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Our Tribe of Soylentils
Since SoylentNews is people, it focuses a lens onto an interesting cross section of humanity. At its best and worst it reflects the most beautiful and ugliest aspects of humanity, aspects that if we look hard enough, we can see hints of in all of us. A key theme is humanity's tendencies towards tribalism. We formed a tribe united originally around the so-called Slashcott, a group of nerds sharing a common, perhaps some would say curmudgeonly, resistance to change for the sake of change, and perhaps a streak of distrust in the authority figures that were running Slashdot.
Those tendencies arguably have upsides and downsides. This stubborn strong will, combined with the natural human tendency towards tribalism, of course exhibit themselves most obviously here whenever a political thread surfaces.
This is a great community, but I am wondering whether we are sometimes a bit hard on the editors and admins of this site. I often find myself disagreeing strongly with some of their political and sometimes ethical views as I can see many others do. I know most of us like to think we're thick-skinned, but I wonder whether sometimes we should pause to think before flaming those we disagree with. Arguing these issues to solve problems or figure things out is great. When it starts to become more like venting pent up anger at one another, we should probably think twice.
Just my two cents.
Logic Wars
Over at a blog entitled The Sooty Empiric, the author The Last Positivist has an interesting explanation of the uses and abuses of logic, on the internet. It is interesting, first, because it is interesting ("But aristarchus", you might say, "that is a tautology!" To which I reply, "Yes, it is, and therefore logically true!"), and secondly because the misconception he adresses is rampant here on SoylentNews, as it is elsewhere on the Internets. And thirdly, because it highlights one of the essentials of philosophy: Humility; humility and Socratic ignorance. I'm sure many have noticed my humble attempts to exemplify philosophic humility right here on the pages of SN. But this is not about me. On to the Blog.
Boundless Ocean of Unlimited Possibilities
Sometimes (e.g.) on the internet we angst about the kind of person who likes to DESTROY his enemies with FACTS AND LOGIC AND REASON. Ben Shapiro has become the iconic figurehead of this sort, and not without cause - but that is at least somewhat misleading. Shapiro is prominently a fairly traditional conservative in his politics, but that is not an essential property of the sort. It is not tied to any particular political position so much as a self-characterisation and an aesthetic. The self-characterisation is that of an unbiased objective person who calmly follows (to the best of their abilities, accepting human frailty etc) good principles of rationality to reach conclusions. The aesthetic is that of being very impressed by displays of logical acumen, and very persuaded that one's ideological opponents (whoever they may be) can be set aside with relative ease once the tools of reason are brought to bear against them. This post is my contribution to that genre.
The aesthetic of displays of logical acumen, and a faith in victory! I mean, if not for this, conservatives would avoid logic like they do climate science. But let's see where The Last Positivist is going with this.
Now, I am a fan of fairly orthodox notions of logical argumentation. I do in fact think it is a good thing to offer arguments which are perspicuously such that there is no way for their premises to be true while their conclusion is false. All the better if you begin from true premises! Just on this blog I have tried to clarify clarity all the better to achieve it, and put a name to an under-recognised fallacy.
Philosophy vs. Rhetoric
There is a long history of antagonism between reason and argumentation. Plato assigned his protege, Aristotle, to show how the teachers of rhetoric played tricks upon the rest of us. This led to the creation of the discipline of logic. Plato, through his character Socrates in the dialogue "The Symposium", held that "philosophers" were "lovers of wisdom", from the greek φιλος and της σοφίας for "love of" and " of wisdom". But the wise woman Diotima ("honored by the gods") taught Socrates about love, namely, that love is not having what you desire.
Thus, philosophers are "lovers of wisdom" precisely because they do not possess it. And wisdom minimally should contain the truth, and logic (correct reasoning) is a tool for arriving at the truth? Thus one ought to be able to use logic to compel one's misguided and erring opponents to agree with you, using what Jürgen Habermas calls "the forceless force of reason". Of course, if we "other direct" or weaponize logic in this way, we are using logic to win arguments, not to discover truth, and that is rhetoric and not philosophy. And so, our noble blogger's point:
So, after all that set up, and for all my sympathy and similarity to this group, what spurs this post is that I typically find myself totally opposed to the logic fans in aesthetic and self-presentation. Why should this be?
