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Author Topic: Reset the clock. Again.  (Read 6960 times)

Ghostmaker

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #45 on: April 07, 2021, 11:43:00 AM »
I would feel more sympathy if the wokeists hadn't made a habit of airing dirty laundry (or even deliberately misrepresenting such) in order to 'cancel' people.

ScytheSong

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #46 on: April 07, 2021, 02:06:51 PM »
I love how some of you folks are trying to interpret my maundering from just before bed.

So, confession time, I don't know a great deal about Jordan B. Peterson, but I have read some of his written material, including abstracts from his books as well as what I believe are even-handed reviews of his positions. I tried to listen to one of his youtube videos once, but he was off on a Gish Gallop so quickly that I gave up after the third time I yelled at the screen, "You need to unpack that!"

For background on me, my training on Modernity, Postmodern thought, and Radical Orthodoxy is from the point of view of Theology, which will make pure philosophers cringe, but whatever. So here goes:

Peterson has made comments like "I am a classic British Liberal" and "I admire Kant's approach to ethics", which seem innocuous enough, bit of name dropping, but whatever. Until you realize that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason includes an argument that is structured as follows:

"If a man comes to you and hides in your house from his mortal enemy, and his mortal enemy comes to you and asks where the man is so that he can kill him, what should you do? The answer is to give the first man to the second man. After all, you cannot be sure that the second man will kill the first, but you *can* be sure that you will be falling into error by lying."

The simple argument (elementary, trivial, and obvious) extending "a man" to  "a Jew" and "his mortal enemy" to  "the Nazis" gives you my statement.  (8th of his 12 rules)

So, then what about Peterson and dragon slaying?

The key is not the pizza and diet coke. The key is that you are gathering with friends. "You must slay your own dragons", right? All of Peterson's work is concentrated on the individual, and to be blunt, himself and his own place in the world. Friends are defined by their utility to the person, not for their own selves. If someone else is getting more out of an experience than you are, you need adjust things either up or down so you are either equal or ahead. I freely admit that I may be extending Peterson's argument beyond his actual intent based on arguments that his fanboys have made, but that is the gist of what I get from him.

Which brings me around to Postmodernism and what I mean by it.

The Modern project is based around an examination of the relationship between the Self and the Universal. The Enlightenment kicked off modern thought by trying to reject claims to particularity and set up a Universal Truth, whether empirical (based on observation) or rational (based on internal thoughts). But as time wore on, it became evident that Truth -- with a capital T -- was harder to pin down than that. Kant tried, the Existentialists tried, modern theologians tried (much as I love Karl Barth, it's clear that he's preaching to the choir), but it became clearer and clearer that rather than Truth, what the Modern project was uncovering was Utility. There are folks who have embraced that, and late-stage Modernity still rolls on around us, seeking out what will give us the most useful stuff, or the theories that will prove the most useful in predicting phenomena.

Postmodernism discovered that Modernity had turned to utility and rejected that. The postmodern effort has been described as "a radical turn to the Subject" where all that is important is the self -- "If it feels good, do it!" is a postmodern slogan. The key to understanding postmodern stuff is to understand that in the postmodern view there is no objective or universal truth, there is only lived experience. 

One of the tools of the postmodern effort, in fact it's primary tool in postmodern Theology, is the small group. People gather together, hopefully with a variety of backgrounds but a common theme, and discuss their personal experiences and explore both their own and each other's interior life around that theme. The lived and shared experience is the point of the exercise, but those experiences then can be shared with others to form a cascade of understanding other people's experiences and perhaps seeing things outside yourself and your experiences and incorporating them into your own world.

Small groups/breakout groups in meetings are a postmodern thing. AA (and it's relatives) uses postmodern methods. And RPGs are the first form of entertainment where you explore the shared experiences of beings that not only don't exist, but that you crated within the small group of (hopefully!) friends so that you can entertain yourselves and tell stories about your experiences later -- I call that a truly postmodern endeavor and hobby.

