An Exercise in Sophistry
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- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2024
- In this video, I’ll be addressing the question of how we might attempt to distinguish incoherence from depth, as fans of New Age swindlers (as well as certain postmodern philosophers) seem to be having difficulty with that task.
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Since there seems to be some confusion about the topic of this video, I'd like to leave this comment to help clarify what this video is and isn't about.
1) this video isn't about "why postmodernism is stupid." This video is about Baudrillard's abuse of scientific terminology.
2) this video isn't about "why Baudrillard is stupid." This video is about Baudrillard's abuse of scientific terminology.
3) this video isn't about "why anti-essentialist ontology is stupid." This video is about Baudrillard's abuse of scientific terminology.
4) this video isn't about "why hyperreality, simulacra, and simulations aren't meaningful concepts." This video is about Baudrillard's abuse of scientific terminology.
5) this video isn't about quantum mechanics, chaos theory, or mathematics more generally. This video is about Baudrillard's abuse of scientific terminology.
KC, nice example of a crony scientism, taking a difference in kind (between the continental philosophy and the esoteric neo-Buddhism) for a difference in degree.
@@exlauslegale8534 This video wasn't about the shortcomings of continental philosophy. This video is about Baudrillard's abuse of scientific terminology.
@@KingCrocoduck they just dont seem to get it do they?
@@KingCrocoduck Yes, and I was just pointing out your abuse of scientific method.
@@exlauslegale8534 Give KC a break. He tries to be as objectively and reasonable as possible . He is after all a scientist , he tried to explain the flaws of the bad use of terminology by people like Deepak for money and profit. There could be two reasons for why an intellectual would do that: either to sounds smart in front of his/her colleagues or to sound smart to sell more books. Besides, how many skeptics you know to have a large understanding of philosophy?
It's less than word salad. It's speaking in tongues in a scientific accent.
fluffymcdeath Great way to put it
Pure Humpty-Dumptyism.
@@bdf2718 Indeed.
Maybe it's like crosswords and some people just like them very difficult and obscure? It sure is exhilirating to decipher the same two pages over and over to glean an approximate meaning out of it... Right?
@@DrummerDucky I think that's a big part of it. Kinda like literature appreciation where they ignore the point of the story and wander off into obscure interpretations of minor phrases. The sort of people who love James Joyce because it's totally incomprehensible so they can get a doctoral degree by interpreting it any way they want. Nobody can say they're wrong because nobody can make sense of Joyce in the first place. PoMo is essentially philosophy in the style of Joyce.
Perhaps hybridized with a little Rabbinical interpretation. The sort of thinking that justifies some indefensible story in the Torah by focusing on some trivial event that happens to a minor character. Which is like saying that _Pulp Fiction_ isn't about crime and violence but teaches us the moral lesson of the importance of keeping one's car clean.
I honestly thought I was stupid after hearing the first paragraph and then I quickly realised it was meaningless bollocks and I felt normal again.
Tom
Same here.
You weren't supposed to figure that out!
Nothing is so absurd it couldn’t have been said by a philosopher
There's a great book with endless examples of this kind of postmodern bullshit: "Fashionable Nonsense", by Sokal and Bricmont.
Preview the nonsense that tumbles out of Jaques Lacan's mouth
books.google.pt/books?id=x6spAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
So, as a layman in both philosophy and various mathematics-related stuff, I will say: that Jean Baudrillard's paragraph reads like a Markov Chain-generated text with some biology textbooks used as sources.
Yeah, my first thought was Markov Chain, too. Especially as certain word roots were repeated in close proximity.
I think it may actually be rooted in the poetic style of presentation used by French philosophers. Still total bullshit.
I wonder what you'd get if you made a Markov Chain out of creationist blog posts? Would the results be any less stupid than the source material?
@@Roxor128 whew, wouldent that be an experiance. Im almost afraid to find out
GOOD philosphers explain their concepts concisely, in a way even a layman can grasp as indeed any good teacher should.
Jean Baudrillard is neither.
I like the way you put that...
Exactly. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" as someone smart once said and the hallmark of a true master if I might say so.
no they shouldn't, you end up losing all the nuance.
you might as well say that physicists should write peer-reviewed articles in a way a layman can understand.
that being said baudrillard is just hiding his ideas behind inelegant metaphors rather than being thorough.
@@cletusawreetus-awrightus2799 Physics is a hard science, Philosophy is teaching, not even a soft science. Physicists aren't writing or trying to communicate with the masses, but with one another. Science teachers (not physicists) DO need to communicate physics in such a way that laypeople can understand. Philosophers are communicating with the masses, or what is the point of them being philosophers?
