shruggedbeware

shruggedbeware t1_jdy0dvn wrote

Reply to Paradoxically, what makes you unique is your relation to other people. The more robustly we try to identify who we are, the more we become embedded in all others. by IAI_Admin

Really thinking about or considering one's identity intently makes one have to create things about it, express it or otherwise relate what it's like to be you into words or sounds or images or other sensory things; in order to be unique among many people, there have to be other people around blah blah blah.....lol

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shruggedbeware t1_jdh4aip wrote

Reply to The Soup! by OgnjenPavkovicArt

Wow, the background is really hitting me. Looking up into nerve tendons or out of a patch of dirt with the soup cauldron as a stand-in for the night sky, just a lot of fun use of perspective on this, OP. Great job.

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shruggedbeware t1_jdfeme3 wrote

Reply to Lich by me. BIC pen on back of test paper by drgahnzo

Something uniquely challenging about the gummy gasoline slick texture of BIC pen. I like the kind of fleshly porosity you've portrayed in the lich's garment, like the clothes are rotting off its body. Maybe the mist-lines could go up to its shoulders on the upper right side for compositional balance. Really cool!

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shruggedbeware t1_jdbuyxz wrote

Reply to ‘Dates add nothing to our culture’: Everywhen explores Indigenous deep history, challenging linear, colonial narratives by B0ssc0

This might be the wrong subreddit for this article, OP.

I'm not familiar with anthropology as it's practiced in Australia, but most sources on world history/anthropology I've read date the earliest civilizations back to 15-20,000 BCE.

>Jim Bowler’s famous work at Lake Mungo in south-western New South Wales in the 1960s and 1970s pushed back the date of Aboriginal occupation even further – to an extraordinary 40,000 years. By the early 21st century, Aboriginal claims that they had always been here didn’t seem unreasonable alongside archaeological finds that measured their presence at 65,000 BCE.

Is this a joke? And then the article links to another article on said "remains" which says,

>While animal bones do not survive in the earliest levels of Madjedbebe, remarkably, plant remains do survive as a result of charring in ancient cooking hearths.

My main issue with the thesis of the book (as presented by the article writer) is as follows. Time, as most people understand it today, is not merely an experiential thing.* Conceptions of or the experience of time are not necessarily time itself. Current international time standards and metrics were imposed by Europeans onto the rest of the world, primarily for commercial reasons. Perhaps what the book might be for is a space for imagining or entering the mental space of Indigenous peoples, which is, to use a kind word, icky. The book is promoted as a break from the conception of "purity or wholeness before" of a colonized people but this angle fails by having Indigenous sources be interpreted through that same lens of being "out of time."

>And the question of whether (and how) Western historical narratives can populate deep history with actual lives, as well as understand and represent the thoughts, feeling and senses of people who lived thousands of years ago, is still to be answered.

While the process of making characters, settings and narratives is most commonly associated in the liberal arts tradition with the discipline of history, when describing civilizations/cultures/social practices on their own accord, studies become anthropological in nature. The archaeological findings described in the article should/would be bigger news if they were true and scientifically validated. Yet unclear what the book's author(s) are presenting the book as,** if the philological "evidence" or "substance" of the text is authentic, given the shakiness of the scientific evidence it is presented alongside. Again, if the book's contents are as the author describes, it seems as though while challenging a narrative of Indigenous Australianness as "atemporal," the author(s) fall into the same kind of conceptual "traps."

TLDR - A wonderful article that touches on issues in understanding the role of an oral tradition or philology in establishing historical study/review, but confusingly tries to establish the text and its findings in science and doesn't really describe any kind of true timeframe.

*Otherwise, what was the point of the scholars supposedly carbon-dating the remains?

**a cultural survey? or a textual sample? a documentation of languages/traditional narratives

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shruggedbeware t1_jc8l8ty wrote

Reply to What would you like to see for the future of cell phones? by ItsOk2PeeSittingDown

Re: "I would like to see wearables":

...like when things like Google Glass were being tried out?

The main problem I have with wearables (which is kind of an extension of the same problem of having a computer-phone and yes I'm calling it that lol) is that there's no demarcation* between a conscious experience of the world apart from Microsoft's experience or Apple's experience or Facebook's experience or everyone else's experience of the world/environment and/or the person wearing the wearable, a.k.a. you. Your own perception or understanding of yourself becomes filtered through the experience of a device by spending so much time with it. People generally are what they do, being social and constructive** creatures, & like for any living thing that adapts to its circumstances/surroundings/creations(!!), self-concept/identity/perception/etc.*** is shaped by, and in turn, kind of resembles/mimics what's around it.