My guess is it comes from a very different idea of what it is that a general improvement in logical acumen would achieve. The internet logic fan imagines that it would often lead to us agreeing on what is true - by contrast, I imagine it would lead to us agreeing on how much we don't know. They imagine it would knock out possibilities, I imagine it would open them up. The rest of this post is just a quick explanation of what I mean here and why I think that.
If we possessed at least some truth, and were able to identify valid deductive arguments, no doubt we could, and indeed be forced to on pain of being irrational, agree on some things being true.
Logic is, among other things, the study of truth preservation. It gives us tools for discerning when it is that some premises being jointly accepted a conclusion cannot be consistently denied. When an argument has this property of its premises ensuring the truth of its conclusion we say it is valid.
But this is not sufficient.
I think the root of the logic fans' vision for logic DESTROYING their enemies is that with it they shall be making arguments that are valid in this sense. In fact there is usually two sides to this. First, their opponents are shown to be not in the business of arguing at all - what "arguments" they offer are little more than emotive pleas (on that contrast see here). And after that these people are sharply contrasted with the airtight reasoning of a scientifically informed and logically precise debater. They thus envision securing agreement by brushing aside their opponents own perspective, then trapping their enemies in the iron grip of a valid argument, and squeezing conclusions out of them whether they like it or not.
A bit more forceful use of reason, aimed not at laying bare the reasoning for our conclusions, but rather at seeking unilateral cause for dismissing our opponents. This is not agreement, it is "victory"!
But validity is only the beginning of wisdom, not its end. For evidently mere validity by itself is not very interesting - we should like to know not just this relationship between the premises and the conclusion, but also whether or not the premises are in fact true. (An argument which is valid and has true premises is known as a sound argument - by their nature, sound arguments must have true conclusions.) In fact, even that is not enough - for logic to really be dialectically effective in this sort of way, it must offer us not just sound arguments, but sound arguments with premises that are known or sufficiently well established to be true that one's opponents cannot very well reasonably deny them.
This is an interesting point, that logic is not agonistic, it is not a battle for the truth. Instead it is a communal search for truth, for agreement, and that means for an argument to be effective, it must be agreed to at the beginning, with the agreement on premises. In other words, διαλεκτική, Dialectic But, then,
And here is where I think the rub lies - I think it is extremely difficult, vanishingly rare in fact, to have arguments which are (i) interesting, (ii) valid, and (iii) possessing premises that are true and established to be so. By (i) I just mean - on the sort of topics that actually concern us in political and social discussion, coming to contentious conclusions about how we should live or arrange our institutions etc. And by (iii) I mean - having premises that are not only true (hard and rare enough in itself in many cases), but are sufficiently well evidenced such that disputants cannot just as reasonably doubt this premise as accept the conclusion.
What, then, is our valiant blogger's alternative?
So to me the more salient tool in the logician's kit is the counter-model. This is the imaginative skill (also taught in intro logic) of coming up with ways the world could be that would satisfy all of the premises while rendering the conclusion false. This shows us possibilities left open by what is established in our premises, sometimes these are ways the world might be that we may not have been inclined to think about were we not set the task of generating a counter-model. When I envision the world wherein logic is better respected, it is a world wherein this skill is more often deployed.
American Philosopher John Rawls once wrote on the situation where there is no forceful argument in favor of liberal democracy and international law:
Some may find this fact hard to accept. That is because it is often thought that the task of philosophy is to uncover a form of argument that will always prove convincing against all other arguments. There is, however, no such argument.
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples", p. 123
The absence of such arguments is not cause for fear, or rampant relativism. It only means that the force of reason is not what the fanbois of logic on the internet imagine it to be. Logic is not a rhetorical weapon, it is not something that can be used without the consent, agreement, and cooperation of opponents. Which means, ultimately, that we can dismiss Ben Shapiro as a raving emo guy, right?
Bass is easy
First off, at the most obvious and fundamental level, the statement is simply wrong. No instrument is easy.
But it's good to interpret the opposition as far in their favor as you can go. So I'll move down a level.
I think what most people actually mean to say, when they say this, is 'Bass is easier.' Easier than what? Easier than the little guitar with six strings.
So let's evaluate that interpretation instead.
It's not entirely untrue. There are senses in which it's easier. Almost all bass players (sorry Lemmy) play one note at a time, almost all the time. Six blades often play two or more notes at once.
But does that really make it easier? I would argue not necessarily. Depending on where the two notes are located, etc. But perhaps on a general statistical level it makes things a little easier, considered in isolation. And what about lead playing, supposedly the hardest part? That's single notes, like the bass, only with freer time, no?
A better argument, though, and one that I suspect many people with no musical experience actually rely on in making the judgement, is simply that there are fewer strings. And that's one case where the novice is right and the mid-level student often wrong - fewer strings is way easier, in one sense at least. Because every time you ring one string you need to mute all the others. Fewer strings to mute means easier, in isolation.
Another argument that the less musically experienced might rely on, but not such a strong one in my opinion - most songs you hear have simple bass lines. On the surface, that seems like it translates to easier, at least, if not actually easy. But that's a misunderstanding. Many bass lines are simple not because the instrument itself is easy, but because of ways that it's actually more demanding. It's easier to get away with something melodically complicated but loosely timed on virtually anything besides the Bass. It's much harder to express yourself while still holding down the rhythm section function, as opposed to doing so in free time over a solid rhythm section.
So while the Bass *can* expand beyond the rhythm section functions in the hands of an expert, it's much easier to do that with virtually any other instrument. Very much not easier.
Physicality comes into it too. Six blades are very finely tuned to the size of the folks that tend to buy guitars. And with six strings to worry about, often expecting several to ring at once, this is important. Relatively easy if your hands fit, relatively hard if your hands are larger.
Bass strings aren't really spread much wider. BUT you virtually never need to fret one while another rings further up the board, as is so common on six string. And the frets are more widely spaced, of course. Whether this makes one or another easier or harder though? Entirely dependent on your own dimensions and what you want to do. I can fret cleanly all the way up every Bass I've tried it on, I often can't do that with a six string, especially a 24 fret, at the 24th fret the distance between frets is much less than my finger takes up, it's not impossible to hit the note but it's virtually impossible to do so quickly and reliably. If I center my finger where it's supposed to go, I mute the note. If I press it down just right, behind the 23rd fret and rolling up, that works, but it's slow and awkward.
That's the main point, I think, it's not easier or harder, without context you can't tell. Context is always key.
But the consequences of giving generations of kids a hasty generalization as if it were absolute truth? Well that's another layer to this. There have been some incredible bassists, even as the trajectory has been for it to be where you find the least talented and least capable member of each band.
So I'll leave you with a positive example. Perhaps a slightly older one than you were expecting.
Perhaps one more topical in 2019 than you imagine as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CUeI9funsk [The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again - Studio/Recorded]
Charlottesville Nazi sentenced to life for car attack/murder
Nearly two years after James A. Fields Jr. rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, the avowed neo-Nazi and convicted murderer was sentenced to life in prison Friday for 29 federal hate crimes.
Fields, 22, whose vehicular attack killed one woman and injured 35 other people, pleaded guilty to the 29 counts in April in a deal with prosecutors, who agreed to drop an additional charge that carries a possible death sentence. In a separate case stemming from the deadly incident, Fields was convicted of first-degree murder and other crimes in December by a Virginia jury that voted for a life term plus 419 years in state prison.
James A. Fields Jr., avowed neo-Nazi in Charlottesville car attack, sentenced to life in prison
(I like how it's posted in the Public Safety department)
RIP Justin Raimondo
"Justin Raimondo, former editorial director and co-founder of Antiwar.com, is dead at 67. He died at his home in Sebastopol, California, with his husband, Yoshinori Abe, by his side. He had been diagnosed with 4th stage lung cancer in October 2017.
Justin co-founded Antiwar.com with Eric Garris in 1995. Under their leadership, Antiwar.com became a leading force against U.S. wars and foreign intervention, providing daily and often hourly updates and comprehensive news, analysis, and opinion on war and peace. Inspired by Justin’s spirit, vision, and energy, Antiwar.com will go on.
Justin (born Dennis Raimondo, November 18, 1951) grew up in Yorktown Heights, New York and, as a teenager, became a libertarian. He was a fierce advocate of peace who hated war, and an early advocate of gay liberation. He wrote frequently for many different publications and authored several books. He was also politically active in both the Libertarian and Republican parties."
Full obit at https://original.antiwar.com/Antiwar_Staff/2019/06/27/justin-raimondo-rip-1951-2019/
New Copyright Collection Society is needed
(crossposted from TechDirt)
If laws can be copyrighted, then would obeying the law require a copyright license?
