Philosophy book recs

I'm a newcomer to philosophy and would like to read some good philosophy books that don't require previous knowledge of other philosophy books. Any book is fine as long as its good and interesting to read. I'd prefer something written in the last 100 years, since older literature is a bit tedious to read through, but it's still fine if you really think it's worth it.

>>10481 schopenhauer is pretty much the only philosopher ive ever enjoyed reading, in fact, he is one of the few authors in general who's writings i regularly revisit. he is very known for his common sense approach to philosophy, and most of his writings is basically just personal observations about life and the nature of reality. he took a lot of inspiration from eastern religions, and made it his philosophical project to form a sort of atheistic metaphysics by merging vedic mysticism with kantianism, or something along those lines. i havent read his major work in its entirety, but i highly recommend getting a selection of his writings. he wrote a lot of essays in his later years which are very short and easily digestible

None of them really require prior knowledge but take some braincells to think and analyze what you are reading. Most of them disagree with each other on many issues so you need to read at least some of everyone. I can recommend Nietzsche but best to start with something more simple then Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Start with Human, All too Human.

>>10481 Socrates, Epictetus and Diogenes.

>>10481 Keep in mind that 99% of philosophical works have "dialogs" with others, so i see Schopenhauer and Nietzsche mentioned and i can clearly say that to really get the full meaning of theirs works you must be aware of other's philosophers ideas, at least. In Schop's masterpiece, The World as Will and Representation, he tells the reader he MUST read Kant, Plato, and his own other work (On the Fourfold Root...) to get a full grasp of the book. In Nietzsche's case, his works are probably the MOST culturally loaded books. You not only need a big knowledge in Philosophy, but also in classical culture, modern culture, pre-socratic philosophy, history, anciente greece, etc... If you really want to grasp his works. Even Aristotle himself, in his "Ethics", "Metaphysics" and "Politics" refers to other philosophers and Plato. You can read literally whatever sounds interesting to you, but won't grasp the entirety of the writer's ideas without more knowledge. All that being said, old greek philosophy is not boring, i can say that for sure. Plato is a really nice read and an overview on the pre-socratics is fine. Aristotle too, is very nice and concise with his writings. Philosophy gets actually hard to read in Kant, then Fichte, Schelling and Hegel... Post-Nietzscheans too, like Derrida, Focault and Deleuze.

Skip the Westoid garbage and head straight to Friedrich Engels if you actually want to understand reality instead of masturbate. Aristotle is one of the few good Westoids imho.

>>10496 >Skip the Westoid garbage >Friedrich Engels lol, lmao remember that dialectical materialism with its "wheat is the negation of a seed" brought more suffering than ww2 >>10481 Read "Process and Reality" from Whitehead, but be warned, it is tough. If you are scientifically inclined then you can grab the "The End of Certainty" by the Ilya Prigogine. Probably the easiest read of them all is "The Metaphysics of Time: a Dialogue".

>>10497 >remember that dialectical materialism with its "wheat is the negation of a seed" brought more suffering than ww2 Not that I agree with the guy you are replying too or anything. Implying fredrich engels isnt a westoid is indeed stupid. But I still think it's a little short-sighted to disregard an entire philosophy simply because some bad people like stalin agreed with it. I will however check out the books you reccommended. Although, should I read Process and Reality first, and then read The End of Certainty afterwards? Or does it not matter what order they are read in?

>>10497 Don't Westoid-splain it to me. Believers of dialectical materialism murdered my ancestors. But even so, understanding reality without an honest appraisal of the objectively most significant philosophical-political theory of the 20th century is, as I described it, masturbation. Evald Ilyenkov is a very interesting addition to the usual canon of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Materialism.

>>10498 >it's a little short-sighted to disregard an entire philosophy simply because some bad people like stalin agreed with it No, that is not the case for my disregard. I just think that it is very retarded to take the idealistic hegelian works with dialectics and being/becoming and all that ,and then replace idealism with materialism. It just doesn't work for me. You do you, though. >Although, should I read Process and Reality first, and then read The End of Certainty afterwards? Or does it not matter what order they are read in? Process and Reality is *the* definitive work for the process philosophy. If you read it, you probably don't need to read anything else. The End of Certainty is the philosophical conclusion for the scientific work of a very good physicist. His results about nonequilibrium thermodynamics rhythm quite nicely with the process philosophy. You will find a lot of things illuminating if you are coming from a STEM (or at least physics) background, and if not, then I don't know. The third book can be read while on a bus. Its more of the introduction to the terminology via dialogues, although stuff like Zeno and supertasks are discussed quite well. >>10499 >But even so, understanding reality without an honest appraisal of the objectively most significant philosophical-political theory of the 20th century is, as I described it, masturbation. Brother, significance for a bullshit system in a time period does not mean soykaf. Mr. Beast was quite significant, so what?

>>10500 >Mr. Beast was quite significant, so what? If you want to win at making good propaganda, you should study Mr. Beast as well. This is the key divide between the idealist Westoids and Materialism. If a system is objectively winning in the one and only History you must make an appraisal of it. Otherwise you will lose.

>>10501 >If you want to win at making good propaganda, you should study Mr. Beast as well. Why would I want to soykaf in the heads of the millions of kids? That's immoral, you know. You don't own those kids, but are basically hijacking their minds from them and their parents. >If a system is objectively winning in the one and only History you must make an appraisal of it. Otherwise you will lose. Define "one and only" History. You can also try to define the synthesis for the winning and losing. The threads of time weave the heterogeneous multiplicity, there is a place for the dialectical materialism and "one and only History" as well. That place is in the past though, because it finally occurred to people that the substitution of the simulacra of reality does not change the dynamics of said reality. There is no divide anymore. I will still dismiss this philosophy as the greatest cognitohazard of the previous century. No offense.

>>10502 > Why would I want to soykaf in the heads of the millions of kids? That's immoral, you know. You don't own those kids, but are basically hijacking their minds from them and their parents. What is moral is generally what wins. What is most harmonious with material reality. So it is moral to "soykaf" in the heads of millions of kids by teaching them to read, for instance, which is already an authoritarian socialistic imposition, a process in which parents often have little participation. Or perhaps you think that illiteracy is preferable for moral reasons. > Define "one and only" History. What happened. This is where abstract linguistic analysis won't help you. You either participate in the real world and know what I'm talking about or you're an LLM and you don't. > You can also try to define the synthesis for the winning and losing. Not really necessary. You know it when you see it. War (in the Carl Schmitt sense of the political) is an important aspect. > That place is in the past though, because it finally occurred to people that the substitution of the simulacra of reality does not change the dynamics of said reality. Napoleon was defeated. And yet his system spread everywhere in Europe. Basically every country today, including the US, adopted Socialism. Back when Marx was writing it was still legal to own people. Only History will be the judge. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Process Philosophers have never governed a quarter of the Earth's population and lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty. https://sci-hub.ru/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/347925/

What are you interested in reading? Philosophy is a discipline of a thousand years. Anyways my start was the CCRU but I wouldn't reccommend anyone else start there.

