by [anonymous]
1 min read6th Oct 201165 comments

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Xander's Lament sounds interesting. I would also be interested in reading a coherent defence of post-modernism (assuming that such a thing could exist and is not a contradiction in terms), because attacking post-modernism is simply too easy.

I invoke Crocker's Rules, as well.

Here's a random thought: is there a way to augment the Less Wrong website to provide a "Crocker's Flag" feature ? The flag will be off by default, though individual users could choose turn it on in their profile preferences. The handle of anyone who has the flag turned on will always be displayed with an asterisk next to it, like this: *Bugmaster.

This way, people wouldn't have to keep saying "I invoke Crocker's Rules" all the time.

My apologies if this idea has been brought up before.

An asterisk is too generic for my tastes, and "Crocker's rules" too specific, for me to like this mapping from one to the other. It would prevent us from using the asterisk for some other purpose in the future, and it would privilege the signalling of Crocker's rules more than other signallings that we may desire to use.

Now a very small, almost unobtrusive icon indicating "crocker's rules" (what would an image indicating Crocker's Rules be like, btw?) is more specific, and we could eventually add more/different icons as needed to signal whatever. (not near the handle, preferably, as it would get crowded, but perhaps at the top right corner of the posts in question? or something like that.

(what would an image indicating Crocker's Rules be like, btw?)

A punching bag.

Either that, or a boxing glove, perhaps.

Or this.

what would an image indicating Crocker's Rules be like, btw?

Green jaunty wizard hat to the left of the karma point indicator.

Yes, though perhaps it'd be better placed near the 'reply' icon.

Maybe put a 'C' on it, too.

what would an image indicating Crocker's Rules be like, btw?)

Stoic Roman shield with coat of arms of somebody like Sir Thomas More.

It has been brought up, but not recently. I think you're okay.

If someone does this, I'd also like the option of turning it on or off on a per-post/comment basis.

[-][anonymous]12y60

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My knowledge of post-modernism is vague and secondhand. However, one valuable thing I've gotten from the neighborhood of post-modernism is that, unlike the modern idea of the lone genius communing with the universe because of having a superior soul, people's heads are full of prior art, and this makes a difference.

[-][anonymous]12y00

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I just meant that people generally build on art they've already seen/heard/read rather than being completely original.

The difference is that criticism is mistaken if it only praises things for being completely new.

[-][anonymous]12y00

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Depends what you mean by "seriously". The copyright industry largely feeds on said myth, for example.

I'm not sure whether people believe that art can be devoid of precedent, but I do think that a lot of what drives high art for the past century more or less is the desire to have as little precedent as possible.

attacking post-modernism is simply too easy.

Huh?! "Post modernism" is not any unified thing, it's just whatever came after modernism in the specific context, as opposed to modernism which means reasonably similar things across the arts.

You're most likely referring to postmodernism within some specific field, or maybe a few where it ended up similar by chance. My guess would be either science/philosophy due to context, or visual arts because that's the largest semi-coherent grouping.

Please be more specific with what you mean by postmodernism, this goes for the OP as well.

EDIT: after reading the rest of the thread I've updated and am not almost certain you mean only post-modernist PHILOSOPHY, which is just about entirely unrelated to the vast majority of things labelled post-modernist.

EDIT: after reading the rest of the thread I've updated and am not almost certain you mean only post-modernist PHILOSOPHY...

I suppose I do. In general, when I said that post-modernism is easy to attack, I was referring to the notion that an objective reality either does not exist or is completely irrelevant, and that all of science, art, literature etc. is basically just a set of arbitrary narratives. As I said, I think this notion is quite easy to attack, especially as far as science is concerned.

I am a little confused by your earlier statement, though:

Huh?! "Post modernism" is not any unified thing, it's just whatever came after modernism in the specific context, as opposed to modernism which means reasonably similar things across the arts.

If its not "any unified thing", then does it even make sense to have a word for it ? Though I suppose that having a unifying term for a collection of distinct, non-overlapping ideas is a postmodern idea in and of itself, so I guess you may be onto something there.

In any case, this is precisely why I would like to see an article that mounts a coherent (insofar as that even makes sense) defence of postmodernism. If you or the original poster write one, I'll gladly read it.

(Edited: typo)

It doesn't make sense to have a single word for it, the English language doesn't tend to make sense, and it shouldn't take much effort for you to come up with things that make even less sense and yet you use regularly. Complaining that your retina being put on backwards not making sense doesn't magically turn it around. Deal with it.

And yea, that's not "post-modernism", that's "post-modern philosophy", and it's the laughingstock of all other post-modernism just as it is of everyone else. Equating all of post-modernism with that is downright offensive and has already drawn the ire of at least one post-modernist.

