'Postmodernism' as Existential Threat.

[woops]

to deny univeralism isn't to say everything is equally meaningless

no? sounds like wishful thinking and your last post contradicts this anyway.

if you don't have a universal for other things to be relative to, then they're all equally floating around being relative to other equal relatives.

otherwise you're proposing that certain things are "universally" more meaningful than others.

 

[constant escape]

The thirst for closure might be the primary cause of the ailments in question, no? But then that ties into the desire to die, for it to end, rather than affirming the potential endlessness that courses through it all.

edit: So to speak.

 

[luka]

its a genuine quandry and you are pushed back to political power and expansion of the franchise broadly speaking

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

your last post contradicts this anyway

which last post

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I can say that I subjectively think something is more meaningful than something else without any universal reference point

 

[luka]

good thread. thank you everyone for buying in. seriously appreciate it.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

what we're talking about is exactly what, if anything, gives anyone the right to impose their values on someone else

 

[constant escape]

Perhaps a central belief here is that if all ideologies could be quantized into reliable data, then there would be some attractors that could be induced, and thus a sort of function could be ascertained within the distribution.

edit: rather than chaos, that is. That is really near the heart of the kind of faith I have. That it is either chaos or progress, insofar as evolution is progress.

 

[luka]

its a genuine quandry and you are pushed back to political power and expansion of the franchise broadly speaking

needless to say this in itself is a contested value but a winnable one

 

[luka]

which takes you back to power of numbers.

 

[woops]

I can say that I subjectively think something is more meaningful than something else without any universal reference point

you can but it doesn't mean anything since you're taking "meaningfulness" as the universal reference, but it's not universal, it's subjective

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

they're all equally floating around being relative to other equal relatives

I would also turn this around and ask if there's a universal, where is it? out there floating in the ether somewhere?

how did you discover what it was? how do you know that you're right about what it is? besides faith and/or intuition

 

[constant escape]

which takes you back to power of numbers.

Mathematics being the protean systematization of cognition, calibrating ever more closely to its target. The map can approximate the territory by different means than the territory was itself formed.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

sure edwin, but what is the universal? show it to me

explain to me how you arrived at it

explain to me how you purged yourself of doubt so that you could attain surety

 

[constant escape]

Well any position taken involves negation, and if there is any negation involved, it can't be said to be universal, no? So anything universal would be the zero point of positionality. Virtually no position taken. Arguably.

edit: crazy thing is, this is identical to a superposition of every possible position.

 

[luka]

Mathematics being the protean systematization of cognition, calibrating ever more closely to its target. The map can approximate the territory by different means than the territory was itself formed.

does that mean you consent to the conclusion or resist it? im too stupid to understand

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I not the person who first used "meaningful" btw that was luke

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I'm fine living in a world of uncertainty but it seems upsetting to some people

 

[constant escape]

does that mean you consent to the conclusion or resist it? im too stupid to understand

But consenting to a conclusion would go against the sort of perpetual, protean, ever-finer calibration I have in mind. Thats why I'm so slippery with taking positions. To take a position is to make a more or less consistent differentiation, whereas the kind of meta-position I have in mind is a sort of extremity of differentiation, which also means an absence of differentiation.

edit: that probably didn;t clarify anything. I wouldn;t consent that everything boils down to numbers, just that boiling everything down to numbers is likely the expression our perpetual development will take.

 

[luka]

I'm fine living in a world of uncertainty but it seems upsetting to some people

we live in a world of uncertainty by default and search for certainty.