I mean, that is their entire job. They have no point other than to teach philosophy to the masses.
@@cletusawreetus-awrightus2799 We are talking philosphy, not physics. Nor are we talking a paper for intellectuals, these are the ideas he presents to be learned. If you cannot walk someone through your philosophy in such a way they can grasp the basics then you have failed.
Yes, both involve layers of abstraction but I'm not saying that someone should be able to walk through a school of philosophical thought in one sentence, just that they be able to convey the idea in a way almost anyone can grasp.
I'd say this is true of physics as well, to a degree: I've had good teachers explain ideas in a way that I immediately grasped where poor teachers failed to convey entirely (often professors in the latter case). However you do require additional skills and fewer people will be able to cope with that.
You have to love Deepak. He spouts nothing but rhetorical claptrap, then hides behind alternative definitions when called out. We could discover warp drive if everyone would simply sit and hum to themselves :D
More KC?? Didn't even take a year this time!
Thanks man. Now we'll have to wait two years for the next one. You and your big mouth lol
@@davey1602 LOL. jinx
I absolutely loved the guy having sex with his own brain. 😂
That is postmodernism if nothing else.
let's hope it doesn't get pregnant...
Haha, yeah thats so silly! Who would do that?
*awkwardly putting away my brain and putting on clothes
You could say he's f♡cking around with his brain! 🤔
I was gonna post something but it appears that all has been said
Surely a far better metaphor for postmodernism is masturbation. By a eunuch.
"Quantum physics is unexplainable in the absence of consciousness"
-Very really good physicists
Well, I mean... who _would_ you explain it to in that case anyway?
Same goes for the concept of a hammer ...
ShotgunLlama Roger Penrose stated that all theories of Quantum Mechanics require reference to a conscious experience. But what would Penrose know about physics?
I'm glad KC made this video. Pompous, empty language in the humanities always drove me crazy back when I was in college.
I'm in university right now. I know what you mean. Laura Mulvey's essay on The Male Gaze is a good example of such a thing. That, and everything ever written by Roland Barthes.
Yeah it's mostly just people using big words outside of the correct context in order to sound smarter than they are.
It still drives me nuts.
You think it's bad in the humanities try it in business jargon, politics, the law or technology. For example: What does "Artificial intelligence" mean? .
@@myothersoul1953 eh...? Artificial intelligence means a network created by people to simulate intelligence, as the entire process is just a computer fulfilling lines of code, it cannot be considered true intelligence, hence it's artificial. Since it's a simulation of intelligence and it's artificial, it's called artificial intelligence.
unlike the humanities that are using the jargon from business and tech without really understanding them the people in business and tech actually know what's going on.
Also the reason law needs to use complex words is to have more precise definitions instead of a lackadaisical wishy-washy you bad so you go to prison structure.
I had no idea what she was talking about...even though control theory is one of subject I was studying and casually utilize on monthly basis. It is astonishing how word salads can confuse my mind to not recognize area that I have knowledge of, well yet another personal fallacy to be aware of.
Archi Yakumo I've n3ver heard of control theory, but i can usually get along just fine as long as the message is coherent and not needlessly wordy. Sadly there are those out there thwt think you can baffle people with bullshit and the more we are confused, the smarter somehow they must be. Thats why i like anticitizenX. Plain language, simple enough expalainations.
@@nunyabisnass1141 "Control Theory" - using feedback to control things. [Very simplified explanation.]
Holy shit, a new King Crocoduck video on my birthday? This might just be the best birthday present I could ask for.
Have a great day, David Merdian.
Happy birthday, David. Eat lots of cake and have lots of sex, in that order.
Bappy Hirthday.
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday
Quoting Karl Popper: "With the romantics, a new kind of dogmatism becomes fashionable, in philosophy as well as in the social sciences. It confronts us with its dictum. And we can take it or leave it. This romantic period of an oracular philosophy, called by Schopenhauer the ‘age of dishonesty’, is described by him as follows: ‘The character of honesty, that spirit of undertaking an inquiry together with the reader, which permeates the works of all previous philosophers, disappears here completely. Every page witnesses that these so-called philosophers do not attempt to teach, but to bewitch the reader.’ "
P.S. Nice spanking. Don't leave us for long :D
I would like to see Kraft Dinner's approval of Karl Popper. LOL
I’m an academic and have become increasingly aware of the nonsense that pervades institutions of higher education. Administrative leadership is beginning to succumb to the pressure exerted by the new Lysenkoists, with bizarre (and imprecise) initiatives to improve “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at universities. I’ve read as much as I can find about this, including Gross & Leavitt, Sokal, and others. But I must say this series is among the best sources I’ve found and I’m terribly pleased to see you have found some time to return to the series. Best wishes on your doctoral studies and thank you for this content.
Yes, but Baudrillard is none of those things, however. Not a single whit of his work is about "diversity & equity & inclusion".
Except, most of that stuff is a response to the horrible stuff early psychology, psychiatry, and neurology doctors/scientists did to people. The point of the "diversity, equity, and inclusion” is to recognize one's own cultural/political biases. And eliminating biases is pretty important to science. Now, I think there is a discussion worth having if that approach actually does reduce bias (I'm pretty skeptical that it does), but that isn't the conversation you are trying to have. Instead you are just assuming those biases either don't exist in academia, or they are not worth removing. I do of course agree that the people KC talk about (and probably many of the people you deal with) are idiots that only prevent progress.
I agree, but not in any sort of political sense... It's more like a culture of being offended is winning out over common sense and a person's perceived intentions. To me, this feels like emotional response, and not a rational one.
@@zippoboyshaneshank8954 That's not exactly their perspective. It's not really about the "offender's" intent, but the implications of certain actions and ideas. For example: if one were to talk about crime statistics and race, in what they intend to be an unbiased perspective, someone who doesn't understand the topic often assumes that they are causally linked (and they end up becoming race realists and/or ethno-nationalists), rather than it being a combination of unrelated/unknown factors. Oh and appealing to "common sense" is a terrible idea.
These people confuse a cultures' reaction to movements in a cultural fashion [fomented by gender gurus, political activists, *sociologists* etc] for what is really not scientific-rationale, nor activism, but simply the undergirding of philosophical values transcending the nature of modernist trends towards questioning religion, culture, etc, as bottomless-pit, and instead, sussing it from what we know [as opposed to what we don't know], and then going from there. In case no one noticed, the end of modernism was the fin de siècle, the most pessimistic age of recent times. People will also conflate, readily, the notion of *postmodernity* [ie, the time-scale we live in] and "postmodernism" which isn't even well-defined, most of the people in the early last century didn't even accept the label, and are commonly only read in one light- to "debunk them", as if they these same gender gurus, which they clearly aren't- but people will conflate their words because they are far-reaching in strata [of philosophical interests, as that's what philosophers fucking do], with the words of some feminist, and that is, "third wave " feminist, which didn't even exist in the times of people like Baudrillard, q.e.d.
I remember several years ago commenting on your own unnatural and sometimes even improper use of words. You were obviously trying to make use of uncommon and unnecessarily obscure words while presenting yourself here on RUclips. I expected to be squirming again as I listened to this but after five full minutes of it I have to say you presentation, use of words and composition was flawless. I think you've practiced, improved and perfected your rhetorical style. Congratulations. You are now an absolute pleasure to listen to.
Baudrillard's thesis is not only poorly presented, but is also just false. It's trivial to make a definition that includes everything you want while excluding everything that you don't want: do exactly that, just list all the things that you want. Of course we don't do it, but that's because it is impractical, not impossible. We try to compress this list with generalizations and corresponding exceptions - this process doesn't have to be infinite either, contrary to what Baudrillard suggests - just stop whenever you feel like your definition is compressed enough.
In the example with the car the problem is that we start with an intuitive fuzzy understanding of what a 'car' is. It's not like the nature has this elusive phenomenon 'car' and we humans just can't describe it adequately with our limited natural language. A 'car' is _exactly_ what 'car' is defined to be, because that's how definitions work. Definitions by themselves aren't true or false, but they can be more useful or less useful; the ultimate purpose of a definition is communication (unless you're french).
No, the ultimate thing in itself is comprised of syntactic-semantic information comprised of sign tokens. Science has never been about agreeing with the teacher. It's been about one-upping the teacher. We define the word 'car' using the same functions we use to 'imagine' said car, but yet, with that, you can evince much greater things that just a subjective "car" image- you can objectify your car, make it nice and 'sexy'. This is an actual thing you can do with the notion of 'car'.
The latter half of what you said is a postmodernist perspective. The idea that definitions are prescriptive tools rather than being fundamentally descriptive in nature, is a postmodern idea. Postmodern thought isn't inherently stupid (tho Baudrillard is).
@@FumbleSquid What I said is sort of a truism, it's compatible with both prescriptive and descriptive models.
Take for example the word 'fish': in the past people weren't wrong to include whales under the defintion, because the definition was literally any finned vertebrate that lived in water. Then as we came to understand evolution we consciously decided to change the definition. The purpose was descriptive, but the change itself was prescriptive.
