Freeper Logic

[MsKandice01]

This reply was posted in response to a post about George Will, William Buckley, Jr., and Francis Fukuyama's recent criticism of the Chimpy-in-Chief.

PLEASE, PLEASE tell me how this makes any sense.

"I have read Will in the past, but I have not agreed with everything he puts out. He comes across as an elitist snob, too educated and intelligent to grasp the truth of the matter. Buckley I can give a pass since I feel his time has passed."

So now only stupid people can grasp the real truth? Well, at least they're admitting they're fecking idiots.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1608872/posts

[Ezlivin]

1. You can't be a Republican Party member unless your IQ is this low

To the Republicans, too much thinking is worse than too much drinking.

Hence our president.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. "too educated and intelligent" is a scathing freep insult..

:rofl: MKJ

[BlooInBloo]

3. It's a Nietszchean re-definition....

losers become winners, idiots become geniuses.

It's the fundamental force behind American anti-intellectualism - people can't STAND being losers, so they simply re-define the words to make themselves winners. Liberals do it just as much "I'm not good at math - I'm a SPATIAL thinker" - and crap like that.

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. That's Nietzschean how?

Certainly, what you're describing seems to align with what Nietzsche called the slave revolt in morality, but it's just as certain that Nietzsche had nothing but contempt for such an operation, and identified it as the root cause of the problems of the human.

[BlooInBloo]

14. Read the geneaology of morals...

That's the whole topic - at least in the first 100 pages or so... The notion of "right" came from a losers-to-winners redefinition of "might". He used the phrase "the jews" to refer to the ones who redefine losing into winning - he clearly didn't think much of the re-definers...

It's Nietzschean in that it was the core of his "rational reconstruction" of morality - it's how he baked a moral cake from non-moral ingredients. Not that he *liked* it....

And I believe that the idea was original with him. Everyone before him put "right" as descending from godly stuff, or from social contract stuff (or kantian, if you don't regard that as social contract-y). It was new to Nietzsche to construe it as a REVOLT from a previous social environment - in effect the BREAKING of a prior social contract. Hence the similarities to Kuhn.

I'll shut up now.

[alcibiades_mystery]

19. I've read it, numerous times

I even cite the notion of the "slave revolt in morality" in my post - directly from the Genealogy of Morals.

Your clarification here is that he didn't like it. Indeed he did not.

Besides, I read the Genealogy of Morals primarily as a commentary on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit - he's also arguing against the Master-Slave dialectic and how something like consciousness develops. I'd also disagree on something like a "prior social contract" primarily on these grounds - the contract itself is an effect of forces that separates a force from what it can do (the great birds of prey agree not to harm the little lambs under the following conditions, etc.): the contract form is thereform always an effect of the slave revolt in morality. No contract can precede it.

[BlooInBloo]

20. It's mostly a semantic quibble...

I was being somewhat inclusive in my use of "social contract". The key abstract features (to me) of social contract-y notions of morality, in virtue of which they contrast with "metaphysical" notions are that (a) they're *malleable* by the people involved, and (b) the social/pragmatic nature of the topic.

To my mind, the literal *agreement* isn't really necessary - just a picturesque frill. On that notion, the moral prehistory *might makes right* structure would count as social contract-y. Hell, it might count even with the "agreement" part.

It certainly counts according to your constraining-a-force notion - the deal being "I lord will not smite thee serf if you act as my bitch". Loosely speaking of course - lol.

I did lose track of Hegel tho - certainly a better/deeper source for world's-intro-to-Kuhn-or-Lakatos than Nietsche... I dunno how far I'd go on the Niet-was-against-Hegel line tho - I'd prolly ask Gadamer and count myself satisfied with that - lol

Except for your apparent love of Plato, you sound like a Pitt thinker - LOL

EDIT: Lost the whole point: What makes the OP's structure Nietzschean rather than Hegelian or Kuhnian Rortian or whatever - to my mind - is the *inversion*. Nietzche dealt with winners becoming losers, bad becoming good, and so on. The others deal more generically with just "changes" - different paths in "the great conversation" - they don't focus so specifically on change between opposites. That, as much as anything, is why I think of the OP's remarks as having a Nietzchean ring to them. And also the *rationale* for the change - being a loser sucks, so if you can't win in reality, change the very concept. There's a strong sense of cheating to it - which is presumably why Nietzsche didn't have a lot of respect for that method of "winning".

[alcibiades_mystery]

22. Not really a lover of Plato

Alcibiades notwithstanding.

Nietzschean through and through. The point re: any notion of contract is that it separates a force from what it can do, and that is what Nietzsche despised most. The lord who agrees not to smite the serf is just as caught up in the slave morality (this reversal you speak of) as the serf, just as the Nazis were much more the slaves of the slave morality than the Jews they killed - that's Nietzsche's open critique of Hegel's dialectic, and dialectical thinking in general. The previous state, for Nietzsche, wasn't might makes right, but rather might is might, period, or rather, forces are forces, and only the slave morality sees a difference in force and wants to squash it, or determine "right" among forces. There is not "right" prior to the slave revolt in morality - right is nothing but the conquest of forces, what Nietzsche (again in the Genealogy) calls the triumph of reactive forces: ressentiment, bad conscience, the ascetic priests of culture, etc.

