I read your gnostic/pagan stuff and chuckled over the “degeneracy [ranking where] Paganism < … < Gnosticism < Atheism < Buddhism”.
I think I’ll be better able to steelman you in the future and I’m sorry if I caused you to feel misrepresented with my previous attempt. I hadn’t realized that the vibe you’re trying to serve is so Nietzschean.
Just to clarify, when you say “pathetic” it is is not intended to evoke “pathos” and function as an even hypothetically possible compliment regarding a wise and pleasant deployment of feelings (even subtle feelings) in accord with reason, that could be unified and balanced to easily and pleasantly guide persons into actions in accord with The Good after thoughtful cultivation...
...but rather I suspect you intended it as a near semantic neighbor (but with opposite moral valence) of something like “precious” (as an insult (as it is in some idiolects)) in that both “precious and pathetic things” are similarly weak and small and in need of help.
Like the central thing you’re trying to communicate with the word “pathetic” (I think, but am not sure, and hence I’m seeking clarification) is to notice that entities labeled with that adjective could hypothetically be beloved and cared for… but you want to highlight how such things are also sort of worthy of contempt and might deserve abandonment.
We could argue: Such things are puny. They will not be good allies. They are not good role models. They won’t autonomously grow. They lack the power to even access whole regimes of coherently possible data gathering loops. They “will not win” and so, if you’re seeking “systematized winning”, such “pathetic” things are not where you should look. Is this something like what you’re trying to point to by invoking “patheticness” so centrally in a discussion of “solving philosophy formally”?
I read your gnostic/pagan stuff and chuckled over the “degeneracy [ranking where] Paganism < … < Gnosticism < Atheism < Buddhism”.
I think I’ll be better able to steelman you in the future and I’m sorry if I caused you to feel misrepresented with my previous attempt. I hadn’t realized that the vibe you’re trying to serve is so Nietzschean.
Just to clarify, when you say “pathetic” it is is not intended to evoke “pathos” and function as an even hypothetically possible compliment regarding a wise and pleasant deployment of feelings (even subtle feelings) in accord with reason, that could be unified and balanced to easily and pleasantly guide persons into actions in accord with The Good after thoughtful cultivation...
...but rather I suspect you intended it as a near semantic neighbor (but with opposite moral valence) of something like “precious” (as an insult (as it is in some idiolects)) in that both “precious and pathetic things” are similarly weak and small and in need of help.
Like the central thing you’re trying to communicate with the word “pathetic” (I think, but am not sure, and hence I’m seeking clarification) is to notice that entities labeled with that adjective could hypothetically be beloved and cared for… but you want to highlight how such things are also sort of worthy of contempt and might deserve abandonment.
We could argue: Such things are puny. They will not be good allies. They are not good role models. They won’t autonomously grow. They lack the power to even access whole regimes of coherently possible data gathering loops. They “will not win” and so, if you’re seeking “systematized winning”, such “pathetic” things are not where you should look. Is this something like what you’re trying to point to by invoking “patheticness” so centrally in a discussion of “solving philosophy formally”?