Unironically you should read Ayn Rand. For non-fiction start with The Virture of Selfishness. For fiction - Everything you know about Atlas Shrugged is Wrong

>>10503 >What is moral is generally what wins. Yeah, that's why USSR crashed and burned. Their suicide was their definition of winning, I guess. >What is most harmonious with material reality. USSR crashing and burning, that is. Nice dialectical materialism you got there, bud. Current victims of cognitohasards snip their genitals, previous victims are winning by the self-negation. >So it is moral to "soykaf" in the heads of millions of kids by teaching them to read And it is moral for the said kids to kill their state instead of themselves or their parents. Most harmonious outcome, mind you. >> Define "one and only" History. >What happened. This is where abstract linguistic analysis won't help you. What happened where exactly? Come on, show me the one and only worldline from which all of the spacetime derives. Or was it in the USSR which, again, crashed and burned spectacularly? >> You can also try to define the synthesis for the winning and losing. >Not really necessary. You know it when you see it. War (in the Carl Schmitt sense of the political) is an important aspect. Ok, so the crashing and burning of the USSR left a lot of tensions between the new states which are not resolved to this day, there were several civil wars, and foreign powers were quick to pillage the lost haven or the dialectical materialists. That's a win in their book. >Correct me if I'm wrong, but Process Philosophers have never governed a quarter of the Earth's population and lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty. Look at China, my brother. They had a shortage of food because dialectical materialists didn't like birds too much. In accordance with the harmony of the material reality, their people starved. Very moral, I know. Well, look at them now. They have quite a couple of institutes for the Process Study. They got somewhat spared by the cognitohasard and now they are on their way on top. Not the USSR, though. It has won, and it is dead. Time judged it good.

>>10506 >Yeah, that's why USSR crashed and burned. Yes, the late USSR ultimately failed. That means they were wrong about at least some important things. > USSR crashing and burning, that is. Nice dialectical materialism you got there, bud. Current victims of cognitohasards snip their genitals, previous victims are winning by the self-negation. If we must make it about this topic, it is today's Authoritarian-Communist states which reject gender ideology. > And it is moral for the said kids to kill their state instead of themselves or their parents. Most harmonious outcome, mind you. This is incoherent babble. Ending the state would mean the starvation of millions. Who's going to produce electricity and maintain the roads? > What happened where exactly? Come on, show me the one and only worldline from which all of the spacetime derives. Or was it in the USSR which, again, crashed and burned spectacularly? Yes. "Crashed and burned" is overly emphatic, but this happened as well. > Ok, so the crashing and burning of the USSR left a lot of tensions between the new states which are not resolved to this day, there were several civil wars, and foreign powers were quick to pillage the lost haven or the dialectical materialists. That's a win in their book. You mention this one thing four times with the same wording. It's pretty boring. And yeah, dialectical materialists won the Russian Civil War, as well as the Great Patriotic War. You actually provide a pretty good demonstration that the way of harmony-restoration lies in a re-appraisal of this thought, as has already begun to happen somewhat under Putin. > They had a shortage of food because dialectical materialists didn't like birds too much. In accordance with the harmony of the material reality, their people starved. Very moral, I know. The Four Pests campaign was a mistake: nevertheless, China is the most materially advanced country today, as you identify, coming back from the "Century of Humiliation" which the CCP ended. It represents the most modern and advanced synthesis of dialectical materialism.

>>10507 >It represents the most modern and advanced synthesis of dialectical materialism I see that you like to ignore the fails of your favorite philosophy and attach it to the unrelated successes by association. "Look, this dude found the cure for the cancer, it must be because of the dialectical materialism!" Process thought led the economic revival in post-mao China and the post-soviet Russia, only to let this parasite appear again by the appeal to eternal greatness and stifle it. If you consider selfish opportunism as a moral endeavor, then you surely won't mind the sudden yoink of your state. Its only fair and harmonious after all.

>>10508 > I see that you like to ignore the fails of your favorite philosophy and attach it to the unrelated successes by association. China is a Marxist-Leninist country. > Process thought led the economic revival in post-mao China and the post-soviet Russia, only to let this parasite appear again by the appeal to eternal greatness and stifle it. I would be interested to see evidence for this if it exists. > If you consider selfish opportunism as a moral endeavor, then you surely won't mind the sudden yoink of your state. Its only fair and harmonious after all. Yeah. If something fails it was wrong. As Lenin said, a revolution that can't defend itself isn't worth anything.

>>10509 >China is a Marxist-Leninist country. Says who? >>Process thought led the economic revival in post-mao China and the post-soviet Russia, only to let this parasite appear again by the appeal to eternal greatness and stifle it. >I would be interested to see evidence for this if it exists. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping sow the seed for the growth of China we saw in the 2000s and 2010s. You can read what he said and done. Russia struggled until 1998, and after yet another crisis it more or less stabilized. It's harder to find information about the background turmoil and reforms leading to the improvement, but some people point fingers to the Nemtsov. Again, read his statements and project the way of thinking.

>>10510 > Says who? Reality. > In 1978, Deng Xiaoping sow the seed for the growth of China we saw in the 2000s and 2010s. You can read what he said and done. Please explain how Deng Xiaoping is a Process Thought practitioner. > Russia struggled until 1998, and after yet another crisis it more or less stabilized. It's harder to find information about the background turmoil and reforms leading to the improvement, but some people point fingers to the Nemtsov. Again, read his statements and project the way of thinking. Please explain how Nemtsov (rather than V. Putin, who nationalized Gazprom...) is a Process Thought practitioner.

not a book, but a fun read: Bentham's mugging https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/utilitas/article/benthams-mugging/9C67002F344B20661A6C35C960F25A86

>>10505 'Ayn Rand', real name Alisa Rosenbaum, was a Russian jewish immigrant to the United States. Her hero was serial killer William Hickman, who killed and dismembered a little girl and wrote a letter bragging about it to the gitl's mother. She based her main characters like 'John Galt' on him. She railed all her life about government welfare, then spent years living on social security. Mussolini's son had one of her novels made into a fascist propaganda film because it embodied their ideals so well. She was a second-rate writer and a turd-rate 'philosopher'. No one mentally over 18 thinks she had anything important to say. https://slate.com/culture/2009/11/two-biographies-of-ayn-rand.html https://www.rawstory.com/2015/01/how-ayn-rand-became-a-big-admirer-of-serial-killer-william-hickman/

OP, most philosophy is bullshit. There are some good parts, like logic and epistemology. If you really want to get into ethics, Spinoza is decent. Most modern philosophy boils down to drama-queen/delusional-lunatic style whining and raving (Sartre and Nietzsche come to mind). You can find a few flowers growing in the sewage, but watch your step.

