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lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

> Hayek

Oh, the irony. If you look at the rest of the comments in this thread you will find people insisting that the Austrian School is economics, not philosophy.

And this is exactly the problem. Philosophy is whatever other self-styled philosophers say it is, and that authority ultimately can be traced back to the people writing the checks. Yarvin is able to do what he does in no small measure because he has (or at least had) Peter Thiel as a patron. In 50-100 years, if the Republicans win the next election, Yarvin will be taught alongside Trump and Vance as being among the brilliant thinkers who threw off the yoke of woke and ushered in the new era of enlightenment.

It's ultimately all about money and power, not truth.

lisperon Ordinary Abundance

Air conditioning!

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

In the context of a discussion of the kinds of philosophy that silicon valley tech bros misread, what would cross your mind?

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

> you didn't qualify "a lot"

Why do you think I needed to? The phrase "a lot" has an established meaning in the English language.

> or mention which topics in philosophy you think are legitimate

That's true. I was writing an HN comment, not a review paper for submission to a peer-review journal. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to notice that my comment was made in the context of a discussion of an article entitled "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy" and to infer from that I was referring to philosophical topics popular among silicon valley tech bros. The specific topics I had in mind are mainly political and economic theories, which not everyone considers philosophy. But I'll point as an undeniable example the work of Curtis Yarvin a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug who, rather incredibly, attracts a huge audience by advocating for the divine right of kings, among other absurdities.

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

> You're basically pointing at RFK Jr's speeches and saying, "See? Biology is bullshit."

That's actually not a bad analogy, except for the tacit implication that RFK is a crackpot and not worthy of serious consideration. I, of course, agree with that. However, the sad fact of the matter is that RFK is the United States Secretary of Health and Human Servivces. He was appointed to that position by a democratically elected President and confirmed by a democratically elected Senate (or at least as close to democratically elected as it gets in the USA). So dismissing RFK as a crackpot is a no-true-scotsman fallacy. Like it or not, RFK is part of the biology establishment. In fact, he is one of the principal leaders of the biological establishment. The only difference between RFK and philosophers is that RFK is a recent and, hopefully, temporary aberration, whereas philosophy is shot through-and-through with RFKs and has been for thousands of years.

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

"Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;[c] February 2 [O.S. January 20], 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (/aɪn/ ⓘ), was a Russian and American writer and philosopher.[3] She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system which she named Objectivism."

lisperon Extreme 220GHz+Broadband Silicon Capacitor X2SC 0201M 22nF BV11

Yeah, I actually realized too late that my brain somehow thought that nanofarads were smaller than picofarads. Mea culpa.

lisperon Extreme 220GHz+Broadband Silicon Capacitor X2SC 0201M 22nF BV11

Why is this a component? Couldn't you just make one of these out of PCB traces?

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

Yeah, well, the topic at hand is how Silicon Valley tech bros abuse philosophy. The philosophy they abuse includes a lot of non-academic stuff.

I can cite a lot of bullshit in academic philosophy, but so what? There's a lot of bullshit in academia in general. There is bullshit in physics (string theory). There is bullshit in chemistry (James Tour). There is bullshit in botany (John Sanford). There is bullshit everywhere. If you really want an example from academic philosophy, I'll give you John Searle and the Chinese Room.

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

> when you try to argue that economics is a field of philosophy

You obviously haven't read Murray Rothbard.

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

Apparently they don't teach you about straw-man arguments. I didn't say philosophy was useless, I said a lot of philosophy is bullshit. That is not the same thing. A lot of physics nowadays is bullshit (like string theory) but that is not to say that physics is useless.

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

> people who aren't philosophers said some bullshit

Wow, I didn't expect to be vindicated quite so definitively when I predicted: "The most likely outcome of that exercise would be for you to invoke the no-true-scotsman fallacy."

> That's no a No True Scotsman fallacy.

It absolutely is:

> the definition of philosophy, a deep analysis of certain specific topics.

I see nothing in that definition about writing in a particular time period or having a university degree, which are the two features you cited that allegedly disqualify Ayn Rand. I also see an awful lot of wiggle-room in the "specific topics" and how one measures whether one's analysis is sufficiently "deep". You exclude economics and computer science from your list of "certain topics" but you don't say what topics are allowed or on what basis this assessment of admissibility is to be made. Your argument is a paragon of muddled thinking, and does more to support my position than refute it.

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

Then by all means please do enlighten me: what is that criterion?

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

How would you expect me to defend it? It's my opinion. I could give you a long list of things in philosophy that I consider BS, but what good would that do? Do you really doubt that I could provide such a list? The most likely outcome of that exercise would be for you to invoke the no-true-scotsman fallacy and say, "Oh, of course those things are bullshit, but that's not real philosophy." And the fact that I can make that prediction with confidence is my defense.

If you really want my list, since this is HN, I'll start with Ayn Rand and the Austrian school. You can read this if you like:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2013/03/murray-rothbard-was-idio...

Oh, and since this is HN, I'll also invoke an argument from authority and cite:

https://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

Well, yeah, obviously. I didn't say that all philosophy is BS, only that a lot of it is, including a lot of what is included in SEP. But as a source for making the field accessible, SEP is excellent.

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

There's a lot of BS in most fields. The problem with philosophy is that it has no criterion for separating the wheat from the chaff. All other fields have some kind of external forcing function. In science, its experimental data. In the arts, it's the ability to produce novelty or exhibit skill or attract an audience. In philosophy there is no external forcing function. The only thing that makes a great philosopher is other philosophers saying they are great philosophers.

There are definitely some non-BS philosophers, like Dan Dennett and Tim Maudlin. But really they are more like scientists than philosophers. In Maudlin's case, he's really a physicist, he just happens to work in a philosophy department.

lisperon Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy

It doesn’t help that a lot of philosophy is actually bullshit.

lisperon The myth of Snow Leopard

Here is what I wrote about it at the time:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/08/snow-leopard-is-disaster...

Consistent with this article's take on the situation 17 years later.

lisperon The great wealth transfer reality check

Newer CA homes also tend to do better in fires.

lisperon Full Scale Foldable Wing Extensions

No, they are not testing these wings in the present, they are planning to test them in the future:

"Over the next three years, Airbus will design, build and flight test full scale wing extensions."

lisperon Full Scale Foldable Wing Extensions

AFAICT they don't exist at all today. They are just renderings. So double clickbait. A more accurate title would be, "Airbus announces plans to develop foldable wing extensions, with non-foldable versions as the first step" or something like that.

lisperon Martha Lillard, last US polio patient using iron lung, dies at 78 in Oklahoma

Making polio great again.

lisperon How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI

I wouldn't think the glass and fire would do them a lot of good either.

lisperon Show HN: 18 Words

You should take a look at this:

https://www.uptoplay.net/wordiest-online-game/com.concretero...

Very similar in spirit, but IMHO a lot more enjoyable than your version. It's untimed which takes the pressure off, but still a challenge because there are multiple potentially correct answers.

The on-line version doesn't seem to be working, and I don't have an android device so I can't tell if the app is still working either. But I ran this on my nexus 7 for years until it died. It was one of my favorite on-line games. I would happily pay someone to port it to ios.

lisperon StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

Yeah, I actually meant to post this comment in the comap thread. Both comaps and SC were on the home page at the same time.

lisperon CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps