01 DEC 2024 by ideonexus
Stone Tools in Europe Were Misinterpreted
For hundreds of years Europeans appear to have been oblivious to the existence of stone tools. Presumably many people saw them. At least it is hard for me to believe that no stone axes, spear points, or arrowheads turned up in plowed fields, dried streambeds, or eroded hillsides. But, as William Stiebing observes, there is no mention of them prior to the 16th century. People apparently “did not notice them. To them such things were just so many more rocks.”3 Writings from the 16th century... 1 
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notes26 AUG 2024 by ideonexus
The Success of Spaceguard
For years, many scientists warned of the dangers that asteroids pose to life on Earth, but for many years they weren’t listened to. Even after it was first proposed, in 1980, that the dinosaurs were killed off by a huge asteroid striking the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico,1 there was, in the words of leading astronomer Clark R. Chapman, a “giggle factor” associated with the risk from asteroids.2
This all changed in 1994 when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 thudded into the side of Jupiter with th... 1 notes
notes26 AUG 2024 by ideonexus
Plasticity and Lock-In/Entrenchment of Values
Entrenchment of values creates multiple equilibria because there is a significant element of chance in which value system becomes most powerful at a particular place and time, and because, once a value system has become sufficiently powerful, it can stay that way by suppressing the competition. Moreover, the theory of cultural evolution helps to explain why the predominant cultures in society tend to entrench themselves. Simply: those cultures that do not entrench themselves in this way are, ...Folksonomies: cultural change values
Folksonomies: cultural change values
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notesThere were issues with this book, but I appreciate how the Critical Theory aspects of it serve as a sort of "red pill" to break us out of our complacent acceptance of the world--specifically in video games. Many reviews complain about the erudite verbiage, but all Critical Theory makes use of newly-invented words in order to circumvent our preconceptions about the social constructs that rule our lives. I appreciated the concept of the "allegorithm" of how the programming of games is used to define a world, the questioning of "play" in games when really many games are actually work, criticizing the concept of "flow" and calling it "non-contemplation," and the idea that the best gamers are merely the ones who most internalize the algorithms. This book is not for everyone. It is dense and obtuse, but also highly effective and will be very enjoyable for the right readers.
04 JUN 2024 by ideonexus
Topic, Topology, and Topography in Critical Theory
In practice, critical theorists use these concepts to:
Topic: Identify and critique the central themes and issues in various discourses, questioning what is considered important or relevant and why.
Topology: Analyze the networks and relationships within social structures to reveal how power and influence are distributed and maintained.
Topography: Map and describe the socio-cultural landscape to expose the underlying forces that shape it, often highlighting issues of power, inequality, a...Folksonomies: critical theory
Folksonomies: critical theory
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notes28 APR 2024 by ideonexus
Clever References to Critical Theory
Really it is entirely about story, though not in any sense that any of you seem familiar with. Do you know nothing of narratology? Where is Derridean "play" and excessiveness? Foucauldian limit-attitude? Lyotardian language-games? Lacanian Imaginaries? Where is the commitment to praxis, positioning Jamesonian nostalgia, and despair as well as Habermasian fears of irrationalism as panic discourses signaling the defeat of Enlightenment hegemony over cultural theory? But no: discourses on this s...Folksonomies: critical theory
Folksonomies: critical theory
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notes23 DEC 2023 by ideonexus
Anthropocene Traps
The concept of evolutionary traps has been used almost exclusively for studying how non-human species respond to cues in anthropogenic environments [24–34]. Key examples include artificial human lights attracting insects, island species responding naively to the presence of introduced predators, and seabirds not being able to discriminate between the cues of marine plankton and marine plastics [34–36] (figure 1a). In the context of humans, evolutionary mismatch is a much more fr...Folksonomies: evolution maladaptation
Folksonomies: evolution maladaptation
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notes05 JAN 2023 by ideonexus
Recipe for Modernism
Here is the recipe:
Look at a complex and confusing reality, such as the social dynamics of an old city
Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works
Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations
Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of what that reality ought to look like
Argue that the relative simplicity and platonic orderliness of the vision represents rationality
Use authoritarian power to imp... 1 notes
notes17 OCT 2021 by ideonexus
Understanding Cause and Effect is Based on Experience
Were a man, such as Adam, created in the full vigor of understanding, without experience, he would never be able to infer motion in the second ball from the motion and impulse of the first. It is not anything that reason sees in the cause, which make us infer the effect. Such an inference, were it possible, would amount to a demonstration, as being founded merely on the comparison of ideas. But no inference from cause to effect amounts to a demonstration, as being founded merely on the compar...Folksonomies: philosophy empiricism
Folksonomies: philosophy empiricism
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notesAdam would not know that one billiard ball hitting another would cause a chain reaction.
08 NOV 2019 by ideonexus
What are Observations?
What are observations? Some philosophers have taken them to be sensory events: the occurrence of smells, feels, noises, color patches. This way lies frustration. What we ordinarily notice and testify to are rather the objects and events out in the world. It is to these that our very language is geared, because language is a social institution, learned from other people who share the scene to which the words refer. Observation sentences, like theoretical sentences, are for the most part senten...Folksonomies: belief
Folksonomies: belief
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