Of course, that also means that catpissman telling you about his character in the local gaming store is expressing a high form of self-actualization. ( :P )

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #47 on: April 07, 2021, 02:17:48 PM »
Of course, that also means that catpissman telling you about his character in the local gaming store is expressing a high form of self-actualization. ( :P )

Don't fucking remind me. Catpissman doesn't even do that in the gaming store anymore, he got a Patreon for his liveplay podcast and is making fifty bucks a month for it, which is fifty bucks more than he ought to for all those years of tedium.

It's a decently benign description of postmodernism, which means it's a terrible one because it isn't an insidious plot to destroy knowledge or God or whatever authoritative center the aggrieved poster holds very dear to their heart.

Fuckin irony is that some storygames try to recenter the text as primary authority - lookin at PbtA games over here - and try to reModernize themselves, but get marked as pomo nonsense.
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Mistwell

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #48 on: April 07, 2021, 02:28:59 PM »
I have two immediate questions here:

A) Is any of these characters out of middle school?

B) We should care about this litany... why?


This was my reaction as well. I know nothing about the people involved with this. I get there are some gender and sexual preference complications with parsing the series of events. But the bottom line is two consenting adults had a relationship which didn't work out. Everyone went into the relationship knowing the basic score on who was otherwise attached to whom and made a choice to pursue a relationship in those circumstances anyway. And it just didn't work out and pretty ordinary relationship-level fibs were told before it all blew up in pretty stereotypical ways.

It's irresponsible and petty and unprofessional to be posting about it publicly. You talk about this to your close friends. You have a drink and you bitch about your evil ex and you get over it. You don't publicly drag names through the mud because you're pissed at your ex. There is no genuine "protecting unknown strangers from this evil person" because nobody was "lured" into some relationship without knowing the score in advance. It's not like the existing establish relationships with others were hidden and you're informing others to beware of that hidden important knowledge. You took a risk on a relationship, knowing the risks going in, and it didn't go as planned. It happens to most people.

Go get drunk or shop or whatever comfort habit your friends use to work out issues and call them names to your sympathizing friends. That process has worked for thousands of years, and it still works well now. I am sure ancient Romans got drunk or shopped for amphoras or whatever and bitched about their lying ex to get over a relationship that didn't work out too. My guess is few would hire a town crier to spread that gossip publicly, and it was probably looked down on poorly then too.

Reckall

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #49 on: April 07, 2021, 02:37:32 PM »
I love how some of you folks are trying to interpret my maundering from just before bed.

So, confession time, I don't know a great deal about Jordan B. Peterson, but I have read some of his written material, including abstracts from his books as well as what I believe are even-handed reviews of his positions. I tried to listen to one of his youtube videos once, but he was off on a Gish Gallop so quickly that I gave up after the third time I yelled at the screen, "You need to unpack that!"

For background on me, my training on Modernity, Postmodern thought, and Radical Orthodoxy is from the point of view of Theology, which will make pure philosophers cringe, but whatever. So here goes:

Peterson has made comments like "I am a classic British Liberal" and "I admire Kant's approach to ethics", which seem innocuous enough, bit of name dropping, but whatever. Until you realize that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason includes an argument that is structured as follows:

"If a man comes to you and hides in your house from his mortal enemy, and his mortal enemy comes to you and asks where the man is so that he can kill him, what should you do? The answer is to give the first man to the second man. After all, you cannot be sure that the second man will kill the first, but you *can* be sure that you will be falling into error by lying."

The simple argument (elementary, trivial, and obvious) extending "a man" to  "a Jew" and "his mortal enemy" to  "the Nazis" gives you my statement.  (8th of his 12 rules)

So, then what about Peterson and dragon slaying?

The key is not the pizza and diet coke. The key is that you are gathering with friends. "You must slay your own dragons", right? All of Peterson's work is concentrated on the individual, and to be blunt, himself and his own place in the world. Friends are defined by their utility to the person, not for their own selves. If someone else is getting more out of an experience than you are, you need adjust things either up or down so you are either equal or ahead. I freely admit that I may be extending Peterson's argument beyond his actual intent based on arguments that his fanboys have made, but that is the gist of what I get from him.

