• barsoap@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    you’re doing the exact thing I’m describing by defining “intellectual” in an individualized way

    Collective understanding is a composite of individual understandings. How the fuck can you make this a contradiction. If (a sufficient number of) individuals make that mistake, then so does the collective. If the collective makes that mistake, then necessarily so do individuals – or, if they don’t, get burned at the stake or banished or ignored or whatever, metaphorically or literally.

    read Hegel

    I’m not a Hegelian. My theoretical scaffold is generally cybernetics. If you hear me use the term Aufhebung then only because people don’t know WTF a metasystem transition is.

    • There is an inherent contradiction to defining intellectual either as individual or collective, but you’re not a Hegelian or a marxist so that’s why Im just done with the Convo, it’s not interesting because we’re not gonna get past that

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        to defining intellectual either as individual or collective,

        Which is not what I’m doing? Both individual and collective capacities for thought are part of the overall system, collective both in the societal and species (evolutionary) sense (see bio-psycho-social model).

        but you’re not a Hegelian or a marxist

        Cybernetics is one of major tools of the creation of a communist society. That’s not me saying that that’s the 22nd Congress of the CP of the USSR. The party has decided, comrade, remember your responsibility in the face of democratic centralism! Agree with this random Anarchist!

        • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          You act as if cybernetics supersedes basic philosophical presuppositions. Of course I support cybernetic sciences like any other scientific study of systems, but if you think you’re doing this independent of an undergirding philosophy you’re entirely wrong.

          The only difference in the first paragraph is understanding not just that these are parts of a system, but that in practice they define one another directly through their internal contradictions (which are related to each other). Again, you’re just an anti-hegelian who thinks you’re above defining your own metaphysics.

          I also am entirely unconvinced you read either of those articles in their entirety

          But I’m not going to convince you here, and my replying is only to you at this point, nobody else will read. So hopefully you read those and try to grasp the underlying philosophy, but I’m out

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            but that in practice they define one another directly through their internal contradictions

            Which is what systems do when they’re in mutual feedback, yes.

            • Ok you pull me back in, read some philosophy of science which is at the basis of your beliefs here. There are such huge assumptions under the ideas of mutual feedback you’re representing here. I’m a Systems Engineer, I get the appeal and genuinely base my scientific analysis of socio economics in the ideas that I’ve developed through that lens. But I also understand the limitations of this because I’ve read philosophy of science at the most basic level.

              You sound like the people who think that math is a formally complete system and base worldviews on it (“everything is math and we can understand all that happens by the math at the quantum levels and even below eventually”) without realizing that the experts of the field are completely against this interpretation, and even claim it’s disproven. You’re doing intuitionism but I don’t think you realize it. I do it too, because it’s easiest for understanding and useful, but I know it’s limited

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                No system can be both consistent and complete. Worse, all logical statements are based on either paradox, circular reasoning, or axioms not provable from those statements. And I’m not exactly sure whether you meant that kind of intuitionism (the constructive maths kind) or the “don’t discount your intuition” kind but, yes, I very much do both. Both tell us that our models are limited, shadows on the cave wall and all (and it is no coincidence that cybernetics itself models that limitation very nicely). Maths tells us by formal proof, intuition and instincts by incessantly insisting that there’s a world outside of our heads, something that refuses to vanish even when we cease to believe in it. It’s actually quite a feat to shut that whole thing off, and I constantly wonder how people manage to not run into lamp posts all the time.

                Lastly, let me share a nasty shower thought (literally, thought of it this morning in the shower): It would be very anti-Hegelian of you to be fundamentally opposed to the sublation of Hegelian dialectics. I even got quite formal with it (though please don’t ask me to write it in Greek), identifying sublation with MSTs. Mull about it.

                • Hegelian dialectics was possibly sublated by marx, but Marx’s dialectic is not a dialectic idea but a material world which does exist as a basic assumption that is perfect for any theory which intends to be useful. You cannot sublate the material world itself. But again, I think that you are under the impression that, because you thought of a quick gotcha, that this hasn’t already been thought about and written by many scholars before you. Hegel himself saw this gotcha coming

                  • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    Nah I’m just confused by the way you reacted to me saying “I’m not a Hegelian”, apparently completely dismissing cybernetics as a framework even though it can very much express Hegelian thought. It’s not like I said “I’m a seventh day adventist and all your arguments shall be in the form of bible quotes or they’re invalid” or something like that.

                    As far as I am concerned, regarding choice of base formalism other people use: Do whatever. If need be I’ll find the corresponding isomorphism in what I’m comfortable with, make the argument, project it back into your formalism, then say it out aloud. Coming to think of it when I put it like this my basic model might actually be category theory. Choice of formalism is very much a matter of convenience, and cybernetics happens to be darn convenient for pretty much everything, and has very important insights of its own to contribute.

                    I’m not read in Hegel and Hegelians so I’m asking you, do they talk about things like branching growth at the penultimate level following MSTs/sublation? It certainly neatly explains e.g. the increase in number in different erm sects both on the left and right following the initial clashes, in the sense that a sublation already exists and is exerting control, is in the process of getting refined as it is refining the old thesis-antithesis pair by deconstructing both.

                    (And yes I just called “left unity” anti-Hegelian, deal with it :)