[HN Gopher] The Dogma of Otherness (1986)
___________________________________________________________________
The Dogma of Otherness (1986)
Author : m463
Score : 109 points
Date : 2024-09-30 06:06 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.davidbrin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.davidbrin.com)
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| Plato's Republic was more fun and engaging than other
| foundational philosophy texts I read as an undergraduate because
| the dialogue format made me want to interrupt Socrates in way
| that I don't usually experience when I read things that I
| disagree with. It activates the conversation lobes of my brain or
| something I guess, it's simultaneously frustrating and
| satisfying.
|
| Anyway, the introduction to this article does the same thing.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22055276-the-just-city
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Have_Never_Been_Modern
|
| A book for those who are interested in this viewpoint; though,
| its a bit technical, its audience is anthropologists.
|
| I agree and _disagree_ , in that, the concept of the "other,"
| which Brin subtly attributes to a crude reading of Hegel, is
| misused in contemporary academia, in contemporary culture, to
| create these what can't be said to be other than corruptive ideas
| like an infinite meakness in the face of what we cannot know
| about ourselves, but a meakness which is secretly all the more
| chauvinistic, as it claims, above all, that only _we_ are
| superior who recognize our "mediocrity," in the face of all
| those animals, cultures, potentialities of otherness, that fail
| to do so themselves.
|
| But, of course, Hegel's concept of the "other" is not this way at
| all. As JN Findlay argued, there is no substantial difference
| between Godel and Hegel's logic in terms of incompleteness: it is
| likely that, although the only philosophy which Godel ever
| adopted was Phenomenology, he would himself not have had any
| issues with the comparison. It is the "identity of non-identity,"
| its not that you "encounter" the other, its the recognition that
| the other is _already contained_ in what is non-other; which is
| to say, in a manner that Godel expressed far more clearly, that
| all logical systems, all systematic programs, contain elements
| that cannot be contained in the system, and the discreteness of
| the world only comes when those elements come to a head, when
| people are forced to, for Hegel, fight in a conflict to resolve,
| at the level of the Idea itself, what they cannot be certain of:
| this is why, science, what you 'd think is objective and
| independent, depends on massive political and social forces: and
| if the Israeli's, for instance, could not fight their wars, it
| would be the proof that ideology of faith is more powerful than
| the ideology of the world, of technological power. The "truth" of
| a missile only becomes apparent when it hits its target, just in
| the same way that one cannot know, here on HN especially, how
| _others_ will think of their comment, until they post it.
| kbrkbr wrote:
| > which is to say, in a manner that Godel expressed far more
| clearly, that all logical systems, all systematic programs,
| contain elements that cannot be contained in the system
|
| Wikipedia [1] summarizes better than I could:
|
| "The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent
| system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective
| procedure (i.e. an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths
| about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such
| consistent formal system, there will always be statements about
| natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within
| the system.
|
| The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first,
| shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency."
|
| That's seems a bit different than what you stated, to me at
| least.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%2527s_incompleten...
| moefh wrote:
| Indeed. Godel's theorem is very technical, and any use
| outside the very technical realm of its immediate application
| should be viewed with great suspicion.
|
| For example, if you take the statement you quoted from
| Wikipedia and replace "natural number" with "real number", it
| doesn't work anymore: it's been proven that the arithmetic of
| real numbers is decidable[1]. That means that the sentence
| you quoted from OP's comment is not true.
|
| Anyone inclined to use Godel's theorem in these philosophical
| contexts should maybe read the great little book "Godel's
| Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse" by Torkel
| Franzen. I'll leave here a quote from a review[2]:
| In addition to obvious nonsense, there are among the
| nonmathematical ideas inspired by Godel's theorem many that
| by no means represent postmodernist excesses, but rather come
| to mind naturally to many people with very different
| backgrounds when they think about the theorem. It is
| especially such naturally occurring misunderstandings that
| Franzen intends to correct.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decidability_of_first-
| order_th...
|
| [2] https://www.ams.org/notices/200703/rev-raatikainen.pdf
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| It was Brin, not me, who makes the connection, and says
| that Godel refutes Hegel. The scholar I mentioned, JN
| Findlay, has a rigorous understanding of both authors, but
| I couldn't quickly find an article where he makes the
| argument. Nothing to do with "postmodernist excesses" or
| whatever.
|
| Also read my comment, see this article here[0] about how
| Godel adopted phenomenology, which is the philosophical
| backbone of much of "postmodernism," so it would be
| entirely fair to make a connection between Godel and, say,
| Derrida, for instance, since they both claim to be in the
| same philosophical tradition. But that's just what the
| scholarly evidence suggests.
