Agree or disagree?

[Anonymous No.6918921]

Scott Aaronson, a Computing Science Researcher at MIT:

>One final note: none of the positive or hopeful things that I said about philosophy apply to the postmodern or Continental kinds. As far as I can tell, the latter aren’t really “philosophy” at all, but more like pretentious brands of performance art that fancy themselves politically subversive, even as they cultivate deliberate obscurity and draw mostly on the insights of Hitler and Stalin apologists. I suspect I won’t ruffle too many feathers here at MIRI by saying this.

>By far the most important disease [in philosophy], I’d say, is the obsession with interpreting and reinterpreting the old masters, rather than moving beyond them. Back in college, after we’d spent an hour debating why this passage of Frege seemed to contradict that one, I’d sometimes want to blurt out: “so maybe he was having a bad day! I mean, he was also a raving misogynist and antisemite; he believed all kinds of things. Look, we’ve read Frege, we’ve learned from Frege, now can’t we just give the old dude a rest and debate the ground truth about the problems he was trying to solve?” Likewise, when I read books about the philosophy of physics or computing, it sometimes feels like I’m stuck in a time warp, as the contributors rehash certain specific debates from the 1930s over and over (say, about the Church-Turing Thesis or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox). I want to shout, “enough already! why not help clarify some modern scientific debates—-say, about quantum computing, or string theory, or the black-hole firewall problem, ones where we don’t already know how everything turns out?”

[Anonymous No.6918945]

A Cultural Marxist, a pleb, and a fedora.

Don't take anyone who doesn't acknowledge sexual dimorphism seriously. They've abandoned reality.

[Anonymous No.6918965]

>>6918945
You can't be a Cultural Marxist and Continental.

...at very least.

[Anonymous No.6918972]

>>6918945
>cultural Marxist

Oh boy, here come the Marxists to deny that anyone takes their beliefs seriously enough to put them into practice.

[Anonymous No.6918982]

>>6918945
This is a tough one. Anyone who believes that cultural marxism is a real thing and that we should be afraid of it is invariably a pleb, if they even read at all. Yet these plebs who fear this "cultural marxism" never leave their mother's basement, so how are we to know whether or not they wear fedoras? Anyways anon, I think you're just hoping that people are as stupid as you are and that you're using posts like these to test the waters. I really have no idea how else I'm supposed to interpret your post. Help us help you anon.

[Anonymous No.6918983]

>>6918965
The OP is basically "political correctness is axiomatically true, so let's just get with the program and move on."

The problem is, it isn't. There are politically incorrect truths that are taboo to discuss, but are nonetheless true. The stronger the grip of PC insanity, the more suppressed truths in the name of "truth."

[Anonymous No.6918994]

>>6918982
It's sick to me that all the self-proclaimed Marxists on /lit/ seem determined to treat it like a game, just another way to feel superior to their parents but not something they think can change the world. Surprise motherfucker, some people aren't as lazy as you and are out there putting those ideas to work.

[Anonymous No.6919000]

>>6918982
Look up Gramsci and Yuri Bezmenhov.

Gramsci theorized that the real enforcers of capitalism are its entrenched cultural moires and institutions, and that dismantling those is crucial to a true revolution.

Yuri leaked the Soviet subversive process, which is basically to incense and antagonize various special interest groups against each other until society collapses.

So...yes, these are Marxist subversive tactics being employed coincidentally (not) by radical left-wingers.

[Anonymous No.6919002]

He's right.

[Anonymous No.6919039]

>>6918994

I'm:

A) Not a Marxist

B) Working my way through school at a private uni, so lazy isn't exactly the word I'd use

I just know a Glen Beck tier conspiracy theory when I see one. I spent years getting worked up about all of these "impending doom" type threats that seem to always be JUST AROUND THE CORNER, and as always, the threats never come to fruition


>>6919000

It seems like you're searching for specific symptoms and justifying your view from the top down. How do you know that the symptoms that you're assuming to be the product of active cultural Marxists aren't just the product of a more educated populace?

