Comments

  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"

    It's not to find out whether Eugenics is nefarious. I think that it's nefarious. Because there is needless debate on its nefariousness, I have included the caveat, "to support Social Darwinism", within my original question, "Could a gifted Eugenicist suit (any given theory) to support Social Darwinism?"

    The purpose of the thought experiment is to determine whether a theory is open to abuse. It think there considerable historical evidence to point to that, should a theory be, then it likely for it to be misused. The experiment, therefore, can be used as a litmus to determine whether or not it will fail in practice.

    Say you like minarchism, for instance. You should ask, "Could a gifted Eugenicist suit minarchism to support Social Darwinism?" If the answer is "yes", then, we can't say for sure that minarchism will work in practice.

    My fears, however, are that this experiment could fall prey to the trappings of Game Theory, namely the idea that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong" ,or prefer an overreliance on ideological purity. Anarcho-pacifism notably can't be suited to support Social Darwinism, but I only want to believe that it works in practice.

    All that it really indicates is of the social risk involved.
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"

    That'd make for a good Sci-Fi novel, I think. A brilliant Eugenicist creates an irreversible algorithm to put his campaign into effect, only to find out that it has, in advance, been designed to prevent him from preventing his own systematic elimination.

    The idea of the thought experiment doesn't really have anything to do with Eugenics, though. It's just kind of a worse-case scenario philosophy.
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"

    Now, I'm confused.

    Considering fourth-generation warfare, I could see how the more benign concept of simulation, to prevent technological failure, could be exemplary of how the experiment could be apt, but I also don't know if you aren't calling it a "computer simulation", perhaps akin to Conway's Game of Life, or as an ender's game, if you will.
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"

    I'm not at you, but sometimes a spade is just a spade.

    What is a gifted Eugenicist?Wheatley

    An intellectually gifted one. The idea is to ask whether a highly intelligent person could suit a theory to some nefarious purpose or another. I chose Social Darwinism because I happen to think it's pretty nefarious.
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"
    In the case of 2, we'd want to provide the best services available to prevent tragedies from occurring. There are existing laws that protect children, but these might need be amplified. How to do this is very hard, because it does enter and clash with privacy concern and over-reach of power.Manuel

    I'm trying to explain that responsible parenting, including the choice of when to have a child, doesn't have anything to do with Eugenics. You, I think, are just confused, but there are intellectuals in this world who are not so confused and just kind of think that some people ought to be let to die. I am accusing them of having manipulated feminists into making family planning out to be analogous with Eugenics. It's confusing, but only due to the poverty of discourse in the United States.

    Then I think you should modify the title of the thread or the gist of the OP, to something like: are there circumstances in which modifying humans or preventing diseases lead to consequences like eugenics, if taken far enough?Manuel

    That's it's lie. That's what the Social Darwinists wanted people to believe. Genetic research isn't analogous to Eugenics as per what it turns out to be, which is just simply, at best, social murder. Huxley was kind of beguiled by it all too, though. Thus, A Brave New World.

    Because although now you are clarifying what you mean, in the OP it does seem as if you'd want someone to defend Eugenics in the social Darwinist vein.Manuel

    I don't want someone to defend it at all because I think it untenable. Including the "Social Darwinism" caveat is just to make it necessarily nefarious. The thought experiment is to test whether a theory is open to abuse.
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"

    I agree, but a lot of people are rather confused as to what it is due to reasons that I mentioned above.

    The thought experiment is just a litmus to see if a theory can be misused, though kind of tacitly posits that any potential to do so will result in it happening.
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"

    The problem with defining Eugenics is that people don't believe that it is what is. It is a sociological campaign designed to systematically eliminate genetic inferiorities. That is explicitly what Sir Francis Galton, who coined the term, advanced. Outside of the full breath of their reason, however, people seem to think that it has something to do with modern medicine, feminism, or the right-to-die.

    I think that this is indicative of a failure on their part not to comply with a tacit campaign of social murder undertaken by a faction of the intellectual hegemony of the West. I think this because of that A Brave New World is a dystopian allegory about Julian Huxley's sociological ideals. Huxley happens to be of the better interpretation of the campaign, which still fails to be humanitarian, if you will.

    I have written my litmus question as follows, "Could a gifted Eugenicist suit (any given theory) to support Social Darwinism?" This is to sidestep the debate on Eugenics. The idea is that if a theory can be suited for a nefarious purpose, then it can't be assumed to work in practice.
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"
    Well if by attempting to create a healthier baby leads to this kind of thinking, which I haven't seen yet, then there's an argument to be made that gene alterations should be limited only to preventing illness.Manuel

    What I am emphatically trying to point out is that this idea that Eugenics, referring to the sociological theory created by Sir Francis Galton, has anything to do with modern medicine, feminism, are the right to put an end to severe pain, is almost solely due to contemporary sophistry on the part of whom you could characterize as cosmopolitan "Thatcherites", i.e. a faction of the intellectual hegemony in the United Kingdom. This is only further compounded by gross misrepresentations on the part of the Catholic Church of stem cell research, the pro-choice movement, and voluntary euthanasia as being Eugenicist campaigns.