>>10513 >Jewish Of course. Very strange how Mussolini’s son made a film about her book.

>>10481 It depends on what you're into OP. If you're into tech then go read philosophy of tech. If you're to ethics, go read that. I'd recommend anthologies and readers that have snippets of key reads in a single book to make them easier to access for beginners. You could also take a look at Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps series, they release the scripts in book form too. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has great articles online arranged by person, school, and topic and gives you a really great overview and a bibliography to check out sources. I'd recommend The Trivium by Miriam Joseph. It's a very basic and old fashioned introduction to grammar, logic, and rhetoric. It's a very valuable book for beginners and well help give you the skills to read other books. https://media.evolveconsciousness.org/books/consciousness/The%20Trivium%20-%20The%20Liberal%20Arts%20of%20Logic,%20Grammar,%20and%20Rhetoric%20-%20Sister%20Mirriam%20Joseph.pdf Some good books for beginners: >Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy by Bryan von Norden A very good introduction to Chinese thought. >Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle by S. Marc Cohen; Patricia Curd; C. D. C. Reeve A nice anthology of ancient Greek philosophy that's accessible for beginners. >Passwords by Jean Baudrillard Baudrillard has a reputation for being complicated and hard to read, but this little book is nice for beginners. If you need help with some of these books, check out Gregory Sadler's channel on YouTube and Adamson's podcast episodes. They have series covering some of these philosophers, and help to explain their ideas. Rick Roderick's series, Self Under Siege, is really great and I highly recommend you check it out.

>>10514 Yes, this is what I'm getting at when I talk of "Westoids". Anyone who swings melodramatic is an unhealthy person you probably shouldn't listen to.

>>10504 >What are you interested in reading? I dont know what all the different types and sub-sections of philosophy are, so I couldn't exactly tell you. What are my options? >>10518 >Yes, this is what I'm getting at when I talk of "Westoids". If it has nothing to do with being in the west and more to do with melodramatics, then why is it called westoid? (sorry if this is a stupid question)

>>10511 >>>China is a Marxist-Leninist country. >>Says who? >Reality. Reality does not speak human languages. It also does not care about specific names and ideologies. >Please explain how Deng Xiaoping is a Process Thought practitioner. >Please explain how Nemtsov (rather than V. Putin, who nationalized Gazprom...) is a Process Thought practitioner. Do your own research. Be careful not to explain everything again in terms of your favorite toy. >>10514 >You can find a few flowers growing in the sewage, but watch your step. This. >If you really want to get into ethics, Spinoza is decent. Spinoza's ideas about God highlight things about pantheism quite well, in my opinion. Did he write anything about social dynamics? >>10519 >If it has nothing to do with being in the west and more to do with melodramatics, then why is it called westoid? (sorry if this is a stupid question) He is just bitter that the West outlived the USSR for some time, and thinks that China's rise is due to non-western influence.

>>10509 >China is a Marxist Leninist country No, it isn't. The Maoists and Trotskyists in China hate the CCP for their capitalist reformist ways even. >>10513 > Her hero was serial killer William Hickman, who killed and dismembered a little girl and wrote a letter bragging about it to the gitl's mother. >She based her main characters like 'John Galt' on him. >Mussolini's son had one of her novels made into a fascist propaganda film because it embodied their ideals so well. Well this is news to me. You left out the fun fact despite evidence she said smoking isn't a cancer risk, then died of lung cancer from smoking.

>>10519 > If it has nothing to do with being in the west and more to do with melodramatics, then why is it called westoid? (sorry if this is a stupid question) It's not necessarily about Westerners as such, but Westerners that hold on desperately to a dead and dying Western order based on something like aristocracy (in the time of Nietzsche) or a bourgeois class (in our time). Hitler was a good example of an extremely melodramatic Westoid. Nietzsche is another. Others exist in the culture. Admittedly that is a fairly particular memetic characterization so the question isn't stupid. >>10520 >Reality does not speak human languages. It also does not care about specific names and ideologies. That's your mistake, thinking of thought-systems as "just ideologies", interchangeable like favorite colors. Positions on the "political compass". The reality is that some thoughts are more correct than others and we give them names. The name is secondary, the Real character is first. > Do your own research. Be careful not to explain everything again in terms of your favorite toy. You do not have evidence. Which is typical of someone who thinks that children should "kill their state". It's all a Gnostic thought exercise to you, unserious, a matter of discovering a secret inner world where things are fluffy and nice. > He is just bitter that the West outlived the USSR for some time, and thinks that China's rise is due to non-western influence. The various Western crises now occurring in Ukraine, the UK, the US, et cetera demonstrate the correctness of what I am putting forward. You accuse me of bitterness, but I have no object other than to be correct. >>10521 >>China is a Marxist Leninist country >No, it isn't. The Maoists and Trotskyists in China hate the CCP for their capitalist reformist ways even. That is not a contradiction. Trotskyists have always opposed Marxist-Leninists. They even collaborated with the Nazis against the USSR for this reason, which is why Stalin had Trotsky assassinated with an ice axe. You can read about it in Goebbels' diaries. It was Lenin that implemented the NEP. I will not be taking more questions. I've made my case and everything is out there for the reader to see.

>>10522 >The reality is that some thoughts are more correct than others and we give them names. Yeah-yeah, they are equal, but some of them more equal than others. Did you consider that there is a time and a place when some ideas are more true than others? Names remove that spacetime localization. Its use-after-free exploitable. >You do not have evidence. Prove it. Doing your own research is better than spoonfeeding. >The various Western crises now occurring in Ukraine, the UK, the US, et cetera demonstrate the correctness of what I am putting forward. They are making the same mistake that Dialectical Materialism did. USSR fell because of it as well, but it happened before the West. >You accuse me of bitterness, but I have no object other than to be correct. You cling to the idea of absolute finiteness and decidability. I can hear it already, "but muh excluded middle, but muh axiom of choice". Reality judged you to be wrong about it multiple times. Now it is a West turn to learn a lesson, and hopefully they will learn it and change, unlike you. >I will not be taking more questions. Yep, the self-negation strikes again. Last time it striked, the USSR fell.

