Life is an emotional Ponzi scheme
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Poast new message in this thread
Date: March 29th, 2016 11:23 PM Author: odious dysfunction
We enter adulthood and realize that life is without meaning or worth, but remain in emotional debt to those who raised us, our families, our friends, or anyone else who made an emotional investment in us, and who would feel sorrow if we were to kill ourselves. Thus we cannot kill ourselves if we wish to bring no sorrow upon those who invested in us, even if we think life not worth it for ourselves – we must live to repay our emotional debts, and to justify and satisfy others’ investments.
Most then address their emotional debt by starting families and having children in whom to make emotional investments of their own. They make themselves emotionally solvent by creating emotional equity in another human being, who will in time come to realize the meaninglessness of his own life, but who will himself be indebted to his parents. Individuals thus satisfy their emotional debt by drawing down on the emotional debt of their children, who must then address their own emotional debts in turn. And the process repeats itself.
It may be Pareto optimal with respect to future generations to escape the continual process of debt repayment and painlessly destroy the human race.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#30164352) |
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Date: May 23rd, 2016 1:40 AM Author: Bonkers boistinker theatre
these emotional rationalizations you cite were put in place by evolution in order to spread dna and perpetuate the species. Your emotions are tools for dna to perpetuate itself. Human emotions were evolved to spread dna.
and furthermore, research shows that life itself is the most efficient mechanism of dispersing heat, meaning life is a solution for thermodynamic efficiency...so genetics (and evolution itself) are most likely simply another way for the universe to achieve the lowest possible energy (all matter seeks to achieve the lowest possible energy level).
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#30537353)
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Date: March 31st, 2016 9:53 PM Author: vengeful ivory pocket flask site
the idea that we owe our parents grandchildren + owe our society marriage/children + need kids to be happy + need kids to be pious + stigmatize alternative lifestyles + define people by their jobs = exactly the kind of values that you would expect in the world's dominant societies.
societies that don't adhere to these values are quickly outbred, overrun, and forced into the hills by those that do.
these values have nothing to do with truth and everything to do with self-perpetuation.
viewed in this light, culture and ideology are revealed as scams. when you adhere to them, they use you for their purposes. you are molded into a part to be used for the machinations of others.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#30179345) |
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Date: May 23rd, 2016 1:53 AM Author: Chest-beating impertinent quadroon trailer park
that's a nested false dichotomy.
which is in a way as misanthropic.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#30537400)
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Date: July 12th, 2016 5:11 PM Author: swashbuckling awkward partner
please someone for the love of god make a strong counter to the OP!!
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#30911533)
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Date: October 22nd, 2017 9:26 AM Author: Bonkers boistinker theatre
But, then I happen to know that there's a little Ataraxic on the way.
I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself down through the generations.
Westward the wagons, across the sands of time until we ... ah, look at me. I'm ramblin' again.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#34500705) |
Date: March 7th, 2018 12:51 PM Author: Cerebral drab bbw party of the first part
Letting the thought of the eventual end of humanity demoralize us would thus be a terrible mistake. It is in large part because many human lives have been flooded with self-standing goods that humanity is not a Ponzi scheme. The kind of value that properly calls forth joy is not something that waits to be validated by the collective life to come. As a consequence, we already live in a rich ecology of value that surrounds us here and now, no matter what happens in the future. Take a look and see: both the weaker and the stronger claim seem refuted by manifestly legitimate joy, which is one form, indeed a highly valuable form, of the recognition of value here, already, in our lives.
http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/mark-johnston-samuel-scheffler-death-afterlife-humanity-ponzi-scheme
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#35553828) |
Date: August 5th, 2019 5:38 PM Author: Balding center
isn't the OP what everyone with a brain realizes by like age 25?
there's nothing inherently wrong with ponzi schemes. they're only A Bad Thing when you run out of capital. the ponzi scheme of the human condition is only A Bad Thing when children no longer can expect to live better lives than their parents (when you run out of new capital to pay off old debts)
and that's exactly what we're seeing today in the west - the ponzi scheme collapsing in real time as white people realize that for the first time in 1500 years, their quality of life will be worse than that of their ancestors
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#38642053) |
Date: August 10th, 2021 4:02 PM Author: trip aqua state nowag
Or maybe we enter adulthood and see it as an opportunity to blaze our own novel path with a newfound freedom to shape our lives and communities in the way we see fit. Then we can find and start our own little community with companions who share our values and live out enriching lives together while passing on these beliefs to the next generation of trailblazers.
