at human experiences

The Gods will not be Chained- the start of this trilogy is the most interesting

A Chase Beyond the Storms- it's not a short story, it's an excerpt from the third book of a novel series, and that's what it reads like. It's not uninteresting but it doesn't stand on its own particuarly well. It dissuade me from reading that novel series but it didn't convince me either.

Dispatches from the Cradle: the Hermit-- Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts- Some interesting ideas but ultimately lacks real narrative drive and thematic development

The Gods Will Not Be Slain- this trilogy and the singularity stories dragged more and more as it went on

The Gods Have Not Died in Vain- see above. Also weirdly pro-letting the machines take over?

Byzantine Empathy- way too much of this story is spent explaining cryptocurrency. Ultimately it has some interesting themes but it is super boring (and at times reads like a cryptocurrency sales pitch)

Seven Birthdays- I literally don't know what this story is about. The good parts of it are basically what Memories of My Mother did better, and then it has the boring over-explaining of Byzantine Empathy (but without being totally clear about what it's explaining or what's happening), and is the worst of the Singularity stories about having a weirdly reductionist view of humanity

Side note-- The Singularity stories, which all take place in the same world and feature a future where people's minds are digitially uploaded and a new "digital humanity" replaces human existence, all reference something called "the singularity" and after reading all six of them, I have no idea what the singularity is.

1-8 on this list are all really good and well worth reading. 9-12 are pretty good 13-17 are okay with that endorsement getting progressively less enthusiastic as you go 18-19 I don't recommend though I think 18 has a salvageable idea within it and gives glimpses of a much better version of itself

Additional thoughts: As much as I liked some of the early ones on this list, Liu's best story is Paper Menagerie and you should read that one (and that one I have taught and hope to teach again and the kids also like it)

I would not have named this collection after the Hidden Girl because that story is one of the most atypical of this collection. Most are hard sci fi and that and two others are fantasy. I think Ghost Days, Staying Behind or the Gods Will Not be Chained are all more indicative of what the book is (though I suppose mentioning ghosts or gods does give more fantasy vibes).

#ken liu #the hidden girl and other stories #cogent reads

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bluepurpleviolatte · 17 days ago

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As frustrated as one feels right now, writing ''woke is broke'' on The New York Times is totally fucked up:

There’s a big difference between constructive criticism and adopting a phrase like "woke is broke," which simplifies complex issues into a catchy but divisive slogan. It's not just about the content but how it's framed. Phrases like that are often used to attack, to mock, or to dismiss rather than to offer a thoughtful critique. When a publication like The New York Times with a history of thoughtful analysis and progressive views resorts to this kind of language, it can make you question their intentions and whether they’ve shifted their ideological position or merely adopted the language of the opposition.

Criticizing faulty policies is important, but it should be done with the recognition that solutions are complex and require nuance, not reductionist slogans. A phrase like "woke is broke" not only reduces the issue to a simplistic binary, but it also risks undermining the credibility of the arguments they're trying to make, aligning them more with populist rhetoric than with thoughtful, reasoned debate.

It’s also telling that, by using this kind of language, the publication inadvertently associates itself with certain political factions or movements, which can blur its identity and make it hard for readers to trust the editorial stance. The failure is in the wording, and it’s frustrating when language like this weakens the very arguments that need to be made about the shortcomings of any ideology or political approach.

The point is, we need to keep pushing for more thoughtful and reflective language in media, especially from outlets that we expect to uphold a certain standard.

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crimsonpublishers-medical · 5 months ago

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Quantum Healing- A New Holistic Insight- Crimson Publishers

Quantum Healing- A New Holistic Insight- Crimson Publishers

Quantum healing is a holistic healing. If we consider human body, human body works. If we consider human body rather than as parts in treating any disease with reductionist chemical drugs yield better results without adverse effects. Human body consists of energy, each cell of human body emit photon. Most of all diseases start in human mind. Human mind has a blueprint of human body. Mindful meditation with positive thoughts in mind known as quantum thoughts, genuine intention to heal any disease creates positive energy known as quantum thinking, healing take place at spiritual level by production of endorphins. This article briefs about the basic research findings of quantum healing and its application in management of diseases.