|
| In any case, Godel's proof has little to do with "math" in
| the sense of calculation but rather is a refutation of
| Russel & Whiteheads attempts at a logical foundation of
| mathematics, which is a philosophical endeavour. The
| mathematical aspect is secondary and merely follows from
| the philosophical argument which it entails. It is the
| simply the case that, Russel & Whitehead were themselves
| engaging with "Hegel" in Principia Mathematica, who of
| course had his own system of logic (cf. the Science of
| Logic), but they failed insofar as Godel's critique is
| accepted, and insofar as you accept Godel's critique you
| could make the inference (though by no means on an entirely
| solid basis) that Godel's work constitutes, in a certain
| sense, a re-interpretation of Hegel, though not directly.
|
| [0]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/goedel-
| phenomenolo...
| moefh wrote:
| > Nothing to do with "postmodernist excesses" or
| whatever.
|
| To clarify, I wasn't implying you or Brin were commiting
| "postmodernist excesses". The part of the review I quoted
| was explicitly saying that the book aims to correct
| misunderstandings that "by no means represent
| postmodernist excesses, but rather come to mind naturally
| to many people with very different backgrounds".
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Then there is Badiou, who perfected deconstructionism in
| his works like
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Being-Event-Alain-
| Badiou/dp/082645831...
|
| It's easy to see Derrida as a bullshitter who doesn't
| understand the texts that he abuses but hard to make the
| criticism stick because Derrida himself is unclear and
| hard to read.
|
| Badiou clearly _does_ understand the math that he 's
| abusing and you can't find anything really wrong with it
| except for the idea that anyone would care about Marxism
| when we know so much more about the science of
| civilization now. Many people come to the conclusion that
| Badiou is a bullshitter, but if he is a bullshitter he's
| much more rigorous in terms of working within the systems
| he works with and also much more clear in his exposition
| in that you really can follow what he says.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| If Badiou derives atheism from the topless nature of
| Nature (no universal set/set of all sets), perhaps I
| should try to interest him in Algebraic Theology?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41258636
|
| -- Herschel, they say you don't believe in G*d?
|
| -- What? Who says that?
|
| -- You know, people; lots of people are saying it.
|
| -- People? People say all kinds of things; you know
| better than that. Why didn't you just ask G*d directly if
| I believe in H*m or not?
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I'm no Badiouian myself, however Derrida and Badiou are
| no more difficult to read than Kant and Hegel. Just
| because its not easy to read doesn't mean its not worth
| your time to read.
| js8 wrote:
| I think that humanistic moral universalism (or simply humanism) -
| a moral philosophy which is a basis for e.g. Universal
| Declaration of Human Rights - requires the moral axiom that "not
| hurting humans is above all else".
|
| This obviously begs a question "who is considered a human?" in
| this moral philosophy. For this to work as intended, things like
| human cells (we can kill cells to save a human being) or
| societies like nation states (we can destroy or mutilate states
| to save a human being) have to be considered lesser than
| individual humans.
|
| But it gives rise to Russell-type paradox of how to include as
| many humans as possible without creating contradictions. (A
| similar problem is with democracy, it cannot be instituted or
| destroyed democratically.) These logical problems seem to come
| from the fact that you need some axioms at all. In the same way,
| you can be "dogmatic in your non-dogmatism".
|
| I also think if you accept the universalist moral position above,
| the questioning and distrust towards experts (authorities)
| becomes obvious conclusion. Authorities asking for humans to be
| killed or harmed (for example, going to a war) need to provide a
| strong justification.
|
| I also consider it very doubtful that the moral universalism was
| first invented by "Western civilization" or "enlightenment".
| Yeah, somebody was first, but it's not that a difficult idea.
| What might be new is the universal acceptance of it, but I am not
| so sure when I look around.
|
| However, in practice, the Russell-style paradox is rarely a
| problem. Yeah, there are edge cases like dolphins, or
| intellectually disabled people, but mostly we can figure it out.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _[moral relativism is] not that a difficult idea_
|
| Eg Aristotle (ca 300BC): _Some people think that all rules of
| justice are merely conventional, because whereas a law of
| nature is immutable and has the same validity everywhere, as
| fire burns both here and in Persia, rules of justice are seen
| to vary._
|
| I'd guess it was common over the last 10k years for educated
| and/or travelled people to be aware that their neighbours had
| different* dogmas, and in pre-colonial times (when it was far
| more likely that these neighbours were similarly located on the
| tech tree) the parochialism of colonialists ("Whatever happens,
| we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not.") would not
| have been as facile.
