@Fionnindy @J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi Alright, sorry (again) for responding so belatedly - I will try to DM you on the weekend. And sure, if you want to ask some questions or like to have something cleared up, go right ahead!
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Christopher Voß
5.7K posts
Christopher Voß
@VoChristopher
This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them. - Bertrand Russell
Leipzig انضم Temmuz 2012
889 يتبع79 المتابعون
@VoChristopher @J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi DM is better. Also, I would prefer not a dozen messages but a dialogue. So, if you‘re able to clear up some things in questions, other in direct references, it would be much easier to answer. Also, German is preferred.
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They are not hiding it. Nothing less than the undoing of the Enlightenment is at stake here. Nothing less.
Edgy pseudo-intellectual musings like this have led to unspeakable atrocities throughout human history.
And in theological terms: truly sinful.
Matt Walsh@MattWalshBlog
The whole debate about which countries have "the right to exist" is based on a false premise. There is no "right to exist" for nations. What does that even mean? How can a country be entitled to exist? Every country on Earth came into existence through force and remains in existence through force. If you can't defend your existence, you will not exist anymore. The history of civilization is full of countries that existed and then ceased to exist. Are the rights of those countless now non-existent countries being perpetually violated by their non-existence? It makes no sense. If you can defend your existence, then you can exist. If you can't, then eventually you won't exist. It's really that simple. A right is an entitlement, by definition, and there is no country that has an eternal entitlement to exist whether it can defend and support itself or not. The very concept is absurd, meaningless.
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@Fionnindy @J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi Should I still try to break it down here or would you prefer a direct message? I guess there are not many spectators that enjoy philosophical skirmishes about concepts, metaphorical language and ontological claims.
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@Fionnindy @J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi Hey, sorry for my late response. And thank you for your detailed reply! I just mentally mapped out my response and that it would probably take over a dozen messages, which I sadly can't fit into 1 post since the richest man on earth can't provide that kind of privilege for free.
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@Fionnindy @J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi But that's the paradox, right? In order to become proper right, abstract right has to come into force itself. It can't substitute force if it just remains abstract right (assuming that this even exists, which is a dubious metaphysical claim).
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@VoChristopher @J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi No. Right has become a historical reality by substituting force. That‘s its whole point.
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@Fionnindy @J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi On a side note - have you ever read Anscombe's "Modern moral philosophy"? Or Arendt's notion that in order to have rights you need to have a rights to these rights? I would be curious to hear your opinion on that.
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@Fionnindy @J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi But "Right" as in a right that has no actual enforcement- I would doubt that this has can be properly called a right. And neither is it likely in the near future that international politics and right will reach that institutional level.
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@J_K_Wilke @BachmannRudi That's true, but the thing is that those kind of personal human rights actually get enforced by certain states. But there is, on the contrary, no world state that could enforce to right of any existing nation to exist.
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@duherrlehrer @BachmannRudi If you want to make a point, then feel free to do so. No point for this condescending tone. And I know the differences between those concepts but the fact is that nowadays they're largely used interchangibly.
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@VoChristopher @BachmannRudi Okay, so you are another guy who does not understand the concept behind the terms "nation", "state" and "country", same as Walsh.
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@Fionnindy @BachmannRudi Granted, that statement is way too broad to be apodictically true. But it's not wrong to point out that modern nationhood is largely the outcome of historic processes of violence. Not because some enlightenment thinkers thought up an abstract right that everyone adheres to now.
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@VoChristopher @BachmannRudi No, he‘s not correct. His premise that „every country on earth came into existence by force“ is wrong.
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@2Philosophical_ Did you read the article? Being non-gifted means having an IQ of 100.
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@VoChristopher “Hey, I didn’t say you’re stupid, I just said you’re non-gifted!”
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A consequence of the intellectual capture of the social sciences is the mass production of “studies” designed to show that conservatives are stupid. Many such cases.