[Anonymous No.6919053]

>>6919002
This
Continental is fucking trash and useless and worthless and stupid and dumb and gay

[Anonymous No.6919067]

>>6918921
Most "philosophy" is simply a boring word game. It's not as if philosophers could contribute to quantum computing, string theory, quantum cosomology, etc. Most of them don't have the IQ for it.

Physics and mathematics are sort of similar and don't intrinsically access "truth" like some say, but they also have the virtue of being interesting.

[Anonymous No.6919070]

>>6919002

He might be, but you should still make an effort to understand them before you try thinking on your own. If you're still discrediting people based on your political platform, you're not ready for thinking yet.

[Anonymous No.6919076]

>>6918921
>I mean, he was also a raving misogynist and antisemite
Stopped reading right there.

[Anonymous No.6919078]

>>6919039
I don't think most people are aware of the original intent behind their disruptive practices because they're far enough removed from the source material.

Western academia was heavily wooed and targeted by Soviet subversives in the 50s and 60s, and the subversives were largely successful.

So, you had a generation of Marxist professors and sister ideologies running academia and "educating" students and educators. Their zealotry was diluted somewhat, but it's no coincidence that radical feminism is suffused with so much Marxist terminology.

[Anonymous No.6919133]

>>6919067
I wouldn't expect a positivist reductionist like you to understand the world building potential of philosophy and metaphysics. At least read some Spengler or Heidegger before ranting about the greatness of science.

People like this guy want to say continental philosophy isn't "real" philosophy when it has the most roots in the actual Greek tradition of philosophy. Some of them even have the nerve to complain that it's just subversive and doesn't seek to justify the status quo. It's the analytic philosophers dream to dismiss entire philosophies with a wave of the hand which is not philosophy at all. I wouldn't trust this guy worth a damn, especially a computing science researcher to interpret Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, etc.

It's also the dream of people like you to marginalize continental philosophy as merely Marxism or the Frankfurt School, and say it's some ivory tower cult yet spreads and infects academia and the world at large.

As an elite, I have no interest in quantum computing, string theory, or technology or science as a whole. I'm merely in for the ride on one torturous Western experiment we can't back out of.

[Anonymous No.6919169]

>>6919133
>bla bla bla I'm a fucking cuck

[Anonymous No.6919173]

>>6919169
ebin

[Anonymous No.6919183]

>>6919133
Most "analytic" philosophy is boring, too. Just do pure mathematics or mathematical logic instead.

I don't even have anything against continental philosophy or analytic philosophy, aside from not finding them very interesting. I feel that a lot of the ideas they try to convey work better as a part of literature, rather than in some philosophical "argument".

[Anonymous No.6919186]

>>6919173
Nice memes, my friend. I know a few epic memes myself.

[Anonymous No.6919189]

>>6919133
Philosophy is endlessly interesting--it's the turning of our reality-parsing equipment onto itself, and then back onto reality, in an endless quest to achieve congruence.

[Anonymous No.6919214]

he and Chomsky should join up to tear down postmodernism

[Anonymous No.6919233]

I don't fucking get it

How could a high-IQ autodidact like Aaronson feel so compelled to put forward as shitty and authoritarian an argument as "continental philosophy is not philosophy"

Even the best of our minds are hopelessly shallow

[Anonymous No.6919249]

>>6919233
He probably considers some analytic philosophers as basically logicians and dosen't know of the rest. Continentals are generally more known, I think.

Maybe he's smart enough to not see much value in posturing and unclear arguments?

[Anonymous No.6919252]

>>6919233
A lot of intelligent people were religious.
Even the greatest geniuses reserve a spot in their spirit for stupidity.
I'm not an atheist by the way.

[Anonymous No.6919254]

>>6919249

https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/

That's where the OP quotes come from. He has a lot of good things to say about philosophers and philosophy, though the OP quotes are not misleading, he really does think those things

[Anonymous No.6919291]

>he wants to be part of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_IaVepNDT4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dXNmbiGPS4

[Anonymous No.6919609]

>>6919053
if you understood the philosophy at all you would understand those labels are mere projections of your insecurities.

[Anonymous No.6919614]

>>6919609
>"no u"
epic
10/10
good argument
blown the fuck out
etc.