>>10523 You should remove all of the zingers from your prose. It is not a good look.

>>10524 >You should remove all of the zingers from your prose. It is not a good look. That shouldn't matter if I'm saying correct things. Reality overrides society and feelings and whatnot.

>>10525 "Society and feelings" are just ossified layers of Reality. And so the ugly is generally exactly wrong.

>>10526 >"Society and feelings" are just ossified layers of Reality Gravity is more ossified than humans, and it does not give a singe fuarrrk whether it acts on an apple which will be eaten by the starving child, or if it acts on the same child falling of a cliff. >And so the ugly is generally exactly wrong. My "zingers" are quite beautiful to me, and I believe them to be locally fuzzy right.

>>10527 > Gravity is more ossified than humans, and it does not give a singe fuarrrk whether it acts on an apple which will be eaten by the starving child, or if it acts on the same child falling of a cliff. Correct. Your example shows the supremacy of materialist thinking. Hence the objective burden on a human society to end starvation et cetera rather than play toys. > My "zingers" are quite beautiful to me, and I believe them to be locally fuzzy right. Preserve your subjectivity at your own peril. It will not save you from the cliff.

>>10528 >the supremacy of materialist thinking Since when gravity is a matter? Link me to the scientific paper, I've must have missed it. It's like, even mass-energy isomorphism tends to show that material monism is outdated. >Hence the objective burden on a human society to end starvation Reality is cruel. When humans think that Reality is "ugly" and oppose the perceived ugliness, they tend to starve faster for some inexplicable reason. Why would the dislike for the birds lead to the huge rise in deaths by starvation? Did someone not understood the Natures law and got punished for it? You bet. >Preserve your subjectivity at your own peril. It will not save you from the cliff. Subjectivity is flexible, localization is adaptable, changes make it stronger. Death will surely come, but that's not the reason to fear it. Objectivity and futile attempts to mock it by "preservation" are doomed to fail fast. Dialectical materialism tried to walk on air, but alas, it defied gravity, and got punished for it much faster. USSR speedran from the cliff. West is crawling near it. By the way, weren't you supposed to not take any more questions since you've "made" your case?

>>10529 > Since when gravity is a matter? Materialism is not about "matter". It is an orientation towards the real. In this sense gravity is a supreme example of the power of "matter". But you know all of this. You're just being a pedantic smartass.

>>10530 >Materialism is not about "matter" >gravity is a supreme example of the power of "matter" So, gravity is matter, but not really, but its powerful, so its matter. Got it. >You're just being a pedantic smartass. Let me guess, is that ugly? Too bad, I'm being real.

>>10531 > So, gravity is matter, but not really, but its powerful, so its matter. Got it. Yeah, that's basically correct. Matter can be described as that thing outside the mind which continuously intervenes in our constructed reality, destroying subjectivity.

>>10532 >Matter can be described as that thing outside the mind which continuously intervenes in our constructed reality, destroying subjectivity. Mind is real. Constructions of the mind are real. Subjectivity is created by interactions and is real as well. Are you going to tell be that heat is matter, electromagnetism is matter, ghosts are matter, ideologies are matter? See, that's precisely why Dialectical Materialism failed. It couldn't handle those local-global transitions, as well as finite-infinite transitions.

>>10533 >Mind is real. Constructions of the mind are real. Yeah, more-or-less. But you have to keep in mind the return to baseline and the trend over time. Taking drugs can cause you to hallucinate but you return to reality afterwards. In other words one way to think of the mind is a reality-approximation device. Hallucinations are not equally valid to the baseline. I refer to LLMs earlier: it is impossible to understand this unless you are an actual human living in the world, there is no formal argument that shows reality is real, so there is a fundamental epistemological gap. > Subjectivity is created by interactions and is real as well. Sure. But reality has a way of destroying the subjective relationship with time. Tragedies, such as car accidents, make good examples: Matter steps in and kills you completely. No thoughts alone can stop the car from killing you. In times of social tragedy, like war, the individual tends to disappear in favor of the collective. > Are you going to tell be that heat is matter, electromagnetism is matter, ghosts are matter, ideologies are matter? Per my previous definition, yes, all of those things are matter. +- ghosts. > See, that's precisely why Dialectical Materialism failed. It couldn't handle those local-global transitions, as well as finite-infinite transitions. No such transition actually exists. True to form as an effective rightist, you appear to believe in a secret inner world of the mind. The mind is nothing but the result of its environment (and the environment is shaped by the mind's work).