- Yann Perrod
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#42926769) |
Date: December 2nd, 2021 4:02 AM Author: wonderful death wish
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/#InfSem
2.2 Infinite Semiosis
As previously noted, part and parcel of Peirce's early account of signs is that an infinity of further signs both proceed and precede from any given sign. This is a consequence of the way Peirce thinks of the elements of signs at this early stage and seems to stem from his idea that interpretants are to count as further signs, and signs are interpretants of earlier signs. Since any sign must determine an interpretant in order to count as a sign, and interpretants are themselves signs, infinite chains of signs seem to become conceptually necessary.
To see this, imagine a chain of signs with either a first or a last sign. The final sign that terminates the semiotic process will have no interpretant; if it did, that interpretant would function as a further sign and generate a further interpretant, and the final sign would, in fact, not terminate the process. However, since any sign must determine an interpretant to count as a sign, the final sign would not be a sign unless it had an interpretant. Similarly, a first sign could not be the interpretant of a preceding sign. If it were, that previous sign would be the first sign. However, since any sign must be an interpretant of a previous sign, a first sign would not be a sign unless it was also an interpretant of a previous sign. The problem is that if we allow a final sign with no interpretant, or a first sign which is not the interpretant or some earlier sign, then we have failed signs in the semiotic process. This affects the rest of the semiotic chain causing something like a collapse of dominoes. For example, if the final sign fails to be a sign in virtue of generating no interpretant, then since that failed sign is supposed to act as the interpretant of the previous sign and function as a further sign in its own right, it has also failed to be an interpretant. The consequence of this is that the previous sign has failed to generate a proper interpretant and so failed to be a sign. The consequence of this is that…and so on. The alternative is not to countenance terminating signs. And obviously, if we cannot end the semiotic process then signs continue generating signs ad infinitum.
Peirce was both aware and untroubled by infinite semiosis. In part, this is due to the anti-Cartesian project carried out in Peirce's work in the 1860s. A significant part of this project for Peirce is the denial of intuitions, something that Peirce took as a key assumption of Cartesian philosophical method. Given that Peirce defines “intuition” as “a cognition not determined by a previous cognition of the same object” (W2. 193), it seems clear that the infinite procession of thought-signs generated by earlier thought-signs and in turn generating further thought-signs is part and parcel of the denial of intuitions. However, in later developments to his sign theory, despite never explicitly relinquishing infinite semiosis, many of the concepts that lead to it are replaced or revised, and the concept becomes less prominent in Peirce's work.
* * *
4. The Final Account: 1906–10
During the last part of his life the majority of Peirce's philosophical output concerned semiotic, and he developed his account of signs far beyond the 1903 theory. There seem to be two reasons for this. First, Peirce was geographically and intellectually isolated and his main outlet was correspondence with the English woman, Lady Victoria Welby. Welby wrote on various philosophical topics and shared Peirce's interests in signs and meaning. This seems to have given Peirce a willing and sympathetic audience for his developing ideas on signs. The second reason seems to have been his growing appreciation of the connections between the semiotic process and the process of inquiry. Peirce always thought of his philosophy in a systematic and architectonic way. However, around 1902, an application for funding to the Carnegie Institute saw him express more clearly the connections between different aspects of his philosophy. The application failed, but Peirce had returned to thinking about the place of sign theory in his broader philosophy. In particular, he came to see sign theory more clearly as part of the logic of scientific discovery, that is, as central to his account of inquiry. We shall not review Peirce's account of inquiry here, but as an end directed process leading from doubt-prone to doubt-proof beliefs, Peirce began to see a similar end-directedness running through the semiotic process. This kind of thinking lead Peirce to reassess his account of signs and sign structure: the connection between the process of inquiry and sign chains led Peirce to notice subtleties and nuances that had previously been transparent to him. In particular, it led him to see chains of signs as tending towards a definite but idealized end rather than progressing ad infinitum. Since at the idealized end of inquiry we have a complete understanding of some object, there need be no further interpretant of that object; our understanding cannot be developed any further. (See Ransdell (1977) and Short (2004) and (2007) for more on the connections between Peirce's later account and the end-directed process of inquiry. Indeed, Short (2007) represents the fullest and best developed account of 'telic' interpretations of Peirce's semiotic to date).