The technological role or function for wearables**** on the market currently is pretty different from what a cell phone is intended to do, which is to transmit. The interface and the perceived intimacy of such devices (being garments/accessories worn against the body continuously collecting biological data, especially eyewear being tech that's put against an open mucous membrane and worn around the most important organ in the body, according to bloodflow) might have strange psychological consequences for long-time users and actual literal exposure to tech would/could be disastrous for if/when malfunctions happen.

I'm also wondering about how beneficial "scrapping" a whole existing tech market is for the environment considering the yet-lacking recycling programs for tech waste, not to mention the legalities (and labor issues/concerns) of said recycling programs as they are.

*or maybe just a preemptive lament for solitude? something that comes from an authentic "me"-ness

**one of the only animals who work on long-term projects or develop trades/skills/arts/etc., lest we forget that birds build nests

***some may call it the "ego," but I think of it more in a consciousness-experience kind of way, like something embedded in a continuous perception or beingness

**** and the fact that they are not currently really relay devices or devices that send signals to other devices, presumably that other users/owners also have/use

TLDR: Consumer wearables (specifically /not/ medical items like pacemakers, because I just know one of y'all, especially if you read something for this long, might use that as a counterexample or something) might further already-existing issues of tech- or net-dependency (for information, for communication, for a sense of sociality.) Wearables would be a new development in trend-acceptability (what I'm saying is they break "boundaries," and not "barriers") for communication devices that I'm just not sure would be more beneficial than potentially harmful.

On "the future of cellphones":

Personally, I'd like for cell phones to decide whether they are computers or phones, but cell phones cannot decide, for they are cell phones. Any sort of design/manufacturing decision of this kind would be a huge break from current consumer trends* and the current financial buyability of smartphones. I like clicky buttons and reparability and long-term functionality as a consumer. What I'm saying is I personally will probably be using a "flip phone" in the future, lol.

As far as new phone designs go, I am really not a fan of the current anti-button trend that makes "phone" "rectangle of pokable light." A friend of mine and I once had a conversation where he (jokingly) said something like "I just know that cell phone manufacturers are holding out on us and every company could come out with its 'perfect phone' that would work forever with no problems." It's still pretty funny to think about. As far as new features go, I'm sure tech companies have their ideas. From newer "consumer" features in wearables/phones, I really think the data and its collection methods would be better suited for pharmaceutical purposes and not being hoarded by home/consumer electronic companies for the sake of making profit or selling "cool" gadgets.

*and such decisions/moves have been marketed as such, for example that recent Nokia "brick" cell phone.

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shruggedbeware t1_jc2axqb wrote

Reply to Validating philosophical beliefs using intuitions is not a simple task, but this doesn’t mean intuitions should be dismissed as unreliable. Experiment and a priori reasoning can sort good intuitions from bad. by IAI_Admin

Then isn't the question what makes a good intuition and a bad intuition? Does it have to do with correctness or correspondence to the external world? This is just a description of the scientific method but for sentiments or for "gut" feelings, which doesn't necessarily encompass the philosophical topic/study of "theory of mind."

A few reading recommendations:

  • Two Heads (a graphic novel)
  • Fred Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind
  • The Norton Anthology on the History of Mind (The edition I read got a black and white cover)

The article linked shows few examples of the purpose of or what specific situations would be applicable to intuitive judgements, and instead is falling into a deductive argument on "Are Intuitions True OR False"* or placing the philosophical function/role/application/method** of honing intuitions into the categories of logic or epistemology. From what I know, applied logic and applied epistemology (like in history of science*** or medical/scientific ethics) almost never relies on sentiments or prizes/utilizes intuition.****

The article is also using number theory for an argument about an idea that is inherently unquantifiable (infinity) in the example after the first quoted text. I think some of the rest of the article goes on to list other mathematical examples and uses a lot of mathematical terminology, but I stopped reading after I read something like "I can extend an intuition through a deduction" or something like that.

*Which kind of defeats the whole point of writing the article. Even though so many philosophers in the Analytic tradition love Kant (me too) it is very taxing and like chorework to read, write, and review papers on a bunch of self-contained mini-experiments and then go around poking holes in Why Or How This Thing Actually Wouldn't Work Or essentially write a manual for How One Ought To Comport Themselves In All Times At All Situations And Be Right Every Time.

**on "the method of honing intuitions," which may sound a bit New Age-y, there is a very nice allegory used in the first recommendation on the list above on how the neurons in your brain and body work to "hone"/"direct" impulses or intuitions/energy to "test" the accuracy of your perceptions

***which is really what a lot of philosophy amounts to

****except as conundrums, unsolvable problems, or other thought experiments/puzzles, you know, things philosophers like

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