When it comes to man-made things and concepts, the definitions tend to be more stable and strict. For example, a metre is exactly 1/299 792 458
'th of the travel distance of light in vacuum per second because it's defined to be this way.
@@CynicalBastard you can even make your car nice and sexy without the notion of a car
@@ZyTelevan Most of what I was getting at is this problem isn't postmodernism's fault, but these people who give up on trying to remove subjectivity and instead deliberately inject more subjectivity into it. The postmodern perspective is being used responsibly in many cases for removing political/cultural bias from science (specifically hypothesis and conclusion formation which is still prone to various biases)
If the author REALLY meant to say what you later described.
Then the author should have said it in that way ... or similar way ... or any other way for that matter.
If smashing your face on a keyboard randomly is more likely to make the reader understand what you were trying to convey than your own style of writing ... then you probably shouldn't be an author. Or at least hire a ghost writer if one appears who has superhuman amounts of patience.
Well these postmodern writers like the taste of their own cum. Who are you to deny this pleasure?
I switched to reading nearly exclusively in English after being forced to gobble up too many of these sanity-shattering French authors. It all harkens back to at least as far as Descartes who would build inane word systems to try and justify the existence of God, and I still can't believe that part of his work was being taught *seriously* in my philosophy class.
@@DrummerDucky Descartes overall is the antithesis of this problem.
Sure some parts were hard but overall he thrived on trying to be understood by the laymen (hence why he wrote several books in French not Latin). The Metaphysical meditations are his most obscure book but it isn't what I'd call that hard in comparison to others as he tried using very concrete examples to explain what his esoteric ideas were and to make them understandable with as little efforts as possible. I don't think that the problem with him is that he tried to be cryptic but that his ideas were just too ...... weird for a regular mind to grasp without twisting itself everytime. But the rest of his work is overall very easy to grasp as he doesn't go into such weird theories and his writing style truly shines
But I agree with you, overall you should stay away from philosophy in French, it is garbage apart from maybe a few exceptions, definitely not something to try, it is so full of nonsense *especially* since the XXth century
Even *if* he were using regular terminology he shouldn't have published it because there is literally *nothing* new about his ideas.
Linguistic students study the disconnection between definition terms and reality *literally* on their first day in class.
If you took this to another field of study, it'd be like this man realizing he has nothing new to say about history in a book and decides to turn the saying "History is written by the winners" into a paragraph long metaphor about natural selection.
Just because you encrypted your writing with highly specific jargon doesn't make what you were saying any less of a fucking obvious concept most of your audience already knew even before you said anything.
Interesting how Jordan Peterson's word-salad diatribe against postmodernism is virtually indistinguishable from that of Baudrillard.
I will address Peterson's belief system in a future video. I'm of the opinion that he's a metamodernist- a successor to the postmodernists.
@@KingCrocoduck Looking forward to it!
@@KingCrocoduck Thanks for the reply, I think he falls into a group that does not understand the basics of engineering thus he lives in a perpetual fear of infrastructure failing(chaos) due to technology failing, whilst at the same time he does not recognise it is incompetent bureaucracy (social hierarchies) that is the greater threat to our stability.
@@truthseeker2275 I've never got that from the man, he seems to be very clear that things fall apart because people are imperfect.
"They muddy the water, to make it seem deep." - Friedrich Nietzsche.
I like your use of the brainlet wojaks.
@@ThatWasPrettyFunny Does the bigbrain have a name
Kony [Current Year] hey, dude! Did they ever catch you in 2012?
I like how the entire time that airbag is talking, Harris just has this look of "When is it my turn to talk?"
Sam Harris is an airbag, just the same.
@@CynicalBastard Um, no. He's a renowned atheist philosopher and nueroscientist.
I love watching Sam take down DC!
Sam Harris has plenty of critics who are also "atheist", "philosopher" and "neuroscientist", but I will grant he is a respected neuroscientist in his field. But just philosophy isn't his field. It really fucking isn't, and he evinces it everytime he tries to tackle it. His politics are spotty, at best, as well.
@CynicalBroadcast Examples?
You outlined something that has driven me mad for decades. As a working mathematician, this cultural appropriation (sarcasm?) of precise mathematical/scientific notions for pompous obfuscation incenses me. Talking with these people is like trying to swim in quicksand. Thanks for the emotional release! Subscribed
As a Philosopher, you have done more for increasing my understanding of Post-Modern concepts than any of my professors or books
Baudrillard obviously knows his way around endless excrescence.
I don't think I could have made it to page 113 reading that rubbish.
