Wait, what? I think you’re misinterpreting a lot of what I was doing. My goal isn’t incivility, my goal is getting my point across. Incivility was a means toward that goal, a means which obviously fails utterly in the context of this website. But certainly you’ll agree that since I’ve started behaving I should no longer get negative reputations, correct? Or are you going to punish me for my sins?
I’d also like to have a debate about manners somewhere else, if you’d like. I hate them and think being polite is in and of itself bad, and I also think manners are kind of oppressive, etc. For the purposes of that debate I would use manners (new means to an end).
I’m pretty sure that Nietzsche was legit, and that you shouldn’t just willy nilly call his arguments silly. He’s universally recognized as a Pretty Smart Guy. I’d be willing to have a discussion about either Nietzsche or Hume with anyone, on the condition that I don’t get bad karma’d into oblivion for disagreeing with a societal convention (ironically that this happens when I disagree with manners bolsters the strength of the argument that manners are stupid).
What arguments about humans and their behaviors and motives did I even make here? I don’t think I made any. I think you just wanted to make a list so that you could act as though that summarized everything I’ve said so that you could conclude I was wrong without actually discussing specific things that I wrote.
What arguments about humans and their behaviors and motives did I even make here?
Specific humans, their behaviors and motives. For example accusing someone of being disingenuous hits all three checkboxes.
I don’t think I made any. I think you just wanted to make a list so that you could act as though that summarized everything I’ve said so that you could conclude I was wrong without actually discussing specific things that I wrote.
I think you are saying more false things about a human, his behavior and his motives.
I’m pretty sure that Nietzsche was legit, and that you shouldn’t just willy nilly call his arguments silly. He’s universally recognized as a Pretty Smart Guy. I’d be willing to have a discussion about either Nietzsche or Hume with anyone
I know a little about Nietzsche and next to nothing about Hume. Philosopher talk bores me. That is, all that ‘philosophy’ that consists of quoting historical Philosophical figures. Actual ideas are somewhat more interesting. If the big names happened to express a particular idea better than other available sources then they may be worth quoting.
, on the condition that I don’t get bad karma’d into oblivion for disagreeing with a societal convention (ironically that this happens when I disagree with manners bolsters the strength of the argument that manners are stupid).
I don’t think that necessarily follows, from the perspective of identifying potentially desirable game theoretic equilibria.
Hume’s problem of induction is pretty awesome, if you’re looking for specific arguments. Nietzsche is often misinterpreted, if you want to understand his ideas you should read any summaries which were written by Giles Deleuze who is another smart person.
Hume was one of the first and best naturalists and his stuff is very easy to read (unlike Kant’s stuff which is all either entirely wrong or a more confusing way of phrasing the arguments that Hume had already made). Wikipedia’s list of entries is fairly informative, many philosophers who are awesome think that Hume was really smart.
Attention to Hume’s philosophical works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from “dogmatic slumbers” (circa 1770).[98]
According to Schopenhauer, “there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart and Schleiermacher taken together”.[99]
A. J. Ayer (1936), introducing his classic exposition of logical positivism, claimed: “The views which are put forward in this treatise derive from the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume.”[100]
Albert Einstein (1915) wrote that he was inspired by Hume’s positivism when formulating his Special Theory of Relativity.[101]
Hume was called “the prophet of the Wittgensteinian revolution” by N. Phillipson, referring to his view that mathematics and logic are closed systems, disguised tautologies, and have no relation to the world of experience.[102]
Hume’s Problem of Induction was also of fundamental importance to the philosophy of Karl Popper.
I strongly recommend Hume. Nietzsche is pretty tough to understand and he goes off into poetics too often to be easily understood, it’s a lot of work without a proportional amount of gain. But Hume was a genius and was very good at communicating. His writings are very concise and informative and will almost certainly benefit you. Treatise on Human Nature is pretty good for a starter, as is Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding. They are very short books and should only take about an hour or so to read.