if you want to get into philosophy quickly I wouldn't start with trying to find 20th/21st century books that don't involve prior philosophers. i would read a selection of essays, like a 101 course curriculum. I'd share mine but I don't remember it exactly, and it was mostly not concerned with the last 100 years. to directly answer your question, though, Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin, doesn't deeply cite or rely on other philosophical sources while covering a relevant issue to the time in a timeless enough way that it could be applied to the relationship between modern-day technology and art as well. while i don't agree with all of his conclusions, I consider his writing to be worthwhile. Additionally it's a little out of the way from direct philosophy but I also think The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a classic. its the most philosophical of the stories in its collection (The Wind's 12 Quarters), although there was one or two others that said some meaningful things too. In general i don't think what you're looking for - an interesting introduction to the subject which is not heavily referential to other philosophers, written <= 100 years ago - in a book by any philosopher, especially as most would consider it intellectual dishonesty to not cite their references. You may however find this in literature. >>10483 >>10495 you don't necessarily need all that context to get started with Nietzsche. The Madman is a good essay. I like the little I've read of that guy a lot because of the arguments he presents in the form of stories which typically aren't, but hypothetically could be read without context. I feel that while background could be provided to any work, such as knowing what philosophers an author has read which will help make additional meaningful conclusions about them, it isn't always necessary. >>10501 Tell me, was Kissinger an idealist westoid or a materialist? What of any theorists conception of Realpolitik, is that too airy westoid ideo-masturbation, or the grounded science of historical materialism? The worst part is that I don't even disagree with you that distinctions between idealism, materialism can be made, that the former does often feel empty, that certain unfalsifiable values are a form of bourgeois false consciousness meant to justify The West (if there ever could be such a thing) as the imperial center, etc. but you aren't getting anyone to read by shoehorning your political philosophy, which seemingly amounts to collecting particular books, into a thread interested in philosophy more broadly and concerned with things like "what does it mean to be" or "what is the true nature of knowledge". Materialism might answer *some* of these questions but they are largely secondary, and moreso presuppositions to an analytic technique that has had incredible predictiveness in the past couple centuries. Although Engels was to my understanding one of the worst. >>10502 >Why would I want to soykaf in the heads of the millions of kids? That's immoral, you know. You don't own those kids, but are basically hijacking their minds from them and their parents. One of the first things I read when I was getting started with philosophy was The Apology of Socrates. It's about how he was put to death for, allegedly, corrupting the minds of children in his criticisms of society. I'm not sure how serious you're being but I want to address a pet peeve I've had with what you seem to be referencing. If you care about any variety of meaningful inquiry you should not take arguments about "infohazards" or "cognitive security" too seriously. failing to read books or ideas because they might be dangerous to indulge in will only lead to ignorance and ultimately an incapability to defend yourself or your ideas, or creatively develop any new ones. you're not a horse who needs to wear blinders in order to pull a cart forward, you have a sense of curiosity that is better nurtured than treated as reactionary immorality. Also, it will improve your ability to think about and deal with large systems, like organizations or people, to explore different complex viewpoints. >>10503 >What is moral is generally what wins it's not. one direct contradiction to might makes right (or right makes might, if we're going to take this at face value) is how largely morality and ethics seem concerned with past mistakes. something that was so certain would not do this, and to be dismissive of that is cutting yourself off from a very wide category of meaningful inquiry. it may be true that history is written by the victors, but to even say that involves a level of awareness built from contradictions to the principle in the first place. >>10533 >>10534 you two should be able to make a distinction between physicalism (the basis of physics) and materialism, which is largely used by communists to describe how political and social realities are grounded in a particular set of relations between subjects. most classically they would be the proletariat and bourgeoisie, but capital itself, geography, and ecosystems are crucial parts of the equation as well. Another important relation to this system would be the base and superstructure, which roughly consist of categories of society which causally advance one another in a dialectic fashion. Furthermore, while i agree that the secret inner world of mind is ultimately rightist, you must understand that marxism has been long incorporated with freudianism and this synthesis has been presented as materialistic for the better part of the last 100 years.

>>10534 >Hallucinations are not equally valid to the baseline. When and where? Relative to which baseline? We got whole societies hallucinating to the point of mass psychosis. They thought that their hallucinations are the baseline. A nearby society thought that their hallucinations describe the hallucinations of their neighbors better, and that is their baseline. The water in a river between those societies will still flow, and Navier–Stokes equations are its baseline. >the return to baseline and the trend over time See, that's why I recommended Prigogine's work. The assumption of a global equilibrium is false, and its refutation by Nature is all around us and in us as well. >Taking drugs can cause you to hallucinate but you return to reality afterwards. Or you will jump of a cliff, because you can fly in your baseline. >>10534 >there is no formal argument that shows reality is real, so there is a fundamental epistemological gap There are quite extensive technical arguments about representations of an object not being substitutable for the same object. In fact, 20th century is littered with those arguments. Reality always has more room for the unknown. That's good enough for me. >No thoughts alone can stop the car from killing you Yeah, that is why thoughts are transferred to actions, seemingly breaching the subjective-objective boundary. >In times of social tragedy, like war, the individual tends to disappear in favor of the collective Oh yeah? That depends on the given individual. While WW2 was going on, Stalin did not disappear, but millions did instead. Do you really want to go down that road about the relation of an atom vs molecule? >+- ghosts What's the *matter*, why not them? They are definitely real in the head of some superstitious person. Or is the matter in the head of this person not real just because it contains the representation of a delusion? >It couldn't handle those local-global transitions, as well as finite-infinite transitions. >No such transition actually exists. Well, guess there is no point to avoid the car hitting you then. >True to form as an effective rightist, you appear to believe in a secret inner world of the mind. I'll give you even more of my beliefs: particles become only slightly measurable the lower you go. Something about speed-position or time-energy interdependence, if you measure one property, the other becomes less measurable. Quite a secretive thing for the reality to do, don't you think? And it all happens outside of human heads as well! Also, just to curb your "but muh macroscale", phenomenon akin to wave function collapses happen at the human level as well. You never know then the missing nail in the hoof of a warriors horse will cause the kingdom to fall. Avalanches happen, volcano eruptions happen, tornadoes happen. They all share a great deal of a secret. >The mind is nothing but the result of its environment Yeah-yeah, blank slate and all. Teach a dog how to fly, teach a human how to build a society. >>10535 >If you care about any variety of meaningful inquiry you should not take arguments about "infohazards" or "cognitive security" too seriously. Curiosity killed the cat, or so they say. But of course, open mind is indispensable, just not too open. >>10535 >you two should be able to make a distinction between physicalism (the basis of physics) and materialism I'm aware of this distinction. It was exactly the reason to include "are ghosts matter?".

>>10536 >curiosity killed the cat a good definition of "too open" is when you've opened yourself up to cutting off input channels or opened yourself up to actually doing something stupid, which seem to go hand in hand. or sharing something weaponizeable with somebody dramatic. or giving an abusive stalker your unencrypted hard drives. reading things online, while perhaps idle, isn't going to hurt you, and neither is cutting somebody off if they can't respect your explicated boundaries. although reading physical books might hurt your eyes less. >I'm aware of this distinction I'm just given the impression that you were talking past each other on the subject of materialism. it felt very rhetorical and not very productive to advancing the conversation. but i am an autist

>>10539 >reading things online, while perhaps idle, isn't going to hurt you Debatable. Epileptic photosensitivity exists, as a crude example. A lot of people got bullied silly on the social networks, but its just text, right? Apparently a lot of people can not work with their reality/fiction distinction responsibly. It's more prevalent with kids, until the age of 7-8 they don't even have that separation. There is a dark arts book about all kinds of mental exploitation in use by advertisers. Its easier for the autists to detach and set up boundaries, not so much for the "allists". >you were talking past each other on the subject of materialism. it felt very rhetorical and not very productive to advancing the conversation Well, rhetorics is the only tool of the Dialectical Materialism cult. I started of by saying that Dialectical Materialism is the worse version of both Hegel Dialectics and Monist Materialism, by my judgement, and as an ideology it was immensely destructive. Then the "muh China Rise, muh USSR greatness" began. I've seen that talk a thousand times, their behavior pattern is unmistakable. They still cannot meaningfully move on from their failure. Old habits die hard, y'know.

