What Book Are You Reading at the Moment?

[heydaralon]

I haven't read most of his work but I like most of what I've read from him. Its also likely that his words don't translate as poetically and impact as they would had English been his first language. Translations are just that, translations so you have to be careful about both interpretation and meaning. But if it sounds good in translation you can beat it sounds even better in his native tongue. I tend to think in existential terms and probably too much for my own good. I don't gravitate towards Nietzsche (but ive read a lot from him) , Sartre, or Heidegger. But I do love Dostoevsky too.

Im obviously biased and become a bit of a reactionary. I'm also neither right nor left but ultra traditional whatever that mean, but I couldn't think of a better word to use for myself. I've become more of a fan of hierarchies , yes mostly from listening to all personality and mythology courses online for hours, but I've also always been enamored with the past so there's that too. I'm also very "open to experience" and disorderly so politically I should be "liberal". But I find that I'm more and more traditional with my own habits and values. I bit erratic and neurotic so there's that to. Im probably prudent b/c of anxiety and not b/c of any real wisdom or consciousness. Plus im a fan of Jacques Ellul and his ideas on "technique" and John Ralston Saul and his ideas on bureaucracy and the failure of the Enlightenment. Im a bit of a primitivist in some ways and early on a big fan of the Romantics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ralston_Saul

This is another book that is all about ideas and hinge factors. Its popular history / not scholarly but still very entertaining and thought provoking.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/204 ... -of-change

Yeah translations get weird. I can barely pronounce French, much less read it, so often when an author uses a French phrase, I have to put it into google and even then it never translates perfectly. German is not nearly as bad for the English speakers, but anything written and translated before the 19th century can be quite difficult for me to understand on the first go round. I know a small amount of German, but not enough to speak (even with a toddler), and I certainly can't read these dudes in their original untranslated form.


Are you a fan of Joseph Campbell? I'm not well versed in him, but he is quite popular with casual readers. I have no idea how he is viewed in academia. Never heard of Saul or Ellul. I'm going to do some resarch on them.

If you are interested in ideas and their history, you might enjoy Isaiah Berlin. He has written some very good books for those like me who are not well versed in this stuff. He has written quite a bit about Russian authors, Romanticism, the Enlightenment, and Counter Enlightenment. The guy's work is published in Essay form, which makes it easy to break his stuff up into chunks when reading. So you might read a 30 page essay on Tolstoy, then the next chapter is a 30 page essay on Herzen. But Berlin has many collections of essays, and they are all really good. I haven't read many of them. The hedgehog and fox idea is based on a Berlin essay.

Im a fan of Campbell in so much as he's good at getting people to think about and explore mythology. He's good at breaking down World myhtologies and comparing them and finding connections.

Berlin seems like an interesting dude. Its funny that he's wiki page says he was somewhat adverse to writing so his talks were later made into transcripts
his improvised lectures and talks were recorded and transcribed, with his spoken word being converted by his secretaries into his published essays and books."

I'm more recently intrigued by this dude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard

mimetic desire and scapegoat mechanism. These things are real.

Yes! That mimetic stuff is discussed in Age of Anger. The idea that everyone lacks a sense of being. Where do we get our sense of being? We look at those more succesful than ourselves, their objects, their sexual conquests, their lifestyle, and we try to imitate it. We try to copy them, in the hopes that by acquiring these things, our identity becomes solidified and we become content. I don't think advertising and politics would work without mimetics, and even nations engage in this. Germany (before it was Germany) was humiliated by Napoleon, so it copied France's militarism and Nationalism. This worked so well that after the 1870 Franco Prussian war, France's elites and academics attempted to replicate the culture of Prussia in the hopes of becoming militarily dominant. Germany then attempted to mirror this attitude leading up to WW1. This shit happens all the time. Think of Ataturk. Think of Ghandi. Think of the Shah of Iran. Think of Mao. Think of Julius Nyerere and the scores of African despots whose hare brained schemes toward modernity turned their nations upside down. These third world countries are utterly envious of the West and the way they percieve it has made them irrelevant, so they attempt to copy its economic models, its laws, and its culture. They often do this while feeling a strong contempt for it, but it is a perpetual ongoing process. If mimetics isn't true, than the last two centuries have been a lie. It is a major driving force on a human and civilizational level.

[GloryofGreece]

Yeah translations get weird. I can barely pronounce French, much less read it, so often when an author uses a French phrase, I have to put it into google and even then it never translates perfectly. German is not nearly as bad for the English speakers, but anything written and translated before the 19th century can be quite difficult for me to understand on the first go round. I know a small amount of German, but not enough to speak (even with a toddler), and I certainly can't read these dudes in their original untranslated form.