Would obeying the law without a license constitute copyright infringement?
With so many jurisdictions (city, county, state, federal) and so many laws, there are a lot of copyright licenses that each citizen would need to acquire.
To simplify things, collection societies could be created. These societies would obtain the rights to license and enforce the licenses on copyright 'bundles' of various laws.
When a new law is passed, one of the copyright societies would acquire the rights to it and add it to its bundle. Now you can get a proper copyright license -- necessary to obey the laws -- from one convenient place, and with one single copyright fee.
Oh, wait -- but with multiple copyright societies, each licensing different subsets of the laws, it seems you would still have to go to multiple parties in order to acquire all of the necessary licenses in order to obey the laws without infringing the copyrights of those laws.
So maybe congress could establish a new federal department of law licensing. Give it suitably large budget, offices, staff, etc. Every citizen could be required, annually, just like with taxes, to file forms declaring that they intend to obey the laws, and paying the copyright license fees for those copyrighted laws they intend to follow.
There. That should fix everything.
NY Post Deletes Trump Rape Allegation Story
An allegation that President Trump raped a journalist in the 1990s was too much for a Trump-loving editor at the New York Post, it was reported Monday.
Col Allan — a former Post editor-in-chief and top Rupert Murdoch lieutenant who has returned to the paper in an effort to make it even more friendly to the president — ordered stories about E. Jean Carroll’s rape claim scrubbed from the Post’s website, CNN said.
The Post published a staff-written story about the alleged attack on its website after Carroll’s allegation emerged on Friday in New York magazine.
People who clicked on search engine links pointing to the Post’s story landed at an error page with the message: “DID YOU GET LOST?”
Is peer review failing?
There are a lot of problems with academic publishing and the peer review system of evaluating scientific research. I have found peer review very capricious. Rather too often, trash is accepted while good research is rejected. Partly, this is because doing a review is at heart an exercise in charity. Reviewers aren't paid, not even with reputation. Any peer facing the pressure of Publish or Perish is not going to want to devote time to doing reviews.
Another bad problem is that the system is clearly struggling to adapt to changing technology. Maybe last century and earlier, a delay of several months between submission and notification was acceptable. But today, no. Doubly so when one receives a poor quality review. That custom in combination with their jealous insistence on exclusivity means a paper can spend a lot of time in limbo. May have to miss submission deadline after deadline from other journals and conferences while waiting on a reply, and if the reply is a rejection, one has been denied the opportunity to try elsewhere. The least that serious authors deserve for putting up with that is a decent review.
What really is the reason for this lengthy peer review system? It made sense to screen research when publications were printed. And when there weren't that many. But now, no, it does not make sense. Cost and limited space are no longer real barriers. Now it's just the inertia of customary procedures. Interested members of the public should be able to look at raw, unpolished, and unreviewed research, and even review it themselves. Others who prefer their searches be restricted to prescreened, professionally reviewed material can still have that.
Of course, the problems with copyright are well known. It is an outrage that private publishers are allowed to paywall publicly funded research. Plan S, if successful, should take care of that.
So I am wondering where to go to escape this system. Arxiv? Sci-hub?
Soylent News Unavailable Via Spectrum Internet [Updated]
[Update 24 June 2019 0855 US/Eastern]
The issue (at least for me and several other users) appears to have been resolved. There is a front page story addressing this. That would probably be a better place to post info and discuss.
===================================
I am currently (since ~0640 US/Eastern) unable to access https://soylentnews.org via Spectrum internet.
However, the site is *not* down (I am writing in my journal as this is happening).
This likely means some sort of outage on Spectrum's (formerly Time Warner Cable) network or some intermediate network between Spectrum and Linode.
I am able to access the site via Megapath/GTT without issue.
I'm guessing that I won't get an answer until the outage I've inferred is fixed, but is anyone else having similar issues?
Golden Slumbers
Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home, sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullabye
Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles await you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling, do not cry
And I will sing a lullabye
Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home, sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullabye
============
Bonus Track: Her Majesty
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl
But she doesn't have a lot to say
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl
But she changes from day to day
I wanna tell her that I love her a lot but I gotta get a belly full of wine
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm gonna make her mine
Oh yeah
Someday I'm gonna make her mine