>>10536 > When and where? Relative to which baseline? This is whataboutism. Psychosis or otherwise we all agree to a rounding error that objects fall when you drop them. Any reality-estimation failure trends towards systemic death in the longer term, it's not generally possible to have deep hallucinatory psychosis and win in reality. >Or you will jump of a cliff, because you can fly in your baseline. Like this. And so the baseline prevails in general. > The water in a river between those societies will still flow, and Navier–Stokes equations are its baseline. This may offend you to know, but these equations are the discovery of human minds... if you chose to believe in their validity you accept the validity of the mind's ability to model reality.

>>10535 > it's not. one direct contradiction to might makes right (or right makes might, if we're going to take this at face value) is how largely morality and ethics seem concerned with past mistakes. I do not see how that is a contradiction: being concerned with past "mistakes" (i.e., failures) and analyzing how they were caused by principles is what creates morality over time. I don't think any morality aside of game-theoretic constraints eventually arrived at by human societies exists. Nothing that comes from God or the like. >>10536 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ExkJhk7lA You may enjoy this video.

>>10536 >Also, just to curb your "but muh macroscale", phenomenon akin to wave function collapses happen at the human level as well. You never know then the missing nail in the hoof of a warriors horse will cause the kingdom to fall. Avalanches happen, volcano eruptions happen, tornadoes happen. They all share a great deal of a secret. On the Copenhagen interpretation, Bohmian mechanics offers a more materialistic theory held up in evidence today.

>>10540 >debateable both your examples are exceptions that prove the rule, imo. i think most people when talking about reading imagine a definition of reading books / articles that doesn't involve the sort of social back-and-forth, communication etc that an abusive online community has. and as for the epilepsy example... i mentioned eye strain, didn't I? Actually, I would take your point a step further and say that i even feel like shock photos for instance could be bad for your psyche, especially if theyre sprung on your randomly without consent. but this i feel is the same dimension of abrasiveness as advertisements, which most of the normal person internet has. And, in spite of their engineering to be as enticing and attractive as possible, advertisements are wildly unpopular. nobody is destroying their life because an ad told them to, and they might get some wrong ideas but that's largely due to lack of media literacy and not knowing any better. My interest in infohazards / basilisks began a long time ago at this point, beginning with the SCP foundation and then hearing about roko's basilisk and seeing the idea explored in more experimental fiction. It was actually a project I had at one point to develop them and it more or less concluded with the realization that the things most capable of "owning" people play on specific details of their lives, with the kind of cold reading you see in horoscopes and the like having an upper bound of effectiveness whereby most people, including those very into it, have means of interpreting that more or less maintains their cognitive agency. I would argue that Dangerous Ideas, especially those that can convince a large number of people are nothing more than a kind of effective cold-read playing on anxieties, consequent of material absence. I would also add that there is a kind of idea with terrifyingly virulent spread that can lead to such disastrous things as social unrest, which is a true one. Applying this rudimentary framework to the classic example of Roko's Basilisk, which I would posit is only one example of a category of underlying beliefs driving most cults, we see that it has spread to a particular kind of person but not much further - specifically, it spread to people who already had a social investment, and often a financial one, in the rationalist community, many of whom were tech workers who saw a particular importance to the future of artificial intelligence. what we've learned since its inception is not only that the actual capabilities of AI fall so wildly short of their predictions that the safetyist cadre is now something of a laughingstock, but simultaneously their ability to even comprehend what its capabilities and advancement would look like was so shortsighted that even the more extrapolatory safetyists - such as Nick Land - must resort to the very same parlor tricks as cold-reading to maintain a following, which, in spite of its incessant reference to 90s technofetishism (or 80s horror) winds up in a deeply neurotic place where every minor advance signals some alarming philosophical microcosm that you might actually be able to find the verbiage of in the words of largely forgotten social commentators from at least 100 years ago. What people are now saying about AI they once said about photographs or the printing press, in fact, the entire post-truth argument of liberalism are seemingly pulled directly from reactionary criticisms of photography. But understanding this might be a cognitohazard, so you might want to stop reading here. Governments and other powerful institutions are deeply invested in the notion of a dangerous idea because it provides the moral grounds to censor as they please. Through this concealment, apparent truth is maintained not as a function of power but a deemed-necessary-but-insufficient condition to it, that is, the official narratives become more persuasive simply by suppression of their alternatives. One irony of this performance is that the only ones who are really convinced of its effectiveness are those doing the suppression themselves, as a masturbatory kind of self-reassurance chasing after its abandonment of self awareness. Most tragically is that the unpleasant reality is not even ever lost, but only obscured sufficiently enough that non-solutions, often involving chauvinistic violence and aggression, can be celebrated for the modicum of satisfaction they might provide. Not because they solve anything, but because in its downward spiral from anything remotely of value the false agency of authority - being able to LARP as what abuses you, or being able to witness it happening to somebody else for once is taken as a kind of concession in absence of the ability to advance. What remains is a deep kind of resentment, ready to be mobilized into ugly violence at any opportunity, but ready too to masquerade as joy and excitement (truthfully, anxiety) when called for. But I want to return to some loose ends, more particularly how roko's basilisk i first interpreted as containing a kind of truth - in this case, a kind of agnosticized equivalent to pascal's wager, whos logic to pascal was not shared by other mathematicians and rarely to other christians either, besides those most desperate to convert what they saw as a type of mind to the good word. This was to the extent that I believe its most persuasive spiritual critique was made by another Christian. It is my belief Roko's Basilisk had staying power specifically because it obscured the origins of its logic in a group that, while superficially rejecting the all-powerful christian God did not stray beyond the spiritual genre of Sunday school Christianity by instance positing omniscience as a kind of maximal intelligence quantity, and consequence as a matter of arbitrary methodology. This is probably a direct consequence of the reputational laundering that goes into getting hired at one of the many nothing jobs in tech, persuading venture capitalists spend their money on you, and other empty signifiers of machistic greatness that exist in the suppression of serious inquiry. Not to vent about my job, though. I just hope to spell out why infohazard neurosis is so frustrating to me - as another example, the whole sphere of capitalistic tech bloggers seems very obsessed with the concept of memetics, Land for instance taking it in the direction of vague allusions to pathogen, except stripped of the mathematical details that would make it cogent, not-self-contradicting signal theory or god forbid actually useful differentials of spread through a population to imply that there are somehow harmless ideas that couldn't be slanted as pathogens, or that ideas spread due to inherent fitness. Land fwiw is a horror writer who doesn't take his ideas very seriously, perhaps on account of the fact that the techie obsession with memetics exists in a lack of understanding the trajectory of critical theory to semiotics - the relationships between signs. in fact, memetics gets invoked so wildly that it is often the case Signs *are* the underlying logic being called upon, except to proceed along this might bring you to the consistent departure made from social darwinism by both scientific and philosophical approach. First in the breakdown of New Criticism, with its understanding of texts as organisms with fitness of inherent qualities resultant in their sales (equivocated with the work's greatness) to the radically contextual Deconstruction, and then, again, in the linguistic observation, arrived at by scientific rigor that languages and cultures do not possess fitness either. anyways thank you for asking, I needed a place to let off steam about this. It was my belief for a while that other cults had some useful kernels of truths about them, as well as core contradictions - infohazards - that were necessarily censored from the group. For instance, the statement of a major scholar of the group known as Aum Shinrikyo or Aleph rings in my head - that Shoko Asahara was right, in a sense, and I often wondered what it was he was supposedly right about. Something that made Aum appealing to and determined to recruit from social outcasts - people who were disenchanted from society. the basilisks that aren't meant to be discussed, and in that solutions can be found in Aum. But I suppose now my experiences have lead me to see this as more the riding out of a few contextual insights for whatever following they might gather, and attempts to preserve that following among the upper brass of whatever organization, the many little distractions made from their decreasingly stable core. Reading cult groups attempt to articulate, directly, the insight that supposedly brought them together and spurred in the first place, I feel disappointed repeatedly in a way corresponding to how much I already know about their subject. At least there's always more to read about.