Which brings me around to Postmodernism and what I mean by it.

The Modern project is based around an examination of the relationship between the Self and the Universal. The Enlightenment kicked off modern thought by trying to reject claims to particularity and set up a Universal Truth, whether empirical (based on observation) or rational (based on internal thoughts). But as time wore on, it became evident that Truth -- with a capital T -- was harder to pin down than that. Kant tried, the Existentialists tried, modern theologians tried (much as I love Karl Barth, it's clear that he's preaching to the choir), but it became clearer and clearer that rather than Truth, what the Modern project was uncovering was Utility. There are folks who have embraced that, and late-stage Modernity still rolls on around us, seeking out what will give us the most useful stuff, or the theories that will prove the most useful in predicting phenomena.

Postmodernism discovered that Modernity had turned to utility and rejected that. The postmodern effort has been described as "a radical turn to the Subject" where all that is important is the self -- "If it feels good, do it!" is a postmodern slogan. The key to understanding postmodern stuff is to understand that in the postmodern view there is no objective or universal truth, there is only lived experience. 

One of the tools of the postmodern effort, in fact it's primary tool in postmodern Theology, is the small group. People gather together, hopefully with a variety of backgrounds but a common theme, and discuss their personal experiences and explore both their own and each other's interior life around that theme. The lived and shared experience is the point of the exercise, but those experiences then can be shared with others to form a cascade of understanding other people's experiences and perhaps seeing things outside yourself and your experiences and incorporating them into your own world.

Small groups/breakout groups in meetings are a postmodern thing. AA (and it's relatives) uses postmodern methods. And RPGs are the first form of entertainment where you explore the shared experiences of beings that not only don't exist, but that you crated within the small group of (hopefully!) friends so that you can entertain yourselves and tell stories about your experiences later -- I call that a truly postmodern endeavor and hobby.

Of course, that also means that catpissman telling you about his character in the local gaming store is expressing a high form of self-actualization. ( :P )

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For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

ScytheSong

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #50 on: April 07, 2021, 02:39:33 PM »

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Hey, they asked.

Valatar

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #51 on: April 07, 2021, 03:18:17 PM »

This was my reaction as well. I know nothing about the people involved with this. I get there are some gender and sexual preference complications with parsing the series of events. But the bottom line is two consenting adults had a relationship which didn't work out. Everyone went into the relationship knowing the basic score on who was otherwise attached to whom and made a choice to pursue a relationship in those circumstances anyway. And it just didn't work out and pretty ordinary relationship-level fibs were told before it all blew up in pretty stereotypical ways.

The issue, as far as ethical considerations go, is that Hill was this woman's boss.  And was apparently trying to pressure the wife into accepting a side piece, while said side piece was thinking she was going to get equal billing with the wife.  Aside from that, yes, it does involve a bunch of adults who were not breaking laws.

Snark Knight

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #52 on: April 07, 2021, 04:16:11 PM »
So... why did their dirty laundry need airing in public again?

Attention and sympathy obviously, but otherwise...?

These neo-Cathars have a religion of sin without forgiveness.  Only the Pure enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Their sainthood is being turned into a Funko Pop.

GeekyBugle

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #53 on: April 07, 2021, 04:23:52 PM »
I love how some of you folks are trying to interpret my maundering from just before bed.

So, confession time, I don't know a great deal about Jordan B. Peterson, but I have read some of his written material, including abstracts from his books as well as what I believe are even-handed reviews of his positions. I tried to listen to one of his youtube videos once, but he was off on a Gish Gallop so quickly that I gave up after the third time I yelled at the screen, "You need to unpack that!"

For background on me, my training on Modernity, Postmodern thought, and Radical Orthodoxy is from the point of view of Theology, which will make pure philosophers cringe, but whatever. So here goes:

Peterson has made comments like "I am a classic British Liberal" and "I admire Kant's approach to ethics", which seem innocuous enough, bit of name dropping, but whatever. Until you realize that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason includes an argument that is structured as follows:

"If a man comes to you and hides in your house from his mortal enemy, and his mortal enemy comes to you and asks where the man is so that he can kill him, what should you do? The answer is to give the first man to the second man. After all, you cannot be sure that the second man will kill the first, but you *can* be sure that you will be falling into error by lying."