|
| http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
|
| * Tacitus seems to have written _De origine et situ Germanorum_
| partly as an objective description of germans, and partly as a
| subjective reproach of his Roman compatriots; during the XIX
| (which established many of the tropes we 've inherited as
| "common knowledge") the germans flipped this around: germans
| and french were in superpower conflict, and as the french
| --with a significant advantage in language-- had laid claim to
| inheriting the (centralised) Roman tradition, the germans
| retorted by digging up all the old arguments the
| (decentralised) greeks had made along the lines of "maybe the
| Romans have all the money, but we've got all the culture".
|
| (cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst#Schlageter ; ta
| panta Rei kai ouden menei )
| js8 wrote:
| > > [moral relativism is] not that a difficult idea
|
| Actually I mean moral universalism here, but thanks for your
| comment.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| My bad. For moral universalism, how about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism#Non-violence_(ahimsa)
| for an older example? (although their protected class is a
| bit wider than humanity)
|
| Looks like it goes back a ways, either infinitely (if you
| ask the Jains) or at least thousands of years (if you ask
| current historians), but both agree to further back than
| the Age of Pisces covered by Brin's essay:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parshvanatha#Historicity
| kragen wrote:
| my lagniappe for you today is Jian Ai
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mohism/#inclusive
| which probably you are familiar with but have forgotten
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| thanks for the anamnemetic reminder!
|
| according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gods_i
| n_the_Investitur... the list of gods (Jiang Tai Gong Feng
| Shen ----Lou Liao Zi Ji ) came via working group from the
| 3 (three) religions, which doesn't seem to leave much
| room for Mohism, but on the other hand https://en.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/List_of_gods_in_the_Investitur... suggests
| that as we can't be sure the list itself hasn't been
| tampered with, we certainly oughtn't be confident of its
| provenance.
|
| confirmed: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng Shen Bang
| San Bai Liu Shi Wu Wei Zheng Shen #Feng Shen Bang Que Shi
| Wen Ti (but unless I'm missing something, no ecumenical
| wg mentioned in the zh. article)
| kragen wrote:
| happy to help!
|
| Feng Shen Yan Yi is from the Da Ming though, 2000 years
| after Qin Shi Huang supposedly performed the Fen Shu
| Keng Ru and did in fact exterminate Mo Jia ; even if Xu
| Zhong Lin was concerned with strict historical accuracy,
| he had no mohists to consult, and even Mo Zi himself, if
| he existed, would have postdated the god-making event of
| the book anyway by nearly an entire dynasty
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| TIL; good thing I'm not around in the times of Li Si or
| I'd have to give up bad habits like using history to
| criticise the present, and stick to allusions related to
| agriculture and forestry instead?
|
| [divination sounds like a good out: in actually technical
| subjects, there'd always be a tension involved in keeping
| the cover reading halfway coherent, but divination books
| sound like they'd be amenable to running at nearly full
| channel capacity: that which is bright rises twice.]
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mohism/#historical
| makes it sound very much like they were out and out
| geeks:
|
| > _The philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics,
| and science of the later Mohist Canons were recorded in
| difficult, dense texts that would have been nearly
| unintelligible to most readers ... The Mohists helped to
| articulate much of the framework of classical Chinese
| philosophical discourse while advocating a way of life so
| at odds with most people's conception of the good life
| that it stood little chance of ever inspiring a wide
| following._
| Freak_NL wrote:
| David Brin is a great sci-fi author too by the way. One of the
| few who've written about dolphins flying a spaceship.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| He's an expert in dolphin cognition, he's said so himself. Also
| notice the "Ph.D." he put after his name? Don't look up what
| that's in though, else you might wonder what astronomy and
| electrical engineering have to do with dolphins.
| yownie wrote:
| >"I'm not a real expert," I tell them. "But the data are
| pretty easy to interpret. I'm afraid real dolphins simply
| aren't all that smart.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I really liked Startide Rising for its spacefaring dolphins,
| particularly how their attitudes contrasted with Humans' and
| the other uplifted or alien species - great concept overall,
| playful and sometimes poetic. And 'Earth' also had some great
| concepts and predictions, if you discount the global war
| against Switzerland. I didn't like 'Existence', because (to me)
| the structure and characters seemed primarily to be a vehicle
| for Brin to make impassioned points about humanity. They may be
| good thought-provoking points, but they killed any suspense.