>>10548 Good post. I think the motivation to avoid "cognitohazards" is in part a neurotic desire to retain a sense of purity, the ability to be a completely free agent. In my prior posts I mention a fatal car accident as an event that destroys mentalistic subjectivity directly. "Cognitohazards" in some sense do the same thing on the directly mental level. But what is the broadest definition of a "cognitohazard"? Something like, "a thought which causes you to do things differently?" What is the point of having thoughts if they do not change the way you think and act? The idealist framework accepting Copenhagen interpretation and the like is almost perfectly designed to create spiritual paralysis. "Reality is real" is a central "cognitohazard" that, when fully processed, should really change how you live. But when life is like kicking dead whales down the beach (as it does for many), it is more ergonomic just to go to sleep. I think a lot of religions (particularly more modern abrahamic) are really putting forth this central "reality is real" concept in Aesopian language, at times. Beyond the fairly obvious connection to monotheism vs. paganism, the Sufi tradition of Islam likes to refer to Allah as one of his particular 99 names, "Al-Haqq", i.e., "The Real".

>>10542 >> When and where? Relative to which baseline? >This is whataboutism. I don't think so. >Psychosis or otherwise we all agree to a rounding error that objects fall when you drop them. Any reality-estimation failure trends towards systemic death in the longer term, it's not generally possible to have deep hallucinatory psychosis and win in reality. Humans evolved on Earth. Our visual cortices have abusable illusions because on Earth there is a light from the sun above us. Objects do not fall down on Earth's orbit. Any human which assumes that they do will behave suboptimally and lose. Hence the question - where and when? >> The water in a river between those societies will still flow, and Navier–Stokes equations are its baseline. >This may offend you to know, but these equations are the discovery of human minds... if you chose to believe in their validity you accept the validity of the mind's ability to model reality. Up to a point. Then human mind starts to hallucinate because it didn't evolve tackling processes relevant to its survival. Or are you claiming that you can solve those equations every time everywhere? You can claim a million dollars for this, just a heads up. >>10543 >A Refutation of the Diagonal Argument Yeah, right, usually those cranks are busy with invention of paraconsistent logics which are strictly weaker than classical one. Diagonal argument was abstracted and applied in many contexts, see https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Lawvere%27s+fixed+point+theorem Whats next, you'll tell me that its always possible to predict when the Turing machine will halt? >>10545 >Bohmian mechanics >deterministic, non-local fuarrrking hell, nice delusion. You could make an argument from something like EPR paradox, but no, you chose the pilot-wave. Born rule, and Bayes as well, rely on the existence of a certain symmetry, as well as induction principle, as well as defined measure. Do I need to bring up black swans again? Or will something like Chaitin's constant bring you to your senses? >>10548 >I would argue that Dangerous Ideas, especially those that can convince a large number of people are nothing more than a kind of effective cold-read playing on anxieties, consequent of material absence. Dialectical Materialism is the counterpoint to your argument. Throughout history Dangerous Ideas led to large-scale destructions. Philosophy is not a childs play, running with scissors has a non-zero chance of injury. >terrifyingly virulent spread that can lead to such disastrous things as social unrest If you care about prevention of a disease spreading, you lockdown everything. Close your mind, in your case, but it might already be too late. The retarded option is to stay open, of course. >we see that it has spread to a particular kind of person but not much further If this particular kind of person holds power, it does not matter if the serfs are infected as well. See USSR history for confirmations. >But understanding this might be a cognitohazard, so you might want to stop reading here. Presenting truth as the infohasard is what inept governments do. That is basically the sign-off about their incompetence. >Governments and other powerful institutions are deeply invested in the notion of a dangerous idea because it provides the moral grounds to censor as they please. Defense and Violence is their whole raison d'être. Their suboptimal structure in regards of this is another story. >Through this concealment, apparent truth is maintained not as a function of power but a deemed-necessary-but-insufficient condition to it, that is, the official narratives become more persuasive simply by suppression of their alternatives. Truth is still out there for all to see. Governments cannot prohibit gravity even if they shoot down all falling humans. > It is my belief Roko's Basilisk had staying power specifically because it obscured the origins of its logic in a group that, while superficially rejecting the all-powerful christian God did not stray beyond the spiritual genre of Sunday school Christianity Roko's Basilisk is the attempt to scare off fragile childrens minds (and rationalists as well) from the idea that unpredictable changes can be extremely good as well, not only catastrophically bad. They do that to force their moral subjugation. However, any amount of unexpected goodness or unexpected success is usually enough to return them to the self-custody of their morals and actions, but the incompetent Church and the incompetent State perceive that as a threat. Too bad. They cannot stop Reality. >why infohazard neurosis is so frustrating to me - as another example, the whole sphere of capitalistic tech bloggers seems very obsessed with the concept of memetics They are hooking up their LLMs to the atomic plants now. What are you going to do about it? >>10549 >The idealist framework accepting Copenhagen interpretation and the like is almost perfectly designed to create spiritual paralysis. How exactly "spiritual paralysis" and "idealism" work against each other? >"Reality is real" is a central "cognitohazard" Again, "economy is not real" is what caused the USSR to fall. >But when life is like kicking dead whales down the beach (as it does for many), it is more ergonomic just to go to sleep. Yeah, let the car hit you, its not real anyway. USSR also didn't fall, I assume. >I think a lot of religions (particularly more modern abrahamic) are really putting forth this central "reality is real" concept in Aesopian language, at times. Beyond the fairly obvious connection to monotheism vs. paganism, the Sufi tradition of Islam likes to refer to Allah as one of his particular 99 names, "Al-Haqq", i.e., "The Real". Lets explode the churches, am I right, Comrade? After all, religions are our direct competitors, and we cannot have that. Dialectical Materialism will replace God for them.