    Scientists should obviously seek to prevent the spread of diseases. There are feminists who have argued in favor of Eugenics due to having confused it with either family planning or the treatment of genetic disorders. That just doesn't correspond to any historical reality. Julian Huxley was considerably more well-meaning than Sir Francis Galton, who absolutely did advocate scientific racism and can not be interpreted as not also advancing, at best, social murder, but did still advance the "sterilization of the genetically unfit" and outlawing their marriage. He reformed the field to be moreso concerned with the prevention of reproduction. I think that it's fairly clear that sterilizing people with genetic disorders in the interests of an ostensive purity is just kind of implicitly totalitarian, but, should anyone think that merely preventing them from reproducing isn't all that bad, I will ask as to just what it entails. That a person should succeed in having consensual sex almost always coincides with their success in some other aspect of their life. How, socially, we can discourage the "genetically unfit" from having sex is to prevent them from being successful in other aspects of their lives.

    When I am certifiably "insane", what reason do I have to consign myself to failure? If you can not answer that question, then you can not convince me otherwise.

    All of which is to say nothing of that Eugenics emphatically was a justification for the Holocaust and even became one for the systematic elimination of dissent in the former Soviet Union under Josef Stalin. When it is a basis for, at least, two out of the three most notorious mass exterminations in all of human history, why are we trying to salvage in the name of scientific progress, feminism, or the right-to-die? It'd seem to make a lot more sense to concede the rather obvious point and point out that those things are not analogous.

    When a woman is called a "feminazi", it'd seem rather impolitic to defend Nazism. Because certain sets of the British ruling class happen to have a gift for rhetoric, however, there are some who think it wise to defend Eugenics, all of which is to say nothing of the obvious complicity within our contemporary intellectual hegemony or ploy to slander anyone in opposition to social murder as a reactionary Catholic, if not somehow tied to the provisional Irish Republican Army.

    Sure.

    But then what would be a hypothetical of a "gifted eugenicist" society look like? Like babies only born with IQ over 140?
    Manuel

    The point of the thought experiment is to uncover as to whether or not the theory can be abused. The caveat, "to support Social Darwinism", is there to sidestep this debate on Eugenics. It's just designed as a litmus under the assumption that, if an idea can be misused, then, it will be.
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"

    I don't want to be accusatory of you, as I don't think you the kind of person to do so, but it seems self-evident to me that, in practice, Eugenics can only, at best, amount to social murder. Should the United Kingdom adopt a such a campaign, what, then, can we expect from the British ruling class? Substitute the U.K. for any Western nation, and I will still beg the same question. No matter how well-meaning or minded, it can only reinforce social divisions and justify the deliberate effective elimination of sectors of society through either the removal of social programs or the creation of new ones.

    Though I do wax conspiratorial at times, I doubt that it could be used for genocide. If we're going to speak of not contributing to the survival of people within contemporary society, what Eugenics just simply is, however, it is, at best, exceptionally naive to believe that it will result in anything other than social murder.

    I fully support family planning, which kind of exclusively relates to people who have yet to be born. I also support a qualified right-to-die. Neither of those things, however, have anything to do with Eugenics. Eugenics is a sociological program designed to eliminate what it designates as "diseases" or "inferiorities" by eliminating what contributes to their survival, namely either the lives of the afflicted or their capacity to reproduce. Even in the latter sense, it's nothing but illiberal to enforce sexual repression upon people who suffer from genetic disorders.

    If people want to advocate for family planning or the right-to-die, then, they ought to just distinguish between those things and Eugenics, which very explicitly did begin as a campaign of social murder under the auspice of scientific racism, among other things.

    The only way that Eugenics can be salvaged is to turn it into something else entirely. At that point, why not just advocate for something else?

    All of which is still besides the point, as the idea for this thread is to create a thought experiment to determine whether a theory can work in practice.
  • Loners - the good, the bad and the ugly
    To my experience, isolation has been due what I generally refer to as a "patrician mentalist" prejudice that later became socially enforced to a point of either intentionally or tacitly effectively leaving me to die, if not either attempting to convinced me to commit suicide or just kind of create a situation where it could have become likely for me to be killed. As you might imagine, I do blame society.

