So why can't they be trained ?
Before we proceed to the substance of the article, indulge me by loading into your head a number of seemingly disparate items as such, unconnected. Take it on faith, I promise it'll be worth your time so just do it.
- Item #1. Diana wants to know why the girlies manning the sastreria can't be trained to become actual human participants, must be relegated to object status in the background. This is by and of itself a very solid, and very important question, and it unmitigatedly deserves an equally solid answer. Why is it that people can't play the role of people ?
- Item #2. I have said,
I expect (on the basis of experience!) that it is quite feasible to teach computing to ignorant thinking people -- god knows it is impossible to teach thinking to computer-cvasilliterate morons.
and moreover my own practice is very much congruent, and for a long time, with this saying. Why would I derride a
3031 yo "investment banker" instead of educating her ? What senseless waste of life is this, where I literally would much rather throw her away than pick her up and fix her ? - Item #3. Consider this discussion :
mircea_popescu in other news, https://lurkmore.to/%D0%9A%D1%82%D0%BE_%D0%BD%D0%B5_%D1%81_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B8,_%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%82_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%B2_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81 quite entertaining.
mircea_popescu "Мужчина без остро выраженной социальной позиции напоминает трансвестита, подкаблучника, труса или еще какую дешевую мерзость, недостойную носить это гордое имя: Воин! Дядька, стыдливо проходящий мимо подлости и грязи, — это уже напо ловину тетка, вне зависимости от его кондиций, возраста и социального статуса."
mircea_popescu if you ever wondered about the deluge of crossdressers -- this is exactly it, i'm sure. in the immortal words of Weston Amsbury Liggett, "to beat everyone, including you, to the punch".
mircea_popescu on meditation, that piece makes it plainly evident redditardation is ~generational~, not ideological. there sit the russki kids, who'd be in a fine position to understand the problem. god knows they have much better access to much better priors that readily illuminate it.
asciilifeform generations that get unplugged from sense, ahamircea_popescu but instead, "совки vs. либерасты" hurr. they reconstructed "the dilemma", truly more meaningful than their lesser brethren's "coke vs pepsi", but to them ~just as meaningless~. the fucking point is that they ~want~ the "superiority" of http://trilema.com/2014/fred-quimby-and-ancient-evils/#footnote_5_53722
mircea_popescu amusingly enough, the 90s romanian redditard magazine was called "dilema".
mircea_popescu BingoBoingo has a lot more in his hand with the whole degenegeliation theory than readily realised : schmucks simply wanna "dilemma". - Item #4. You have probably read along with me that excellent Ballas piece, "How does the shutdown relate to me" ; but I suspect you didn't understand it. I know I didn't, until having actually dissected enough "New Man" brains to gain actual familiarity with the... diseased state, shall we call it.
Alright, we're done. Let's proceed to thinking!
We shall think in the form of my asking questions. Question one : why is it that I could ask you load up four disparate items each worth some involved reading ? Whence and wherefore do I have the sort of credit ?
This happens to me all the time, by the way. I can pick up items in all kinds of shops without paying, I can do anything I fucking want. Far, far from "you can't order things not on the menu" (someone actually said this, you know ?), I can actually do whatever the fuck it is I wanti. The older woman in the sastreria story asked me specifically and precisely, "what do you want to do" when it came to payment. Because, and this is the important part, whatever the fuck it was, she was going to go along with it, all she wanted was it be specified clearly, and that's all.
But look at the other side. Why can I ask you to load up on some gibberish, with naught but the promise that "it'll make sense later" on offer ? You're a certain kind of chump, aren't you ? I mean, as far as alf knows, the only way to run a computer is to never ever do this. He's right, too -- yet the only way to run a human is to do this, precisely this, for as long as you can.ii
There is something that anchors, you to me, and me to you, my friends to me, me to my friends, my landlord to me, me to my landlord, there's something there. The space between a handshake, right ?
And yet you know people who don't have it. Well, "people", at any rate. But you are aware they exist, sad, broken defectives.
Question two : what if it doesn't stop there ? What if desocialization is not actually the only possible derealisation of the individual ?
Consider the oft discussed case of wolf children : in rural India, wolves will sometimes carry children away. The human child being the most whorish thing known to nature, they manage to mimic a wolf cub enough to not get eaten, but fed instead. Can you believe this is what we are, at the bedrock, by the way ? Yet it's true.
These children fed by wolves fail to develop speech. Children learn to speak by mimicking originally, which is to say, by taking the adults on credit. As wolves don't speak, wolf children do not learn speech, and as brain plasticity and human development carry on, the portion of the brain that'd have been occupied by speech gets taken over by other functions. Adults who grew up with wolves can never learn language, not to any respectable standard in any case. They will never enjoy a book, or laugh at a joke, or even recognize a pun. Just not there.