The simple argument (elementary, trivial, and obvious) extending "a man" to  "a Jew" and "his mortal enemy" to  "the Nazis" gives you my statement.  (8th of his 12 rules)

So, then what about Peterson and dragon slaying?

The key is not the pizza and diet coke. The key is that you are gathering with friends. "You must slay your own dragons", right? All of Peterson's work is concentrated on the individual, and to be blunt, himself and his own place in the world. Friends are defined by their utility to the person, not for their own selves. If someone else is getting more out of an experience than you are, you need adjust things either up or down so you are either equal or ahead. I freely admit that I may be extending Peterson's argument beyond his actual intent based on arguments that his fanboys have made, but that is the gist of what I get from him.

Which brings me around to Postmodernism and what I mean by it.

The Modern project is based around an examination of the relationship between the Self and the Universal. The Enlightenment kicked off modern thought by trying to reject claims to particularity and set up a Universal Truth, whether empirical (based on observation) or rational (based on internal thoughts). But as time wore on, it became evident that Truth -- with a capital T -- was harder to pin down than that. Kant tried, the Existentialists tried, modern theologians tried (much as I love Karl Barth, it's clear that he's preaching to the choir), but it became clearer and clearer that rather than Truth, what the Modern project was uncovering was Utility. There are folks who have embraced that, and late-stage Modernity still rolls on around us, seeking out what will give us the most useful stuff, or the theories that will prove the most useful in predicting phenomena.

Postmodernism discovered that Modernity had turned to utility and rejected that. The postmodern effort has been described as "a radical turn to the Subject" where all that is important is the self -- "If it feels good, do it!" is a postmodern slogan. The key to understanding postmodern stuff is to understand that in the postmodern view there is no objective or universal truth, there is only lived experience. 

One of the tools of the postmodern effort, in fact it's primary tool in postmodern Theology, is the small group. People gather together, hopefully with a variety of backgrounds but a common theme, and discuss their personal experiences and explore both their own and each other's interior life around that theme. The lived and shared experience is the point of the exercise, but those experiences then can be shared with others to form a cascade of understanding other people's experiences and perhaps seeing things outside yourself and your experiences and incorporating them into your own world.

Small groups/breakout groups in meetings are a postmodern thing. AA (and it's relatives) uses postmodern methods. And RPGs are the first form of entertainment where you explore the shared experiences of beings that not only don't exist, but that you crated within the small group of (hopefully!) friends so that you can entertain yourselves and tell stories about your experiences later -- I call that a truly postmodern endeavor and hobby.

Of course, that also means that catpissman telling you about his character in the local gaming store is expressing a high form of self-actualization. ( :P )

In short you know jack shit about the man and are relying on 3rd person accounts.

You're aware you can admire someone whitout agreeing with him?

I gave you a definition of postmodernism thought, where in your ramblings does that remotely apply to TTRPGs?

Nowhere, but of course you have your personal redefinition so you're never wrong.

That's very postmodernist of you.
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Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

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GeekyBugle

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #54 on: April 07, 2021, 04:25:51 PM »
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Exactly, very postmodernist to answer to concise questions with an incomprensible wordsalad.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

This Guy
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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #55 on: April 07, 2021, 04:35:28 PM »
Hey, they asked.

You blew it by not referring back to his Britannica link which said all the same shit but came from a source he found authoritative. I wouldn't worry about it he's a found again man of faith by his own estimation so you'd never get him past the issue of lack of god for a moral center.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2021, 04:38:12 PM by This Guy »
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ScytheSong

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #56 on: April 07, 2021, 04:42:04 PM »

In short you know jack shit about the man and are relying on 3rd person accounts.

You're aware you can admire someone whitout agreeing with him?

I gave you a definition of postmodernism thought, where in your ramblings does that remotely apply to TTRPGs?

Nowhere, but of course you have your personal redefinition so you're never wrong.

That's very postmodernist of you.

