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urpriest asks:
In relation to the discussion about physicalism, something I'd like to understand: Suppose there's a D&D-esque world. Souls exist, and you can track their progress from their creation to embodiment to the afterlife to oblivion. You can capture them, if you're sufficiently evil, and use them as a power source. It's possible to extract them from people, to put them back in, and to change their properties. In such a world, is physicalism true, or false?
This is actually the more pressing question to me. A lot of people have expressed worries along these lines: even if we discovered something non-”physical”, if it obeyed certain laws and interacted with the “physical” in certain ways, we would begin to learn a lot about it and eventually it would become part of our picture of “physical” reality. After all, Chomsky writes, at its time, Newton’s conception of gravity had a “nonphysical” feel to it because of the way bodies were affecting each other at a distance. But because it was lawlike and legible it quickly entered into our picture of physical reality. A certain sort of understanding of consciousness would do the same.
This is related to the “is magic a good explanation in Westeros?” question I saw a few people discussing recently. I was considering mocking up a post about that, with notes on the relevancy for various philosophical questions. But anyway I guess my answer is “good question”, for better or for worse.
See, this sort of thing is why when I see someone proposing anti-physicalism, I assume they mean something like “there are phenomena that could never be investigated by an institution similar to physics”. That may be excessive steelmanning though.
Reblogged from:
ogingat
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Fairly high! It’s of mostly historical interest now. But I wouldn’t fret. Most of the resources you may think you need from logical positivism can be taken from one or another form of naturalism or physicalism, which are close to sacrosanct in certain quarters. I don’t think it’s even quite right to associate Yudkowsky with logical positivism. Arguably a logical positivist would have next to nothing to say about interpretations of quantum mechanics, for instance.
light-rook said: What’s wrong with it? That it doesn’t account for the proto-science of doing science?
Sort of. I’ve tried to explain this on here before and didn’t do a great job (although jadagul said he found me convincing, so that’s something). The Stanford Encyclopedia article is good and very sympathetic to the positivists.
IMO, the best argument against logical positivism is that modern analytic metaphysics “works”, i.e. that it generates results that become widely accepted and can be built upon in nontrivial ways, like the existence of the necessary a posteriori.
Reblogged from:
ogingat
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classidiot replied to your post: Let’s all cleanse our palates of bad S…
How do you guys pronounce “Cauchy”
“Caoww-shee”
There’s an “oww” in there because he’ll kick the shit out of your brain with his theorems!!
I always remember him from the famous song, “Voulez-vous Cauchy avec moi”.
Reblogged from:
bartlebyshop
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Can’t believe nobody has done this yet.
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If I was a stripper I would call myself The Ogre, because I grind men’s bones to make my bread.
Reblogged from:
gruntledandhinged
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This article, I found the lens tiresome. Captain Kirk, John McClain, and Axel Foley were all just as immortal as Iron Man, kill as many people as Captain America, and pay as little attention to collateral damage as Thor does. These are objections to action movie conventions that are older than I am, but attempting to single out Marvel movies.
You’re right they’d never do that with Kirk or the Die Hard franchise.
Basically it’s the worst sort of nerd nitpicking
pretending to be critical analysis of the movie market,Evidence? I don’t see them pretending anything here. Unless you think their “I ate five jello-based entrees and puked” articles are pretending to be critical analyses of 50′s cuisine, it seems kind of silly to claim their “I watched all of the Marvel movies back to back and nerd nitpicked about them” are pretending to have anything to do with the movie market.
Again, this is what they do with literally every other franchise that their readers have any chance of enjoying. Today’s article on the Terminator franchise was worse than pretty much any Marvel-based article I’ve seen them do, and I’m saying that as someone who has no emotional attachment to Terminator whatsoever.
And you notice how those two articles are about things specific to the relevant franchises? I didn’t say they didn’t write about other works, I said the stuff they’re writing about Marvel is generic action movie criticism. It lacks any new insight or wit. That’s what bothers me about the marvel articles. (Seriously, both Axel Rose and John McClain are 80s movie cops and only half the McClain article applies to Rose. Thor is literally a norse god, and everything in the OP article about his series applies to both McClain and Rose).
I think my real objection started when I read this piece, “How Marvel Tricked You Into Seeing ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.‘” The framing is “This movie was bad, but we loved it, so here how Marvel tricked us into liking their work.” That’s mean. It’s not trying to be funny, it’s not trying nitpick something they love, it’s not the crazy implications of the latest blockbuster, it’s how Marvel TRICKED you into seeing the movie with things you don’t know until you’re in the theater (such as the plot or the title card).