It's been my experience that when someone uses big words and convoluted language either he doesn't understand the topic, or is trying to "baffle 'em with bullshit.
give james joyce a miss then......and literature in general.
@@georgeanthony4834 Joyce isn't trying to teach anything though, it's his own idiosyncratic world with its own rules.
Baruch Ben-David :
DD/Gary Milne fits that description perfectly.
@@DrummerDucky Respectfully disagree.Joyce is a fierce moralist and it's our world he is describing - even though his prose is a joy in itself.....and I suspect we've gone a bit off topic here.
accurate and im ashamed to admit that i used to behave every similar to those pseudointellectuals back when i was in middle school. bad memories.
The triple double pendulum was truly fascinating! Thanks!
Nuanced and sophisticated!
Isn't it adorable when the soft sciences get envious of real science?
Don't fall for sciencism please.
It's cringey
@@Lobsterist Don't use the word "scientism" please.
It's cringey.
Isn't it adorable when people are so focused on the hard that they forget the soft exists entirely?
The hard sciences are rather meaningless and without direction and interpretation without philosophy. Without a philosophical process of understanding and thinking about science and how to best know the world, you probably wouldn’t be able to justify something like predictive power as a goal of science and laws and theories in science.
Epistemology is integral for a proper justification of science.
@@jackbarman7063 Load of pretentius horseshit
Yes, there is Philosophy of Science, but in practice, all that really matter is mathematics. The further away you get from that, invariably the more noise and bad ideas. Obviously there is a use to the softer sciences, but to pretend that their usefulness or proximity of objective truth is anything like equivalent is simply nonsense.
To put it more succinctly: math has no need of your "philosophical process of understanding".
Sorry, I had to skip Chopra's incoherent ramblings.
That's okay, Deepak zoned out on that part too.
Profezor Snayp those were the easiest postmodern ramblings in this video to digest
DON'T YOU GET IT? THE MOON IS QUANTUM SOUP!
wow... You compared someone to Deepak Chopra, that's a pretty unprecedented level of shade throwing. I hate post modernist too but they must've really gotten under your skin big time.
Also the progressively worsening line art with the big brain person, was as hilarious as it was terrifying.
The problem with these postmodern retards is they screw with science just like the christians did but this time their antiscience is applaud.
Well the comparison is pretty apt.
Postmodernists, are as useful as Deepak Chopra, if your goal is to affect the world around you - not at all.
In my humble opinion their best descriptor is "not even wrong".
@@viermidebutura That's putting it mildly.
King Crocoduck uploads frequently now! Thank you KC!
Me: Writes a concise and understandable essay
Doesnt pass
Also me: Writes a junkyard essay full of complicated words
Passes
I am entering college this fall, so glad you are making these videos!
As a mathematician, I was similarly startled by this fragment discussing 'hyposensitivity to initial conditions', which did betray the author's lack of understandind of the problems that chaos theory tries to deal with. Regular theory of differential equations deals with the 'sensitive' case just fine, let alone an 'insensitive' one.
Deepak Chopra is a rank amateur compared to this sh...I mean, stuff.
Deep-pocket Chopra.
@@baruchben-david4196 Or the Ikea knock-off - Flatpak Chopra.
Derp-yuck?
Rank amateur, or clever enough to know that you don't need to put any actual effort into sounding profound when mindlessly juxtaposing complicated words will fool the unwashed masses?
The answer is yes.
Never heard it before? Why do you suppose that is?
Dammit! I can only hit thumbs up once - but I did so with great emphasis and enthusiasm.
Just saw you on the Benjamin Boyce channel and I was excited to see your new videos, but no new videos! Dude! Your voice is needed!
Baudiliard is French. That's why his language sounds convoluted, that's the French tradition. You can argue about his ideas after they've been simplified for your understanding in English by others.
It's unfortunate that the postmodernists obfuscate their own ideas deliberately. Thanks for sharing translations of the word salad. The images you used were also good.
19:10 Clearly, with the phrase "Sometimes I use big words I don't fully understand, to make myself appear more photosynthesised", Deepak is invoking a plethora of concepts. While a less erudite person will think about long written words and the metabolic processes of plants, a *Nuanced™* and *Sophisticated™* interpretation will reveal what he means:
The length of a written word is a social construct, so by big words he means words that have more impact on the listener, and admitting to not fully understand a word is just a recognition that words have different meanings to different people, so none of us can fully understand any word. Photosynthesis is the act of creation of something by light, that something is Deepak itself, who trying to appear more "created by light", thus less "created by darkness". Light being a symbol for knowledge and for the divine, darkness a symbol for ignorance and evil.
So, in trying to mock Deepak, this meme only shows how he is being humble and cognizant of his limitations, but still striving to act in the image of God.
