/edu/ - Education

Finished Denial by Ajit Varki (2013), developing an idea proposed to him by Danny Brower (who died in 2007). Their claim is this:
Strong self-awareness / theory of mind is present in humans only because of a lucky co-evolution of another aspect of the human mind, denial of death. So, without death denial, strong self-awareness would lead to depression and inaction (thus not passing on your genes). They speculate that other species did not get strong self-awareness because of that barrier.

Maybe I missed something, but my impression is they failed to make an argument for their assertion (not even a good argument, just an argument). We probably all know of people who got really busy getting things in order when they got news of their impeding death instead of freezing up, and I'm pretty sure that this is indeed the more common behavior. Just like when we become aware of being near a less dramatic limit (deadline for a paper, last day of your vacation and so on).

Ancient artifacts from elaborate burial rituals are used as an example by Varki (as by many others) as signs of when self-awareness evolved. A great opportunity to point at this as a sign of reality denial, but somehow that does not occur to Varki.

The dumbest thing is his speculation about why there wasn't more interbreeding between homo sapiens and others. He posits MENTAL incompatibility specifically for the low fertility of interbreeding couples.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-and-neanderthals-may-have-had-trouble-making-male-babies-180958701/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-neanderthal-gene-variant-related-to-red-blood-cells-may-have-contributed-to-their-extinction-180987586/
Yeah OK, the book is older than these findings, but what a stupid hypothesis. Mein Gott, has he ever observed some couples?? There are people who seek relief by fucking horses.

should we make another thread for /fiction/?

>>25403
nationalism begins as a liberal movement with the french revolution, but has its prehistory in the reformation, where kings would claim sovereignty against the catholic church and so establish independence. it has since been appropriated by both the far left and far right as means of self-determination.
>>25395
national socialism was an existing movement which hitler became part of; he did not create it. the earliest mention of "national socialism" is in 1898, but it becomes official with rudolf jung's "der nationale sozialismus" (1919). in the book, anticapitalism and volkism is specified, with a special interest on fighting usury. there were of course internal divisions in NS, most notably the "socialist" wing in people like strasser, while hitler took the side of the industrialists.

New Ancient Americas video discussing the Eastern Agriculture Complex ie that time the ancestors of Mississippians developed agriculture independently of Mesoamerica and the Andes but later most of these agricultural crops were replaced by Mesoamerican imports, including the king of crops, maize.

>>25250
I think it's interesting to see how a region of the world could develop agriculture but not "progress" into high civilization like Mesoamerica or the Andes.
Could the crops have something to do with it? Were they not as efficient or nutritious as stuff like maize, amaranth, quinoa or potatoes?
The intensification of maize agriculture into the eastern woodlands seems to coincide with the development of Mississippian civilization. Could they have been on their way to develop as much as Mesoamerica and the Andes when Europeans came? That would've been pretty interesting since the area is quite large and has vert navigable rivers. Would there have been eventual direct contact with Mesoamerica? So many lost possibilities.

New ArchaeoEd video. Topic is Ancestral Pueblo religion.

the whole area surrounding the ceremonial center of cholula has now been built up despite allegedly being protected by INAH.

i looked into this and apparently the puebla state government itself destroyed most of the area to build some faggot park, a train station and a "museum".

https://www.milenio.com/cultura/parque-cholula-gobierno-puebla-excava-zona-arqueologica-autorizacion-inah

to top it it all off even as excavators were digging up shards of pottery out of the soil the useless national coordinator of INAH just shrugged it off because "you can't protect everything"

>>25543
And of course there's a fucking church right there

>>25501
only a life-denying, nihilistic religion like christianity can convince people of martyrdom. the idea that being tortured to death by rapists who will conquer your land is better than fighting them is peak psyop shit;
>oh, please crucify me upside down!
this is why peter holds the keys to the kingdom lol

If it were not Christianity, it would be Islam, if it were not Islam, it would be Buddhism. The religious inclination of man has inspired him to do great things. At the same time, none of it is true, so make of that what you will…