Enquiry is a very short book, but the Treatise is not. I certainly couldn’t read it in an hour. The edition I have is about 300 pages long. Anyway, I agree that Hume is awesome. I think, though, that most what is of greatest value in his work (empiricism, the problem of induction, instrumental rationality, ethical anti-rationalism) is probably already part of the collective memeset at LW, in more sophisticated guise. So I’m not sure it would be worth it for the average LWer without a genuine interest in the history of philosophy to work their way through Hume.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, I think a lot of people here could learn a lot from.
I misremembered the length of Treatise. I agree that Hume will just tell you things that you probably already know if you visit this site. So people should read Nietzsche instead. Very good point.
To people who want to read Nietzsche: note that every secondary author except Giles Deleuze is probably misinterpreting Nietzsche’s work. Also note that Giles Deleuze uses Nietzsche like a historical sock puppet so that he can get his rhizomatic message of anticapitalism across. Deleuze is the best that I’ve found, but even his stuff is very selective. I didn’t do this personally, but I’ve often heard it repeated that new readers of Nietzsche should start with The Gay Science. That might be the best place to start.
The best parts of Nietzsche are the ones that no one seems to know about. The dangers of the safety of the “Last Man” is awesome. The parts where he talks about being a lion and recreating value is awesome. All of Zarasthustra is awesome. Twilight of the Idols is hilarious at times. The “pop culture” Nietzsche is nothing like the one in his actual books.
It helps to remember that Nietzsche was basically a Christian who found out that God was dead who then got incredibly sad and nihilistic and then worked his way through it by realizing his past and current ignorance, and becoming very critical of Christian ideals and he then found new and objective ideals to work for, and became awesome. He’s anti Christian, but he doesn’t criticize literally everything about them and they share some common ground. He hates them, but he also hates his past self. He also managed to fix his past self, and his books are meant to try to fix other people as well. He does feel empathy, he’s still human.
Also, he’s not responsible for the Nazis. That was his stupid evil sister’s fault.
He hates Schopenhauer, maybe reading Schopenhauer should be done before reading Nietzsche. Not sure.
Agreed both that Hume is awesome, and that most of his valuable insights are incorporated already in our memeset. If you want a clear, easy and fast to read version of the proto-form of that memeset from 300 years ago, there is nothing better than his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Spinoza has also many early insights, complementary to Hume’s (roughly, you could say that Hume anticipates LW’s epistemology and metaethics, and Spinoza anticipates LW’s naturalistic metaphysics and computationalist philosophy of mind) but Spinoza is more difficult to read casually with profit because of his outdated terminology (e.g. “God” instead of “the Universe”) and his tiresome pretense of deducing everything from self-evident principles.
Wait, what? I think you’re misinterpreting a lot of what I was doing. My goal isn’t incivility, my goal is getting my point across. Incivility was a means toward that goal, a means which obviously fails utterly in the context of this website. But certainly you’ll agree that since I’ve started behaving I should no longer get negative reputations, correct? Or are you going to punish me for my sins?
I’d also like to have a debate about manners somewhere else, if you’d like. I hate them and think being polite is in and of itself bad, and I also think manners are kind of oppressive, etc. For the purposes of that debate I would use manners (new means to an end).
I’m pretty sure that Nietzsche was legit, and that you shouldn’t just willy nilly call his arguments silly. He’s universally recognized as a Pretty Smart Guy. I’d be willing to have a discussion about either Nietzsche or Hume with anyone, on the condition that I don’t get bad karma’d into oblivion for disagreeing with a societal convention (ironically that this happens when I disagree with manners bolsters the strength of the argument that manners are stupid).
What arguments about humans and their behaviors and motives did I even make here? I don’t think I made any. I think you just wanted to make a list so that you could act as though that summarized everything I’ve said so that you could conclude I was wrong without actually discussing specific things that I wrote.
Specific humans, their behaviors and motives. For example accusing someone of being disingenuous hits all three checkboxes.
I think you are saying more false things about a human, his behavior and his motives.