Nice try ... but what you have written here is pure male bovine fecal matter ... photosynthesis is a SPECIFIC word for a SPECIFIC scientifically explained process ... human beings cannot and do not photosynthesize anything. KC using this DC meme just drives home his point. Chopra's use of mixed metaphors are silly, inane and trite at best and confusing, senseless and dishonest at worst ... and have nothing to do with actual science ...
Deepak Chopra is actually right this time, quantum theory really cannot be explained without consciousness - there would be noone to do the explaining after all..
Only if you assume that an intelligence must be conscious. Other wise an intelligent, unconscious, machine could explain quantum mechanics without invoking conciousness.
Perfect timing! :D Hi Croco! EDIT: You did way too good a job with that rewrite of Chopra. Try doing it drunk and hit your head a couple times, then you'll sound like the usual apologists for this junk.
You had me at "junkyard of a paragraph". Actually a bit earlier. Nicely done.
Nice to see that you're back. lol
Nice to be back
@@KingCrocoduck I made a few boring vids while in biochem lab. Was thinking of you.
@@TheCommentaryKingOfficial thx boo
I love how wojacks brain got bigger every time
please more videos like this
The memes are priceless in this vid. "This a nuanced and sophisticed ect ect."
Finally, someone who used “magnanimous” correctly. Bravo! Love the content.
Love your work man, always puts a smile on my face, keep it up!
And artificial intelligence took that quote, rephrased it, and then rephrased it again to sound like a Pulitzer Prize winner:
"As our complex systems continue to grow and spread at an exponential rate, they are doomed to a state of perpetual change and instability. No longer able to find an end or purpose, they are trapped in a cycle of constant activity and metamorphosis. The signs of chaos and disorder are all we can discern in these systems, as our ability to predict their outcome has been lost. Yet, even as we struggle to comprehend the frenzied nature of these systems, we remain largely unaware of the inverse phenomenon, in which the tiniest of actions can unleash a maelstrom of consequences."
He didn't say anything?! The AI writes better!
I think the quote from Baudrillard (like much of postmodernism) is not supposed to be understood, but interpreted.
exactly, why converge thoughts for clarity, when we could also diverge into a plethora of subjective interpretations that have nothing in common but a feeling of "yeah, right"....
Let's interpret it as bullshit then :)
But that's not really what postmodernist philosophy is. The people KC talks about are idiots, but the issue of subjectivity is a real problem for science. And it is solved by the continuing removal of subjectivity, wherever it is found. What the people KC talk about are doing is giving up because perfect objectivity is technically impossible (at least on an individual level). Despite it being impossible to reach, the pursuit of objectivity results in useful theories.
Expecting clarity from the guy who think words cannot have meaning and reality doesn't exist is not going to go well.
Baudrillard isn't an idiot, though. He isn't a gender guru new-waver like all you people like to conflate into "All postmodernism" in your slight gleaning of early last-century [fin de siècle, the most pessimistic time in recent history]. But you are right though, these are important subjects that people conflate with idiot gender guru nonsense [sociology, not really philosophy, per se], and you all eat it up like it's mom's mashed potatoes. Cause instead of having original thoughts, you need to be spoon-fed "critique" [more like simple criticism which is bereft of much investigation- that isn't completely off-base, as per what I've already just described], critique, that is, against something you've all confused together, with actual reasonable philosophy, which is to ascertain axiological, practical, and epistemological truths, and separate them from falsehoods. It's always been the same, but now, it's a bit different- you've got the same people fighting against it- but it's not religious people, per se, anymore- now it's just a bunch of people who don't understand the history of philosophy nor it's true takes on the human condition [sort of like how people confuse Nietzsche for being the "father of nihilism", rather than whom was the one warning of it's impending nature]. You conflate [again] the warnings [a la Lyotard, Baudrillard, et al] and take the likes of the gender gurus of today's completely defunct curriculum, and then also maybe some Derrida- even though he's not really construed with the others' so much by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, but that is, only if you've read them, and their opinions on one another- no one like Derrida, lol]. Either way, it amounts to the same thing: Burn the witches!
“By and large, language is a means of concealing the truth.”
-George Carlin
Dear branch chief, our new antenna designs didn't work out because our current understanding of electromagnetics isn't coupled with our human nature and how we perceive the world. Quite being so enamored with classical science and start using your feels!
chief's response: you're fired!
The engineers should have gotten HR involved to work through the feelings and diversity issues. Of course this is what happens when the universities humanities departments add their adjectives to the proper noun science and then think that social science and political science and psychology are actual sciences ... SMH ...