[-][anonymous]12y50

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Well, then PLEASE don't call it plainly post-modernism, and take a few lines to correct this misunderstanding apparently common around here, ok?

[-][anonymous]12y00

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Complaining that your retina being put on backwards not making sense doesn't magically turn it around.

Right, but I didn't have any say in the architecture of my retina, whereas, presumably, there were human-made decisions involved in applying the term "post-modernism" to this or that.

Equating all of post-modernism with that is downright offensive and has already drawn the ire of at least one post-modernist.

All right, what is the true postmodernism, then ? And why should we exclude post-modern philosophy from this umbrella term ? The mere fact that it's offensive is insufficient, as there are plenty of offensive notions in existence which are nonetheless true (such as evolution, for example).

what is the true postmodernism, then? ...

You asking this question.

There is no such thing as "true post-modernism", not only because the label is applied to many unrelated things, but also because most of the best candidates are inherently impossible to pin down for Gödelian reasons.

If you need to chose one meaning, I'd say the literary one, but really only because I personally enjoy it. TV troopes "post modernism" page describes it better than anything else I know really, although they don't make it clear enough it only applies to literary post-modernism. If you do this none of the things discussed in this thread are post-modernism at all.

You asking this question.

Yes, I did foreshadow that a bit:

Though I suppose that having a unifying term for a collection of distinct, non-overlapping ideas is a postmodern idea in and of itself, so I guess you may be onto something there.

Anyway, if, as you say, "there is no such thing as "true post-modernism"", then why would people be offended when I apply this label to a particular philosophy ?

I believe this discussion, which is itself becoming post-modern, illustrates one of the weaknesses of post-modernism. We are now arguing about the applicability of an ill-defined (or, perhaps, entirely undefinable) term to a variety of subjects, while at the same time agreeing that the term is mostly (or perhaps even entirely) subjective. In other words, we're just pushing around some syntax which has little (or perhaps none at all) semantic content. We could be talking about almost anything else, and that discussion would be more productive.

[-][anonymous]12y10

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Personally, I think the exhibitionist aspect is the best part of intellectual masturbation.

I usually assume certain situations happen under "Crocker's or silence"; for example, I think most productive enterprise should be carried out in this fashion, Crocker's in discussion and silence in generation.

I have yet to see anyone on Less Wrong exhibit the understanding of post-modernism that would be required to dismiss it on its terms (rather than just mocking it and moving on -- which is a valid strategy for the most part). One would have to begin by recognizing that post-modernism is not one thing. It would be impressive if successful, though.

David Gerard seems to have some (not all negative) things to say about postmodernism, though I never managed to convince him to write a post on it. It's a topic I've been asking for for some time.

I really don't know enough to speak of it authoritatively. (I've had no training in the area and have picked up all my knowledge as an autodidact; I cannot purport to explain the field as it is practiced by the knowledgeable. I'm trying to level up in it and am becoming quite the non-fan of Derrida in the process ...) I wrote a bit here, see "p.s." points at the end.

(This week's all-but-idle progress on "Bayesian postmodernism" is correctly sorting other uses of the word "theory". My current tentative notion is that quite a lot of "theory" as used in critical theory is actually more in the form of how-tos. How would you falsify a how-to? Particularly a tentative, untested one?)

(If I write on the topic again, I will try to explain what "post-colonial" means in sufficient detail as to conclusively kill it as a local example.)

I have yet to see anyone on Less Wrong exhibit the understanding of post-modernism that would be required to dismiss it on its terms (rather than just mocking it and moving on -- which is a valid strategy for the most part).

Post-modernism is concentrated confusion. You can't achieve anything on its terms, let alone a self-dismissal. Can't a viewpoint just be wrong without also being self-defeating?

I found the stuff, or some things of that name, useful in practice in rock music criticism - actual explanatory power - but then again that's a field whose obsolescence is a plus for humanity.

Post-postmodernism is actually a thing.

This is very sad. What is wrong with people that they can't come up with names for their ideas that have some flavor (like Classical or Romantic) instead of being so abstract? And then they look for authenticity-- the only authenticity they've got is the fun of being intellectual.... but if they noticed that, they'd break it.

[-][anonymous]12y40

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I cannot stress enough how hard I would upvote a post entitled "My post-postmodernism post".

[-][anonymous]12y00

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You have to explain post-colonialist alienation in the form of a theory with predictive power, however.

[-][anonymous]12y10

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Because a cool-sounding theory outcompetes a useful one. Identifying and distinguishing the two is needed. e.g. noticing something triggering one's internal "insightful!" detector without one then checking that this is actually insightful. (The difference between striking gold and striking crack.)