    Those assumptions of mine are kind of pathological, though, as treating everyone as if they were out to get you does kind of leave you fairly isolated. Extending a certain degree of good faith towards other members of society is the only way to, y'know, make good friends, but, I must say, the people who challenge what issues I have with trust are a little too few and far between.

    It's the age-old paranoid dilemma. Are they really out for you or does thinking it just make it so?
  • On the "Gifted Eugenicist"

    This is not really a conversation about Eugenics, which, given the history of its use, in my opinion, is less salvageable than communism. You can attempt to prove to me that it won't be suited to the purpose of my social murder if you like, but, as I can very much so relate to Aldous Huxley's "savage", it's just going to be a moot point.

    It's easy to say that, well, there are certain heredity diseases that should be taken into consideration while undergoing family planning and difficult to extricate things like scientific racism, prejudice against those deemed "insane", or, y'know, genocide from the sociological theory. As I happen to have been declared "insane" and not to trust the Western intelligentsia, it's doubtful that you will convince me to consign to my own systematic elimination. To me, the concept of mental illness just makes the entire field untenable.

    Sure, though, family planning is a good thing, but is it Eugenics? Sir Francis Galton's theory was explicitly Social Darwinist and it did become a fundamental basis for late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century genocides. Sure, we salvaged Friedrich Nietzsche and even Martin Heidegger, but, when this theory, at best, amounts to social murder, what would the point of rescuing it from its abuse be?

    All of which is besides the point, though. I just edited my post, but the thought experiment is of a gifted Eugenicist suiting to support Social Darwinism explicitly, and, so, always involving its negative connotations.
  • Stuff Thread

    Okay, I was still just trying to get banned from this place, anyways. It's all w/e, though.
  • Stuff Thread
    All is well, y'know.

    Cya!
  • Deep Songs
    Also, should that plan never get off the ground, there's always Baroque Shoegaze, which is kinda already just Galaxie 500, Postmodern Punk, which is kinda already just Marnie Stern, and Dream Rock, which is a hypothetical genre that I created for Tellurian consisting of a band led with a synth player and jazz flutist, a second guitarist with a silver Gibson hollowbody, a Fender Twin Reverb and a Tone Master headstock, a first guitarist with a gold Gibson Les Paul, a Marshall half-stack and Marshall headstock, a bassist with a tea-burst Fender Jazz bass and whatever amp, and drummer with kind of a lot of cymbals. It's only hypothetically deep, but it'll do.

    That's definitely all that I came back for.

    Again, ☮!
  • Stuff Thread
    Being said, I think that we can all start living well now.
  • Stuff Thread
    It's like that adage about how you shouldn't do something well if you don't want to be expected to do it again.
  • Stuff Thread

    Hopefully. I can just go on like this and there are people who do things to make it seem like I somehow ought to and, in so far that I don't and something happens, then I'm somehow responsible or something because I always could've known, but "didn't do anything to prevent it", which is how my good nature kind of gets abused and I just want off of the internet at all times.
  • Stuff Thread

    Absolutely not. Just bothered by things.
  • Stuff Thread
    You can find my experimental poetry:
    jaskaxaver.bandcamp.com

    You can find my work of hypertext here:
    iainxavior.bandcamp.com

    This is a song that I recorded on my ex-bandmate's drum set in 2015 that I have decided to share so that people on the internet can share it with other people on the internet in the interests of that word should travel well.
  • Stuff Thread
    The gem of gems:

    "Crisis After Crisis" by The Verlaines
  • Deep Songs
    My favorite song by Otomo Yoshihide:

    "Eureka (Live In Lisbon)" by Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet

    If you think that it's too repetitive, then, you just didn't get it.
  • Why Black-on-Black Crime isn't a Racist Deflection.

    Honestly, I only entered this thread in the hopes that someone will take me up on creating black Shoegaze.

    It's fine to talk about black on black crime, but it was kind of a deflective talking point in the 1990s.
  • Why Black-on-Black Crime isn't a Racist Deflection.

    Also, in political discourse in the 90s, black on black crime was used to deflect from conversations on institutional racism. It's an exceptionally serious problem, but was just kind of way for news pundits to highlight the danger of certain neighborhoods so as to skirt actually addressing inherent racial inequalities most particularly pronounced within the United States, which is a shame, as it's very sad and something that people ought to be willing to think well enough about so as to change such a state of affairs.

    Anyways, though I'm fairly keen on getting around to reading Necro-Politics, Slavery and Social Death, and The Undercommons eventually, I still stand by what I said about afro-futurism. It's just good all around.

    Note:

    I lied when I said that I was an activist and have further done so by pretending to be a philosopher. I'm mostly just interested in Shoegaze. Black Shoegaze will just sound awesome, though. Someone should really take me up on this.

    It could also, perhaps, dabble in Dub and utilize Samuel R. Delany references, but I fear that I may have taken this too far.