Are you a fan of Joseph Campbell? I'm not well versed in him, but he is quite popular with casual readers. I have no idea how he is viewed in academia. Never heard of Saul or Ellul. I'm going to do some resarch on them.

If you are interested in ideas and their history, you might enjoy Isaiah Berlin. He has written some very good books for those like me who are not well versed in this stuff. He has written quite a bit about Russian authors, Romanticism, the Enlightenment, and Counter Enlightenment. The guy's work is published in Essay form, which makes it easy to break his stuff up into chunks when reading. So you might read a 30 page essay on Tolstoy, then the next chapter is a 30 page essay on Herzen. But Berlin has many collections of essays, and they are all really good. I haven't read many of them. The hedgehog and fox idea is based on a Berlin essay.

Im a fan of Campbell in so much as he's good at getting people to think about and explore mythology. He's good at breaking down World myhtologies and comparing them and finding connections.

Berlin seems like an interesting dude. Its funny that he's wiki page says he was somewhat adverse to writing so his talks were later made into transcripts
his improvised lectures and talks were recorded and transcribed, with his spoken word being converted by his secretaries into his published essays and books."

I'm more recently intrigued by this dude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard

mimetic desire and scapegoat mechanism. These things are real.

Yes! That mimetic stuff is discussed in Age of Anger. The idea that everyone lacks a sense of being. Where do we get our sense of being? We look at those more succesful than ourselves, their objects, their sexual conquests, their lifestyle, and we try to imitate it. We try to copy them, in the hopes that by acquiring these things, our identity becomes solidified and we become content. I don't think advertising and politics would work without mimetics, and even nations engage in this. Germany (before it was Germany) was humiliated by Napoleon, so it copied France's militarism and Nationalism. This worked so well that after the 1870 Franco Prussian war, France's elites and academics attempted to replicate the culture of Prussia in the hopes of becoming militarily dominant. Germany then attempted to mirror this attitude leading up to WW1. This shit happens all the time. Think of Ataturk. Think of Ghandi. Think of the Shah of Iran. Think of Mao. Think of Julius Nyerere and the scores of African despots whose hare brained schemes toward modernity turned their nations upside down. These third world countries are utterly envious of the West and the way they percieve it has made them irrelevant, so they attempt to copy its economic models, its laws, and its culture. They often do this while feeling a strong contempt for it, but it is a perpetual ongoing process. If mimetics isn't true, than the last two centuries have been a lie. It is a major driving force on a human and civilizational level.

Please tell me you see some serious holes in this "trending" historian...*(lets discuss)
https://medium.com/s/youthnow/yuval-noa ... 72a3fb4bcf

[Speaker to Animals]

Problematic:

Besides information, most schools also focus too much on providing students with a set of predetermined skills, such as solving differential equations, writing computer code in C++, identifying chemicals in a test tube, or conversing in Chinese. Yet since we have no idea what the world and the job market will look like in 2050, we don’t really know what particular skills people will need. We might invest a lot of effort teaching kids how to write in C++ or speak Chinese, only to discover that by 2050, artificial intelligence can code software far better than humans and a new Google Translate app will enable you to conduct a conversation in almost flawless Mandarin, Cantonese, or Hakka, even though you only know how to say “Ni hao.”

He says we need people with the tools necessary to invent new ways of doing things, doesn't understand those tools at all, and then proceeds to argue we shouldn't teach those tools.

Who does he think writes code generation software? How does he think that is written? Well, technically, it's probably written in something like Lisp, but learning C++ is not going to hurt kids to get them started. Programming is not like learning a natural language. There exists lots of crossover. Once you get a few languages in a few broad areas, learning new ones in those areas is pretty simple.

His assumption about machines actually being able to do the universal translator thing is hilarious. He has no idea how difficult that problem really is. It's basically like solving the hard AI problem. If you can solve that problem, you also solved all the other hard AI problems and basically have a HAL 9000 on your hands.

I will still read through it some more in a bit, but this part stands out.

[Speaker to Animals]

Okay. Another problem:

So, what should we be teaching? Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs” — critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations. To keep up with the world of 2050, you will need to do more than merely invent new ideas and products, but above all, reinvent yourself again and again.

It has been my experience that people who use phrases like "critical thinking" really mean right thinking, and by right thinking they mean people need to agree with them. Trying to distill education into some modern take on the Trivium besets us with the issue of ideologues trying to use these so-called intellectual "tools" to indoctrinate.

My best suggestion is that schools ought to only teach technical skills like mathematics, science, etc. to kids, along with a foundation in literature, history, etc. Let parents send their children to some after-school programs for philosophy, religion, politics, etc. Get that stuff out of the education system because there is no fucking way we can do that right as long as we are trapped with these fucking government schools.

As well-meaning as this guy is, and I get where is coming from here, I think he misses the true reason why it's gotten so bad.

Also, learning to write software, how to solve mathematical problems in the real world, etc., are exactly what will teach kids to solve problems objectively and empirically. I really do not want liberal arts and humanities people trying to equip my children with "critical thinking" skills these days. No offense. But look at who these people are for the most part in our current time.

[HarryK]

Programming is sloppy, overpatched, and doesn’t provide any real societal benefit. Might as well be a fat desk jockey like the Disney movie.

Kids should be outside more than staring at a monitor. Parents shouldn’t have to “low-jack” their kids in order to stay in touch.

The less technology spoon feeds our youth the better.

[heydaralon]

Im a fan of Campbell in so much as he's good at getting people to think about and explore mythology. He's good at breaking down World myhtologies and comparing them and finding connections.

Berlin seems like an interesting dude. Its funny that he's wiki page says he was somewhat adverse to writing so his talks were later made into transcripts
his improvised lectures and talks were recorded and transcribed, with his spoken word being converted by his secretaries into his published essays and books."

I'm more recently intrigued by this dude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard

mimetic desire and scapegoat mechanism. These things are real.

Yes! That mimetic stuff is discussed in Age of Anger. The idea that everyone lacks a sense of being. Where do we get our sense of being? We look at those more succesful than ourselves, their objects, their sexual conquests, their lifestyle, and we try to imitate it. We try to copy them, in the hopes that by acquiring these things, our identity becomes solidified and we become content. I don't think advertising and politics would work without mimetics, and even nations engage in this. Germany (before it was Germany) was humiliated by Napoleon, so it copied France's militarism and Nationalism. This worked so well that after the 1870 Franco Prussian war, France's elites and academics attempted to replicate the culture of Prussia in the hopes of becoming militarily dominant. Germany then attempted to mirror this attitude leading up to WW1. This shit happens all the time. Think of Ataturk. Think of Ghandi. Think of the Shah of Iran. Think of Mao. Think of Julius Nyerere and the scores of African despots whose hare brained schemes toward modernity turned their nations upside down. These third world countries are utterly envious of the West and the way they percieve it has made them irrelevant, so they attempt to copy its economic models, its laws, and its culture. They often do this while feeling a strong contempt for it, but it is a perpetual ongoing process. If mimetics isn't true, than the last two centuries have been a lie. It is a major driving force on a human and civilizational level.

Please tell me you see some serious holes in this "trending" historian...*(lets discuss)
https://medium.com/s/youthnow/yuval-noa ... 72a3fb4bcf

Give me a little to read your link, but even without reading it I am familiar with the author.



As far as grand history books go, Sapiens is the best I have read. Guns Germs and Social Justice by Jared Diamond is pretty awful though well written. Sapiens has many big problems, but it is a genuinely readable and highly informative book. I read the sequel to it, and it was shit. For one thing. Harari buys into the childish transhumanism ideology. You can't genetically engineer humans and avoid all the problems with mankind. These problems are baked into the cake. IMO the Bible's take on Original Sin is spot on. We are permanently flawed as humans. We are greedy, destructive, lustful, and hopelessly cruel. We can and have accomplished incredible things and our cultures have created amazing inventions and art, but this comes with a great price. And how to fix this? Well, I happen to believe that we can't really because good and bad are intertwined. Tamerlane massacred millions, but he built beautiful mosques in central Asia. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, but he also helped lay the framework for the greatest country on Earth, and doubled its territorial size. Socrates lusted over teenaged boys (and was an ugly creep) but he laid the bedrock for Western philosophy. Arthur Koestler was likely a rapist, but he also wrote amazing books warning the west of the dangers of Communism. Schopenhauer pushed an old lady down the stairs, but he is in my opinion the greatest philosopher.