Cathy Reisenwitz@CathyReisenwitz
“Non-gifted men showed higher conservatism scores than gifted men.” The authors asked participants to complete a questionnaire to map their political beliefs onto economic libertarianism, conservatism, socialism, or liberalism. Otherwise, the difference between the gifted cohort (IQ over 130) and non-gifted individuals was minimal.
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@VTHistory25 I'm afraid there are actually people who really like that kind of content. Or just don't realize it's AI. Really a shame YouTube doesn't show you more small creators instead of this and YT shorts.
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Oh good, Youtube is doubling down on AI content by making it free for users to make shorts with generative AI. I'm sure that won't destroy the platform even more with AI slop.
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@daisychristo @j_amesmarriott @b_judah I think you could make the point that mass literacy is only of public benefit when it leads to an informed public having an intelligent say in politics. Invoking 2 world wars that were started by autocratic systems doesn't really disprove that.
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I'm very sympathetic to the @j_amesmarriott thesis and I've also seen the same issues @b_judah talks about - select committees in the UK (and senate committees in the US) becoming content fodder for social media, very senior politicians apparently unable to focus without getting distracted by their phones.
But there are obvious problems with the thesis too. Does anyone really believe that Britain was so exceptionally well-governed 1970s-1990s? Wilson & Macmillan were both very well-read - did that make them brilliantly effective leaders?
Also, the peak of mass deep literacy probably isn't 70s-90s but pre-TV & post-universal schooling- so maybe 1890s - 1930s. There were two massive world wars then and public opinion did play a part in them. How does that fit the thesis?
Plus do you know who else was a great reader? Hitler! He read a book a day and was apparently always quoting Shakespeare. Stalin loved literature and had a personal library of thousands of books.
I don't want to completely dismiss the thesis because there is something going on here but it is not as straightforward as it first seems.
Ben Judah@b_judah
This will be an important book. I kept on noticing the @j_amesmarriott thesis working in politics. At the peak of mass deep literacy, roughly 1970s-1990s, we had large numbers of intellectuals as MPs with complex ideas genuinely driving politics. Utterly normal people were what we would call avid readers. Millions watched things like the South Bank Show elaborating on them. Everything, and thus politics, was built on a reading culture we have left behind. Today, in an internet, not a book based society — intellectuals as peripheral to culture — and they are now peripheral to politics. It’s not a matter of one party or another but across the board. This makes it so much harder to ground politics in ideas as Westminster — as the endless circus over leaders shows — is the most distracted environment I’ve ever seen. Glued to double phones. Politics is the distraction economy. Policy is surfing that, reacting to that, suffering that. Ideas do make it into speeches and so become headlines — but overall they are used more and more flippantly, ironically or contradictorily — reflecting social media. As a result, buffeted by the next viral thunder clap, the intellectual hard work is so much harder and they struggle to become sustained projects. I found it so depressing watching debates in Parliament on hot topics where there was in fact “no debate” every MP getting up and asking almost exactly the same question for their socials. Nobody listening. The entire chamber on their phone. The entire thing a clip studio.
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@otets_nervegas They're not saying that he's stupid, but merely that he wasn't the genius he wanted to be. That's true for a lot of people who are still intelligent.
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people calling blair stupid in roundabout ways in the new doc
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@RadioFreeTom @BretDevereaux You're arguing with someone who proudly proclaims he doesn't read modern books. There's no way you'll make him learn anything.
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cc @BretDevereaux
"So the explantion of why I was wrong is why I was right, is that what you're saying?"
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@berthoppe Ist vor allem ein Musterbeispiel für das selektive Unterstellen von guten und schlechten Absichten.
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Die Rede von #Martenstein beim „Prozess gegen Deutschland“ ist eine ideale Quelle, um mit Studierenden über rhetorische Tricks und Manipulation des Publikums zu sprechen.
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You can only really appreciate Clausewitz in the original Klingon of course.
Tom Nichols@RadioFreeTom
Indeed. Although after years of teaching, I'm still amazed that people think they're going to read Thucydides (or The Republic, or Clausewitz) without someone to help guide them through it. That scene in Good Will Hunting made a lot of dumb people feel smart, but it's a fantasy.
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