But obviously, this is contextual, you say. Sure. It is contextual, those poor beings' misfortune (queue a whole boatraftload of literature showing how "really not" etc, all that tiresome wank). Yet...
Question three : what isn't contextual ? Obviously children learn language from their parents, but who do they learn socialization from ? Yes children are born with an innate drive to learn language, just like they're born with an innate drive to socialize. But who do they learn all this from ? And how ?
Yes ?
Question four : What else ?
It doesn't stop with language, or social relations, does it ? As a factual matter, there could be such a thing as a deidealized person.
Consider a child born by the sad failures inhabiting our sadly failed colonies in North America. This child is never liable to encounter any sort of relation between the ideal and the real that'd permit him to anchor the former into the latter, would he. In such a simulated world, the child would acquire no model whereby to relate the natural byproducts of his organ churning with the repeating patterns reported by the senses. "Exam taking" is the word for a light and limited expression of this problem, where the child fails to comprehend anything, but learns how to mix-and-match the incomprehensible garbage and meaningless refuse into experimentally-established acceptable patterns.
Yet it doesn't stop there, does it ? Asciilifeform's celebrated "if i make it what i think is the right size, it crashes!111" is the necessary and predictable end result of pop-up avoidance. Have you ever seen the iliterate (but not therefore unintelligent) computer operator engaging in this game of random clicking ? "I wonder if I do this...". The fellow's trying to get a desired result out of a black box, and can never answer a question in the vein of "but why are you doing that". In fact, merely being asked anything even remotely like it infuriates him -- not because he's evil, but because he's well aware what's going on, and fighting with himself over it. The third party expression of internally repressed ideas is what evokes anger in the individual. What the fuck else would ?!
Yet it doesn't stop there either, does it ? Can it ever stop ? What if one could bring up children who never ever interacted with any sort of abstract in any meaningful way, whose ideal world is completely, I do not use the world lightly, completely separate from the real ? They could speak, of course, but in the manner UStards speak -- small talk, prefabricated phrases on predecided topics, sports, commercials, "awareness", etcetera. The activity may simulate, for the naive, a complete orchestra -- but it'd be less complete than any conceivable alternative. In point of fact, while the mouth traced the wooden paths, the mind would be elsewhere, in an indescriptible, unilluminable elsewhere.
Last question : Would such a person ask you to explain how "the news"/"reality" relates to them ?
Because obviously they don't understand how anything abstract relates to anything concrete. Which doesn't mean that I, my lordship, the great and fabulous and whatever else myself carries no credit with them. It means that nothing does, you understand, ex nihilo nihil, there is simply no way to order idealsiii absent the fundamental bridge anchoring abstracts to concretes.
If I'm trying to explain tailoring to someone who doesn't know what it is, I will start with fabrics and cuts and needles. But if they do not understand what fabric is, because they have literally not ever perceived such a thing as the miracle of weaving before I will have to start a little earlier. Where would you start ?
Where do you start when there is absolutely nothing to start with ?
———- While explaining to girly the dubious nature of "crime", I recounted the following story : one day, I walked into a friend's business, and without further ado asked him how much he has in the till. He answered. "Alright, I'll take it", came the retort. And I took it.
"Was he being held up ?" stood the question to her. It's an unanswerable question. Alligned merchants belong to the lord (and unalligned merchants belong in the limepits). That I never oppressed my merchants does not mean they weren't my merchants ; and that officious intermeddlers came up with whatever "other names" for lords doesn't change the substance, structure or functioning of reality, nor carries any interest. Of fucking course I was welcome to take it, or any portion thereof ; and of fucking course I was going to make it up to him, after all he's my fucking friend, neh ? Yet what's "make it up to him" mean ?
I can (I know, because I have, and I don't mean illo tempore -- even within last year) pay my landlord a visit, take all the money he has in the house (plus some more the spouse runs over to bank to get from her private account and delivers at my door on her own fucking time), because I say "I need it". Can you ? Does this disparity make me a "gangland figure" and you a "law abiding citizen" ? Maybe it just makes your relations very fucking shitty, and perhaps the fault's not mere circumstance, maybe the problem's your very capacity for having relations in the first place ? Maybe it's because you play life-lite and never brought anyone any cool gifts, maybe that's why nobody gives a shit about you or what you say ? Aww, and you thought you could brute-force it by having children, tsk tsk!
I guess it's just that "I'm very charismatic". You know, the way the stone broke, and besides, the chicks always go for assholes. Right ? [↩]
- Have you seen Le notti di Cabiria ? Excellent film on the exact topic. [↩]
- I am too lazy to use the full Kantian regalia. Sorry bop. [↩]
Friday, 15 March 2019
PS. The answer is, of course, on Trilema. I have deliberately put it on display -- but it is on one hand expensive, and on the other (I suspect) unthinkable. So...