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#biomedical engineering #crimson-biomedical #crimson biomedical engineering #crimson publishers #crimson publishers llc #biomaterials

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askgothamshitty · 9 months ago

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I think that's why they try their hardest to mock radical feminist theory. They don't really have genuine critiques of the movement (or the theory). They don't want to deconstruct any views of sexuality or patriarchial ideals. I feel like the reason why Marxist feminism (in general) is so palatable. It tackles other forms of women's oppression and that makes it somewhat easier for them to remove male supremacy from the equation and never analyse it + it allows them to be class reductionist or dumbing down women's oppression to just "imperalism" (especially in the Global South)

This is just my general view of the situation, I could be wrong though😅

You’re totally right! Most male marxists don’t even know what radical feminism is, they just see it as the “mean” feminism. And that’s because they don’t like how it forces them to confront their role as oppressors. They’d rather cling on to a more liberal feminism that obscured that and eases their conscience.

I don’t think they like marxist feminism either, actually. They really don’t know what it is besides what Engels had to say over 100 years ago. They definitely haven’t kept up with the way it’s evolved (ask them what “social reproduction theory” is and they’ll go blank). And they certainly don’t ascribe to its values on sexual politics, which are similar to radical feminism in that they’re sex trade abolitionist.

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romanarose · 10 months ago

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Whenever I try to talk to most of my friends about Oppenheimer, they all hated it.

It always seems like they say they lked barbie more

..... one is a comedy one is drama

I loved Oppenheimer???? I'm not saying you have to like it but saying its just a bunch of men talking is so reductionist. Like, good movies can be just talking. Maybe it's because Im a history major and i had a historical context but i didn't feel like it was hard to follow at all. I had issues keeping up with a few characters bc I'm totally face blind but I had 0 moments where i zoned out in oppenheimer, vs. i did zone out in barbie

you arent subversive for not liking oppenheimer.

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monstruous-pictures-present-blog · 1 year ago

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📆 19 Aug 2022 📰 Innate immunity to malaria: The good, the bad and the unknown 🗞 Frontiers

Blood stage malaria manifests as a severe inflammatory disease in naïve individuals. In animal models, genetic ablation of innate sensing pathways often offer survival benefits pointing towards a role for dysregulated inflammatory signaling in innate cells in malaria pathology (80). However, reductionist co-culture systems with intact parasites generally seem to reveal nuanced responses of innate cells that often show a lack of, or reduced inflammatory signaling (54), unless parasites are added in high quantities or stimulatory ligands are purified.

To understand this seeming contradiction, a biomass comparison may be made between a Plasmodium blood stage infection, sporozoite immunization and sepsis caused by E. coli (Table 1). A blood stage Plasmodium infection can involve hundreds of billions of parasites with a total biomass of several grams. Nonetheless, such infections are frequently tolerated by the host, even in naive or semi-immune individuals. In contrast, a septicemic E. coli infection can induce a life-threatening cytokine storm with one millionth of the amount of antigen. This comparison argues that on a per-pathogen and per gram biomass basis, blood stage parasites have a relatively low inflammatory capacity as compared to bacteria. Interestingly, comparatively low numbers of sporozoites can induce sterile immunity when used as a vaccine, while 6 orders of magnitude more blood stage parasites do not suffice.

Understanding the mechanistic basis for this difference could be highly valuable. An explanation for these observations can likely be found considering the pressure that evolution exerts on host parasite interactions. This pressure likely favored different outcomes for pre-erythrocytic and blood stage parasites, especially considering their respective roles during the parasite life cycle: While only a single sporozoite needs to productively infect a hepatocyte to complete its mission, blood stage parasites need to keep proliferating in the blood for long periods of time to ensure successful uptake of gametocytes into a feeding mosquito.