[Anonymous No.6919626]

>>6919067
> It's not as if philosophers could contribute to quantum computing, string theory, quantum cosomology

It's funny that you would quote the most meme-y cutting-edge science. Descartes, Leibniz and Gödel to name a few, perhaps didn't work in quantum computing, but they did produce some valuable things for mathematics and science, and their activities as mathematicians was closely related to their work as philosophers.

[Anonymous No.6919653]

>>6919078
>implying it wasn't capitalism that caused this feminist bullshit.
>implying philosophy didn't warn all of academics about the PC bullshit storm that was brewing
>implying stem fields didn't consider themselves "immune" and are only now starting to realize the bullshit can reach them too.

[Anonymous No.6919658]

>>6919653
>>implying it wasn't capitalism that caused this feminist bullshit.
It wasn't.

[Anonymous No.6919693]

>>6919658

It certainly was. Initial ideological material for the feminist movement was absolutely Marxist in character, but the reason it has stuck around as anything more than purely academic rambling is because feminism is now understood to mean a movement with the magical capacity to double the number of people with spending power to whom any given company may advertise.

[Anonymous No.6919720]

>>6919658
Right, because women's rights with regard to taking equal part in capitalist-imperialism belongs to the ideology of the working class destroying the class structure of society and the value form while seizing the means of production for the proletariat dictatorship :^)

[Anonymous No.6919749]

>>6919658
Yes all that feminist AstroTurf is payed for by penniless Marxists and women's studies degree holders :^)

Now that you cant find love, which is free, with a nice young lady guess we all just have to spend our young lives consuming entertainment and other bullshit to fill the void.

oh, but thats just a coincidence :^) fugging marxists man.

[Anonymous No.6919751]

>>6918983
>There are politically incorrect truths that are taboo to discuss, but are nonetheless true.
>The fact that I won't list any makes this true.
Slick.

[Anonymous No.6919757]

>>6919693
>Initial ideological material for the feminist movement was absolutely Marxist in character, but the reason it has stuck around as anything more than purely academic rambling is because feminism is now understood to mean a movement with the magical capacity to double the number of people with spending power to whom any given company may advertise.
Not really. The reason why feminism is popular is because of the corruption of academia by communists.

>>6919720
>Right, because women's rights with regard to taking equal part in capitalist-imperialism belongs to the ideology of the working class destroying the class structure of society and the value form while seizing the means of production for the proletariat dictatorship :^)
Yes. Marxist literature is very pro-feminism. Women are "oppressed" by the evil bourgeois who force them into artificial gender roles, according to the commie.

[Anonymous No.6919764]

>>6919749
Trying to claim that feminism is somewhat a capitalist creation is absolutely ridiculous. It's a marxist movement through and through.

Did capitalists exploit this new feminist market? Sure they did, but they did not create it.

[Anonymous No.6919782]

>>6919757
>Yes. Marxist literature is very pro-feminism. Women are "oppressed" by the evil bourgeois who force them into artificial gender roles, according to the commie.
You missed the part where liberal feminists aren't Marxist at all. Marxism is necessarily feminist but Marxist feminism is a revolutionary consequence whereas liberal feminism is an idealist reform.

[Anonymous No.6919788]

>>6919757
>this cracker is serious

[Anonymous No.6919802]

>>6919782
When people complain about feminism, they don't complain about liberal feminism, but about this marxist garbage feminism which seeks complete equality of outcomes and condition between men and women.

[Anonymous No.6919803]

>>6919764

In what way does material dialectic cause feminism?

What was the historical tip that caused the conditions for feminism if not, under capitalism, women working for themselves becoming more profitable for themselves than staying at home?

this is LITTERALLY because good paying jobs went overseas so corporations could make more money for the top execs and share holders.
this is LITTERALLY because capitalism destroyed the possibility of a good working life that lets you support a family.

>hurr durr muh nuclear family capitalism where it was really just the govenment keeping an ultra tight leash on everything, i-i dont like gobment but i want to return to that.


you are confusing the fact that feminists use marxist terms as them being created by any marxist movement.

like what the fuck.


You can't be this cucked by capitalist ideology.

