Doubtingthomas Philosophy Topic

[doubtingthomas]

@Elliot

It was also toxic because it was posted shortly after I posted, again, about not wanting to put my energy into politics.

I did read your post about not wanting to put energy into politics. I don’t think I had any toxic intentions when I asked you about a politics related topic. One of the reasons being I’m not that interested in US politics. I’m not a US citizen and the politics there barely makes any material difference in my life. The reason I asked you about that is I wanted to challenge/better understand your world view. I get two conflicting signals from your writings. One signal being elites are bad and the other one being elites are good. I understand there’s no contradiction here. People belonging to the same class can be different. What confuses me is the elites you support are the ones who seem to have obvious problems like Trump and people controlling oil. I’m open to having my mind changed about both of these hence I was asking which creator makes the best case for Trump right now specifically with regards to 2020 elections. The information coming from people who worked for Trump in these legal proceedings seems to indicate that everyone around him knew that he had lost the election. I also think Trump is not a moral or ethical person which makes your support for him even more surprising to me.

On the oil front - in the environmentalism podcast you argued that the environmentalism movement is anti-human. I agree. I agree with the progress is the only way forward idea. We should look to solve problems instead to trying to reduce our impact to make things better. The conflicting thing here is you are ascribing problem-solving capabilities and human ingenuity to people working in the oil industry but elites in other industries are bad/dumb/not innovating/not developing new technologies/not driven by the idea of make things better. Why is it only the oil industry where all the good/smart elites ended up coagulating? Contrast that with your view of physicist.

from Career, Physics and Goals (was: Artificial General Intelligence Speculations) - Unbounded - Critical Falliblism

@Elliot

DD/Feynman/me think, basically, that our science education system is so bad that it can’t produce a first rate physicist. I think maybe you have a significantly higher opinion of it than they do.

Why is it that only the fourth-rate people ended up coagulating in the field of physics? Are the people working in oil industry also fourth rate? (A somewhat relevant tweet)

I can get behind a lot of your messages. For example, one message could be: it’s possible to people to improve a lot and get much better at doing things thus the pace of progress can increase a lot. That’s a great message. I find it optimistic. It makes me want to improve and be one of the people who contributes to that progress. But most times I’m left with a pessimistic sense after reading you. I don’t know why that is. lmf had a similar experience:

from Quitting CF (for now) [lmf]

@lmf

For context, I will first note that I have greatly enjoyed learning about philosophy from the books I’ve read, as well as from some of Elliot Temple’s essays. I also have enjoyed doing the small amount of grammar / discussion trees / etc exercises that I’ve done. It’s all fun. I like philosophy.

However, there is a large percentage of ET’s material which I do not enjoy reading. I disagree with a lot of what he writes, including some specific points but also some broad / hard-to-pin-down worldview things. He has a view of the world which I find to be very dark and depressing, as well as very ugly and sterile and robotic.

I think you are an important thinker. Your sense making helps put things in perspective for me. But these two conflicting signals not only confuses my but also makes me feel pessimistic.