[BlooInBloo]

23. Your notion of contract is TOO inclusive...

... EVERY system separates a force from its application. On your notion, EVERY system would count as a contract. While I was being inclusive with the notion, you rob it of all meaning (in vitue of its promiscuity).

"Might makes right" was just a catch-phrase for morality's prehistory, for me. I'm aware that "right" + "morality's prehistory" are literally contradictory.

And the losers don't merely see "a difference in force" - lol - the winners see that same difference. The losers specifically focus on the fact that they're on the LOSING end of that difference. Hence the ressentiment.

In any case, my initial Nietzsche reference was only to the cheap-redefinition-inversion-due-to-being-on-the-crappy-side - details aside, I don't think you substantially disagree with THAT characterization.

Else I'm much mistaken, and should just go back to bed. lol

[BlooInBloo]

24. Just occurred to me....

The only contrast to a system that separates a force from its application would be the Hobbesian "state of nature". Everything beyond that would have to count as a "contract" per your notion.

[alcibiades_mystery]

26. It's not my notion

It's Nietzsche's notion. Every systematization that depends on consciousness does indeed separate a force from what it can do, because this is the very purpose of consciousness. Every force implies a difference in force, of course. There are active and reactive forces. What astounds Nietzsche is the triumph of reactive forces as reactive forces - precisely this "losers win" business that you've been describing, but the losers winning as losers: the victory gives them no victory, they remain losers in victory, slaves after the revolt. It is the "loser's" perspective that ends up separating a force (active or reactive) from what it can do, segregates being and doing, installs feeling rather than action.

[BlooInBloo]

27. I'm not convinced you understood what I said... lemme try another...

I agree that every contract "does indeed separate a force from what it can do". It's the CONVERSE that I disagree with. It's not the case that every separation of a force from what it can do is a contract.

Are you comfortable with the difference between a statement and its converse?

Because the converse, above, fails, separating a force from its actualization is unacceptable as a notion of contract. It's an *implication* of a contract, but a lot of things can have that effect which are not, conceptually speaking, contracts - Freud's superego, for example.

Too many non-contract things involve the separation of force from use for someone as smart as Nietzsche to use that as the definition.

Unless there's a convenient chapter/verse you can provide me with, I prefer not to believe that smart folks make massive, obvious intellectual blunders when I can avoid it.

[alcibiades_mystery]

28. Since I never made the converse claim

On my own behalf or Herr nietzsche's, the point is moot.

My point is this: no social contract precedes the slave revolt in morality - the very notion of a social contract assumes that the reversal you speak of - at least in Nietzsche's rather complete building of that concept - has already taken place. Why? Because every contract assumes that one can separate a force from what it can do. For Nietzsche, this is precisely the "infolding" of forces that allows the triumph of reactive forces, the slave revolt in morality. The reversal Nietzsche describes with due care in the Genealogy of Morals is this movement, the separation of a doer from the deed. But Nietzsche notes explicitly: just as there is no lightning apart from its strike, "there is no being behind doing, effecting, becoming: the doer is merely a fiction added to the deed - the deed is everything."

The converse is quite obviously invalid: that every contract implies a separation of a force from what it can do by no means implies that every separation of a force from what it can do is a contract. But that is utterly beside the point, since no claim I made either states or implies the converse. I am happy enough to dispute these point with you, but I'd prefer to defend an argument I actually made, rather than an obviously ridiculous argument that i didn't. :-)

[BlooInBloo]

29. Ok

We're just using different notions of contract. Nothing wrong with that.

btw - when you said "any notion of contract is that it separates a force from what it can do", I took the "is" as identity, hence implying commitement to the converse. If you didn't intend that, fine.

[alcibiades_mystery]

31. subset

any NFL player is a professional athlete

(obviously, not implying the converse)

it has been fun talking Nietzsche with you, though. Cheers.

[BlooInBloo]

32. Subset is "is a" or "is an"...

And that's not actually subset. That's set *membership* - but whatever - the "is a" locution can also be used to indicate subset relations.

That's why yours confused me - it was not a case of "is a". It was just an "is"

[billybob537]

4. Too intelligent

not in that party. The party of Chimps. :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast:

[Norquist Nemesis]

5. The simplest explanation is

Cognitive Dissonance:

"Beyond this benign if uncomfortable aspect, however, dissonance can go "over the top", leading to two interesting side-effects for learning:

if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know — particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge — they are likely to resist the new learning. Even Carl Rogers recognised this. Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget's terms.
and—counter-intuitively, perhaps—if learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are less likely to concede that the content of what has been learned is useless, pointless or valueless. To do so would be to admit that one has been "had", or "conned".

[TAPat]

6. This guy must be a top ranking Party Member over

at the Ministry of Education...

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. This is not an uncommon sentiment even here

American culture seems to produce anti-intellectualism across the board. the idea is not that the stupid get it, but that intellect somehow masks an authentic relationship with the real, a more folksy wisdom that one gets by being - to an extent - uncritically enveloped in supposedly real situations. It is the very rationale for Bush's popularity in some quarters: the work of learning and culture haven't corrupted his folksy perceptions of the real.

But, to be fair, you'll see the same charge levelled on these very boards a hundred times a day, as if using complex sentences and including qualifiers was itself a distortion of the real. The appeal to common sense is always ideological; it always excludes and naturalizes "basic assumptions" which should not be open to question, ever. It's a lie, but it is the way many people have of holding on to their own corrupted and thoroughly produced way of making sense of the world.

[Igel]

18. Precisely.

There's an anecdote that Edison was urged to hire a mathematician; a math expert could help him in so many ways. So Edison did. One of the first tasks Edison gave him was to determine the volume of a glass bulb. The glass bulb was slightly asymmetric. The university-educated mathematician took days measuring and trying to model the bulb so that he could integrate the resulting set of equations and produce a precise answer: not a trivial task, and the answer was still days away.

Edison finally got tired of waiting for the mathematician to fulfill such a simple task; Edison retreived the bulb, filled it with water, and poured the water into a graduated cylinder. He then read off the bulb's volume with the degree of precision that he required.

In fluid dynamics, the key was making the correct set of 'simplifying assumptions' that would both make the equations solvable, and the answers nearly on target. Same in complex analysis.

It takes folk wisdom to cut through the Gordian knot of complexity that befuddles scholars. Or, as I would put it, sometimes it takes intelligence to see through all the possible complications that really don't matter. It's not always anti-intellectualism, but the distinction is sometimes lost when intelligence conflicts with knowledge.

[EstimatedProphet]

9. Stupid uber alles

This reminds me of a job I had once at a fish hatchery. One of the maintenance men used to say things like that-we had 3 Ph. D.s on station, including myself, and he would talk about how education will make people stupid. He was a huge fuckup; he literally was known throughout the region as a fuckup. The whole thing was about jealousy and an inferiority complex.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. "Only stupid people can grasp truth"...that's why they love Chimpy!

[Arkansas Granny]

11. Freeper Logic. Now that's what I call an oxymoron. Or would

that be oxymoran?

:rofl:

[Justice Is Comin]

30. That would be oxymormon.

[seabeyond]

12. my sons and i literally laugh at the repug mentality of opposing

education and intelligence. my brothers and other repugs pinning intellectual elitists on us, as if being intellectual is a bad thing, leaves sons and i in such giggle.

[zbdent]

13. Funny, I always thought of George Will as an educated, intelligent

elitist Republican snob . . .

IIRC, the original understanding of "educated elitist" always referred to the people who were able to afford to go off to college . . . the "wealthy" . . . while the working class would go off to work with a minimal education. Back when you actually could do such a thing. Back when you had a job for life at Ford/Chevy/LTV.

The "educated elite" would be the guys up in the offices above the factory floor who would find out that they could get cheaper parts by shipping stuff from Japan . . .

And, since the Republican party appealed much more to the wealthy than the Dems, the Repukes were really the "educated, elitist snobs" . . .

Now, they associate themselves as the party of NASCAR, hunters, and Larry the Cable Guy, even though their "elected leaders" are every bit as much lawyers as any Dem . . .

[librechik]

15. see, being ejimacated is a huge disadvantage

to sucking in the propoganda uncritically. Pukkkes hate those you know, brainy types. But only after they say the truth aloud (George Will has been a Willing acolyte until quite recently when a discouraging word or two slipped out)

[izzybeans]

16. Revivalists did the same thing to intellectual clergy during the

"The Great Awakening". They attacked them for their knowledge. They know too much to know the truth. They have no emotional connection to the truth, as it went. Truth be told, its what happens when someone lacks the tools to do intellectual battle. They say someone is too intellectual to know the truth, call them an egghead, and move on sloshing through another Busch-Light induced haze. If you don't have blind loyality you don't have truth. That basic premise is what made Orwell famous because he demonstrated it as submission to tyranny.

[DiverDave]

17. A quote from James Michener

I know, I know, he was a Conservative, and wrote with that in mind.
But this is relevant for this thread:

"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."
James Michener 'Space'

[Chi-Town Exile]

21. Too Educated. Goes right up there with

this is hugh!

If this Freeper actually spelled "educated" correctly and used "too" instead of "to"
he needs to give up HIS freeper credentials because he's too educated for that website. LOL

[distantearlywarning]

25. A very typical Repuke argument

If you ever dare to bring facts, science, or your higher education in a relevant area into an argument the very first thing they claim is that everybody knows that professors/college students/scientists/anybodywhoisn'tJimBobfromthesticks are all left-biased and have too much education, therefore we can discard everything and anything they ever said regardless of their methods or evidence (unless it agrees with the conservative viewpoint, of course, then's it's "good science").

This is the #1 thing about Repukes that makes me want to kick them all in the crotch. They've managed to spin ignorance into a highly valued social norm and present it as evidence of moral correctness in all things. It's absolutely insane. :crazy: