Ziinggg!!!

Fridges in tents.

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People standing proudly in front of their fridges.

http://www.eyeradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/eeeee.jpg

At least we can keep our iced coffees cool.

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I was thinking we could put the fridge in this corner here?

https://media.dhakatribune.com/uploads/2017/05/Rohingya-Camp-Cyclone-Mora_AFP_000_P31LB.jpg

Maybe we need a freezer?

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Inside JRPC's fridge.

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JRPC wrote:

There seems to be a lot of this sort of stuff. He never says (that I've read, which isn't much) "so it's ok that people are poor because historically they were poorer". But the "It's not as bad as you think" motif is everywhere. It seems to be a book that answers people who think "Things have never been this bad." which it does well. But no one really thinks this, or at least no one sensible.  If you're position is that inequality etc are causing harm and misery, impeding progress, all the rest of it, and it's happening now, and is avoidable and can be improved, Pinker's got nothing for you.

Unfortunately that’s simply not true.  In fact there’s an entire chapter dedicated to describing and quantifying how actually the exact opposite is the case; that undue pessimism and progress-denial is widespread, despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary. He also dives into why this may be the case, including looking into the psychology that may explain it (chapter 4; Progressophobia).  

Pinker: Seeing how journalistic habits and cognitive biases bring out the worst in each other, how can we soundly appraise the state of the world? The answer is to count. How many people are victims of violence as a proportion of the number of people alive? How many are sick, how many starving how many poor, how many oppressed, how many illiterate, how many unhappy? And are those numbers going up or down? A quantitative mindset, despite its nerdy aura, is in fact the morally enlightened one, because it treats every human life as having an equal value rather than privileging the people who are closest to us or most photogenic. And it holds out the hope that we might identify the causes of suffering and thereby know which measures are most likely to reduce it.

Fascist! He goes on to describe ways in which undue pessimism can actually be deeply harmful, beyond the general utility of having your conceptual understanding of the world track with reality.  

Chapter 4 begins with this quote.

If you had to choose a moment in history to be born, and you did not know ahead of time who you would be—you didn’t know whether you were going to be born into a wealthy family or a poor family, what country you’d be born in, whether you were going to be a man or a woman—if you had to choose blindly what moment you’d want to be born, you’d choose now.
—Barack Obama, 2016

If you disagree with that, then read the book, because it seems like you need a history lesson. But things improve because people make the effort to improve them.
I dunno, it's probably not a bad book. The inequality stuff is spurious from the chapter I read a few weeks ago. Skimming through and ripping bits out to have debates on the internet is not really a fair way to go about judging it. But there you go. I doubt I'll read it fully.

It took all of my will not to write incarcerated scarfaces.

No I’m saying historical perspectives cut both ways. But it’s a side point. I agree that things are better. I just don’t know where that gets anyone once you’ve agreed it.

JRPC wrote:

JonB wrote:

Yes, this 'things aren't so bad' narrative is becoming a real bugbear of mine. Notice how it nearly always comes from white guys in western countries who are doing just fine thanks.

JonB wrote:

All seems pretty straightforward to me. Big claims of rationality, Enlightenment values, looking at the facts and the numbers etc. But it's all so clearly selective and interpreted to fit an already decided narrative, which really goes against those supposed Enlightenment values, especially in the duty - as I see it - of philosophy to be critical of existing power structures. To be fair, it's a problem with a great deal of Anglo-American liberal political philosophy, even in more serious stuff like Rawls. It's the philosophy of the dominant ideology, effectively, which is always going to struggle to be self-reflective. And sadly also means it gets far more attention than it warrants.

hunk wrote:

@JonB It's called 'conservatism'. They also apply it to their 'science' which they then present as fact.

Is that you winning the thread again?

Rewatched a talk yesterday by the very brilliant Dr Alan Kay. At the end there was something that I thought was relevant here, and kind of describes the issue of looking at relative progress. It's coming from a bit of a different angle, he's adressing a room of executives in tech I think, and trying to explain how you might get genuine invention and progress, at least in computing.



(47:57)



There is a problem with our short-term perception, in that we percieve small changes in the present as being more significant than they actually are when looking at progress across a much larger time-span. But we are also prone to being content with situations that appear to be 'good enough' (especially easy for the privileged ofc), when really the standards could be so much higher.

That little demonstrative graph kinda shows the issue here I think; you can draw a rough line through the "Better" squiggle, and say "Look how good we have it now!". But that misses the point, that we should really be aiming to get over the threshold of what is actually needed. Anything below that is Not Bloody Good Enough.

@Gurtfactor
The thing with conservatism is:
We're good where we are.
Why change a good thing, why upset the (social) status quo?
Why give 'outsiders' the chance to potentialy displace us?

We are the top dog, do not fucking upset the Status Quo!

Yossarian wrote:

How did you get that from monkey’s post?

I don't really follow your question there.

Are you asking who was the only prime minister to be murdered ?

If so, the answer is Spencer Perceval.

Ozno wins the thread again

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legaldinho wrote:

Vela wrote:

legaldinho wrote:

Come on now, Einstein was born in the 19th century. In Germany. What do we expect?

Moral relativism

So? Are moral judgements absolute in every respect, about everything? Or can they be mediated by experience and context in at least some respects? It's not like Einstein was going around murdering Asians. Im perfectly happy being a moral relativist in some contexts, an absolutist in others. At least one thing I'm not is a moral positivist. Racism is bad so let's blacklist Einstein. No dude, let's not.

Dude, it was a joke about general relativity.

Abandon thread, we're all infected.

Is this the Jordan Peterson appreciation thread?

If so, enjoy this.

https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1009716701385101313?s=19

That is fuckin hilarious.

And I like his answer.