Thus, blood stage parasites were subject to high evolutionary pressure to survive host sensing pathways to avoid destruction by innate or adaptive immunity. On the other hand, sporozoites might have evolved to very efficiently reach host hepatocytes while being much less manipulative regarding innate sensing pathways. Their high success rate allows only very few sporozoites to be deposited into the skin during a mosquito blood feed, limiting the amount of PAMPs to be detected and the amount of antigen available for the induction of protective immunity.

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ajsthoughtsandthings · 1 year ago

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Is The Internet Controlling Your Life?

There is no doubt about it...the internet has changed our lives. You only have to look at the recent COVID-19 pandemic for a ton of examples of how this technology has impacted our day-to-day.

From video calling family and friends thousands of miles away, remote work, online schooling, and staying connected through social media, we can all think of dozens of ways we use the internet.

Every day.

All the time.

Except when you sleep. (Unless you're like me and HAVE TO play tv shows or ambient videos to help you catch some quality z's).

Technology has a hold on all of us in one way or another. Ranging from benefiting from to straight-up being addicted to the internet, everyone's lives are impacted by the internet.

But how much power do we have over such an expansive technology? Or is it the technology controlling us?

Who Runs the World? Technology?

If you are a Beyonce fan (and let's be honest, who isn't a little bit), you know her hit song Run the World (Girls) celebrates women as leaders and move makers.

However, some people don't believe any humans have much say in how we live our lives. Instead, it's inevitable technological advancement that influences us.

Technological Determinism is a theoretical framework that believes technology shapes social change and determines our future. These technological advancements bring about a new phase of human history and change things as people of the time know them.

Marshall McLuhan's studies of the effects of mass media on thought and behavior contributed to the creation of the Technological Determinism theory. McLuhan viewed media as providing many unique environments with specific characteristics that influence people's actions and beliefs.

This isn't too hard to see at play in our own lives, right?

The way we interact with the radio vs. a YouTube video or Podcast is different. So McLuhan was definitely onto something.

Plus, he kind of foretold the creation of the internet way back in the 60s. So, that's pretty cool.

Why Even Try?

Sometimes, it can feel like technology runs our lives. We've all been there. Maybe you needed some time for yourself, but the thought of turning off your phones felt impossible and selfish and left you riddled with anxiety.

Or you may have wanted to apply for a great job, but felt nervous about your technological literacy and skipped over the job listing.

If technology is controlling our lives, it's doing a darn good job of it.

But hold up. It's not all doom and gloom; you do not have to submit to the AI overlords just yet.

The Technological Determinism theory has its own limitations.

Cons of Technological Determinism

Hard Determinism is our first gripe with the theory. Hard Determinists feel technology play's a complete and totalizing role in shaping human society.

Using this view, all we are — our religions, culture, art, politics, relationships, etc. — are determined by technology and its advancements.

2. This leads us to another important criticism of Technological Determinism... that it takes a reductionist approach. Aka, this theory reduces a highly complex and multilayered phenomenon into an oversimplified narrative. It effectively ignores human's role in interactions with and the adoption of technology as individuals and a collective. I mean, technology doesn't just spring up out of the ether. Humans do have a say in how they live their lives, right? If you answered 'yes' to that last question, you're not the only one who thinks so. 3. Our last criticism of Technological Determinism is that it doesn't consider human free will. Humans are the ones who have to decide to create, use, and choose how a particular technology will evolve. Those at Helpful Professor gave an example of how the internet and smartphones brought about the digital era and how, in response to the overwhelming presence of the internet, people have created a 'digital detox' movement to willingly ignore this technology and spend their time in other ways.

Image via tenor.com Still, despite the cons, there is a reason this theory is essential for us to understand. No one can deny that technology influences our lives. So let's take a look at some of the theory's strengths.

Pros of Technological Determinism

1. Remember the Hard Determinists we mentioned before? Well, now I'll introduce you to the Soft Determinist. These people agree that technology has been and will continue to be a critical factor in shaping human history. However, they believe human agency, values, and institutions can influence technology development, spread, and consequences. 2. Some see the Technological Determinism theory's inclusion of these varying viewpoints as proof of the framework's adaptability and another check in the pro column. I guess we can give them that. 3. Another strength of the theory is its application to all of history. It provides an explanation for all human societies. We can look back at the creation of stone tools and follow it all the way to the design of AI and walk away with an answer to how we got where we are today. And, possibly, where we'll go in the future.

