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Cont: Cancel culture IRL Part 2

mumblethrax said:
I didn't claim you said it.

I'm saying that postmodernism, as people tend to use it here, doesn't have much meaning beyond signaling disapproval.
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Yeah, I think I may have said initially "right-wingers' characterization of what post-modernism is", but after a while it gets tedious typing all of that out.

If post-modernism is anything, I suppose the fundamental idea is a kind of self-defeating premise that there is no such thing as objective truth. It should be obvious why that is self-defeating, but then it becomes part of a two-step process of then arguing that whatever a "post-modernist" says is on an even footing with, say, the hard sciences. I think that this was the main target for Sokal, when critics of scientific objectivity tried to argue that science is no better at understanding the world than, say, critical theory. Julia Kristeva, for example, I believe that said E=MC2 was a sexed equation.

I think Sokal's point was perfectly well-made with his hoax, so I support it. However, these days, if you are trying to find someone arguing that there is objective scientific truth, and then there are some other, different important truths that may not actually be true, but are still true in an important sense, then who would be the poster child for this? Jordan Peterson of course. Nobody writes more like the right-wing reactionary idea of a post-modernist than he does. He blathers long and hard about Jung and Nietzsche and creates these incredible intellectual towers of ********, and the right-wingers, the reactionaries can't get enough of his total and utter drivel.
 
theprestige said:
I regard "witnesses" the same way skeptics do: The null hypothesis holds until they provide evidence for their claims.
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An in this case, the "null hypothesis" is that what was reported to have happened, actually happened until and unless it can be shown that it didn't.

https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/09/27/williamsburg-brooklyn-dog-park-racist-verbal-attack-video/

This Karen is a racist. She got called out for her racism, and her boss fired her for it. Cancelled! Karma's a bitch!
 
smartcooky said:
I regard witnesses the same way as courts to - a witness is accepted as being truthful and accurate unless shown to be otherwise.
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Assuming this random bystander was under oath and facing the possibility of perjury, then I'll accept your comparison to a courtroom. That said, everyone might should have a look at the Elizabeth Loftus book I linked earlier about how unreliable eyewitnesses can be, even under fairly ideal courtroom circumstances.

I'm still unclear on why you're ruling out the following hypothetical exchange:
Canceled woman: Go back to Long Island City and stay there!

Frederick Joseph: Did she not just tell us to stay in our hood?

Random bystander: She did.
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In such a scenario, the bystander is telling the truth, that is, the cancellee requested that FJ stay in his own neighborhood.
 
Ha! Funny coincidence. In this latest episode of Very Bad Wizards, Tamler and David talk for the first five minutes about Helen Pluckrose’s “support group” for academics besieged by “woke” ideology. They laugh about it and point out that this whole thing is “coddling for you but not for me” and they laugh about how of course the coddling is okay for them because in their case it is important, and remark about how obvious it is to everyone. Hmmm…. Apparently not that obvious.

I have to say they put my thoughts into words better than I can:

https://www.verybadwizards.com/222
 
Emily's Cat said:
Nah. Just don't be a racist. Nothing more is required. Being "antiracist" is equivalent to being "antitheist" instead of just being an atheist.

Also, recognize offensive, infantilizing, patronizing ******** when you see it ;)
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I think they might argue that “just not being racist” is quietist.
 
angrysoba said:
If post-modernism is anything, I suppose the fundamental idea is a kind of self-defeating premise that there is no such thing as objective truth.
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Postmodernism isn't really anything beyond a label that gets applied to ideas that challenge the modernist project--it's not a single cohesive school of thought at all. I don't think you need commit yourself to the idea that there's no such thing as objective truth in order to be called a postmodernist. I don't even see someone like Foucault as necessarily rejecting the existence of truth--he might be just critiquing the idea that we can get at it in an impartial way. I don't know; I don't have the patience to read him.

When people reject postmodernism out of hand, it reads to me like dogmatism--it implies that the modernist project is necessarily beyond reproach. That's a weird stance to take, and one that's fundamentally at odds with the aims of modernism, where dogma is meant to be anathema.

I think that this was the main target for Sokal, when critics of scientific objectivity tried to argue that science is no better at understanding the world than, say, critical theory. Julia Kristeva, for example, I believe that said E=MC2 was a sexed equation.
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I think that was Luce Irigaray, not that I can tell you the difference. But yeah, "fashionable nonsense" pretty much covers it.

I think Sokal's point was perfectly well-made with his hoax, so I support it. However, these days, if you are trying to find someone arguing that there is objective scientific truth, and then there are some other, different important truths that may not actually be true, but are still true in an important sense, then who would be the poster child for this? Jordan Peterson of course. Nobody writes more like the right-wing reactionary idea of a post-modernist than he does. He blathers long and hard about Jung and Nietzsche and creates these incredible intellectual towers of ********, and the right-wingers, the reactionaries can't get enough of his total and utter drivel.
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I think so too, but I don't think Sokal ever claimed to have demolished postmodernism, because he obviously didn't. We do probably owe him a debt for putting some of the obscurantists in a corner.

