Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

NOT WORTH MY TIME, BUT IT’S MIDNIGHT SO….

Benjamin Bruno (BB): Modern science gives practical results, but this doesn’t mean that it’s analysis is, in any way, correct.

CD RESPONSE: Science does not claim to produce practical results nor do scientists make any claim of correctness (truth). The discipline of science attempts to construct theories and collects empirical observations in an attempt to see if those theories survive criticism – and what survives are truth candidates. More precisely, scientists freely associate in order to create hypotheses, and then seek to eliminate false content from those hypotheses. If an hypothesis survives criticism they treat it as a theory. If the scientific industry cannot falsify it and it has broad explanatory power and narrow parsimony, then they treat it as a law. But in no case to they make truth claims. Just as mathematicians do not make truth claims, only proof claims.

BB: Imagine there’s a black box that we can’t see into. But, we can see stuff

(A) going in, and than other stuff (B) coming out the other side. After which, we concoct a theory as to what is happening that causes the change from A –> B and than pass it off as fact.

CURT RESPONDS: No, they do not make truth claims. They attempt to construct theories and test them. If the theories are not testable then that is not within the domain of science.

BB: THAT’S what modern science is.

CURT RESPONDS: Actually, first, that sentence is poorly constructed. Science is a discipline. Scientists follow one way or another, the scientific method. This purpose of this method is an attempt to remove error, bias, and wishful thinking from their theories. Second, as we have discussed above, I am not really sure what you’re claiming, but you are not describing science.

BB: It’s concern isn’t to understand nature (as classical science did) at all, but to control it.

CURT RESPONSE: This first half of the statement is sufficiently imprecise as to be meaningless, and false the second half is false. To make sense of this sentence (a) You would need to define ‘understand’, and (b) you would have to define ‘control’. I assume that you mistake whatever you mean by ‘control’ with ‘demonstrate existential properties’ in order to ensure we are not imagining content that does not exist. Instead, Scientists attempt to construct theories: general rules of arbitrary precision within limits.

BB: Marxism operates under much the same premises: it doesn’t care to understand Human-nature, but to change it.

CURT RESPONDS: If marxism makes this assertion, I am not sure how. The assumption made by marxists is of the same fallacy as that made by libertarians and progressives: that given a certain set of circumstances, people will happily do what is expected. Neither Marxists, progressives or libertarians believe they will change man, only change institutions such that their perception of natural man is set free from men with ill intentions.

BB: Heisenberg confirms this when he remarked, in one of his books, something like: “the object of study isn’t the object it’s self, but nature as a function of the problems that man sets for himself [to solve]”.

CURT RESPONDS: this is more precisely stated as man must act in order to outwit the current course of events, and therefore benefit from the differential change in state. But that is not the purpose of study. Scientists seeks to perform experiments by altering states of nature and attempting to understand nature by altering those states and making observations (chemical transformations), or seeking observations that where state change naturally occurs (red shift).

BB: It also functions by subsuming anything in opposition it it’s self. For example, science can’t predict which of a half dozen things I may do upon first getting up from bed in the morning.

CURTD: if science consists of constructing truthful descriptions that are free of error, bias, imagination, wishful thinking, and deception, and philosophy consists of the pursuit of truth by the same means, it is hard to see what the difference is. Secondly, scientists attempt to identify regularities, not conduct predictions. Regularities occur within some degree of precision or we could not categorize them. The fact that you state that you get up in the morning and that may choose from a limited number of things is a prediction that is necessary and sufficient for the question. We can however, with enough information reasonably well define the LIMITS of what you will do in the morning even if we cannot know what noise level that you perform that morning any more than we can know any other question outside of a certain level of prediction in any casually dense matter.

BB: However, it could observe my behavior and cause for probabilities to be assigned. These probabilities, however, are not actual predictions. But, are none-the-less passed off as “facts”.

CURT RESPONDS: This again is a fallacy that conflates precision with description. There are far too many errors in these three sentences alone for me to address. You are falling into a whole series of positiveist and justificationary fallacies, all of which are … kind of ‘very 19th century’.

BB: It’s easy to be “factual” about something when one is given, structurally, as much lee-way as possible. E.g., I may start browsing FB, lay in bed for an hour, immediately take my suppliments. etc. Science will then say “it is an indisputable fact that Ben will do either A, B, C, etc, with X, Y, Z, etc probability of each occurring, upon getting up in the morning”. Plebs then be like “wow, I fucking love science”.

CURT RESPONDS: science would never make such a claim since the regularity of your actions is broad.