Sipdey sence is all tingly with Dr. Woo !
The thesis at beginning sounds like an r/iamsmart post.
Most know at least intuitively that metaphors have utility, and that utility is very limited.
I heard something about the butterfly effect, chaos theory, and I guess they aim to connect everything as being another cog in the machine you just have to be versatile enough zoom out to see the connections? Its difficult to say because there's no context and seems unnecessarily verbose.
The worst thing about people trying to "fix" these passages by saying what they really mean, is that a dozen people will usually come to a dozen conclusions about what was "really meant."
It's funny that they always describe what the supposed genius meant in far clearer (better) language too.
It's also ironic that a postmodernist speaker is seemingly intentionally confusing with their wording
I suppose one's reaction to the Baudrillard passage depends on one's opinions concerning the purpose of language. If one tends toward a utilitarian view, one is likely to perceive language as a means for sharing information and ideas, and one might tend toward impatience with the text. On the other hand, if one perceives language as serving some higher aesthetic purpose, one might bask in Baudrillard's serried ranks of magniloquent polysyllables. I must admit that, personally, I found the passage excrescent and devoid of meaning. However, I admit to moderately severe educational deficits and possibly, cognitive impairment, that may prevent me from fully appreciating the rhetorical brilliance of the argument [whatever it may be]. Having heretofore never heard of Baudrillard, and suffering little fear that life has thus been intellectually impoverished, I shall endeavor to forget the name as quickly as possible and return to my admittedly grubby, plebian pursuits.
This channel is really good glad I found it somehow
Good job!
as for categories and communication: they are not necessarily infinite regresses... most things are illdefined, true. but intelligent people can agree there exists some absolute truths, and through the relation of these truths we can build up a common framework that has a definite deepest level.
I fucking love you KC, because of you I got the inspiration to study physics
I feel like my brain just did a 20min high intensity workout. Brilliant stuff, keep it coming.
Love the new intro!
Is he really jargonning the Sandwich Conversation??
Yeah, he's kinda taking the piss.
GREAT ANALOGY with the Christmas ornaments. Very astute and descriptive of you relating your position on this. I thoroughly and totally agree with you on this. Why is it that most people that try WAAAYYYY to hard to sound elevated and smart are normally either very ignorant about the subject in which they posit or so lacking in self-confidence that they barely could be described accurately as a potato!!
20 minutes of nuance and sophistication. Chopra is a good example of the opposite of a deepity.
I learned today that there is such a thing as saying less then nothing, that there is such a thing as negative information.
No one can know enough yet to make it a declaration, but we all suspect that awareness is probably going to be part of the universal equation when it is discovered.
If it looks like a croc, walks like a croc, and quacks like a croc, it's a crock. ;-)
YES !!! "Quantum"'s serie Part 3 in fall 2019 "announced" !!!!!!!
And what about Half Life 3?
A Markov Chain could probably write something just as meaningful/less as that author. Actually, there's a site out there that will randomly generate Deepak Chopra quotes and ask you to guess if they're real or random. I tried a dozen times and got every guess wrong.
Always glad to see something you've uploaded.
gaaaah I can feel myself becoming stupider every moment Chopra is on screen.
@17:20 No, no, let me make this brutally simple.
He said, "The moon doesn't exist when you're not looking at it"
and so one of my favs are back
I would like to say that a basic condition of intelligibility requires using language that is as unambiguous as possible to the people you are communicating with and not so damn wide open to interpretation that it reads like poetry.
More than a few times in our history we had value laden science, and they always had some objectively negative affects on the enterprise and society. I doubt Deepak would argue against this, except the reasons why it didn't work then is because they weren't his values imbued in those disciplines. Despite the fact that the values he champions as being essential for further advancement being completely subjective even at individualistic standards, he still promotes this idea that we only need the right values, and saying nothing to confront the arbitrary nature of his interpretation inevitably leading to the same disasters they had before.
When we address the content of this video, there's no shortage of examples of people doping their theses with liberal applications poetic license, and everything I had said up till now is a good example. Both of these paragraphs could easily be reduced to one sentence each and carry as much information.
What I find funny is how the wooists generally blame you for not comprehending their speech which may very well be true, but they obviously don't comprehend the subjects they speak on either.
“The function of a metaphor...For example”
Love the drawings! Hope you stay save and sane. All the best from Spain.
You uploaded twice in one week? What the fuck did I do to deserve such a gift
I paused the video near the beginning to attempt to decipher the passage by Jean Baudrillard. This took hours but I think I finally get the picture. He is lamenting the fractal growth that could come from taking conceptual fluidity seriously as the problem he views it as, portraying it as cancerous. (Although he couldn't have asked this seriously, he wouldn't have written his paper in the most wasteful obfuscating manner possible. Perhaps this passage was intended to be a rhetorical question.)