4.1 Dividing The Object
The first effect of Peirce's greater appreciation of the parallels between inquiry and his sign theory is a distinction between the object of the sign as it we understand at some given point in the semiotic process, and the object of the sign as it stands at the end of that process. The former he calls the immediate object, and the later he calls the dynamic object. A neat way of capturing this distinction is as the different objects arising from the “two answers to the question: what object does this sign refer to? One is the answer that could be given when the sign was used; and the other is the one we could give when our scientific knowledge is complete”. (Hookway 1985, 139).
4.1.1 The Dynamic Object
The dynamic object is, in some senses, the object that generates a chain of signs. The aim of a sign chain is to arrive at a full understanding of an object and so assimilate that object into the system of signs. Using slightly more simplistic terms, Ransdell (1977, 169) describes the dynamic object as the “object as it really is”, and Hookway (1985, 139) describes it as “the object as it is known to be [at the end of inquiry]”. Indeed, Hookway's description shows an acute awareness of the connection between the dynamic object and the process of inquiry in Peirce's later sign theory. An example, from Liszka (1996, 23), captures Peirce's idea quite clearly: taking a petroleum tank half full with fuel, a variety of signs for this half-full state are available. Perhaps there is a fuel gauge attached to the tank, or perhaps the tank makes a distinctive sound when we strike it and so on. But, despite these various signs, the object underlying them all is the actual level of fuel in the petroleum tank; this is the dynamic object.
4.1.2 The Immediate Object
Ransdell (1977, 169) describes the immediate object as “what we, at any time, suppose the object to be”, and Hookway (1985, 139) describes it as “the object at the time it is first used and interpreted”. The immediate object, then, is not some additional object distinct from the dynamic object but is merely some informationally incomplete facsimile of the dynamic object generated at some interim stage in a chain of signs. Returning to the petroleum tank example, when we strike the tank, the tone that it emits (which functions as the sign-vehicle) represents to us that the tank is not full (but it does not tell us the precise level of fuel). The immediate object, then, is a less-than-full-tank.
Clearly, the immediate and dynamic objects of a sign are intimately linked and Peirce consistently describes and introduces the two together. (See, (CP 4. 536 (1896)). However, the connection between the two is most clear when we consider the connections between sign chains and inquiry. The dynamic object is, as we have suggested, the goal and end point that drives the semiotic process, and the immediate object is our grasp of that object at any point in that process. Ransdell, for instance, says:
[T]he immediate object is the object as it appears at any point in the inquiry or semiotic process. The [dynamic] object, however, is the object as it really is. These must be distinguished, first, because the immediate object may involve some erroneous interpretation and thus be to that extent falsely representative of the object as it really is, and, second, because it may fail to include something that is true of the real object. In other words, the immediate object is simply what we at any time suppose the real object to be. (Ransdell 1977, 169)
Put this way, it is clear how Peirce's growing concern to capture the parallels between semiosis and the process of inquiry leads him to identify two objects for the sign.
4.2 Dividing the Interpretant
Just as with the object(s) of the sign, the parallels between semiotic and inquiry result in a similar division of interpretants. As a chain of signs moves towards a final end there are different interpretants playing different but important roles. Peirce identifies three different ways in which we grasp the way a sign stands for an object. He calls these three types of interpretant, the immediate interpretant, the dynamic interpretant and the final interpretant and describes them like this.