Friday, 15 March 2019
> the only way to run a computer is to never ever do this
On the contrary, that's just about all a computer is even able to do. Consider.
Friday, 15 March 2019
What, take all from all-comers ?
Friday, 15 March 2019
> take all from all-comers
Every comp ever made has at least one hole where "takes from allcomers" (the mains cord) -- and usually more.
Friday, 15 March 2019
Yeah well. In the sense here contemplated, the ethernet chord would be the conduit.
Friday, 15 March 2019
Since we're doing "abstractions vs physicalities" -- the part where comp can "reject" what came down the cord, is an abstraction that exists at certain level but not below -- if you were to put 30,000 volts down the cord, comp will find itself in a difficult position to "reject".
Friday, 15 March 2019
True enough!
But if this ever happened, computer would just get a fuse.
Friday, 15 March 2019
To be insufferably pedantic: even "fuse" is an abstraction..! (ever had a transistor "die death of heroes" to protect his fuse? I have - more times than can count)
Friday, 15 March 2019
This may be, but we're discussing here the abstraction rather than its associable concretes. The computer as an abstract object would be ideally constructed as to plug the hole.
Friday, 15 March 2019
Right. The way I read this piece, though, is as specifically about disease where people forget the connection b/w physical and abstract, and end up floating away into cosmos.
Computer is arguably a hazardous instrument, like power saw: in that -- by design -- it heavily encourages the disease progression in the susceptible.
Every "if I make it the right size, it crashes"-type "surprise" grows from a root of having made the mental disconnect and given up on finding the boundary between the physical and the artificial-abstract (as e.g. a borderline tard may at some point "give up" on sphincter control.)
Friday, 15 March 2019
Where do you start when there is absolutely nothing to start with ?
There is never absolutely nothing to start with. The access to essences afforded to the great comes with the onus to work it (or not, but then to knowingly discard it, in preference of some other activity deemed greater).
Friday, 15 March 2019
@Stanislav Datskovskiy Not even forget. Simply, never develop.
Computer is not particularly hazardous when taken by itself. But consider the "simulacra" world. You can have such a thing as a child who grows up without ever meaningfully interacting with anything, without ever getting to try out anything his head came up with in the real world.
Between "self-esteem-is-the-only-thing" "schooling" and "avoiding-pain-is-all-parenting-is" "fambly"... one who gets his A's through the by now ubiquitous process of copy-pasting wikipedia chunks in the respective webforms is supposed to ever discover there's a relation, any relation at all, between thought and noise how ?
"All opinions are equally valid, being in the end someone's opinion" is the naive statement. The proper statement would be that "without hierarchy of someones, there's no possibility of meaning, thus no such thing as an opinion in the first place", but who's to understand that ? And how do they ?
@pletzalcoatl The essences are not of this world ; one's access to them always illusory (or more properly speaking, idealized abstraction).
Friday, 15 March 2019
@Mircea Popescu:
Circular saw also not hazardous "taken by itself". But will reward certain outlook of operator with removal of fingers, hands, whether he "forgot" or "not developed."
Otherwise entirely yes.
Friday, 15 March 2019
It does sound very appealing as explanation in that it fits all sorts of previous observations but the niggling part I have so far is two-pronged:
1. it's unclear how does one identify/decide whether it's something that failed to develop (i.e. can't learn it anymore) or simply something that can still be learnt; I suppose this could be rephrased as "where does one give up?"
2. while it is true that sane teaching follows the required knowledge tree and hence has to answer this question of "where do you start", the child as typical learner does not really have this problem: it simply starts with whatever it can grasp at all from what is available. One can say of course that the whole point is precisely that it's exactly that the problem - they are by now so unable to interact with reality that they precisely cannot grasp anything at all, no matter what is available. This though is unclear to me and especially unclear as to how to evaluate. It's not like they can be *immune* to reality to say that they can't possibly grasp anything under any circumstance.
Friday, 15 March 2019
Oh, and re matching patterns of nonsense - it's neither specific to this generation nor a novelty in any way. As far as I saw it over and over again and identified it even as a child it's simply the "easy", low-effort-now way: in the short term it's way easier to "remember" than to understand and especially so when one hasn't had yet much practice with understanding. And so, quite many will simply try to "remember" the whole world no matter how silly this might sound when put this way.
Friday, 15 March 2019
@Diana Coman As to 1, I am firmly convinced it can always be learned -- as long as language exists, ie the patient is not profoundly retarded, ideal anchoring can absolutely take place, and not less soundly for having been delayed.