BB: Like a more precise and rigorous way of saying “l’l| either get run over by a car today. or I won’t” and assigning probabilities there-in rather than actually being able to predict the future.

CURT RESPONDS: The fallacy continues. While we can define probabilities in this is not a matter for science, it is a matter for statistics.

BB: The scientific logic is thus operating backwards: “science must be correct because science is always correct” (or, at least more correct than others systems). Catholic Scholasticism operated under much the same premises.

CURT RESPONDS: Since you haven’t described a single thing that has anything to do with science so far, you cannot reason from false premises to your conclusion. (Philosophy of his scope is kind of above and beyond casual interest. at this point I am becoming aware of the set of errors you are making in pursuit of signaling self status. And it is kind of unfair to ask me to spend my time and attention when that is your purpose.

—“He lacks the language (Propertarianism) to make his statements in what we would today call a ‘technical’ or ’scientific’ language:—

BB: Most of my posts would be re-assertion of Evolian principals in more “scientific” and detailed language. Evola’s “reconstruction” of Tradition is, likewise, a further refinement and glimpse into the “machinery” that operated behind the scenes. in all Traditional civilization, but put into more refined language as well. My Destra and wall posts take this a step further.

CURT RESPONSE: There is nothing meaningtful to comment upon here.

—“lmprecise words (allegories) are an intellectual prison just as precise

words (theories) are an intellectual key to intellectual freedom.”—-

BB: Only if you’re so unbelievably autistic that you can not grasp any sort of nuance at all. Or, you’re an INTP personality types that deals in absolutes instead of an INTJ who deals in heuristics.

Well, it is not that I cannot grasp nuance, it is that I seek to eliminate error, bias, imaginary content, obscurantism, and deception. And the problem is that romantic analogies full of loading and framing are just justificationary nonsense. That does not mean that there is no true content, it means that I cannot make use of that content in the construciton of logical and formal institutions (law) sufficient to construct a political order.

—“Evola’s solution is to preserve our literature and intentions, and seize

an opportunity that MAY come in the future. Meaning he has failed to develop an institutional solution to restore the scientific (objectively good) content of our traditions. in other words, he is creating a christian “savior mythos” for himself. And not a solution for ourself.”—

BB: (1) Evola’s political ideals are detailed in “Men Among The Ruins” and were taken up by various far-right groups even in his lifetime. (2) Evola’s ideals are based on the notion of cyclicality of civilization. At the time of his death (19703) and at present, there is no institutional solution for the problem.

CURT RESPONDS: Eternal recurrance is a common theme. I don’t disagree that civilizations follow cycles, any more than humans follow generational cycles, and business follows an economic cycle. However, that does not alter the fact that eternal recurrance and hope for salvation during it, is not the same as sufficient knowledge by which to eitehr alter the course of current events, to innovate to alter the course of events, or to propose a solution in the case of recurrence that guarantees reconstruction of the prior order. So yeah… he failed.

BB: Ergo, Dolittle’s criticisms that Evola’s works do not present a political solution is akin to a criticism of a fork that it does not function as a spoon.

CURT RESPONDS: well, that’s correct. Evola’s works are meaningful but not scientific and they are informative but inactionable, and they are certainly insufficient for the basis of law.

—‘Belief’ and ‘value’ are terms hungover from the age of mysticism.”—

BB: Hubris. l.e., “every ideology is obscurantist and irrational except for mine”. Where have we heard that one before? See also: my comments on heuristics

CURT RESPONDS: Straw man. Its merely fact that these terms are the result of that era, and that belief and value have no impact on the truth of propositions.

—“Perhaps I am the product of my half century of science and computer science. Perhaps I have been trained to eradicate the subjective experience from my perceptions such that the subjective experience sounds to me as talk of gods will sounds to scientists and aethists.”—-

BB: At least he’s self-aware, which is far more than can be said of the

overwhelming majority of people (whether rationalist of Traditionalist).

CURT RESPONDS: I am terribly self aware, but you cannot make that claim. In order to be aware one must know the alternative states with which to make a comparison. I do. You don’t. 😉

THis wasn’t really a good use of my time other than to illustrate to people that the little voices you feel confident about in your head are precisely why we need the scientific method: to make sure they aren’t telling us errors, biases, imaginary nonsense, wishful thinking, or deceit on the behalf of others.

The great thing about writing stuff down is that you have to deal with the fact that if you cannot state it operationally, that you really have no idea what you’re talking about. And your genes are just doing their job of keeping you motivated in the pursuit of their ends.

Puppeteers. Genes are puppeteers.. 😉