>>25520
As an abrahamic, I'm very envious of the eastern religions. And only a couple of atheists, the one's that aren't annoying

>>25480
>Calvary Chapel Chino Hills exists to uphold unchanging biblical truth that breaks the powers of darkness, transforms lives, and equips the church to stand as the salt and light of the earth.
Not even the biggest fan of Islam, but lmfao

>>25538
the source is biased, but still valid
you dont get a lot of ex-muslim scholars debunking their old religion either

>>25396
he doesnt make a single coherent point to be responded to, i.e. its a "waste of words".

>>25397
I don't believe you can even understand the point. The point is that you're supposing there is some arbiter in Nature assigning these values, when this is all a political calculation made up by humans. Basically, the labor theory from Adam Smith was that none of the capital and stock would be worth anything if there weren't humans working at a basic level, who on some level wanted the products of labor that constitute this capital. People don't make products "randomly" or for spurious purposes, and if they are made for spurious purposes, they typically do not enter economic life. In other words, the management of things and products is much like the management of human beings, i.e. various types of unfree labor. That's why Adam Smith writes that it is command of labor rather than any natural generative power of labor that is valued (and bad economists muddled the words Adam Smith wrote to make bad arguments). Everything from Ricardo to Marx extrapolates based on that assumption that it is labor commanded that is valued, and Marx's contribution to this is the concept of "abstract labor", which if you read Marxism 101 you would understand. What Marx is writing about can quickly become esoteric and something removed from what actually happens; but for the manager of labor, this is what he has to do to exploit labor and keep his firm operational. He has to think in a manner that is increasingly divorced from what the capitalist wanted out of production in the first place, in ways that work against the very system that he agreed to enter as a producer.

uyghas really be out here posting to some retards hoping to get a correct explanation of Capitalism instead of just reading capital

>>25527
The problem with reading Capital is that Marx assumes you know the argument from classical political economy. What Marx is describing is how this law of value appears to the manager. The manager deals with labor in the abstract at the level of the firm and he can only manage it in particular ways. I.e the boss can choose how long the work day is and the compensation for workers, and ask how much more he can get out of workers.

Luxury goods are not freely reproducible in that way. If they were, their price would be subject to competition and they would be cheap. Many luxuries are actually cheap but diamonds are controlled by a monopoly that seeks to keep the price high. That is done by forbidding competition and cornering the market on diamonds. That's an easy problem. It's not solved by utility because diamonds are worthless for that. But there is a way by which these monopolies are established and those monopolies have an outsized effect on what others do on a market society. Who can establish these monopolies becomes clear, and that is the imperial power. Diamond monopolies exist because the British empire likes that monopoly.

>>25536
so, why not just at least read the first chapter of ricardo's "principles" before capital? (oh right, 'cause marxists are illiterate outside of their little book club):
>Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it. If a commodity were in no way useful, - in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, - it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it. Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them. There are some commodities, the value of which is determined by their scarcity alone. No labour can increase the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered by an increased supply. Some rare statues and pictures, scarce books and coins, wines of a peculiar quality, which can be made only from grapes grown on a particular soil, of which there is a very limited quantity, are all of this description. Their value is wholly independent of the quantity of labour originally necessary to produce them, and varies with the varying wealth and inclinations of those who are desirous to possess them. These commodities, however, form a very small part of the mass of commodities daily exchanged in the market. By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are procured by labour,. and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them.
<In speaking then of commodities, of their exchangeable value, and of the laws which regulate their relative prices, we mean always such commodities only as can be increased in quantity by the exertion of human industry, and on the production of which competition operates without restraint.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htm

>>25414
>What language/languages are you learning?
Chinese
>What is your level currently?
I can recognize quite a lot of characters. Probably HSK2, I'll be HSK3 by next year.
>Why are you learning them?
I am interested in learning more on the eastern sphere of the world, and I hope to live over there one day.
>What is your plan for improving?
I just got an Anki deck and I plan to study each day by utilizing it, and I plan to master the Sanzijing in a month.
>What tips can you share with someone who also has your TL?
Learn radicals. Write things down physically. Read stories. Learn to think in Chinese. Solve problems.