The clincher is not capacity, but inclination. There is absolutely no way or manner in which the afflicted can be made to fix their mental anomie. It can only be resolved if they want to, and this is no idle sort of "sure, why not", the "want to" comes with some strictly and most literally astounding levels of passion required (in the antique sense, as in passion of christ -- suffering).
And yes this is where the "no women over 25" heuristic is born -- experimentally observed ossification in the will to live of females as they age, resulting in comfort seeking behaviours rather than truth seeking consumption. Other than this one thing, there's nothing wrong with them, which is why I'm not stuck kicking them out as they age, for instance.
Otherwise, one gives up in the grave.
As to 2, that is exactly what's being said -- that in having formed adaptive but ultimately dysfunctional behaviour patterns, one actively prevents oneself from fixing head. In the exact sense of tripping over own feet prevents dancing, or such.
Children are immensely flexible, which both permits and is required for the very loose and anti-anxious (ie, unreflective) manner in which they learn. Welfare-state byproducts (improperly called adults, even if they seem to look like one) are in fact immune to reality. That is the whole point of their "open society" nonsense, a simulated world in which the agent is completely insulated from reality. Why shouldn't the whistleblower be punished by the company it "whistleblowed" on ? And why should "the state" "provide" "guarantees and safeguards" he won't be ?
Immunity to reality is the name of the game.
As to 3 : there's a difference in that for the first time now it became capable of practically boundless recursion. Yes people pattern-matched nonsense ever since forever, but nowadays people can call procedures of pattern-matched nonsense deeper than you can practically examine the stack.
Runaway processes don't have to be novel -- consider that people had been splitting atoms long before they built the atomic bomb. All you need is a cup fulla air taken out of well chosen basement and there you go -- you're splitting atoms in a cup.
Yes children used to live in a simulated world for as long as we care to remember (and not much longer). It also used to come to an end.
Saturday, 16 March 2019
Hm, you are saying that they don't have to be immune - it's enough to have internalized the belief that they are, since driving it out afterwards has such a huge cost as to hardly make it worth it for someone else to bother forcing it out of them.
I can see it (and the deeper stack of pattern-matching is a reality, sadly). In other words they are immune to reality the way il bidone became immune to everyday world - not as much immune as just not there anymore.
Saturday, 16 March 2019
Consider how the court system works in the common law lands : the whole thing is constructed around the purely xtian concepts of indemnification, "make whole", torts, etcetera. These are nothing other and nothing besides very transparent efforts at de-idealization, attempts to sever the relation between the content churning into individual noggins and perceptible reality flowing outside the noggins.
They get together to agree upon "how things should have been" according to "what they thought things should be" and to come up with "what to do" in order to "remedy the difference" -- but notice that the remedial is never in the sense of "cut out whatever shit you got in brainbox", it's always "pretend lalalala portions of reality do not exist".
This isn't some isolated, quaint society game -- the reason they ended up without money flows exactly from here. You realise that it is not possible for the empire of retards (not for the average retard, mind you, but by their aggregate collective!!!) to ensure my collaboration through the traditional method (which is what economic life is all about) because of the obvious reason. They aren't merely playing around, but painted themselves into exactly that tradtionally Romanian position, where they can't obtain the help of the only people that can help them.
The whole social system drives towards this immunity, it's not even that she herself wants to be, or aims to be. She's dressed in what she can find at the shop, body and mind. If you ask her, up front and personal, experience shows she almost never actually wants the immunity, but yes, the cost of stepping out is truly overwhelming. Just ask one who stepped out.
A "government" as the state is for some reason currently called, exists in their assistential paradigm to "help the individual". Well -- guess what, if the individual is reliably desocialized, they'll end up with the ridiculous sort of state they had throughout the 20th century, trying to make sure that socialization doesn't actually happen, so that nobody feels left out. This is the deep driver, and the deep meaning, of the "pulpit lobby quashed publican lobby" : some dudes (no, it wasn't about women, not one bit -- because society never was nor ever can be about women) felt awkward at the pub. They just didn't feel at ease, all the men there kinda put them off. As they gained mass, eventually they had the state "help them". Unfortunately, the helping consisted of making it so that nobody can go to a bar anymore -- but what the fuck else is the state supposed to do ? Fix their brains for them ?
Now that de-idealized kids are coming up with some reliability, "government" aka "the state" aka "the support system for the handicapped" will come up with some manner of "social organization" to... prevent their suffering. Why, what would you have it do ?
Saturday, 16 March 2019
But yes, you're exactly right : they became immune through decerebration, like the con man, like Ann Margaret ("you know you're only cheating yourself!!!") and like all the other tragic figures of apprentice mages throughout the ages/