English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mitch

4:00 AM

technologically? socially?

MετάEd

Socially.

It's simply more conservative than Iowa.

Joseph Weissman

Deleuze and Guattari are always emphasizing the way minority, whether social or ecological or musical, effect a kind of mutation of the major, taking it to its highest power, decoding or "deterritorializing" it...

MετάEd

So more stuff was conserved.

Mitch

As in plainly open about things considered not politically correct?

conservative isn't necessarily backwards/regressive... ha ha! I don't believe that at all!!

Joseph Weissman

@Cerberus to be honest, I'm not even that avid a fan of Baudrillard; I was compelled to dramatize his thesis in response to your perspicacious inquisition :)

Mitch

4:02 AM

The whole point of liberality is going forwards, changes (and not just to replace one tyranny with another)

Joseph Weissman

Neoliberalism is just as compromised by the market as conservatism today, no?

The third way, corporate nationalism, has won...

Mitch

@JosephWeissman I find it hard to stomach the...modern 'continental' philosophers...too much that is just idle speculation of interpersonal psychology, really articulately expressed.

Joseph Weissman

The challenge, as @Cerberus and I were discussing earlier, is how to reconfigure social relationships so that we no longer require wage-slavery as an inducement for work -- without falling back into relationships of direct domination.

Mitch

@JosephWeissman I am being much more naive/simplistic than those labels. Conservatism = keeping things the same even if they aren't helpful. liberalism = ... I don't know.

@JosephWeissman everyone's gotta eat. and here are too many people for foraging or hunting too work. Once we get a replicator and cold fusion, then we can spend all our time worrying about leisure.

Joseph Weissman

(There are definitely problems with critical theory today. I guess it would just be important to recognize the degree to which Continentalism, to the degree that has any significance that isn't pejorative, has effectively won the debate. Theory is moving ahead on the terms set out in Deleuze, Derrida, etc. -- and of course beyond them, but we can't deny their critical role without risking missing the stakes of thinking today...)

Well, that just seems plainly reductive. You've just eradicated all art and literature too :)

MετάEd

4:08 AM

> Conservatism at its heart is the champion of the accumulated wisdom of many generations, protecting it from the new wisdom of the current generation or of individuals. At its best, it preserves our institutions from ill considered changes. At its worst, it interferes with wise innovations and preserves evil in the form of social institutions such as American slavery.

> Liberalism at its heart is the champion of personal liberty, protecting it from fascism, whether despotic or the tyranny of the majority. At its best, it rights past wrongs and comes to the aid of the defenseless. At its worst, it acts without foresight and creates evil in the form of unintended consequences of social reforms such as rent control.

Mitch

@JosephWeissman I do realize that 'continentalism' is pejorative and I feel it that way, and am sometimes surprised when it is so insightful. I just happen to come from a very technical background and so it almost always comes across as bullshit to me.

MετάEd

Source: metaed.blogspot.com/2009/09/…

Mitch

@MετάEd thanks. well said.

Joseph Weissman

I mean, in very big picture terms: I think it's really important to read charitably. To remember that another human spent a lot of time and energy into creating the words in front of you. To be generous, and so on.

Cerberus

Oh, noes! I leave for two minutes, and I have several text walls to catch up on!

Joseph Weissman

4:10 AM

(I really only say that because pragmatically it can be hard to see anything valuable and useful without doing that.)

Onoes!!!

Mitch

@JosephWeissman I don't know about reductive, but certainly simplistic because my thoughts are not that deep. But then much of such that I read is also reductionistic then, if it is at all coherent.

Joseph Weissman

Bachelard, in the beginning of Psychoanalysis of Fire, has this really interesting discussion of the difference between the poetic and the scientific frames of mind.

He says while it's good and right for us to be sympathetic to our fellow human beings, it's natural for scientists to be antipathetic towards the inert, inhuman objects of their study.

Nevertheless, there are certain objects which have such a distorting affective impact that we can't gain sufficient objectivity to study them dispassionately.

Mitch

@JosephWeissman If I seem dismissive as opposed to charitable, I'm just giving an unjustifiable snap assessment. I couldn't think of an support for any statement I've made!