|
| YMMV
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The global war against Switzerland is an interesting idea
| because it was a Boomer "child of WW2" idea that both
| understood banking in general as needing great reforms
| (especially in light of stolen Nazi goods being money
| laundered through Swiss bank accounts), and yet misunderstood
| a few true root causes and pointed fingers in the wrong
| directions (the money launderers at the top of the "funnel"
| rather than the ones making the most profits). As a
| prediction it doesn't survive things like the 2008 mortgage
| crisis, but as a concept it was meant to signify lack of
| certain globally-minded banking regulations and eventual
| banking fights like the 2008 mortgage crisis and the
| stalemate that was "Occupy Wall Street". That was certainly
| not quite a "global war", and certainly wasn't against
| Switzerland, but in a ballpark of what _Earth_ seemed
| concerned with. Also "war with Switzerland" is just a silly
| concept for fiction whether or not it was meant to be
| predictive.
| impostervt wrote:
| Pretty nice guy, too. Back in the early-mid 90s I was a
| teenager and got on some kind of David Brin fan site (this may
| have been on Prodigy it was so long ago), where the man himself
| would sometimes reply. He once responded to a message I posted,
| and it just about made my year.
| yencabulator wrote:
| On the contrary, I'd consider space-faring dolphins a trope.
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SmartCetaceans
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| This seems quite appropriate listening to half wits like Joe
| Rogan giving equal weight to an expert in a given topic and then
| cutting away unashamedly to some fruitloop with a theory that
| would make a sane person blush.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| I'll never get accustomed to the arrogance of people hating on
| the intelligence of some of the most successful people in their
| field.
|
| I don't have to like JR and I'd be surprised if he wasn't a CIA
| asset to influence public perception, but outright calling him
| a half wit is more telling about you and than him. Your
| reliance on titles and certified experts just exposes what's
| wrong in a post-COVID and post-truth world.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think it comes from a long experience of just how stupid
| people often are despite all of their success. While many
| certified experts are also often quite idiotic, particularly
| when talking even slightly outside their fields, or when
| parroting dogma within their field, there really seems to be
| almost no correlation between public success and what we'd
| normally call being smart.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See Pauling, Shockley and Josephson for scientists who did
| fantastic work to win a Nobel prize who then went crazy
| with alt health, racism and psionics. Appallingly to me
| there are people taking Penrose's "I can do math because I
| am a thetan" seriously in another discussion running now:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41696434
| m463 wrote:
| I like the variety of Joe Rogan guests.
|
| I think being able to listen to crazy viewpoints can help you
| untangle the fluff and propaganda in not only other speakers,
| but your own thinking.
|
| also, it prevents the echo chamber effect.
| schoen wrote:
| (1986)
| avazhi wrote:
| "Answer truthfully. You all believe that widely diverse points of
| view have merit, right?"
|
| Nope.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Not all orderings are total: just as {A} is a subset of {A,B}
| and {A,C} but neither {A,B} nor {A,C} are subsets of the other,
| one can consistently hold the position that point of view A is
| inferior in merit to points of view AB and AC while neither of
| AB or AC are inferior to the other.
| avazhi wrote:
| Sure. In many cases {A} isn't a subset of anything else,
| though, and is merely what we might call standalone bullshit,
| and unfortunately it's pretty prevalent these days.
| tomrod wrote:
| {A} is always a subset, by definition, of the power set.
| winwang wrote:
| Mostly tangential, but in mathematics, there are sometimes
| "canonical" objects, typically a 'natural' viewpoint which is
| proven to be unique and sometimes also 'universal' in a sense.
| So, in many cases, you can rigorously prove "this is the one
| 'best' way" (in some sense of best (in some theory)).
|
| A top-of-mind example is how a tuple `(A, B)` is "obviously" the
| (minimal) way you would have both objects A and B within one
| object: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_(category_theory)
|
| I find it interesting that the author mentions "nonscientists",
| as those seem less likely to be equipped with the experiences of
| simple/well-defined problems with "global optima". And in
| mathematics, the "what if there were another way" questions get
| followed by "suppose there were another way _W_...".
| Galanwe wrote:
| > A top-of-mind example is how a tuple `(A, B)` is "obviously"
| the (minimal) way you would have both objects A and B within
| one object
|
| I am confused as to what that means. A and B are most likely
| one of the thousands of possible modelisations for an abstract
| concept I am trying to model.
|
| Say I want to model a point on a plane, I could decide to model
| it as carthesian coordinates in an (A, B) tuple, or a single
| complex number as a scalar. The _best_ representation depending
| on how I plan to use that point later on.
| ordu wrote:
| Complex numbers are just tuples of real numbers with some
| rules how to add and multiply them.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Not quite. They can be _represented_ that way (but not
| uniquely, e.g. c=(a+bi) vs abs(c)=r, arg(c)=Th) or they can
| be treated as fundamental (defined by axioms), or as a sub-
| field of the quaternions, etc. If this seems
| counterintuitive, think of how the claim that "words are
| just sequences of letters" breaks down when you examine it
| closely.
|
| Also, I'm not seeing why a tuple (A,B) (with order) is
| simpler than a set {A,B} or a bag [A,B].
| ordu wrote:
| _> They can be _represented_ that way (but not uniquely,
| e.g. c=(a+bi) vs abs(c)=r, arg(c)=Th) or they can be
| treated as fundamental (defined by axioms), or as a sub-
| field of the quaternions, etc._
|
| Hmm... If we are looking for the simpliest way, then I
| don't think that sub-field of the quaternions is simplier
| than tuples with definitions for operations on them: you
| need to define quaternions for that.
|
| I'm not sure about definition of complex numbers through
| axioms. Probably it is the simplest way, because for
| tuples you need first to define real numbers and
| operations on them.
|
| _> Also, I 'm not seeing why a tuple (A,B) (with order)
| is simpler than a set {A,B} or a bag [A,B]._
|
| I don't see it either. It is the minimal way to define
| complex numbers (if we have chosen this path), but why it
| may be simpler in general case is not obvious.
|
| But in any case, I agree, that the whole idea of a
| "natural" viewpoint was not clearly stated.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| The idea that people in e.g. Asia don't tend to consider outside
| viewpoints as much as Americans is so absurd I'm not even sure
| what to say. If anything it's the opposite, but Westerners are
| too full of themselves to notice. It would require a genuine
| interest and to a degree immersion in foreign cultures.
| Prevailing Western ideology does not permit for that.
|
| To give just one example, people in China know much more about
| the US and its culture than vice versa. If America were really a
| questioning culture, it would be reversed.
| mc32 wrote:
| Do you mean some city folk or people in the hinterlands who've
| never seen any kind of foreigner ever in their lives?
| benfortuna wrote:
| I would think most are familiar with American television, or
| other cultural symbols like Coca Cola. Regardless of where
| they live.
|
| Whether or not that equates to understanding American culture
| I can't say..
| gus_massa wrote:
| My daughter [in Argentina] knows more about Halloween than
| about the local Independence Day. Every kids show in
| Netflix has a special episode about Halloween.
| mc32 wrote:
| This not an apt comparison. Else we could say American
| kids know more about Anime than about our Independence
| Day. Kids like kid things.
|
| I doubt people in the Podunks of interior China have much
| awareness of what the US is about other than what their
| official propaganda tells them.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| This sounds like an easily testable proposition... (for
| someone with better hanzi-fu than I?)
|
| EDIT: ok, so I was just on douyin.com (seeded with what
| deepl told me were "farmer" and "opinion of american
| people") and there's a fair amount of official line
| delivered by news commentators, a fair amount of not-the-
| best-of-the-Old-Country phone footage that's been
| helpfully subtitled in chinese, and not infrequent tubes
| of chinese-on-the-street commenting about the US or
| interviews in the US, eg
| https://www.douyin.com/video/7253009716257836347
|
| (the latter two categories are easy to spot because
| they've been subtitled in english as well as chinese, but
| I'm most curious about if the people standing in front of
| tractors while speaking their bit are ranting as their
| stateside counterparts often seem to be?)
|
| Anyone with better language skills have a better site, or
| better query?
|
| EDIT2: finally found the deep link: just click X to
| dismiss the QR code popup; no idea what that may be...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| There are companies in germany that sell red plastic cups
| in case you wish to throw an "American" theme party.
| mc32 wrote:
| That's great; we also have "Oktoberfests" and drink from
| big mugs. What does that mean; we know German politics or
| at least royal traditions?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| That means that, beyond all the movies, although germans
| have been watching Magnum, The Denver Clan, The Duke
| Brothers, etc. I doubt their american counterparts have
| been watching DSDS, Die Rosenheim-Cops, GZSZ, usw.
|
| They're not buying red cups because they've heard about
| them, or have seen them on product tie-ins; they buy them
| because _the american media they consume_ includes them,
| and red plastic drinking cups stand out as something
| _peculiarly_ american.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Any suggestions for entry points into chinese culture (beyond
| the 1961 Da Nao Tian Gong )?
|
| As an american, who had never met _anyone_ from a Warsaw Pact*
| country until the very late 1980s, I was very amused to run
| across a bemulleted late soviet boy band video (1988?)
| prominently including a Dick Dale and the Deltones t-shirt:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dezX61f3Ycg&t=87s
|
| * I had played Tetris and with Rubik's Cube, so there was a
| small amount of cultural influence coming the other way
| PaulHoule wrote:
| (On the theme of fantastic fiction)
|
| It's remarkably hard to find good translations of classic
| Chinese works such as _The Investiture of the Gods_ , though
| there is
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Teahouse-Retold-Investiture-
| God...
|
| China is having its best success with video games like
| _Genshin Impact_ but I 'd highly recommend the 2010 _Three
| Kingdoms_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL33A390995E9A7F00
|
| (you'd never see tough legendary warriors in western culture
| cry the way the heroes do in that show)
|
| Also there is
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne_Zha_(2019_film)
|
| which is pretty good despite being packed with the same kind
| of fart jokes you'd expect in a Dreamworks movie.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| (thanks for the jade!)
|
| TIL why I also got CGI results when I had earlier been
| searching for Jiang Ziya.
|
| [In a Super Dimension Fortress crossover, the singer would
| get a chorus of oboeteimasuka while the old man destroys
| the staircase?]
|
| Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CToPsT1UF10
|
| EDIT: for western weeping: porque no El Cid?
| rendall wrote:
| > _The idea that people in e.g. Asia don 't tend to consider
| outside viewpoints as much as Americans is so absurd I'm not
| even sure what to say._
|
| That is indeed an absurd idea. Fortunately, that's not what he
| wrote. He wrote that considering all points of view _to have
| merit_ is a liberal Western value.
|
| >> _' There's always another way of looking at things' is a
| basic assumption of a great many Americans... as a truly
| pervasive set of assumptions, it's pretty much a liberal
| Western, even American, tradition..."_
|
| At least, it was more true in 1986. Now the pendulum seems to
| be swinging away.
| bbor wrote:
| In what way can you consider a point of view without
| considering it to have merit? He's not discussing relativism
| (everyone is right about everything), just social evaluation
| of epistemological credentials. Aka "merit".
|
| Re: the broader question of "are/were Americans the most
| scientifically minded culture", I'd like to see some more
| rigorous evidence than "think of ancient Chinese emperors".
| Or, for that matter, "equatorial cultures tend to promote
| violence"??
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You can regard other POVs as a potential threat to your own
| hegemony, and thus feel the need to study them to
| understand how that threat may play out. Doing so does not
| inherently accord them any merit.
| rendall wrote:
| Brin wrote:
|
| >> _" You all believe that widely diverse points of view
| have merit, right?"_
|
| I wrote "consider" using it in the sense of "to believe"
| rather than "to evaluate". "Consider" was my word. Brin
| used "believe".
|
| And, I do believe he was talking about cultural relativism.
| That specific phrase has unpleasant philosophical and moral
| booby traps, however, so the left-leaning intelligentsia
| and fellow travelers of the time ignored these traps by
| subscribing to the concept without actually using the term.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| Brin isn't making any point about knowledge- in fact acquiring
| unfiltered knowledge of the other is a risky move in the dogma
| of otherness, as you may find something you don't like. Knowing
| something about the other that you don't like is of course
| devastating to your social status. His central example of the
| dolphins clearly demonstrates this distinction- the dolphin
| scientists are not popular with the crowd.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I got sucked into Japanese animation because it seemed to be
| culturally richer, in shows like _Urusei Yatsura_ and _Nadia:
| Secret of Blue Water_ I found a mash-up of western culture (UY
| has the same epistemology as Marvel comics) as well as
| traditional Japanese, Chinese and Indian cultures.
|
| Later I came to understanding _Nadia 's_ trick of continuous
| expansion was itself a trick similar to the Shepard Tone. And
| now I see every anime as being made by shredding up previous
| anime into parts and reassembling them. In _The Melancholy of
| Haruhi Suzumiya_ there is the term Bi Suo Kong Jian which is
| translated as "Closed space" and if I was going to write a
| blog about anime now I would use that as the title because that
| is exactly what anime is. Haruhi is bored of the real world in
| all its richness so she makes up a dreary place which actually
| a lot smaller.
|
| In anime and Japanese video games I see a number of different
| registers of morality. In games like _Tales of Symphonia_ and
| _Hyperdimension Neptunia_ it is common for principal
| adversaries to become members of the party and in mahou shojou
| anime like _Sailor Moon_ and _Precure_ it 's not an unusual
| subplot for enemies to attempt infiltrating the social group of
| the heroines and wind up being domesticated by the little
| rituals of Japanese life. In the 2010s most _Issekai_ have a
| swordsman who, when asked why he fights, says something about
| the need for the strong to fight to protect the weak while some
| bad guy says that the strong have the moral imperative to crush
| the weak. Nietzsche would call the first "slave morality" and
| the latter "master morality" -- it's not plausible that
| Castenada's Don Juan would have been as steeped in continental
| philosophy as he was because contemporary Asians sure are
| exposed to the ideas of the west.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Before understanding Japanese culture through anime,
| understand western culture through Cartoon Network.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Were I to wish* to learn american culture, Archer might be
| a productive entry point.
