francis kafka
@pachabelcanon
Followers
2,847
Following
723
Media
898
Statuses
22,470
hauntological transhumanist. modernist science fictioneer. aspiring heterodox epistemologist. psychohistorian/psychoanalyst. alt: @pach_canon
Singapore
Joined December 2022
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Julia Kristeva so elegantly on the problems of modern man
33
731
5K
I wonder how it is like, after learning a language like French or German to read literature or philosophy in it, reading or listening or watching pop culture in that language
52
93
1K
i wish i could be a physics student in a humanities department. or rather, i wish i was at an institution that taught physics or mathematics as if it was one of the humanities. i think that the sciences actually belong to the humanities departments
32
76
991
Have there been science fiction writers, etc, who wrote science fiction, or did worldbuilding, in a way that draws on theory/philosophy? eg. Deleuze, Derrida, Baudrillard, Benjamin etc
105
38
654
This is a common enough complaint, especially from those who come from STEM circles. So here's a reason WHY in philosophy (and the humanities in general) we read original works which are a thousand or so years old, and a (heterodox) defence why we might want to try this in STEM
In Physics we don't read the original works of Newton. In biology we don't read the original works of Darwin or Mendel (in intro classes).
And yet in philosophy they make us read works thousands of years old as if there has been no progress since
519
70
2K
16
71
580
what is the point of studying psychoanalysis and philosophy if you're a fucking idiot
15
42
457
I'm more and more convinced that 1960s French thought (Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault) is closer to "rationalism" than it is to postrationalism and woo today
18
20
421
my most crackpot notion is that for each writer or philosopher you can assign them a scientist or mathematician that they're "isomorphic" to
29
24
389
watching instagram reels and youtube shorts literally make me feel like I'm killing brain cells. i snap out of it and realise that none of this is funny, that this is just a stream of pure content which really means nothing ... and I continue to stick my head in the trough
13
27
385
continental philosophy + computer science is an evil, evil combination. i hope that they take over the world
6
37
385
my epistemology is that I literally think that philosophy, not the "deconfusing" analytic philosophy thing but actual speculative metaphysics, is able to jump ahead of the sciences and prep the ground
10
40
371
the left-wing reaction to AI art and writing is justified imo, but the problem is that it tends toward reinstating the aura of the artist and a cult of authenticity in a way that can become reactionary
22
50
367
I have complicated feelings about this, because at least for me and my friends, and all the intellectual-ish people I know, I don't think any of our intellectual growth would have been there without Library Genesis. Not one!
14
21
363
computationalism is really popular among science-oriented people who don't care much for philosophy, and think metaphysics is a waste of time, but computationalism itself's a type of Hegelian idealism
16
37
297
@CartoonsHateHer
people really conflate "i'm going to cook a meal for you because i love you and want to take care of you" into something like "as your wife i will be your unpaid cook" and then wonder tfw no tradwife
2
6
291
if ur in ai research pivot to transcendental philosophy
6
28
224
there is a kind of person who doesn't care about the Huberman expose, thinks its some sort of dodgy journalism meant as revenge. even discounting that it feels like if you don't care about his cheating you would care about the fact that his lab seems to be smoke and mirrors?
26
8
214
the first reason is simply: philosophy is not science, and there is no reason to apply the model of progress from science onto philosophy. we have something similar in art: we read and listen to and watch the original works of Proust, Chopin and Bergman
1
4
207
when people say that [X] is a fed in TPOT, why would feds be in TPOT? why would they even be infiltrating communities like this? I'm not American, but I fail to see how it's a national security dilemma; at worst it feels like self-important puffery, "the feds are after us"
51
4
206
sometimes you find a passage from 1700 that would be a banger tweet today
5
17
204
twitter men ranked by the likelihood of them actually being egirls
16
4
199
@eris_nerung
as a leftist who's not a fan of capitalism myself ... this is like, ressentiment communism, right, at the very end it becomes something like "there's a conspiracy theory where the Elite are making sure you have to do meal prep"
4
1
199
question to the culture: what do you think happens to be the essential difference between deleuze and derrida?
27
9
195
@katiedimartin
apparently the jokes bombed really bad and everyone, not just swift, were less than plaeased. like jfc I'm not a swiftie but making all this fuss for ten seconds is so silly
1
1
198
I think it is possible to teach the hard sciences (without losing any rigour) in the manner of the humanities: focusing on individual scientists, the history of science, and the conceptual structures involved, instead of just providing facts.
13
17
198
i cannot shake off the idea that most consciousness science research is bullshit make-work that will produce tangles and traps to get lost in, not because it's not scientific enough, but because it's too sutured to an unquestioned metaphysics which isn't interrogated
23
14
195
"a difficulty in expressing oneself", "a general malaise caused by a language experienced as 'artificial', 'empty', or 'mechanical'."