This culminates in noting that Chaos Theory is about large changes having exponentiality larger impacts, only to beg the question of if Chaos Theory is ignoring the opposite idea that tiny changes can have exponentially larger impacts like a butterfly beating its wings.
(He probably knew that a butterfly doesn't actually have a large impact, but invoked the metaphor used to portray the butterfly effect which goes something like: "A butterfly flapping it's wings in Washington State can cause a tornado in Texas or a storm in Japan.")
Did I mention it's nice to have you back in my comment on the last video. As a layman I can only break this shit down in layman's terms, and it isn't overly hard if you don't let the jargon bog you down, but it's nice to have some with the science take that extra step.
I love this
related to
The Demarcation Problem
CP Snow two worlds points to this as a cultural issue
I can appreciate that putting together a reply video is probably a lot less time and effort than your usual fare but I do hope you're not planning on switching off your usual fare as it's what I'm subscribed specifically for.
Welcome back, King. Can you make a video on Essence of Thought? Its clear he is creating a certain rhetorik but the topic is a verbal nuclear minefield.
I addressed his nonsense here:
minds D0T com/newsfeed/976683618765950976
@@KingCrocoduck Thanks, I will check it out.
Thank you for this! This is my new rebuttal response video to the hippy philosophers and new age statisticians that bastardize terms to fit their specific political view or religious beliefs.
A recently useless discussion between myself and a futon philosopher about ESP, Jung, etc... ended this way.
"You are shutting your mind's eye off to the potential. Evolve bro. Be at one with the universe."
My response: "You're not even wrong"
They followed:
"Thanks. Peace man."
Thank you for taking the time to present your weapons-grade discourse against the madness.
"The problem isn't that I don't understand the words that he's using. I know what they all mean. The problem is that *he* doesn't understand the words that he's using."
I’m just discovering KC... omg are these videos great!! You, sir, are a PHENOMENAL essayist!!!
Now, let’s get you a proper mic and recording setup so you don’t sound “tinny.”
westerners are the best storywriters n storytellers ever. and all thanks to the greatest story ever told. endless philosophizing makes it all happen
If someone criticizes a passage by saying it’s overly wordy sophistry trying to masquerade as deep insight by using esoteric or out of context terms, and the response is to decipher its meaning and give a simple explanation of that meaning, then the response is kind of proving the point. Don’t say in a paragraph what can be said in 2 sentences.
Welcome back, please keep making videos. You’re a very intelligent dude
1:00 Baudrillard even used the wrong expression - it should be hypersensitivity.
Hyposensitivity is a medical condition.
I did like the video, and at this time, I couldn't do it better than you did here. Though, there were a lot of mistakes that could have made this more powerful and convinsing.
The sci-fi review channel, SfDebris, did a video mocking the use of scientific terminology in Star Trek a decade ago. The use of scientific words in these post-modernist works reminds me of that.
Language really baffles empiricists. They can't grasp the internal world of the mind.
@@CynicalBastard - The people who seem "baffled by language" to me, are the ones who use words in nonsensical ways that express no meaning.
People call memetics a pseudo-science. People often tout much disdain for what they don't understand. I'd posit you actually make a point and give me an example: But I know that's asking too much. Why bother? You could give an example of such language that is nonsensical, and that expresses no meaning, but you'd just be wasting your time, as I'd be proving your claims to be hyperbolic, at the least.
Words either are "expressed in nonsensical ways" or they "express no meaning", because one is shed of the other- to express no meaning by way of using nonsensical words is like nonsense writing, like Lewis Carroll or something; this isn't that; to express words that convey no meaning and to "use words in nonsensical ways", are two different things. One is nonsense writing, the other is basically "word salad". But alas, I really don't see word-salad. I see clauses that convey lucidity and complex ideas. To conflate some passages from some author's work [Baudrillard], and then conflating it with anti-science gender guru sociology, is not "word salad", nor is it accurate.
As a poet, I appreciate your exemption. Such graciousness. Cheers.
To be a poet, you have to hold a Poetic Licence surely ?
What an appropriate thumbnail
2:57 What a beautiful teaser! I'm dying to watch that one
Me trying to use all the vocab words on the same answer back in HS to get extra credit lmao. Love the video bro. Also, when are you coming out with [3] ?🥲🙃
The simplest explanation for the gibberish is that Baudrillard is paid by the word.
Good to see you again, KC
look guys he's alive