On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:44 PM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think this is a quite interesting read: > > http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ > > It made me think of the everything list. We clearly have members of the > conventional tribes (red, blue and gray), with all the predictable > frictions. > There are thousands of social, psychological models that group people into categories. The difference between quality and mush here, is that I can see where an author is going ("what kind of people/world/proposition does this suggest; how would that look like with varying degrees of truth/implementation: relaxed to radical"), given that I put on his red, blue, grey glasses or whatever. A model has to refer to something. And even then, even when we do our best, I feel Gödel's incompleteness is such a double edged sword, it will devour (thankfully), any set of categories in some theory about "all kinds of people". At the base of things, I see therefore no in- or out-group, but people who cling to their categories radically (doesn't matter if they are moderate or freaks) and people who at least aspire to and can point to histories where they minimize harm + share joy doing so, intuiting Gödel a bit. The racism/religion bigot stuff are just tasteless, low examples of the former. Of course there is truth to such assertions, nobody doubts this. But where such reasoning leads, the self-fulfilling prophecy scenarios that it sets whole cultures into (Terror as a global threat, when it was just isolated gangsters years ago; the West brought in the modern weapons to fertilize tensions centuries old, that had been suppressed by violent dictatorship recently) is brainwashing ourselves into truth of increasingly violent spirals of politics. Cui bono, and what are proposed solutions? Spud said "nothing", which is consistent with the rhetoric that since we can't achieve cultural, economic advances, we should invest more into military action. As if this will solve it. Sure you have to put out fires, but without more freedom to search for solutions + dumb media sensational feedback loop, that security gained by temporary military measure will not provide the durable stability to move forward towards common goals of higher living standard attainment etc., the implementation of which should be at least as clear, convincing and accurate as the weapons/people we send to fight. Otherwise, what are they fighting for, other than downward infinite spiral? So am I red, blue, grey, or pink or what now? PGC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