Hmm…
So on the one hand, I do think that the two articles I linked are substantially better than the Avengers marathon article. (The Guardians article is kind of in another category, nerd conspiracy theory rather than nerd media criticism, but I agree that sort of thing gets annoying pretty easily). On the other hand, the Terminator article is pretty straightforwardly worse, trading pretty much entirely on old objections, most of which apply to large chunks of the genre. It’s marketed towards Genysys, but except for the name jokes it’s pretty much just a reheated Terminator article from years ago.
And that’s the thing to keep in mind here. Cracked writes about whatever’s recent, whatever people are paying attention to. There has been a lot of MCU content and news recently, much of it very popular. I’m just not sure that what you’re noticing isn’t a Sturgeon’s Law situation, where many of their MCU articles are lackluster reheated criticism because most of their articles in general are lackluster reheated criticism, and they happen to write a lot more MCU articles. Throw in the fact that, with click-based revenue, they end up writing intros that link back to some of the worst ones and thus fnord you every time you open them (which sounds like what happened with this one), and you’re left with something that looks a lot more negative than it actually is.
Tone is hard to convey when writing on the internet, so if you’re trying to judge their actual opinion the videos may be more effective than the articles. And for all the riffing, the sheer excitement you see in the trailer-watching videos for Marvel indicates that this really is a franchise they love, especially if you compare it with things they genuinely dislike like Shia Labeouf’s new thing.
I haven’t watched those videos, can you send me a link to one they liked vs a tentpole picture they didn’t like (Terminator, Transformers, etc)? Also, if this was a Sturgeon’s Law thing, I would expect at least 1 or 2 good articles on Marvel, and I haven’t seen any (I may be wrong, if you have any good ones I’d love a link here as well).
Looking back, it looks like the only MCU “Cracked Responds” they’ve done is for Ant Man. Ant Man is kind of objectively silly, so this probably doesn’t provide much evidence for my side, though I’ll point out that they’re a lot more playful and less direct in their criticism than for, for example, Assassin’s Creed.
I think I was mostly remembering some of their more MCU-focused videos, like this one and this one. Both show a lot of love for what Marvel is currently doing, while still including criticism/analysis.
In terms of written articles…
If you’re looking for quality nerd nitpicking versus low-quality nerd nitpicking, this is at least on the level of that star trek article. This goes for the “Marvel is doomed” narrative, but with substantially better comedy. Regardless, the doomsaying isn’t a constant, here’s an article that thinks the MCU is going to improve on the comics.
I don’t think you’ll enjoy the straight-doomsaying articles, but I should point out that it’s kind of disingenuous to say they’ve been proven wrong when none of them predicted anything this early. The earliest doomsaying articles I can find are from 2014. This one gets one thing wrong (ruling out the Spider-Man deal), but the rest of it still seems fairly plausible. The other articles I’ve been able to find all seem to put the collapse at after Ant Man/Batman vs Superman at least, possibly significantly after.
Finally, a lot of their Marvel coverage is neither of those things. It’s using the current popularity of the MCU as a springboard to discuss interesting comics trivia, like the OP or this article, or interesting real-world trivia, like this one. Since generally their best articles are trivia ones (with the best of those of course being the personal experience articles, but until they publish “Why being frozen for decades is harder than you think” we’re not going to see one of those in the MCU), I think they’ve generally got fairly good quality Marvel articles.
Reblogged from:
chroniclesofrettek
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Necromancers
by golentan
Reblogged from:
ddemotivators
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Prince Charles’s claim to fame is that he was born into the royal family. JFK’s claim to fame is that he was born into a de facto aristocratic family – Joe Kennedy Sr. had set up his oldest son, Joe Jr., to become president, but Joe Jr. died in the war and JFK was next in line. Lena Dunham’s claim to fame is that she was born into a de facto elite caste – the New York media picked her out of all the children of preſtigious New York artist types to attend some elite middle school or other, and decided to set her up as The Voice Of A Generation.
Royal families are above aristocratic families, and aristocratic families are above elite castes, whose members don’t have recognizable names (compare Kennedy, Rockefeller, Cabot, Bush, and Van Valkenburg [yes, I went there] to Dunham, Simmons, Denton, Lemann, and Antonoff) and can’t just decide to make their sons become president.
But you don’t have to have any talent to get power and respect if you’re a noble, an aristocrat, or an anointed member of the elite – you get them because you occupy a high-status position.
‘HBO actress’ is also a high-status position.