I know a little about Nietzsche and next to nothing about Hume. Philosopher talk bores me. That is, all that ‘philosophy’ that consists of quoting historical Philosophical figures. Actual ideas are somewhat more interesting. If the big names happened to express a particular idea better than other available sources then they may be worth quoting.
I don’t think that necessarily follows, from the perspective of identifying potentially desirable game theoretic equilibria.
Hume’s problem of induction is pretty awesome, if you’re looking for specific arguments. Nietzsche is often misinterpreted, if you want to understand his ideas you should read any summaries which were written by Giles Deleuze who is another smart person.
Hume was one of the first and best naturalists and his stuff is very easy to read (unlike Kant’s stuff which is all either entirely wrong or a more confusing way of phrasing the arguments that Hume had already made). Wikipedia’s list of entries is fairly informative, many philosophers who are awesome think that Hume was really smart.
I strongly recommend Hume. Nietzsche is pretty tough to understand and he goes off into poetics too often to be easily understood, it’s a lot of work without a proportional amount of gain. But Hume was a genius and was very good at communicating. His writings are very concise and informative and will almost certainly benefit you. Treatise on Human Nature is pretty good for a starter, as is Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding. They are very short books and should only take about an hour or so to read.
Enquiry is a very short book, but the Treatise is not. I certainly couldn’t read it in an hour. The edition I have is about 300 pages long. Anyway, I agree that Hume is awesome. I think, though, that most what is of greatest value in his work (empiricism, the problem of induction, instrumental rationality, ethical anti-rationalism) is probably already part of the collective memeset at LW, in more sophisticated guise. So I’m not sure it would be worth it for the average LWer without a genuine interest in the history of philosophy to work their way through Hume.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, I think a lot of people here could learn a lot from.
I misremembered the length of Treatise. I agree that Hume will just tell you things that you probably already know if you visit this site. So people should read Nietzsche instead. Very good point.
To people who want to read Nietzsche: note that every secondary author except Giles Deleuze is probably misinterpreting Nietzsche’s work. Also note that Giles Deleuze uses Nietzsche like a historical sock puppet so that he can get his rhizomatic message of anticapitalism across. Deleuze is the best that I’ve found, but even his stuff is very selective. I didn’t do this personally, but I’ve often heard it repeated that new readers of Nietzsche should start with The Gay Science. That might be the best place to start.
The best parts of Nietzsche are the ones that no one seems to know about. The dangers of the safety of the “Last Man” is awesome. The parts where he talks about being a lion and recreating value is awesome. All of Zarasthustra is awesome. Twilight of the Idols is hilarious at times. The “pop culture” Nietzsche is nothing like the one in his actual books.
It helps to remember that Nietzsche was basically a Christian who found out that God was dead who then got incredibly sad and nihilistic and then worked his way through it by realizing his past and current ignorance, and becoming very critical of Christian ideals and he then found new and objective ideals to work for, and became awesome. He’s anti Christian, but he doesn’t criticize literally everything about them and they share some common ground. He hates them, but he also hates his past self. He also managed to fix his past self, and his books are meant to try to fix other people as well. He does feel empathy, he’s still human.
Also, he’s not responsible for the Nazis. That was his stupid evil sister’s fault.
He hates Schopenhauer, maybe reading Schopenhauer should be done before reading Nietzsche. Not sure.
Agreed both that Hume is awesome, and that most of his valuable insights are incorporated already in our memeset. If you want a clear, easy and fast to read version of the proto-form of that memeset from 300 years ago, there is nothing better than his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Spinoza has also many early insights, complementary to Hume’s (roughly, you could say that Hume anticipates LW’s epistemology and metaethics, and Spinoza anticipates LW’s naturalistic metaphysics and computationalist philosophy of mind) but Spinoza is more difficult to read casually with profit because of his outdated terminology (e.g. “God” instead of “the Universe”) and his tiresome pretense of deducing everything from self-evident principles.
Wow. I might even read them instead of reading the Dresden Files for a 13th time. Get me some culture.