Trygve Taranger

Young musician turned software dev. Interested in the why of things. Opinions = my own. Accidentally studied Critical Theory 6 years straight.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

I finally figured out the perfect term to replace 'social construct' in most cases where that term is used.

Thing.

I know some people will hate it, but it is *perfect*.
See quoted thread to understand the issues with 'social construct' and an earlier fumble before 'thing'.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

Most social constructs were never constructed, but emerged through the interactions of our evolved pattern-recognition systems and our shared environments.
They are also not equally social if some develop everywhere and others don't. The term is due for a rework.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@entropyrian

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@S_Coughlin_DC I could say the same to you. I merely responded to a tweet I hadn't noticed earlier because it made some dubious claims and I abhor letting those stand uncontested.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

On topics like these is where a bunch of people who do good work on Hermeticism and stuff like that lose me.

"What if"?

What if we could distinguish between different theories?
Evolution by natural selection enables abiogenesis as an explanation. NOT the other way around.

[Stephen Coughlin @S_Coughlin_DC]

If actual science converts on an actual scientific basis for evolution, I'll say, "cool." But it hasn't. And the body of science to date argues heavily against it. (I'll bet you didn't know that!)

So, just spitballing here, what if "evolution" was always part of an active measure to create an initially plausible competing cultural-level metaphysic to that of the Judeo-Christian?

And that in every way, it can be shown to parallel the Hermetic, the alchemical, the Neoplatonic, and Platonic world view that is organically immanent in orientation that seeks the reformed Prisca at the end of time, or, as Hegel put it, that seeks Absolute Act at the end of History (that moves forward)?

The parallels are a perfect match. And this could have been measured in 300 BC.

BTW, and not for nothing, the term evolution can be traced back to Neoplatonic origins in both Greek and Latin and relates to the unrolling of a scroll or turning of a page.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@S_Coughlin_DC It sounds like you are arguing about abiogenesis again. "What cannot happen" is not relevant, nor is it relevant if Dawkins is a shill. Replicators are real, and natural selection applies when they have inheritance and a fail-state. Then it is a question of effect size, not "if".

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@S_Coughlin_DC Fair enough. I didn't expect you of all people to appeal to consensus though! (You did re. evolution & Darwin.)

I should hope you read the last post in my reply-thread before writing the above, but I suspect not, given its content.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@S_Coughlin_DC I understand the subject of Darwinian evolution. Do you understand the subject of suspension? The old quote about "give me one miracle, and..."?
Science operates within-universe. It is fundamentally beyond its scope to explain where everything started, which includes evolution.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@S_Coughlin_DC Regarding God, definitionally "the greatest", that'd naturally be beyond measure. And some would argue the source of all measurement, too. But that is irrelevant as long as we are tackling within-universe things like Darwinian selection mechanisms, even if it may be the source.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@S_Coughlin_DC The maxim that you can't get a greater from a lesser is weird because intuitive understandings of greater and lesser are not stable terms - it depends on what we measure. You can get a greater by one measure from a smaller by that same measure, like height (mothers).

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@S_Coughlin_DC The colloquial understanding of it, which is more like how Pokémon evolve or a person matures into adulthood, is very much unsupported and anathema to serious discussion of the topic. It is also the common model for applying it to politics, which is a problem.
Don't blame Darwin.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@S_Coughlin_DC I would take exactly the same examples you chose to argue the opposite. Moreover, as Dawkins pointed out in the seminal work the Selfish Gene, all it takes to get the mechanism of Darwinian evolution is something that makes imperfect copies of itself with a fail-state (death).

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@XtremelyDad @S_Coughlin_DC Conversations on these topic almost always leave a lot to be desired because people barely consider any of the options. There is zero reason to believe we live in a Man-made reality. Any reality with powers beyond us in it can source rights in principle.
https://t.co/wFCjSqTYxz

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

Compilation thread of my recent threads on philosophy, which I think all fit together quite nicely, concerning agnosticism, epistemology, ontology and even natural law🧵
First, Descartes' foundation for modern western philosophy was a gnostic meditation.
https://t.co/xVtvxoONy9

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

Much of the supposed "evidence" against evolution by natural selection is evidence that abiogenesis - a separate theory - is unlikely, or something similarly unrelated.
Yes, evolution changes the game in many ways. And some conceptions of it are really bad. Darwin counters those.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

Evolution as presented by Charles Darwin does more damage to Hermeticist notions of progress than it does to Christian notions of God.
This is because Darwin's model posits a "blind" design process. Hermeticism does the opposite. Christianity has an opt-out option with God.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@PostmodernPhil It is the underlying capacity that is unalienable. Failing to respect it is like failing to respect a fire. It can work out for a time, but then you get burnt in the end. That respect is expressed through codified rights and norms; Some better than others.

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

1. Kindly stop calling the Woke "Liberals". You know they're not.
2. What the Woke did to Liberalism can be done to literally anything. There is no defense against this better than the defense Liberalism prescribed: Vigilance.
3. Hence, it is ridiculous to blame Liberalism here.

[Christian Heiens 🏛 @ChristianHeiens]

Noah, why do you think Wokeism emerged in the first place?

It came around in part because people disagree on what "human freedom and dignity" are.

Modern Liberals think a world without borders and the mass importation of people from radically different backgrounds into Western nations is an essential component of "human freedom". They believe mutilating a child to conform to their gender identity is "dignity". They claim that a vast and forcible redistribution of power and wealth from largely straight White Christian men to demographics that match the inverse of that are necessary to achieve both.

Wokeism emerged and hijacked Liberalism precisely because it took your own definition of what it stands for and forced other Liberals to follow their own worldview to its logical conclusion. Any Liberals who objected to these demands were forced out and either became Conservatives fighting a doomed battle, or they eventually realized that it was their own ideological worldview that birthed what we call "Wokeism" today.

Any system that denies the existence of particular loyalties (nations, traditions, religions, etc) and replaces them with abstract universal concepts (freedom and dignity) will inevitably universalize its own framework. Wokeism is what liberal universalism looks like when put into practice.

This is why you see all Liberal movements all over the world, in different countries on different continents among different people with different histories who speak different languages all openly pushing for the same exact ideological end-state.

This is what Right-wingers mean when they talk about "the eternal Progressive omnicause".

[Trygve Taranger @CuriousnTT]

@PostmodernPhil Knowing that any one of us could harbor a secret that could end everything you care about; Knowing that any one of us could harbor a secret that could save everything you care about; These imply some things about how best to deal with others.