Image via knowyourmeme.com

Is the Internet Friend or Foe?

Speaking of futures, I don't relish the idea of mine being chosen by some algorithm. Like most people, I resist the thought of my free will being stripped from me.

Even by a theory.

While I'm not arrogantly human enough to ignore how an infinite amount of factors (yes, including technological advancement) influence how I live my life, I don't wholeheartedly agree with Technological Determinism.

Image via Cinema Tweets on Twitter

At its most rigid, the definition of Technological Determinism strips away our human agency and minimizes our and our ancestor's impacts on our lives today.

I view the determinate aspect of this theory as misleading. Many people have worked tirelessly to bring us the technology we have today, even those we take for granted. Some had very big ideas about how these technologies would benefit, or sometimes even harm, us.

And I would argue humans have played a significant role in creating our societies today. Without the technologies we stumbled upon, sought out, built, cultivated, adopted, and resisted; our world could look very different.

Our fate doesn't sound predetermined to me.

And I'll continue to appreciate that I can both immerse myself in and take a break from the internet at my convenience.

But how about you? Share your opinions in the comments.

And if you want to learn more, check out Dr. USP's YouTube video on Technological Determinism here.

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elisaenglish · 2 years ago

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Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality

How to “include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border.”

Life is an ongoing dance between the subjective reality of what it feels like to be alive, to tremble with grief, to be glad—what it feels like to be you—and the objective reality of a universe insentient to your hopes and fears, those rudiments of the imagination, the imagination at the heart of consciousness. We are yet to figure out how these two dimensions of being can be integrated into a totality. We are yet to figure out how the known physical laws can cohere with each other—relativity, the physics of the very large, is still at odds with quantum field theory, the physics of the very small—and yet to figure out how those physical laws give rise to the wonder of consciousness.

The urgency of this integration is what the physicist David Bohm (December 20, 1917–October 27, 1992) explores in Wholeness and the Implicate Order (public library).

Bohm — who devoted his life to “understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole, which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment”—writes:

“To meet the challenge before us our notions of cosmology and of the general nature of reality must have room in them to permit a consistent account of consciousness. Vice versa, our notions of consciousness must have room in them to understand what it means for its content to be “reality as a whole.” The two sets of notions together should then be such as to allow for an understanding of how reality and consciousness are related.”

Acknowledging that these immense questions might “never be resolved ultimately and completely”—that they might belong to what Hannah Arendt insisted were the unanswerable questions that make us human—he adds:

“Man’s* general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.

[…]

The way could be opened for a world view in which consciousness and reality would not be fragmented from each other.”

A generation after the Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser contoured a view of this unfragmented reality in his notion of “the ever-present origin,” Bohm considers what arriving at such a holistic view would take:

“Our general world view is itself an overall movement of thought, which has to be viable in the sense that the totality of activities that flow out of it are generally in harmony, both in themselves and with regard to the whole of existence. Such harmony is seen to be possible only if the world view itself takes part in an unending process of development, evolution, and unfoldment, which fits as part of the universal process that is the ground of all existence.”

Such a way of viewing reality, Bohm argues against the grain of our reductionist culture, requires fully inhabiting all aspects of the mind, including those that elude the clutch of quantification:

“The proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known not only in formal, logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc… It is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society… This requires a continual flow and development of our general notions of reality.

[…]

A new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails is unbroken wholeness.”

In the remainder of Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Bohm goes on explore how the relationship between thought and reality illuminates the way this unbroken wholeness is enfolded within each region of space and time. Complement it with Iain McGilchrist on how we render reality and John Muir on the transcendent interconnectedness of the universe, then revisit Bohm on creativity, the paradox of communication, and how we shape reality.