The [Dynamic] Interpretant is whatever interpretation any mind actually makes of a sign. […]The Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of this type: “If so and so were to happen to any mind this sign would determine that mind to such and such conduct.” […] The Immediate Interpretant consists in the Quality of the Impression that a sign is fit to produce, not to any actual reaction. […] [I]f there be any fourth kind of Interpretant on the same footing as those three, there must be a dreadful rupture of my mental retina, for I can't see it at all. (CP8 .315 1909).
We shall examine each of these in turn, but to get a clearer understanding of the three interpretants it is helpful to look, very briefly, at Peirce's three grades of clarity, or understanding since Peirce took these to inform his division of interpretants.
In his 1878 paper, “How To Make Our Ideas Clear” (W3, 257–275) Peirce introduces three grades of clarity, or levels of understanding. In this paper, he introduces his famous pragmatic maxim as a development of rationalist notions of “clear and distinct ideas”. Combining his pragmatic maxim with notions of clarity from Descartes and Leibniz, Peirce identifies three grades of understanding. The first grade of clarity is to have an unreflective grasp of some concept in everyday experience. The second grade of clarity is to have, or be capable of providing, a general definition of that concept. The third grade of clarity, though, comes from Peirce's famous statement of the pragmatic maxim:
Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (W3, 266)
A full understanding of some concept, then, involves familiarity with it in day-to-day encounters, the ability to offer some general definition of it, and knowing what effects to expect from holding that concept to be true.
Although these grades of clarity are part of Peirce's pragmatism, his greater understanding of the interconnectedness of his thought led him to realize that they were also crucial to his work on semiotic. In particular, he saw the three grades of clarity or understanding as reflected in his notion of the interpretant and of course felt that the interpretant also had three grades or divisions. Peirce himself says:
In the Second Part of my [“How To Make Our Ideas Clear”], I made three grades of clearness of Interpretation. The first was such Familiarity as gave a person familiarity with a sign and readiness in using it or interpreting it. In his consciousness he seemed to himself to be quite at home with the Sign. […] The second was Logical Analysis [and is equivalent to] Lady Welby's Sense. The third was Pragmatistic Analysis [and is] identified with the Final Interpretant. (CP8 .185 (1909)).
Here, then, Peirce identifies the first grade of clarity with the dynamic interpretant, the second grade with the immediate interpretant, and the third grade with the final interpretant.
4.2.1 The Immediate Interpretant
As its identification with the second grade of clarity suggests, the immediate interpretant is a general definitional understanding of the relationship between the sign and dynamic object. In an extended example, where the dynamic object is the weather on a stormy day, Peirce describes the immediate interpretant as “the schema in [our] imagination, i.e. the vague Image of what there is in common to the different images of a stormy day” (CP8 .314 (1907)). The immediate interpretant, then, is something like recognition of the syntax of the sign and the more general features of its meaning. Indeed, Peirce seems to take the immediate interpretant to be “all that is explicit in the sign apart from its context and circumstances of utterance” (CP5 .473 (1907)). Also instructive is David Savan's description of the immediate interpretant as the:
explicit content of the sign which would enable a person to say whether or not the sign was applicable to anything concerning which that person had sufficient acquaintance. It is the total unanalyzed impression which the sign might be expected to produce, prior to any critical reflection upon it. (Savan 1988, 53).
In terms of an example where ordinary sentences are the signs, the immediate interpretant will involve something like our recognition of grammatical categories, syntactic structures and conventional rules of use. For instance, without knowing anything about its context of utterance, we can surmise certain things about the sentence, “we don't want to hurt him, do we?”. We know it is a question, we know it concerns doing harm to some person, a male, and so on. These things are part of the immediate interpretant of the sign.
4.2.2 The Dynamic Interpretant
The second type of interpretant that any sign must have is the dynamic interpretant. This is our understanding of the sign/dynamic object relationship at some actual instance in the chain of signs. Peirce describes the dynamic interpretant as the “effect actually produced on the mind” (CP8 .343 (1908)), or as the “actual effect which the sign, as a sign, really determines” (CP4 .536 (1906)). The dynamic interpretant, then, is the understanding we reach, or which the sign determines, at any particular semiotic stage.
