Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Jordan B Peterson"
channel.
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
It might be useful to define what we mean by "an interpretation" of a text.
Words are networks of associations. Some of these associations are explicit denotations (which consciously limit and focus the word enough to make it useful, and are included in a dictionary). Some of these associations are implicit connotations, and these can include "typical" context, famous usages, sense-memory associated with the word, vestigial literal meanings from centuries past, personal / unique associations, and more - whatever contributes to your intuition of what it means. This also holds true of phrases of words.
Your brain keeps track of these physically through the way neurons are networked together, and convolutional neural nets keep track of them (as far as they keep track of anything) by connections between "nodes" in that net.
Sometimes, these networks are congruent with one another in some way; we call these analogies. You can extend these comparisons into allegories, fables, and parables.
Just like tou can "interpret" a word by picking some associations over others, you can "interpret" a text by emphasizing some set of associations over others. You can emphasize the literal associations of an author's writing, for example. Or, you can emphasize whatever your ideology tells you to emphasize, even if every other association is working against you.
And, just like using word associations or abstract images to plumb someone's psychology, you can use someone's interpretation of a text to judge their psychology and character, or whether they're incapable of independent thought because they're in the throes of some overwhelming ideology.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@jsharp9735 Eh, not compared to the German military-industrial complex that Eisenhower was thinking of when he wrote his speech. Krupp was basically the prince of Essen, bankrolled the Nazi party when it was nearly bankrupt, and sold arms all over the world. He was, for a time, the world's richest man -- and not by any small amount.
US defense contractors, on the other hand, are scattered up and down the Fortune 500, making up no more than 4% of this country's GDP. CEOs tend to receive middling compensation, again compared to other Fortune 500 companies. Compared to Silicon Valley companies, they're bit players on the national stage.
Speaking of those Silicon Valley companies, they are the Scientific-Technological Elite that Eisenhower warned about. As the Twitter Files indicate, they are FAR more of a threat to the freedom and financial security of Americans than the military-industrial complex.
It's Google's world, we're just living in it.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
"The gross idea of the greenhouse does have some value"
Yes. Doing a simple thermal balance calculation for the Earth, including albedo, radiative heat transfer from the Sun, and radiative heat transfer into space, is something any sophomore Thermo student can do. You can see that the Earth is warmer by a number of degrees, than that simple heat balance would imply.
Further, you can use the differential between the opaqueness / transparency of CO2 over the spectrum of sunlight, and its opaqueness / transparency over the spectrum of the Earth as a blackbody radiator, to calculate how much warming different partial pressures of CO2 would cause. Dr. Lindzen's favorite word, "minuscule", is perfectly applicable here.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
"When you start talking about family you start talking about the normative point of view, you must have children"
You do realize, don't you, that the trade-off for not having children is the collapse of your society? Since I have a stake in that, I'm perfectly comfortable establishing that as a norm.
What we do about those who do not follow the norm, is an interesting question. There's a huge spectrum, from the absurd extreme of e**cution, to coercive participation, to justified disincentives like depriving the childless of old age benefits, to taxing them at the level of expense of 2.1 children, to portraying them as villains in popular media, to denying them any socially acceptable access to s*x, to merely lecturing them about duty, to neglecting to represent them at all in popular constructive media.
The distance up that spectrum we should embrace, should depend on the degree to which we've fallen below a 2.1 replacement rate. The idea that we're not enforcing this norm at all, is a predictable disaster that future societies will see as one of this era's most foolish ideas.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
"The Christian apocalypse is a spiritual reality that occurs in some heavenly place" - You need to read CS Lewis' "Doctrine of the World's Last Night"
"For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came."
Also, from Lewis' "Living in an Atomic Age"
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
1
-
1
-
1
-
1