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Comment by bcatanzaro | Hacker News Reader

I find the description of alcohol as something that "stupefies" rather reductive. People are often louder, more expressive and more interesting when they've had a drink. The opposite of catatonic. Now it's true that overdosing on alcohol is poisonous but most people don't drink to the point of stupification regularly.

I am interested in why Tolstoy feels the need to be so reductive. Sounds to me like he might also be "hiding from himself what he doesn't wish to see". Which is a human activity so I don't begrudge him his own chosen blind spots, I just think it's interesting and I'm wondering if he is being fully honest with himself about why he hates alcohol so much.

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Tolstoy argues that it is the conscience in particular that is stupefied; he may also have been influenced by behavior he observed. I have anecdotal experience of Russians drinking themselves beyond garrulity into stupor, although I'm certain it can happen in any culture where alcohol is available.

> Sounds to me like he might also be "hiding from himself what he doesn't wish to see".

He tells exactly this. You and him are looking from different sets of axioms, so you come to a different language, but it is just outside appearance.

Tolstoy uses axioms like Freud's: human is an animal inside and human needs to work hard to subside his/her animal nature and to become a Human. So human is inherently bad, but it may become good if tried hard enough.

From other hand you start from different premises (I allow myself a little guessing here, sorry): human is inherently good, but may become bad due to bad experiences. So if one feels the need to become good, they need to dig inside themselves, find out what happens, accept it, and learn how to live with it. Humanistic psychology like that.

But the funny thing, that it doesn't matter much where you begin to think what it means to be a human, the most complicating thing is a communication between people using different sets of axioms about human nature.

Neither set of axioms requires one to be extremely reductive about something like alcohol. Does Tolstoy admit to being reductive (“he tells exactly this”)?

I think in this case it isn’t the axioms but the “style” of philosophical discourse that requires the reader to take the message with a big grain of salt. Like when a YouTuber says, “In the next ten minutes, I’m going to lay out the exact formula for how to write a perfect screenplay,” it’s not literally true. Tolstoy’s musings are a little deeper than your average YouTuber, on par with a good one, similarly overblown and oversimplified, and more moralizing.

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