|
| * this is a counterfactual: I was "soaking in it"
| sangnoir wrote:
| The Classic American animated show _Spongebob Squarepants_
| is particularly emblematic of western values, particularly
| on the themes of self-reliance, and the importance of fast
| food restaurants as the second (or third) space. In this
| paper, I will argue...
| nerdponx wrote:
| You joke, but Spongebob wouldn't be nearly as funny if
| Bikini Bottom weren't both highly absurd and highly
| recognizable to American audiences.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Sure, why not?
|
| American kids cartoons have a _lot_ to say about American
| culture. Just to rattle off whatever was popular when I was
| a kid: The Simpsons, Spongebob Squarepants, Fairly
| Oddparents, Family Guy, South Park, Courage the Cowardly
| Dog.
|
| The fact that everything not overtly meant to be comedy is
| imported from Japan is interesting in and of itself!
| d0mine wrote:
| Try watching something like Peppa Pig in a foreign language
| --there is a lot of western culture in it.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Have you ever seen a show where the aliens come down and they
| go, "We know all about your culture! We've been watching your
| television shows since the 50s!" and then they act really
| bizarrely because they have no idea what real life is like?
|
| See _Galaxy Quest_ for the pinnacle of this trope.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| With all respect, it will forever endlessly bug me that
| comments like this seem to always be the top comment on Hacker
| News. This has virtually nothing to do with anything the author
| of this piece is trying to say. It's more off-topic than on-
| topic and derails the entire discussion to the point that
| people are now talking about anime and asking for onboards to
| learn about China.
|
| Those are perfectly fine topics to discuss, but this guy was
| talking about the disrespect for expertise. It's a feature of
| American democracy that we believe all viewpoints to be worthy
| of getting airtime is what he was saying. This guy giving a
| lecture who is an expert on dolphins is telling you they almost
| certainly can't comprehend the kind of thoughts necessary to
| form sentences and reason linguistically, and the audience is
| agasp because they heard differently from whatever the
| equivalent of a random YouTube channel was in 1986, which they
| consider to be equally authoritative because, in American
| dogma, authority doesn't really exist. Whoever we agree to
| elevate for a few years at a time because they won a popularity
| contest is the authority.
|
| Somebody in the audience also seems to misunderstand him and
| brings up that Chinese civilization has equally valid points of
| view compared to American, which I doubt this guy would say is
| wrong and has nothing to do with his point, and you somehow
| completely seized upon this one irrelevant detail that was
| basically interactive happenstance, has nothing to do with the
| point the author was really trying to make, and this is now the
| main discussion on Hacker News rather than discussing the
| content of the link that was submitted.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| People in almost any country know more about about the US (and
| China) then vice versa, because these are big powerful
| countries.
| pavon wrote:
| Note that this was written 30 years ago based on observations
| of people in the literary community. At the time cultural
| relativism had become very big in academia, and would grow and
| peak in the general liberal population over the next decade. I
| think what he said was a fair assessment of that microcosm.
| They were very interested in learning about other cultures and
| were fairly unique in their wanting to hold all cultures
| equally, although non-charitably that was often obtained by
| adopting a filtered rose-colored view of other cultures.
| However, Brin was overestimating how much of what he saw was a
| reflection of general western or US population vs his
| particular microcosm at the time. And it didn't hold in the
| long run. Political and social dogmatism is quite high now
| across the political spectrum in the US. Looking back, the idea
| that this form of cultural relativism came about because we
| were a melting-pot culture doesn't hold up well given it was
| only popular for a decade or two out of our country's 250ish
| years of history.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| I think this is more abstractly expressed by Lewis' Convention
| book.
|
| "Dogmas" as fulfilled expectation about other's expectation's
| expectation (and so on recursively ad infinitum).
|
| Necessary, in Lewis opinion, to solve coordination problems.
| rendall wrote:
| This was a common view back then. By 1986, Americans had long
| been culturally and geographically insulated from other cultures
| and nations. Post-modern philosophy was in full flower, promoting
| the idea that no world view nor cultural practice is inferior to
| any other. It was quite easy for the liberal wing of the American
| intelligentsia of the time to adopt a paternalistic universalist
| outlook, given that there were no immediate challenges to this
| perspective. In fact, examples of conservative-driven imposition
| of American ideals abroad were actively punished: Viet Nam,
| Iranian Revolution, Korea, etc. The Soviet Union appeared to be
| going strong.