    Before this objection is even raised, I have undertaken to put this hypothetical musical act out there out of an interest in the pure production of an aesthetic and, most importantly, of a sound. To counter tokenism within the Shoegaze community, an act could very easily deploy some form of détournement. I don't necessarily speak for the Shoegaze movement as a whole, but, this is not an effort on our part to make the genre appear more multicultural. This is a decision that I have made out of the sole interest in getting very high. Clearly, I can't expect for black artists to pander to such a desire, but will say that the creation of this band is just a good idea. Upon reading that article, I did immediately think, "not you, too", but, then quickly discovered the potential for a radically new musical genre and near perfect musical act.

    Also, as to why I wouldn't just do this, no matter what I did, people would just say that it's appropriative, and they wouldn't just keep telling me how to make it sound even doper. If it seems like too monumental of a task to create, if you figured out how to make it sound dope enough to be promising, then, people would just keep telling you how to make it sound even doper.

    Also, should a black artistic savant discover this and decide to take me up on it and happen to want to help me get my Drone label, Tellurian, off of the ground, hmu. I can't promise that it would, but feel kind of like this could take off like Apple Records. The tagline for Tellurian is "music for the people of Earth". Otherwise, I'd just be happy for this to somehow exist in the world.

    Despite what vested interest I may or may not have in this, I do, in full sincerity, think that this theoretical act could actually be good enough to bring about what would be like another golden age of Jazz. Don't not do this because of that some alienated hipster came up with it here. It's too good of an idea not to take as far as you possibly can.

    Anyways, that's all that I came here for.

    As before, ☮!
  • Why Black-on-Black Crime isn't a Racist Deflection.
    Also, awhile ago, I read this article on the the black roots of Shoegaze. As tempting as it may be to compare the "scene that celebrates itself" to the former "British invasion", what I, instead, post is that this calls for a black artistic savant to take a leaf from so-called "world music", a decisive influence from free jazz, echoes of musique concrète, a style of production that proceeds from both the wall of sound and contemporary Hip Hop, and, of course, soaring epochal feedback-driven guitar sounds and to create an immanent plane of good vibes.
  • Why Black-on-Black Crime isn't a Racist Deflection.

    Lazy white anti-racist activist with an opinion, here:

    Afro-futurism is the solution to this crisis. In point of actual fact, afro-futurism is the solution to all black crises.

    @thewonder, promoting black positivity and space-related aesthetics, ☮!
  • What Constitutes Power?
    You can respond to this if you like, but I will actually be taking off.

    As before, so long!
  • On the Distinction between Analytic and Continental Philosophy

    This is great!

    To give the opposition some ground, though, I have noticed that "Analytic" philosophers tend to be fairly denotative and that "Continental" philosophers tend to be fairly connotative. Take Bertrand Russell's "On Denoting" and Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus, for example. Russell clearly is speaking of denotations in a very explicit manner. Camus spends the entire text speaking of "the Absurd" without ever really delineating what it is. On some level, I think that this was done to leave it open for interpretation, but I do kind of wonder as to whether it isn't so that "the Absurd" can refer to whatever Camus so desires.

    Anyways, what I wonder about all of this is as to whether it doesn't actually have something to do with the linguistic differences between English and German.

    There are obvious cultural differences between England and Germany, aside from that it probably difficult to separate language and culture in this sense, as well as that I happen to know next to nothing about linguistics, but I wonder if, engaging in some sort of pure linguistic analysis, you wouldn't find more of an emphasis on inference in German and more an emphasis on clarity in English. If anyone does happen to be a linguist, I think that this could, perhaps, be done by analyzing Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Sir Issac Newton's delineation of calculus.
  • Thinking Beyond Wokeness
    I've thought this further out than you, I think.

    The mistake of wokeness is to have abandoned potential police magnetism. Though I do advocate for a large-scale dismantling of the security apparatus, being a potential police magnet is just a good idea. Michel Foucault was right and the world is dangerous, man. Generally, I'm in favor of avoiding the police, but there's never a good reason to unbecome a potential police magnet. It's good for you if you're around certain sets of society, identify as being a woman, or are even engaged in certain kinds of activities. It's even good for you if you're a potential political criminal. The caveat, "potential", does need to predicate the whole thing, but there's no real reason to give up on that. I'm not just woke, y'know what I mean, I've got my thinking cap on.

    The internet knows now. So long, odd fellows!
  • Is the political spectrum a myth?

    This test is mistaken in that you can only responsibly score a -9.49 on the libertarian/authoritarian scale due to two of the questions in the last section and the more obvious one on Astrology.

    @thewonder, out!
  • What are you listening to right now?
    Exit strategy:

    "My Back Pages" by The Byrds

    ☮︎!