Posts by Kracklite
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Okay, you're going to have to explain to me how you can be a socialist and not a Marxist.
Funnily enough, I delivered a lecture on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement this morning and to avoid being long-winded (after all, I'm not being paid by the word here), Morris' socialism was opposed to the mass-scale production model of the Industrial Revolution. One may think him naive, but in any case, there is a difference between the Marxist belief in linear, progressive teleological history with its emphasis on urban civilisation and Morris' model of an idealised, local-scale co-operative model.
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merely because I do not like geek culture
Bah. That is not an honest description of your posting. You are free to 'dislike'. It is the representation of 'geek culture' as morally and intellectually corrupt and politically incorrect and even a probable cause of the global financial crisis, then demanding its banning and assuming to yourself the right to set the agenda that everyone else must follow in discussion that goes beyond 'dislike'.
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Probably not, I admit... I'm simply no good at reading body language or facial expressions and constructing an accurate theory of mind thereby. Goes with the territory.
I do take your point thusly expressed, however.
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To Giovanni, I mean.
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Well, thank you, I may I return the compliment.
I often wonder what I think I mean and spend hours cogitating on epistemology as a consequence.
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Sacha, I'm not offended by you at all. I am offended by people who never for a moment consider that anything they say might be reflective of bigotry, and defensively assume instead that any offense taken at that bigotry must have an ulterior motive.
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I guess you get paid by the word.
Yes, in many cases actually I do.
(My major point of frustration with neurotypical types is that they seem to think in glib one-liners and never bother it explore or explain an idea in depth)
I think you try a bit harder and argue a bit more honestly.
Your grammar is not clear.
I would suggest that you should think a bit harder and argue a bit more honestly. Is that what you meant to say?
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Kracklite: I don't think you are sufficiently interesting to be rude, merely long-winded and prone to read an awful lot into what I said; such is your geek = Aspergers assumption and your determination to be offended.
'The boys throw stones in jest, but the frogs die in earnest."
I've had to deal with that bullshit for years and I'm sick of it. You might think that it's trivial, but it's not.
'Hey, I was just sayin'
Oh puh-leez. give me a break. Try being on the receiving end of it. For a lifetime.
If I read a lot into what you say, it is because you have never bothered to consider in any depth your prejudices. That is the nature of prejudice - it is NEVER considered.
So, I'm long-winded. Fine. View it as symptomatic. At least I get paid for it, so there are compensations.
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I am, however, intrigued by this:
I find people hijacking conversations to enthuse about... their sex lives to be very rude.
An offhand, somewhat self-mocking remark by myself, which the inestimable Mr L took too seriously or opportunistically.
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Let's try an example... The relevance of fantastic fiction.
Before even the first world war, a 'geek' named Herbert George Wells read a paper by Ernest Rutherford. He deduced that energy from nuclear reactions could release tremendous amounts of energy which could be turned to military purposes. He wrote a novel called The World Set Free which depicted the first nuclear war. That novel was read by the Hungarian Jewish physicist Leo Szilard in the 1930s, who was at that tine a refugee from Nazism in London. Nobody listened to him. Later, he contacted his friend Albert Einstein who signed a letter to Franklin Roosevelt warning of the dangers of such a weapon in the hands of the Nazis. Thus was born the Manhattan Project.
Now what effect did that trivial fantasy have then?
(ref: Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb and various biographies of Wells, Szilard, Oppenheimer et all )
Wells suggested that his epitaph should read 'I told you so. You damned fools.'
So, if I want to enthuse about a TV show that depicts the rise of a species of Artificial Intelligence that declares a right to consideration as independent sentient beings, perhaps superior to their creators, then I think of that example and guess that perhaps petty matters of exchange rates and copyright laws will be resolved in a few years, but AI and whatever else are something that will have an effect over centuries , then yeah, fuck you, I will be 'rude' if someone actually bothers to consider the consequences of that happening.