Joseph Weissman

(He says fire is one of these; "psychoanalysis of fire" then just meaning the analysis of the psychological impasses to grasping fire as an object of scientific study.)

Cerberus

@MετάEd To me, liberalism is not restricted to social liberalism. Economic liberalism is liberalism too. All classical liberalism means is "less interference by the state", whether in the economy or in people's private lives.

Neo-liberalism is a more specific, purely economic school of thought.

Mitch

4:15 AM

@Cerberus I always think of the self-governing pre-city states or germanic/celtic tribes of Europe... it's all liberal and conservative at the same time. arbitrary rules made up as they go a long.

Joseph Weissman

experiences a simultaneous succession through all conceivable conversational topics

Mitch

I'm sure there's a single sateement you can make that will be sufficient to answer all of them at once.

Joseph Weissman

"This too shall pass"?

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman How could social relationships be so reconfigured? I can't think of a way (except that they are already for the most part not focused on economic gain/inequality).

Mitch

Something like 'Oh...that's an interesting perspective' or 'So, it has all come to this'

@Cerberus create moon bases. total control just for survival.

Cerberus

4:17 AM

@Mitch I'm not sure what you mean...how are Germanic tribes liberal, and how are they conservative? Any society is in certain ways both...

Joseph Weissman

@Cerberus so that's the question. That's exactly why we can't let liberals blackmail us into thinking that speculating about alternative social and economic arrangements is utopian or secondary.

Mitch

YOu can do anything you want, within reason.

Cerberus

@Mitch I see. takes notes

Joseph Weissman

In fact, in light of the economic, intellectual, financial and ecological crises we are rapidly approaching, the only "utopian" position is the notion that we can continue indefinitely as we are.

Cerberus

Maybe we can.

Mitch

4:19 AM

@Cerberus Particularly for pre-roman Germanic tribes, one 'law' they had was about murder. If someone killed someone else, whether out of accident or anger, what you had to do is pay the family. Done. No retribution, no vendettas. just a payment (were-geld)

Joseph Weissman

Give into collapse?

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman But does anybody have any suggestions? Communism didn't work...

Joseph Weissman

Give up?

There is a voluntary extinction movement, believe it or not.

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes, such laws existed, although of course rules varied wildly between tribes.

Joseph Weissman

On the contrary, communism will win :)

Cerberus

4:20 AM

Haha.

How?

Mitch

The point is...the point is not about the particular law (though it is fun to see how other people 'did it'.

Joseph Weissman

I mean, I think the challenges we face this century are challenges of the commons, right?

("Republic" originally meant something like commonwealth, by the way -- a "public thing", right?)

Cerberus

In a way...but what challenges aren't?

Mitch

it's that the state control can be different things (one in Sparta, one in Athens, one in the Alemanni, one in the Tuareg)

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Yes, the public cause, commonwealth is not such a bad translation.

Politeia means something like a society of citizens.

@Mitch Yes...

Joseph Weissman

4:22 AM

An increasingly global and technoscientifically-empowered commons -- and increasingly co-extensive with nature: intellectual property, ecology, genetic manipulation; we face real and very new ethical challenges

There aren't easy answers to these; we haven't had to face these sorts of decisions before

Late capitalism brings a host of qualitatively new problems to the species

Cerberus

Many of these challenges are old...

Copyright and pollution are old.

At least several centuries.

There was pollution in ancient cities.

In prehistoric villages, even.

Mitch

@MετάEd: where these the changes you were suggesting?

1

A: Use of determiners as adjectives

Determiners occur mostly in the same positions syntactically as adjectives do, and have a modifying function of nouns like adjectives. Determiners don’t act exactly like other adjectives but they act enough like them to be classified usefully there. For example, the answer to the question “which...

Joseph Weissman

Sure, but certainly not on the scale they are today. Threatening to destroy the human-habitable ecology of the planet, or to render genetic originality meaningless through mutability, etc.

Mitch

later dudes and dudettes...it's so late.

Joseph Weissman

later!

user19161

4:27 AM

@Mitch What time is it there?

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Making the plane uninhabitable? But nobody claims that that will happen?

@Mitch Night!

@JosephWeissman Direct genetic modification is very new, certainly. However, is it really that different from the way cross breading has created new species over the millennia?