To continue with linguistic examples, we know that the dynamic interpretant is the actual interpretation we make, or understanding we reach, in the first instance of interpretation. For instance, when you say to me whilst pointing at some cowardly woman we know, “I saw her duck under the table”, the dynamic interpretant is my understanding that you are the utterer, that I am the addressee, and that you saw our cowardly acquaintance hide beneath a table.
There is also an interesting connection between the dynamic interpretant and the immediate object. As the understanding we actually reach at any particular point in the sign chain, the dynamic interpretant represents an incomplete understanding, or interpretation, of the dynamic object. More important, though, is that the immediate object of some sign in a sign chain consists of the actual interpretations made previously, that is, it consists of the dynamic interpretants from earlier stages in the sign chain. As Ransdell (1977, 169) puts it, the “immediate object is, in other words, the funded result of all interpretation prior to the interpretation of the given sign”. The dynamic interpretant then, is the actual interpretation or understanding we make at some point in the semiotic process, and also constitutes, along with previous dynamic interpretants, the immediate object, or partial understanding we have of the dynamic object at any particular point in the semiotic process.
4.2.3 The Final Interpretant
Peirce describes the final interpretant as, “that which would finally be decided to be the true interpretation if consideration of the matter were carried so far that an ultimate opinion were reached” (CP8 .184 (1909)). Elsewhere he describes it as the “effect that would be produced on the mind by the sign after sufficient development of thought” (CP8 .343 (1908)). The final interpretant, then, seems to be what our understanding of the dynamic object would be at the end of inquiry, that is, if we had a reached a true understanding of the dynamic object. Peirce's notion of inquiry is clearly central here. As Hookway points out, we might best define the final interpretant as the understanding:
which would be reached if a process of enriching the interpretant through scientific enquiry were to proceed indefinitely. It incorporates a complete and true conception of the objects of the sign; it is the interpretant we should all agree on in the long run. (Hookway 1985, 139).
As an example, consider again the kinds of utterance that we have already looked at. In such a case as your uttering, “I saw her duck under the table”, the final interpretant would be the understanding where there is “no latitude of interpretation at all” (CP5 .447 (1905)), that is, where the meanings of the words, the identity of the agents involved and so on, are absolutely determinate. So, the final interpretant of your utterance of “I saw her duck under the table” is my coming to a determinate understanding of what you mean. We can envisage how this would come about, by my asking a variety of questions, like “are you using ‘duck’ as a verb or a noun?”, or even “are you talking to me?” and developing a series of dynamic interpretants that get us closer and closer to the final interpretant.
Just as the dynamic interpretant has clear connections with other elements of Peirce's semiotic, so too does the final interpretant. As should be clear, from the connections that emerge from the notion of inquiry, the final interpretant interacts strongly with the dynamic object. The final interpretant, then, is important to our understanding of the dynamic object in a couple of ways. First, it is the point where our grasp of the dynamic object would be complete and, according to Ransdell (1977, 169–170), is where the immediate object and the dynamic object coincide. This represents the full assimilation or integration of the dynamic object into our system of signs. Second, the final interpretant functions as an exemplar or normative standard by which we can judge our actual interpretative responses to the sign. As David Savan puts it, “Peirce's intention was to identify the third type of interpretant as providing a norm or standard by which particular stages (Dynamical Interpretants) of an historical process may be judged.” (Savan 1988, 62).
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#43544354)
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Date: December 2nd, 2021 6:28 AM Author: wonderful death wish
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#43544436) |
Date: May 6th, 2024 4:10 PM Author: sickened bearded shrine
see JRR Tolkein, letter 43
OP is correct but misses that this is actually heartarchingly beautiful. you'll never understand how your parents loved you until you love someone the same way; it's an almost surreal realization
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3180134&forum_id=2Reputation#47640054) |
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