|
| I'd argue that the rise of the internet, 9/11, Iraq and
| Afghanistan wars, fears of disinformation and misinformation and
| foreign influence, bot-farms, the rise to prominance of China,
| all put the lie to this idea that all ideas have merit. It's an
| idea that is held by few American intellectuals these days,
| conservative or liberal.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| > to look, as a species, into the mirror and see neither Lord of
| Creation nor Worldbane, but merely the first of many in the world
| to rise to the role of caretaker.
|
| I came to the same conclusion recently. As a species we have
| almost total control over earth. Caretaker - or BDFL if you
| prefer - seems to be the only viable long-term role for our
| species at this scale.
|
| Whether or not we're heading in that direction is another
| question. But it's interesting to watch nations, societies,
| businesses, etc, attempt to build sustainable structures and
| lives for their constituents using the power structures they
| believe best. A microcosm of the same problem on a smaller scale.
|
| It's not super encouraging how many different civilisations,
| societies and commercial enterprises have died and failed before
| us, but maybe diversity and resilience go hand-in-hand, and those
| values are how we need to approach the natural world we now
| control.
|
| Of course, that all sounds a bit like the self-serving Dogma of
| Otherness, and another example of the double-standard in
| philosophy that "values that prioritise others actually elevate
| myself with their nobility".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > but maybe diversity and resilience go hand-in-hand
|
| As long as the values that are against resilience are not part
| of that diversity...
|
| I'll say, I have no idea how to get anything close to
| sustainability from a human society. Thankfully, making
| something that can last for a few centuries looks like a much
| easier problem.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My first take was it's another case of sci fi fans discovering
| that the author doesn't believe in the stuff they write.
|
| Charles Stross confessed that he doesn't believe in space
| colonization and interstellar travel. As a non-fiction author
| Issac Asimov railed against the belief in ESP although he wrote
| as many trashy stories about ESP as any author had to to get
| published in the Campbell era. Maybe Heinlein never broke
| character or maybe his combination of earnestness and naivety was
| real (and provided future authors such as Haldeman a chance to
| write stories somewhere between a homage and refutation such as
| _The Forever War_ and _Worlds_ ) Never mind the writers of
| fantastic fiction masquerading as non-fiction such as Lily,
| Castenada, Roberts, etc.
|
| To be a fan of fantastic fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, comic books,
| etc.) you have to be able to hold an imaginary world and its
| rules in your mind and take it seriously enough to care what
| happens to the characters. A certain kind of pornography can
| interest people for a while without any conflict but _Superman_
| would be entirely uninteresting if he didn 't have meaningful
| limitations or worthy adversaries. (And he struggles... in
| _Superman Returns_ he rescues people who are launching a freaking
| space shuttle (unsafe at any speed to begin with) off a
| commercial airliner. I 'm sorry if your judgement is that bad you
| don't deserve to get rescued.)
|
| A good example of a 'serious' short story is _The Cold Equations_
|
| https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-cold-equation...
|
| where the story depends on believing certain constraints about
| space travel. The more fantastic it gets the more you're going to
| think it's silly unless you've got the ability to jump into a
| counterfactual world with both feet.
| gwern wrote:
| > Cliff Stoll confessed that he doesn't believe in space
| colonization and interstellar travel.
|
| Perhaps you mean Charles Stross?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| You're right! This has been corrected. Thanks!
| the_af wrote:
| Hey, don't disparage Asimov's _Foundation_ stories! It 's true
| Asimov was an atheist and also stood against pseudoscience, but
| his stories are not trash! ;)
|
| > _Charles Stross confessed that he doesn 't believe in space
| colonization and interstellar travel_
|
| I've never read Stross but I've experienced a similar
| dissonance with John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" series. If you
| stop at his first novel, you could easily believe (as I did)
| Scalzi is pro-war and his stance is that aliens must be met
| with firm military force "or else". He even has a token
| pacifist self-righteous character who insists there must be
| another way, then immediately gets torn to shreds by evil
| aliens for his naivete (to everyone else's applause). I was
| disgusted and ready to toss the series into the garbage bin.
| Then... well, I'm not saying he's a good writer, but his later
| novels in the series paint a different picture. Well done
| fooling me, Mr Scalzi!
| yldedly wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| RHSman2 wrote:
| A great read.
| m463 wrote:
| To be honest, I posted this because I saw similar discussions
| s/dolphin/AGI/
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