How can you isolate that shit? For any of those people, they did amazing shit, but also some bad shit. Which shaped them more? Which is more representative of who they are? Many mystic traditions view good and bad as being a circular feedback loop, both influencing the other and both feeding off eachother. They often feed off eachother in ways that we are incapable of understanding. Your ancestors gave you the land of displaced natives, and may have been racist, but you are capable of living a tolerant and open minded life now. Transhumanists try to pretend like they can isolate the variables that make humans bad and eliminate them, while simultaneously taking the good ones and amplifying them. They don't realize this is a Utopian way of thinking, and that science, technology, and culture got to this point through good and bad things. How could you possibly expect to fully understand what traits are ultimately good or bad? Nowadays, we want people to be altruistic, thin, secular, and non aggressive. Is there anything to indicate we will always feel that way? Before World War I, we wanted men to be ballsy, honor driven, Nationalistic, and our women to be fat adn submissive. How will we feel about our current fadish human traits in 100 years? Do the transhumanists have a crystal ball that determines what human traits will be universally good? Maybe religion drove people to share their bread during Stalin and Hitler's rule with others, making Jews and Ukrainians would have been better off during this time if they were more aggressive and fought these tyrants, stopping them before they even started. I can't see us engineering a better man, because whatever we came up with would have to pass through the imperfect lens of our own highly limited and biased understanding.

CS Lewis wrote about this stuff a century before Transhumanism. He discussed the idea of hundreds controlling the fate of billions. What he was referring to was the fact that people who decided the education plans of students were affecting the minds of countless people who were to be educated. Transhumanism is just like that. Imagine some random scientist deciding your life, looks, and personality. Maybe he would do a good job. Maybe he wouldn't. To me, it wouldn't fix the problems of being a person, any more than uploading your consciousness on a flash drive Kurzweil style would be immortality. If it could fix birth defects and cancer, that would be awesome. If it was being used as a form of eugenics or as a weapon against certain genetic groups of people thats not so awesome. Whatever it becomes, it be used and misused by humans, just like every other thing we come up with.

Harari kind of touches on these type of ideas in Sapiens, but in his sequel its like he forgets everything he learned. The Bible isn't perfect, but I really can't think of a more honest way than original sin to examine our predicament.

[GloryofGreece]

I'm glad there's varied disagreement! Makes me think I'm not completely barshit crazy or completely reactionary. The thing that stuck out the most was his comment, " the best thing I can tell young people is dont listen to old people they can't help you anyway"...WTF ?

Also, as if people don't need basic knowledge and typical conventual defrees rigt now or in the short to midtem...yea um your going to need a degree and/or certificates in regular shit to go get a job in the interim and right fucking now.

Almost as bad as the JRE podcast can be when it's joes with some tech feddish on. i.e. Duncan or most regulars.

[Speaker to Animals]

Just looking him up a bit, his idea of looking for the connection between biology and history interests me.

I think his main problem here rests in the fact that he really doesn't understand the technology. He gets how technology impacts human society, but I don't think he understands technology itself enough to make good recommendations to kids. For instance, "don't learn C++" because some other language might replace it strikes me as rather silly. It's not as if the skills you pick up learning C++ are non-transferable. Programming languages are not like natural languages and it's not like when your VHS tapes became fucking pointless.

[GloryofGreece]

Just looking him up a bit, his idea of looking for the connection between biology and history interests me.

I think his main problem here rests in the fact that he really doesn't understand the technology. He gets how technology impacts human society, but I don't think he understands technology itself enough to make good recommendations to kids. For instance, "don't learn C++" because some other language might replace it strikes me as rather silly. It's not as if the skills you pick up learning C++ are non-transferable. Programming languages are not like natural languages and it's not like when your VHS tapes became fucking pointless.

Its absurd to tell kids not to rely on older people. You have to survive to the singularity for there to be a singularity or some transhumanism event to take place, no? And contextualizing history/society has a function all in itself as well.

[Speaker to Animals]

Just looking him up a bit, his idea of looking for the connection between biology and history interests me.

I think his main problem here rests in the fact that he really doesn't understand the technology. He gets how technology impacts human society, but I don't think he understands technology itself enough to make good recommendations to kids. For instance, "don't learn C++" because some other language might replace it strikes me as rather silly. It's not as if the skills you pick up learning C++ are non-transferable. Programming languages are not like natural languages and it's not like when your VHS tapes became fucking pointless.

Its absurd to tell kids not to rely on older people. You have to survive to the singularity for there to be a singularity or some transhumanism event to take place, no? And contextualizing history/society has a function all in itself as well.

The singularity will not come from machines. It will come when we eradicate aging and death by old age.

People do not understand how freaking impenetrable human intelligence really is. In eighty years now we have made no meaningful progress.

We made lits of progress in soft AI. But that is not going to replicate human intelligence with respect to imagination and creative innovation.