Prince Charles can push homeopathy all he wants; he’s still Prince Charles. JFK could have all the affairs he wanted; he was still a Kennedy. Lena Dunham can molest her sister, try to sue news outlets for quoting her autobiography, peddle mind-numbingly stupid degenerate horseshit on TV, and look like Jabba the Hutt with tattoos; she’s still a member of the elite caste. People do what they’re told. If they’re told to like Prince Charles, they’ll like Prince Charles; if they’re told to like Lena Dunham, they’ll like Lena Dunham; if they’re told to like Natalie Dormer, they’ll like Natalie Dormer.
Or they might not. But if they don’t, they’re less likely to talk about it, and they’re less likely to be the sort to want to gain power. The social justice cult doesn’t have many adherents, but all of them have blogs and a lot of them are bureaucrats, so their voice is amplified and their power is disproportionate. Back when Benadryl Carbohydrate was the weird-looking celebrity of the week on Tumblr, how many people even knew who he was?
Similarly, over a third of Americans claim on surveys to attend religious services every week, but you wouldn’t get that impression from looking at the internet – who goes to church around here?
Taylor Swift?
Born into the elite Swift family. Take a brief perusal of bartlebyshop‘s tumblr and see how important the Common Swift is.
Reblogged from:
argumate
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- Me on a date with breadsticks: do you like purses
- Breadsticks: i think theyre the worst
- Me: *starts shoving breadsticks in my purse* tough luck
Reblogged from:
itsbenedict
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This article, I found the lens tiresome. Captain Kirk, John McClain, and Axel Foley were all just as immortal as Iron Man, kill as many people as Captain America, and pay as little attention to collateral damage as Thor does. These are objections to action movie conventions that are older than I am, but attempting to single out Marvel movies.
You’re right they’d never do that with Kirk or the Die Hard franchise.
Basically it’s the worst sort of nerd nitpicking
pretending to be critical analysis of the movie market,Evidence? I don’t see them pretending anything here. Unless you think their “I ate five jello-based entrees and puked” articles are pretending to be critical analyses of 50′s cuisine, it seems kind of silly to claim their “I watched all of the Marvel movies back to back and nerd nitpicked about them” are pretending to have anything to do with the movie market.
Again, this is what they do with literally every other franchise that their readers have any chance of enjoying. Today’s article on the Terminator franchise was worse than pretty much any Marvel-based article I’ve seen them do, and I’m saying that as someone who has no emotional attachment to Terminator whatsoever.
And you notice how those two articles are about things specific to the relevant franchises? I didn’t say they didn’t write about other works, I said the stuff they’re writing about Marvel is generic action movie criticism. It lacks any new insight or wit. That’s what bothers me about the marvel articles. (Seriously, both Axel Rose and John McClain are 80s movie cops and only half the McClain article applies to Rose. Thor is literally a norse god, and everything in the OP article about his series applies to both McClain and Rose).
I think my real objection started when I read this piece, “How Marvel Tricked You Into Seeing ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.‘” The framing is “This movie was bad, but we loved it, so here how Marvel tricked us into liking their work.” That’s mean. It’s not trying to be funny, it’s not trying nitpick something they love, it’s not the crazy implications of the latest blockbuster, it’s how Marvel TRICKED you into seeing the movie with things you don’t know until you’re in the theater (such as the plot or the title card).
Hmm…
So on the one hand, I do think that the two articles I linked are substantially better than the Avengers marathon article. (The Guardians article is kind of in another category, nerd conspiracy theory rather than nerd media criticism, but I agree that sort of thing gets annoying pretty easily). On the other hand, the Terminator article is pretty straightforwardly worse, trading pretty much entirely on old objections, most of which apply to large chunks of the genre. It’s marketed towards Genysys, but except for the name jokes it’s pretty much just a reheated Terminator article from years ago.
And that’s the thing to keep in mind here. Cracked writes about whatever’s recent, whatever people are paying attention to. There has been a lot of MCU content and news recently, much of it very popular. I’m just not sure that what you’re noticing isn’t a Sturgeon’s Law situation, where many of their MCU articles are lackluster reheated criticism because most of their articles in general are lackluster reheated criticism, and they happen to write a lot more MCU articles. Throw in the fact that, with click-based revenue, they end up writing intros that link back to some of the worst ones and thus fnord you every time you open them (which sounds like what happened with this one), and you’re left with something that looks a lot more negative than it actually is.
Tone is hard to convey when writing on the internet, so if you’re trying to judge their actual opinion the videos may be more effective than the articles. And for all the riffing, the sheer excitement you see in the trailer-watching videos for Marvel indicates that this really is a franchise they love, especially if you compare it with things they genuinely dislike like Shia Labeouf’s new thing.
Reblogged from:
chroniclesofrettek