(The standard works do not help in this. Deleuze and Guattari read like a textbook in the style of an experimental novel.)

[-][anonymous]12y00

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The "not being one thing" is greatly underempathized. MOST things called post-modernism are great, and I am still shocked at some of the things I've read in this thread. Have most LWers only encountered post-modernism philosophy (which sucks simply for being the average quality of mainstream philosophy), and no arts?

I think mostly people don't mean art-- they mean the arguments and possibly the values.

But if ever there was a word worth tabooing it was "post-modernism".

well, what they mean depends on context. I have certainly heard it mostly about art.

And yea, it should be tabooed if you're going to have a serious discussion about it.

Confused criticism. This might be an example of a larger topic-- that every statement and every intention is actually a bunch of statements and intentions bundled together, and one of the things which causes communication logjams is a person says X, which is really composed of x1 + x2.+.....xN, and someone says X is wrong (thinking that x3 is highly defective), and the original person doesn't even realize that x3 might be seen as part of X.

It looks like I just complicated the problem further-- the premises underlying X may be somewhat a matter of opinion. This certainly comes into play when people are looking for why someone said X.

Xander's lament. Cognitive psych seems to me like rationality that doesn't require huge amounts of intelligence. Instead of explaining why rationality is important and what biases are, cog psych just dives in, teaching pattern matching for some common sorts of irrationality.

Note: it's not possible to avoid being wrong all the time. There's a reason this blog is called "Less Wrong", not "Getting Some Things Right".

Post-postmodernism. How much do you know about post-modernism? It seems to me that I see a lot of complaining about a sketchy overview, and I don't think I need more of that. I don't know much about post-modernism, but I think I can smell it when someone is attacking a stereotype rather than something with details and complexity and history.

If you actually know something about post-modernism, go for it.

Optimization and monoculture. This sounds interesting.

Cognitive psych seems to me like rationality that doesn't require huge amounts of intelligence. Instead of explaining why rationality is important and what biases are, cog psych just dives in, teaching pattern matching for some common sorts of irrationality.

A lot of 'rationality' appears to be "think things through carefully instead of using heuristics," which definitely requires intelligence (at the very least, thinking speed) to do in real-time.

Xander's Lament.

[-][anonymous]12y20

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I will mention that I am available for editing and troubleshooting help (just message me or email the public goods list). The topic that most intrigues me is Optimization and Monoculture. Intention or anxiety alleviation? and Confused criticism also sound good.

[-][anonymous]12y20

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Good luck! I like people posting.

I'm particularly interested in Mind Map and Xander's Lament. I have a tiny ugh field around Intention or Anxiety Alleviation, so I'd probably enjoy reading about that if you did a good job. Concrete Language is a Doric Column sounds like a post that will either be fairly good or fairly bad.

"Xander's lament" sounds like it might actually be useful.

"Concrete language is a Doric column" and "Optimization and monoculture" sound like random interesting things that might get upvotes.

"Post-postmodernism" ugh. If you want to write about postmodernist philosophy than CALL it that and make it very explicitly clear other things calling themselves postmodernist are unrelated and shouldn't be associated with it.

I'd mostly be interested in a good post on postmodernism.

I'd be interested to hear more about what you have to say about concrete language. I assume it's more than the familiar observation that that concrete language is typically better style and usually more effective for communicating.

I have noticed that the people who understood their field as if it were their life and soul write in beautiful simplicity; consider Feynman, Minsky, Paul Graham.

Those observations are perfectly compatible with a model where expertise and writing ability are completely uncorrelated (or even inversely correlated once you control for intelligence), and that people are naturally more likely to read good writers, so when thinking about experts, experts that are also good writers are more likely to spring to mind.

[-][anonymous]12y00

Optimization and monoculture.

I hereby invoke Crocker's Rules. Go nuts.

Shouldn't the act of posting on LW automatically imply an acceptance of Crocker's Rules?

Anyhow, to the list!

Most interesting-sounding: Xander's lament, Concrete language, and Mind map of ugh field (very dangerous; you go first). I wouldn't skip over the other posts, either.

Shouldn't the act of posting on LW automatically imply an acceptance of Crocker's Rules?

Whether it should or shouldn't, I don't believe it does.

Whether it should or shouldn't, I don't believe it does.

A great point, concisely made. I meant this as a bit of a joke, but I see that I should have chosen my words more skillfully anyway. Upvoted.

Shouldn't the act of posting on LW automatically imply an acceptance of Crocker's Rules?

I don't consider that it does; I expect comments to be polite and respectful unless someone is really being a dick (downvotes, on the other hand, are OK).

We just sometimes have different norms for what counts as "polite".

[-][anonymous]12y-10

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