2
19
183
this I think shows the importance of "literature" as a practice, not writing autofiction about your trauma, or your demons, being "raw" but working carefully with craft, like learning how to put words together (perhaps even without your personality showing)
4
14
175
we might talk about technical innovations spreading in the arts, like particular chemical paints, or film techniques, but we do not talk about progress as a whole. this is because each work of art remains a "singularity", and we wouldn't assimilate it to some statistical totality
1
3
158
there's this idea in deleuze, that the standard story of what thinking is, in various guises, assumes that in a sense, thinking is "easy", okay, maybe not easy, but it's something that you can do in theory, but for Deleuze thinking is quite the opposite, being forced, involuntary
5
4
149
deconstruction is simply analytic philosophy done right
6
13
147
lacanians shouldn't be on social media, its bad for our mental health. we are a protected species who need a pure ecosystem
7
8
149
i still don't know how to come out to my non-lefty friends as an enemy of progress, vicious luddite, and a hater of all economic growth
8
5
143
anti-oedipus was an elaborate slow burn fuck between deleuze and guattari
2
20
142
psychoanalysis is more of a religion than a science; it's not a set of doctrines about people, but a transference, where your own desire, subjectivity is laid bare. it's a religion not because it provides mystical, or "false" claims but because it makes a claim on you as a person
10
12
137
when people say "the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born" they're quoting Zizek quoting/paraphrasing Gramsci??????? ANTONIO GRAMSCI, the Marxist who wrote on hegemony and all? lmao
"the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born" - this is the time of artists
0
2
8
13
0
142
if I learned French to read Deleuze and Rimbaud, I think I'd, by the dint of the association of words, find resonances of Deleuze when I'm reading the newspaper, Rimbaud in a pop song, even though they're not "literary" or "philosophical"
3
7
137
nick land was sadie plant's ex-boyfriend???????????? what even is this lore reveal
9
4
135
it's better imo to think of them as more like ... works that you respond to, not lists of insights to read off, which can be put in secondary literature. it requires a particular sort of close engagement, which I would say is similar in rigour as that of the natural sciences...
1
2
133
this essay by
@the_wilderless
- "The Only Thing to Do" made a lot click at once. absolutely a banger post, link in reply
3
12
134
there should be a support group for us "Wordcels in STEM"
16
5
134
holy shit i found a pre-lesswrong book where
@ESYudkowsky
is mentioned: The Spike, by Damien Broderick. he's mentioned in the 2001 edition; I wonder if he's in the 1997 edition
4
3
127
leibniz coming up with "the best of all possible worlds"
5
17
129
Physics is a subdivision of comparative literature actually
2
19
123
I really want to set up reading groups for philosophy among STEM majors/people in the future, in a way that it's not just "bunch of people read Deleuze for a lark" but hopefully in a way that helps build something of a new sort of community
11
2
127
i think that "what is philosophy?" is probably the most important text from Deleuze, and one which doesn't seem to have the detailed engagement that capitalism and schizophrenia and difference and repetition. its often summarized to "philosophy is the creation of concepts"
4
5
125
I would like to live in the world where good science is automatically accompanied with good literary quality
9
10
119
...but different
this comes down to the point of the humanities as being "sciences of memory", in the sense that they are about the remembering and transmitting a written canon, a "Great Conversation". the debates of the humanities are irreducible and inseparable from the ....
1
3
124
interests, enumerated somewhat
- physics/mathematics
- continental philosophy
- "history of ideas"
- psychoanalysis
- lit & sf
4
219
113
maybe philosophy shouldn't be done by those who dislike philosophy
11
8
116
are there any examples of genuine accidental plagiarism?
60
1
117
Everyone in Western philosophy is Heidegger. Except Heidegger. He's Hegel.
6
8
110
the reason for my interlude into art is that works of philosophy are rather similar. it's not a good idea to think of works of philosophy, especially those in the canon (Plato, Kant, Heidegger etc) as offering a bunch of basic ideas or insights that we can take up detachedly
1
1
112
A lot of my procrastination comes from my tendency to sabotage myself and I don't know how to deal with it tbh, any suggestions?
22
2
111
a university class like this is a good environment to learn how to work with texts. I would even go on and say that learning how to work through a difficult passage from a Derrida or Deleuze is like working through a tricky mathematical proof or computer program
3
2
109
the problem with rationalism is not that it's too systematic and you need to correct with more vibes, but that "rationalism" itself is full of vibes (disguised as systems). to move on is to learn when vibes and systems are disguised as each other and to see them as conjoined
7
7
107
my own controversial pov is that we should learn from the humanities in the sciences, and read more original work, because i suspect that working through original works (supplemented with modern textbooks) help to evacuate the sense of scientific problems and solutions
3
2
103
most texts from the canon are ... I would say, "fractally complex". like if you read Kant and you come back with the same information you might get from a Wikipedia summary, ur doing something wrong
1
2
98
rationalists like to reason through possible, counterfactual worlds for decisions important for them (eg. ai risk) and deleuze and bergson show that this category is incoherent. taking this seriously means that common ways that they interpret probability theory might be flawed
11
8
98
My theory why digital detox works is that screens are often used in a way to curb desire and being engaged in your own head and so taking that crutch away forces you to feel that anxiety which allows you to 1) be free and 2) learn to desire, which lets u use screens better
3
8
96
but yah in general the model of progress for the humanities it's meaningless, the point of the humanities even I would say is the engagement and transmission of texts, and it's a learnable skill
2
3
97
are bisexual men counted under "girls and gays"? Discuss
24
1
94
I genuinely am not sure what's the point of the "bring back bullying" - you don't have to be a liberal to note that it's the sadistic superego
Gonna be honest I've been thinking lately that maybe we overcorrected on bullying. Today on Twitter was the final nail in the coffin. If I had a time machine I would use it to go back and do some bullying. Don't let them gain confidence. Go back behind your rock, freaks. Jesus.
24
10
237
6
4
95
well-meaning people say "there are tons of positive role models for masculinity!" & roll of a list of celebrities who appear in the media and pop culture characters and miss that the fact that they default to parasocial relationships itself is a problem
7
8
91
As far as I'm concerned, Steven Pinker is an enemy of the Enlightenment
13
0
90
popper is probably one of the few major & popular philosophers i have antipathy for, and i have an aversion to his popularization
15
4
89
original texts published. especially in philosophy, in the continental side, a large amount of innovative work consists essentially of detailed and creative readings of texts from the history of philosophy.
1
2
89
@elymitra_
what sequence of actions I did that brought this tweet to my fyp I will never remember but I must answer for
0
0
82
there's a popular quasi-jungian notion of the unconscious that floats around on TPOT, especially when people talk about "the shadow", things like that, and freud and lacan show the issues of thinking of the unconscious in that way, and offer a different model
4
4
83
this is perfectly good and rigorous stuff? idk what the problem here is lol
13
0
83
is it difficult? yes, but it's ultimately a skill issue, similar to the issues that humanities students have with the prevalent math-centrism of STEM courses. but it's a skill that you can train. the problem IMO is that people don't learn how to read texts like these
1
1
82
secondary literature is really important, but there's no such thing as a "faithful" or a "simple" version, one that's transparent. they're always reinventions, which can be more or less valuable, but they're not "translations" of the original.
2
1
80
so anyway I happen to think that evolutionary psychology is full of shit lol. evolution? very fine, every good theory. evolutionary psychology though... a morass of metaphysical confusions. great way to justify lots of perfect nonsense
17
3
79
A notable autistic moment from undergrad was when at age 18 I met another student in a dining hall who told me he was a capitalist, and I got out my copy of Capital I carry around all the time to explain to him why he was specifically wrong.
7
3
81
if there's one thing that they all take seriously, it's science, mathematics and formalization. instead of dismissing logic and formalization as irrelevant, or limited, they bring it to a higher level, treat it very seriously, with maximum dakka
3
1
77
1. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
2. H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Both leave humans on a small island buffeted by stormy oceans, but for Kant the island is the only real truth we are able to wrest, which is reversed in Lovecraft: "placid island of ignorance"
2
12
77
I wish Derrida had spoken more on genetics and cybernetics, insofar modern molecular biology and computer programming would have much to learn from deconstruction, insofar as they're species of what Derrida calls writing
3
12
74
@browserdotsys
oh yeah. every time something big happens on here thousands of people independently come up with the exact same joke about it
1
0
71
self-development is the final goal of those who have given up everything in ther lives except for that one last idol, the "self". everything is oriented around this last god, which one prays to (introspection) and worships (the idle talk of the self)
3
8
74
this is a dumb childish analogy and people on "Science Fandom" who tout this are just really lame
12
1
72
how was he on the ball like this
And yeah, I think cognitive bias stuff will be considered the weird bullshit science of our era imho.
3
1
29
7
1
71
alright, new gc, "wordcels in STEM", reply to be added
70
2
71
atheists how do you explain that the beatles, pink floyd, David Bowie, the Doors, all did some of their best work in like the same 1-2 decades
24
3
73
because to think that there's an isomorphism between thought and computation, computation and physical processes, it's not science, but the ancient metaphysical position that being and thought are identical, from Parmenides to Hegel
1
5
72