You asked. I answered. Not my problem that you didn't like what I said. That's very premodern of me.

Shasarak

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #57 on: April 07, 2021, 04:44:55 PM »
For background on me, my training on Modernity, Postmodern thought, and Radical Orthodoxy is from the point of view of Theology, which will make pure philosophers cringe, but whatever. So here goes:

Peterson has made comments like "I am a classic British Liberal" and "I admire Kant's approach to ethics", which seem innocuous enough, bit of name dropping, but whatever. Until you realize that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason includes an argument that is structured as follows:

"If a man comes to you and hides in your house from his mortal enemy, and his mortal enemy comes to you and asks where the man is so that he can kill him, what should you do? The answer is to give the first man to the second man. After all, you cannot be sure that the second man will kill the first, but you *can* be sure that you will be falling into error by lying."

The simple argument (elementary, trivial, and obvious) extending "a man" to  "a Jew" and "his mortal enemy" to  "the Nazis" gives you my statement.  (8th of his 12 rules)

So, then what about Peterson and dragon slaying?

The key is not the pizza and diet coke. The key is that you are gathering with friends. "You must slay your own dragons", right? All of Peterson's work is concentrated on the individual, and to be blunt, himself and his own place in the world. Friends are defined by their utility to the person, not for their own selves. If someone else is getting more out of an experience than you are, you need adjust things either up or down so you are either equal or ahead. I freely admit that I may be extending Peterson's argument beyond his actual intent based on arguments that his fanboys have made, but that is the gist of what I get from him.

Which brings me around to Postmodernism and what I mean by it.

The Modern project is based around an examination of the relationship between the Self and the Universal. The Enlightenment kicked off modern thought by trying to reject claims to particularity and set up a Universal Truth, whether empirical (based on observation) or rational (based on internal thoughts). But as time wore on, it became evident that Truth -- with a capital T -- was harder to pin down than that. Kant tried, the Existentialists tried, modern theologians tried (much as I love Karl Barth, it's clear that he's preaching to the choir), but it became clearer and clearer that rather than Truth, what the Modern project was uncovering was Utility. There are folks who have embraced that, and late-stage Modernity still rolls on around us, seeking out what will give us the most useful stuff, or the theories that will prove the most useful in predicting phenomena.

Postmodernism discovered that Modernity had turned to utility and rejected that. The postmodern effort has been described as "a radical turn to the Subject" where all that is important is the self -- "If it feels good, do it!" is a postmodern slogan. The key to understanding postmodern stuff is to understand that in the postmodern view there is no objective or universal truth, there is only lived experience. 

One of the tools of the postmodern effort, in fact it's primary tool in postmodern Theology, is the small group. People gather together, hopefully with a variety of backgrounds but a common theme, and discuss their personal experiences and explore both their own and each other's interior life around that theme. The lived and shared experience is the point of the exercise, but those experiences then can be shared with others to form a cascade of understanding other people's experiences and perhaps seeing things outside yourself and your experiences and incorporating them into your own world.

Small groups/breakout groups in meetings are a postmodern thing. AA (and it's relatives) uses postmodern methods. And RPGs are the first form of entertainment where you explore the shared experiences of beings that not only don't exist, but that you crated within the small group of (hopefully!) friends so that you can entertain yourselves and tell stories about your experiences later -- I call that a truly postmodern endeavor and hobby.

Of course, that also means that catpissman telling you about his character in the local gaming store is expressing a high form of self-actualization. ( :P )

Well that explains a lot.  No wonder you imagine that Jordan Peterson would be against gathering with your friends to fight Dragons.
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yabaziou

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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #58 on: April 07, 2021, 05:08:06 PM »
I cannot wait the cancellation of Olivia Hill. She will be in such good company : Zak S, Adam Koebel, Luke Crane, and many others who will be gladly forgotten. Justice can be like poetry !
« Last Edit: April 08, 2021, 04:47:56 PM by yabaziou »
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Re: Reset the clock. Again.
« Reply #59 on: April 07, 2021, 05:17:40 PM »
Largely disconnected from contemporary audiences?
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