Joseph Weissman

I mean, even if we discount global warming, thermal-industrial output alone will start cooking the planet.

Cerberus

Naaaah.

By the time it gets too hot, many of our industries will collapse, and output will be reduced. Or any of a thousand other things can happen.

Joseph Weissman

At any rate, it's a pretty straightforward extrapolation -- we can always hope things will change, but... The global-warming scenarios outlined by ecologists are pretty nasty and nothing's really been done to check carbon output.

Cerberus

Nowhere near making the planet uninhabitable...that's all I wanted to say.

Joseph Weissman

4:34 AM

There's a lot of disasters that plague the commons that are invading us.

Some are new, some are old with new fangs.

Cerberus

Yes, in a way.

Joseph Weissman

Only a robust and muscular communism can equal the scale of these challenges.

Cerberus

I don't know...we have always found ways around problems. History is long.

Joseph Weissman

And monotonous...

Cerberus

I think the tide on copyright and patents is already about to turn.

@JosephWeissman Not at all!

We have faced so many challenges!

We have wrought lots of destruction.

Joseph Weissman

4:36 AM

(Serres says in Biogea, sad and bloody and monotonous enough to make a rock cry from boredom -- he contrasts with the wonderful diversity of nature...)

Cerberus

But the race never died out.

Joseph Weissman

Not yet.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman But we are precisely as monotonous or varied as nature, since we are part of it!

Joseph Weissman

Some argue the thought/threat of extinction is what inspires philosophy...

Cerberus

Heh.

Joseph Weissman

4:37 AM

(Brassier, for instance, in Nihil Unbound...)

amazon.com/Nihil-Unbound-Enlightenment-Ray-Brassier/dp/…

Cerberus

That's a lot of references...

Just my two cents.

user19161

5:21 AM

Anyway, to avoid future trouble for myself, I think I should stop casting delete votes and downvotes. QED. Over and out!

tchrist

10:00 AM

Tomorrow comes too soon. Let the hour of the wolf play out its miseries on others than ourselves.

Sudhir

Hi

TemporaryNickName

11:31 AM

hey guys

I have a question

I was watching American horror story season 2 last time and one of devil character was wearing

polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=8046071

Is this a funeral hat?

Matt Эллен

11:43 AM

@Cerberus as different as the printing press is to the internet.

JonW

Question for you all. We've had a question over on UX.SE that's been racking up the votes and views, but not sure it really belongs there. Is it more suited for this site instead (and if the OP wanted to migrate it would you accept it?)

35

Q: Why do we say we "browse" to a place on the Internet when we actually download a web server’s content to our browser?

Browsing the web is a common daily task for more than a billion users, and we do not pay much attention to it. We just “browse to a place” or ask our laughing friend across the table “where she is on the Internet” since we might want to “visit the same place” having the same experience she’s havi...

Matt Эллен

@TemporaryNickName it's black, so could be worn at a funeral. it could also not.

RegDwighт

@tchrist first time I hear that. But here's the second Google hit for "delete review queue downvote site:meta.stackoverflow.com", which you edited it on January 6th:

5

Q: Somewhat confusing interaction between the low quality queue and pending delete list

Consider http://stackoverflow.com/a/14172477/131433. It shows up on the delete list with a pending delete. If you click on that list entry, however, you don't see a delete vote. The reason, I believe, is that the answer was never downvoted. From the point of view of the main site UI, only downvo...

bug review 10k-tools vote-to-delete trusted-user

...and answered.

Matt Эллен

@TemporaryNickName also I would describe it as a "net fascinator" or a "netted fascinator"

RegDwighт

Doesn't look like you quoted it here, though. So perhaps that's not the one you mean.

Matt Эллен

11:51 AM

@JonW kind of a philosophical question. It could be turned into an etymology question. The etymonline entry doesn't really help, so there is scope for something interesting.

TemporaryNickName

@MattЭллен I see thx.

Matt Эллен

no probs

JonW

@MattЭллен Does that mean it should be here, or with it get voted OT as it is?

Matt Эллен

12:08 PM

@JonW If I saw it on here as it is, I would leave it be. I might ask what research they've done, but I wouldn't vote to close.

JonW

I'll run it past the OP to see what he thinks. Had a few migration flags and comments but not sure what he thinks.