As for Peterson, you don't need to look further than his account of truth, which is half-baked nonsense. And yes, he looks awfully like postmodernist when attempting to elucidate it. But for that guy, everything is culture war, hence the weirdo conspiracy theories about "postmodern neo-Marxists" trying to undermine western civilization.

Of course, Neil deGrasse Tyson also has a completely boneheaded account of truth, and he's supposed to be one of the good guys.
 
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mumblethrax said:
Postmodernism isn't really anything beyond a label that gets applied to ideas that challenge the modernist project--it's not a single cohesive school of thought at all. I don't think you need commit yourself to the idea that there's no such thing as objective truth in order to be called a postmodernist. I don't even see someone like Foucault as necessarily rejecting the existence of truth--he might be just critiquing the idea that we can get at it in an impartial way. I don't know; I don't have the patience to read him.

When people reject postmodernism out of hand, it reads to me like dogmatism--it implies that the modernist project is necessarily beyond reproach. That's a weird stance to take, and one that's fundamentally at odds with the aims of modernism, where dogma is meant to be anathema.
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Yeah, it is all lumped together to be sure.

Besides, Marxism which also gets lumped in there is probably about as far away from post-modernism as you can get. He's up there with the most hardlined proponents of objective truth and sees almost everything as determined by economic (not cultural FFS!) factors.


mumblethrax said:
I think that was Luce Irigaray, not that I can tell you the difference. But yeah, "fashionable nonsense" pretty much covers it.
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Ah! Thanks for the correction. And yes, Sokal was arguing that that form of post-modernism - at least as far as it intruded on areas that he knew well - was nothing but jargon-laden incoherent nonsense. Bearing that in mind, it is hard to see how it can be the driving ideology of anything. This is why I don't trust B,L and P. They are making claims that don't seem to be borne out from their hoax.


mumblethrax said:
Of course, Neil deGrasse Tyson also has a completely boneheaded account of truth, and he's supposed to be one of the good guys.
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Yeah, my take on that - if you are referring to a video I have seen - was that he was just riffing on the theme and making things up as he went. He should stick to science communication as he is really good at that.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"You want to give rid of Fascists? You know who else wants to get rid of people? That's right Fascists! Which makes you a Fascists!" is such a stupid argument.

Everyone who doesn't understand the problem of the "Paradox of Tolerance" get out of both the discussion and the society please.

//ETA: And totally unrelated but **** "Fascists" being such a goddamn hard word to spell over and over...
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My grandparents and grand uncles got rid of a lot of Fascist when they were young. It was called World War 2....
 
d4m10n said:
I'm still unclear on why you're ruling out the following hypothetical exchange:

In such a scenario, the bystander is telling the truth, that is, the cancellee requested that FJ stay in his own neighborhood.
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Read this next bit very carefully.

I did not rule it out, I just place no weight on it because, as I said previously it was just "pure, idle speculation on your part, and for which you have not a single scrap of evidence in support".

Maybe the woman was an alien from the Zeta Reticuli star system and didn't understand English. Of course, this is pure speculation, I would place the same weight on it as I place on your speculation.... None . Without . Supporting . Evidence!
 
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angrysoba said:
Ah! Thanks for the correction. And yes, Sokal was arguing that that form of post-modernism - at least as far as it intruded on areas that he knew well - was nothing but jargon-laden incoherent nonsense. Bearing that in mind, it is hard to see how it can be the driving ideology of anything. This is why I don't trust B,L and P. They are making claims that don't seem to be borne out from their hoax.
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Sokal we can regard as an honest liar. I don't know that we can say the same about these guys. An honest liar probably would have said "Well, this didn't go to plan."

Yeah, my take on that - if you are referring to a video I have seen - was that he was just riffing on the theme and making things up as he went. He should stick to science communication as he is really good at that.
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The trouble is he's done it more than once, and he's still doing it as far as I can tell. One of the hits for this is his "masterclass" video. He's actively promoting this silliness as wisdom.

My take is that there's a lineage of physicists who are overtly hostile to philosophy, who probably owe this hostility to Richard Feynman. Like Feynman, they nevertheless end up doing philosophy, because it's indispensable. But because they reject the whole discipline, they make 101 errors.
 
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mumblethrax said:
Of course, Neil deGrasse Tyson also has a completely boneheaded account of truth, and he's supposed to be one of the good guys.
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He hasn't found a sophistry he doesn't like yet if he thinks it sounds clever.

Not that I find that some kind of thing to cancel him over. Could you imagine? Unless that criticism alone is canelling him.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Nah. Just don't be a racist. Nothing more is required
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Oh, yeah. That's really worked well for the last 250 years hasn't it?

Ignoring them, won't make them go away. A lack of consequences for being a racist will encourage and embolden them!

Cancel%20Racists.png
 
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