Source: Maria Popova, themarginalian.org (25th May 2023)

#quote #love #life #consciousness #meaning #existential musings #all eternal things #love in a time of...#intelligence quotients #depth perception #understanding beyond thought #essential thinking #perspective matters #the thread of this thing #reflections on the whole #this is who we are #stands on its own #elisa english #elisaenglish

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gravitascivics · 2 years ago

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JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, XIV

[Note: This posting is subject to further editing.]

With a good look at Paulo Freire’s ideas concerning education – that of a critical pedagogue – one can now take a closer look at what critical theory promotes. One word about Freire – to contextualize his contribution – the nation he represented was Brazil. While Brazil has become highly advanced, it is still classified as a developing nation since it still does not provide adequate healthcare and clean water to all of its population.[1] So, one should keep that factor in mind when considering his arguments.

This and the next posting will get more closely at the diversity of ideas or focuses critical theorists hold. One commentator that points to this variety, as he describes and explains the construct, is William Schubert. [2] He does emphasize that critical theorists do agree on certain principles.

He mentions agreement on the need for praxis as Freire mostly describes it as striving for the transformation of a society (instead of working toward marginal changes). In their understanding of praxis, they see it as an action to attain emancipation and empowerment – their terms – of the oppressed. In part they achieve this by questioning the structures of the power arrangements in each nation. And looming over all of this is a value system that prizes equality of results – or as they term it, social justice – as a trump value.

Praxis views knowledge in a particular way. That is, it is derived from constructive processes which investigate the social realities that the oppressed experience. And the approach students are to take utilizes a multidisciplinary approach (history, political, economic, and social sciences) applied to reality as it evolves in given places and times – as opposed to universal conditions.

Regarding “learning,” knowledge is perceived differently. Here it is the product of deconstructing existing claims – the product of oppressor discourses – and reconstructing them in more real contexts as perceived by the oppressed. Obviously, this view of knowledge is that it is the product or created by the mind constructing it. As such, it rejects reductionist research protocols.[3]

In its purity, this view of knowledge counters the positivist view which is what natural rights advocates promote. In its total form, a positivist approach favors the impartation of knowledge through the efforts of experts with sanctioning credentials. Instead, critical theorists argue that knowledge should be the product of self-derived knowledge taken from personal and intimate relationships and their related experiences.

And on this point, critical theorists do not accept the claims of positivists that being that positivists objectify their subject matter and strip their biases from their findings. According to critical theorists, positivists are equally affected by their personal biases as demonstrated by the long history of faulty claims proffered by these experts.

This critique holds that positivists see the function of scientifically derived social knowledge is not to better interpersonal relationships, but to be applied to clinical relationships by social technicians or to advance the interests those who fund such research as multi-national corporations. And this can be said of not only the conclusions they derive from their research but also the questions they pose.

Bottom line is that the results of this sort of “studies” are a false consciousness. In its stead, would be a liberating education, an education that helps people achieve emancipation from the inherently debilitating condition or state of affairs. Through the years, this line of thinking has gone through changes including the evolution of two schools of thought: ��reconstructionism and reconceptualization.

Reconstructionism has remained truer to its Marxist origins – not to deny it has its differences with that source – while reconceptualization has open itself to the influence of a variety of sources including existentialism, psychoanalysis, and a stronger aversion to pure scientific research. Next posting will delve into these ideas and how they have affected the whole critical theorists’ view of civic issues.

[1] Mar Z. Luna, “10 Most Developed Countries in Central and South America,” Homeschool Spanish Academy (October 13, 2022), accessed April 29, 2023, https://www.spanish.academy/blog/10-most-developed-countries-in-central-and-south-america/.

[2] William H. Schubert, Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986). Most of the descriptive comments in this and the next posting relies heavily on ideas presented by Schubert.

[3] According to this blogger’s understanding, not all critical theorists totally reject the contributions of positivist studies one associates with scientific approaches. All of them do question its value as being the sole source of knowledge. It should be noted that Freire does not dismiss the social sciences but argues their application in a multidisciplinary way.

#critical pedagogy #critical theory #positivist studies #knowledge #experience #civics education #social studies

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