>>25513
Good luck Anon

>>25417
if you try making sense of japanese by comparing it to other languages it will only make it more difficult

https://sakubi.neocities.org/ some resource ocmpilation for learning japanese, it already assumes you know the basics

>>25485
>>25484
Moreover, the entire premise of education (as it currently exists) is one of submission. It isn't an accidental stroke of etymology that you have to 'submit' a paper ;).
To deviate from the accepted standards is an unconscionable act, and deserves to be met only with browbeating in the eyes of the imperious arbitrators.
If you truly think critically, you'll come to the realization that much of academia is a kind of 'ritual' more than it is anything transcendentally objective; most of its presuppositions are arbitrary and cannot be honestly defended, and so they fall back upon the circularity of their own tautological self-validation, either through demanding accreditation (circular) or through deferring to likeminded communities who already predispose themselves to the starting premise that education *must* be an inherent 'good', i.e. curating their argumentative experience with the likes of reddit and bluesky and academic forums and so on (tautological). The basis of contemporary education is to work backwards from a series of starting presuppositions and deem anyone who attempts to dissent anew from this as 'stupid' or 'ignorant' or 'crazy'. So-called 'common sense' is really just a form of brutal conformism, and it is fundamentally feminine in essence–it is best encapsulated with the spirit of the phrase 'Really? I can't even…' or something akin to that. The very notion that the fundamental foundations might be a festering source is treated as an inconceivably profaned thing. I don't share the same cynicism towards the future possibility of the human condition, or the reading of its full nature, as Eugene, but he is absolutely on the mark at least with respect to the current state of affairs.

Name a single philosopher who has produced anything of world shattering, history moving value from the modern universities. There isn't one. Probably the most interesting figures currently out there are those involved in the speculative realist movement, but in the end, irrelevance is the doomed fate of those who radically innovate (i.e. 'challenge') under this system. If you want to be a philosopher, OP, you must do it for the love of an enduring truth which might one day be excavated and embraced hermeneutically, assuming anything evePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>25486
BTW OP I have a degree in philosophy. It was a waste of time and money and most importantly sanity. All it did was further entrench my hatred for the capitalist world.
Anyone who currently thinks this shit is worthwhile, at least from a philosophical (and not, say, medical–assuming an honest doctor, of course) perspective, is as delusional and pliable to recuperation as someone like Chomsky. It's hilarious to see so many anarchists embrace university. Worshipping a microcosmic mirror of the dynamic the state already serves, thereby telling on themselves in the implicit process: "We want to abolish our lack of power, not to abolish power altogether–we'll forge it again in our image." Very similar logic to Zionism, wherein the phrase "never again" is perverted into indicating "never again TO THE LIKES OF US", rather than being a universalist renunciation of genocide.

>>25486
>>25487
I was a phil major for years and ended up dropping out and I agree 100% with what you are saying. Academia is just a recuperation factory.

>ideological brainwashing factories
reactionary rhetoric

>>25505
academia is anti-communist, sorry, the theory industry is an industry just like music and movie industries are, and its stimulated by Capital to toe the NATO line in similar ways

aristotle's "politics" is the bedrock of political science
also, plato's "republic", "statesman" and "nomoi"

Hannah Arrendt is a nazi bitch. Stay away from her.

Aristotle and Plato. Alot of what they have to say is still worth thinking about particularly Aristotle, then just progress chronologically.

Polsci is for fucking retards, do you unironically believe shit like political compasses are remotely useful?

Based.

>>25430
This is liberal garbage on par with something I'd read from Alex Karp.

>>25492
This is literally neutral. It is a Memetic Warfare System integrated with AI.

>>25500
There is no such thing as neutral.

>>25510
Esochannealogy is a meta-framework. You can use it as you like.