[Anonymous No.6919808]

i should make a bot that automatically searches for keywords like "marxism" and "feminism" so i know which threads to avoid

[Anonymous No.6919812]

>>6919658
I'm about as far away a Marxist as one can get, but capitalism did in fact cause this 'feminist bullshit'.

[Anonymous No.6919815]

>>6919803
>You can't be this cucked by capitalist ideology.
I'm not.

You, however, are entirely delusional by denying the marxist roots of modern feminism. Marxists have always hated what they called the "bourgeois family" and the subserviant role women played in such a social structure. It has been one of the early goals of marxism to destroy the "bourgeois family" and "liberating" the women in order for them to be able to participate in the workforce.

Oh, and literally is spelled with only one "t".

[Anonymous No.6919818]

>>6919812
Who wrote about wanting the destruction of the family? Adam Smith or Engels?

[Anonymous No.6919823]

>>6919802
They complain about a conflation of the two, as you have done.

[Anonymous No.6919833]

>>6919815
>manual labor family where the wife stays at home is "bourgeois"

LITTERALLY no.


The reason modern feminists use "marxist" ideology is because they are capitalist.
Capitalism incentivizes any advantage someone can get, this is why someone like Ayn Rand took government benefits despite saying they should not exist. She was remaining faithful to her philosophy by being a Hypocrite, her point was always that people will take any unfair advantage that they can, and she did.

Why would you not complain that you are underrepresented under in order to get a high paying job you don't deserve?

This is the essence of capitalism.

Arguing otherwise is like saying competition with high rewards does not incentivize cheating.

[Anonymous No.6919840]

>>6919833
>The reason modern feminists use "marxist" ideology is because they are capitalist.
That is the most lunatic thing I've read today.

Which marxists are capitalists in disguise and which aren't?

[Anonymous No.6919864]

>>6918921
>I suspect I won’t ruffle too many feathers here at MIRI
>MIRI

[Anonymous No.6919882]

>>6919833
Can't believe I'm about to defend Ayn Rand here, but no, she did not teach, at least in her books, that one should accept absolutely any advantage. She was just a poor, old hypocrite.

[Anonymous No.6919903]

>>6919840
>Which marxists are capitalists in disguise
Trotskyists
Frankfurt School
Leftcoms
Anarco-Marxists
Dengites

>and which aren't?
Maoists
Hoxhaists

[Anonymous No.6919904]

>>6919039
>what is the cold war?
Bruh, I went to a private university myself. There are old men teaching there who are still fighting on the red side of the cold war in academia, and they own that, they don't hide it. I respect them for their determination and conviction, as well as their erudition, but they are still trying to dismantle something that I think doesn't need dismantling. Unfortunately for smug basement (or in your case, shit-tier uni or engineering major) Marxists, there are indeed academics who think they are doing the lord's work by undermining the importance of the structures that support our capitalist societies. They have their own disciples, too, students who are taking it all to heart, not because they've been fooled, but because they are fighting the same battles as the professors, and going out into the most influential academies and companies to spread the gospel.

The only reason people on 4chan don't think it's real is because they didn't go to the right universities to witness it for themselves. It's only a secret if you're out of the loop.

[Anonymous No.6919914]

>>6919840

[Anonymous No.6919918]

>>6919903

[Anonymous No.6919927]

>>6919233
>IQ
i took an IQ test once, it told me to match up abstract geometric patterns and then I got a number

perhaps it just goes to show that IQ is a shit fucking system that at most serves to measure the aptitude of autistic STEMdrones instead of anything valuable

[Anonymous No.6919973]

>>6918921
oy vey

[Anonymous No.6920052]

>>6919903
Kek, that's pretty precise.

>>6919914
What part of my question triggers you?

>>6919927
Intelligence is basically pattern recognition and problem solving.

[Anonymous No.6920293]

>>6919927
>not understanding that most real world problems are solved with a combination of pattern recognition, memory and abstract problem solving

Sounds like they gave you a low number. The key to any demanding problem is breaking it down into its atomic pieces, which you appear to have trouble with.

>>6919904
This. Everyone on 4chan likes to speculate about Cultural Marxism, but some of us don't have to speculate.

>>6919812
Capitalism merely accepted the feminist bullshit the moment someone smart realized it would suppress the cost of labour and increase consumption. Capitalist leaders were not the ones pushing it from the beginning.

[Anonymous No.6920320]

>>6918921
He's right.

Modern "philosophers" are just Enki cultists reading the Mes and regurgitating them.

When tax dollars universities, all areas of academics suffer.

[Anonymous No.6920339]

>>6919833
Dude, communism and feminism have been heavily co-involved since the start. Feminism was a large part of what Engels worked on after the communist manifesto.

[Anonymous No.6920354]

>>6918921
I think he's wrong, but I don't think it's a useful or interesting debate to have.

Do interesting shit and talk about interesting shit with people. The tribal allegiances are not interesting when you're talking about philosophical issues.

[Anonymous No.6920372]

Like, I feel much the same way about this that I feel about NK Jemisin saying that epic fantasy as a genre is racist / sexist / conservative. Is it true? Maybe. It's certainly conservative, and frequently racist or sexist. But taking that and viewing it as a problem to be fixed, and evaluating the field in those political terms, is not a useful or fruitful way of thinking about it. On the other hand, I think the creative project of trying to build an epic fantasy that functions differently while still being recognizably epic fantasy is likely to be a very fruitful one...

Similarly in this case, judging about whether or not this is or is not philosophy, and what kind of political movements people supported, and what kind of orientation to culture they had, is fucking uninteresting. But looking at the problems they posed, and the techniques they used, and the reasons they did, that's much more likely to be fruitful. And in fairness to Aaronson he is making a point about praxis in the second paragraph (although not necessarily a well-considered one, because close reading of existing philosophers can be useful as a method) in the same sense that, fair play to Jemisin, she is trying to constructively build a different fantasy.

But I wish we could stop it with the tribal language and the political tests and all of this bullshit. Fuck off with it. It's useless and stupid.

[Anonymous No.6920499]

>>6920372

The only way to escape the game it is to quit playing entirely and let people be racist, sexist, or whatever if they want to be. Arguing whether or not something offends sensibilities is absurd and gives them the dominant position in the debate by default, since you're agreeing to an inflated criteria and trying to weasel into it; at least the way the general political narrative plays out now.

Effective 'bans' on topics or ideology in education are completely contrary to the entire institution in the first place. The entire american experience is derived from the assumed cohesion of different beliefs under the law (not that it's truly ever played out that way, but the spirit is there).

[Anonymous No.6920511]

I unfortunately agree.

[Anonymous No.6920519]

>>6918921
>but more like pretentious brands of performance art that fancy themselves politically subversive, even as they cultivate deliberate obscurity and draw mostly on the insights of Hitler and Stalin apologists. I suspect I won’t ruffle too many feathers here at MIRI by saying this.
I'm ashamed to study CS right now

[Anonymous No.6920531]

>>6918921
>I’d sometimes want to blurt out: “so maybe he was having a bad day! I mean, he was also a raving misogynist and antisemite
>something is inherently evil
Really?
>quantum computing
>mentions hitler and stalin
Alright nigger this is too much. Even a /lit/ greentext story is better than that crap.

[Anonymous No.6920564]

>that chest hair crawling out of his shirt

[Anonymous No.6921363]

>>6918972
thanks for the introduction

[Anonymous No.6921584]

>>6918921
>I mean, he was also a raving misogynist and antisemite
oh, the racist and misogynist card

for somebody who calls himself an intellectual, it is not surprising at all.

[Anonymous No.6921602]

>>6918983
>There are truths
You lost me there.

[Anonymous No.6921634]

>>6918982
>Anyone who believes that cultural marxism is a real thing and that we should be afraid of it is invariably a pleb

That's why the marxist faggots rushed to have it buried and associated with conspiracy on wikipedia, didn't they?

[Anonymous No.6921645]

>>6921634
Yes, they have almost been exposed before the eyes of the blind public, alas it didn't work, but hey, there's still metapedia, right?

[Anonymous No.6921684]

>>6921645
Pls, Conservapedia is where it's at

[Anonymous No.6922044]

Why would a researcher from CS talk about philosophy?