>>10481 >I'm a newcomer to philosophy and would like to read some good philosophy books that don't require previous knowledge of other philosophy books. Any book is fine as long as its good and interesting to read. I'd prefer something written in the last 100 years, "A Histoy of Western Philosophy" 1945 Bertrand Russell. This book will give you a good overview of philosophy and philosophers from ancient Greece through the middle ages and into more modern times. Bertrand Russell was a major philosopher and mathematician of the 20th centurt himself. His writing is clear, lucid, interesting, factual, and accessible to a beginner. You might also be interested in his "The Problems of Philosophy."

>>10551 If we are talking about Russell (whose teacher was Whitehead, by the way), we should mention Wittgenstein as well. He had an interesting transition from "Early Wittgenstein" to "Later Wittgenstein". None of their texts are beginner-friendly, however.

>>10548 >At least there's always more to read about. I invite you to read about mereotopology, since you seem to have the background for it. If you need another look at spirituality, some of the Whiteheads ideas like "God is a fellow sufferer who understands" were expanded upon John Cobb and others. >For both Whitehead and Hartshorne, it is an essential attribute of God to affect and be affected by temporal processes, contrary to the forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable), and unaffected by the world (impassible). Process theology does not deny that God is in some respects eternal (will never die), immutable (in the sense that God is unchangingly good), and impassible (in the sense that God's eternal aspect is unaffected by actuality), but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible.

>>10550 >>This is whataboutism. >I don't think so. > Hence the question - where and when? I point out that humans are generally capable of coming to understand reality, especially over time. You say instead a variant of "Then why aren't all humans correct about everything all the time?" It is exactly whataboutism. The fact that you are even capable of pointing out the existence of such things as optical illusions **as such** is proof that humans can know better than what they immediately see in front of themselves in one particular moment in time. The moon is still there even when you aren't looking right at it. And as you point out, these optical illusions are the result of a **particular**, **material** configuration of reality (development on Earth, in this case). That is exactly what dialectical materialism is, the recognition that truth is in some sense contextual and based on a real configuration of mankind (i.e., how intelligent mankind is at some point, makes it possible to digest more complex truth), which changes over time. But the understanding of truth is also generally improving. > Or are you claiming that you can solve those equations every time everywhere? You can claim a million dollars for this, just a heads up. You are the one that stated "the Navier–Stokes equations are its baseline", not me. And as your millenium problem dillema shows, this is still a finite orientation of the truth made by finite human beings. Whatever comes to improve upon Navier-Stokes, if anything, will **sublate** it, not discard it altogether. Like Newtonian and Einsteinian gravity. > Diagonal argument was abstracted and applied in many contexts That doesn't necessarily mean anything in itself. Mathematically-flavored reasoning is not infallible, or even necessarily a statement about reality. > Whats next, you'll tell me that its always possible to predict when the Turing machine will halt? Yeah, it's actually possible when you have "finite Turing machines", which is the only Turing machine that can actually exist in reality. A trivial algorithm is that if you have a Turing machine with finite memory and a Turing machine with larger finite memory, it is possible to write down all of the smaller finite memories per iteration and detect loops when the memory + state machine returns to a previously seen configuration. The infinite Turing machine (or just "Turing machine") is a theoretical tool but it is clear that it cannot be realized. > Or will something like Chaitin's constant bring you to your senses? Why would it? Chaitin's constant orients me more strongly to my position, because it is not possible to know of Chaitin's constant in general. It can only be computed (to arbitrarily fine precision) for specific configurations of Turing machines. Wikipedia says as such: > Because Ω depends on the program encoding used, it is sometimes called Chaitin's construction when not referring to any specific encoding. > Born rule, and Bayes as well, rely on the existence of a certain symmetry, as well as induction principle, as well as defined measure. I think it suffices to say that the so-called "Born rule" is really a postulate. As you identify with EPR many critiques of the Copenhagen interpretation have been made, Einstein in particular made a few notable ones, and it is still not a resolved issue. As such asserting the ultimate correctness of Copenhagen is approximately as correct as asserting Bohmian mechanics. If you are able to singlehandedly destroy Bohmian mechanics (where all of Science and Reality-Experiment has failed so far) without derailing this thread even harder, using something other than "arguments have been made in a different theory-system", it would be interesting to see. > Again, "economy is not real" is what caused the USSR to fall. > Yeah, let the car hit you, its not real anyway. USSR also didn't fall, I assume. You keep pulling this out like some kind of epic gotcha. I fully acknowledge the failure of the late USSR. It would also be philistine to attach it directly to the supposed failure of dialectical materialism as opposed to a complex social problem. > Yeah, let the car hit you, its not real anyway. The purpose of this claim is to characterize your position, which focuses on internal solipsism (Copenhagen...) at penalty of car-awareness. > Lets explode the churches, am I right, Comrade? After all, religions are our direct competitors, and we cannot have that. Dialectical Materialism will replace God for them. https://isj.org.uk/the-bolsheviks-and-islam/ https://m4rix.substack.com/p/brief-history-of-orthodoxy-in-the?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3j9e96&triedRedirect=true This history is not as simple as you think. It is true that some redditoid elements in the USSR were militantly anti-religion. I think they were wrong, Lenin had a more correct position.

>>10554 >>10550 A postscript on religion. Many know that Marx said: > Religion is the opium of the people. But fever know that the full quote is: > Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions. In other words, Marx's critique of the religious structure was not that it was "numbing", but that it fulfilled a place in society that society could not itself provide so far. Marx suggests that all of society should be religious in the real human sense (rather than the specific instantiation of a particular cult).

>>10554 > It is exactly whataboutism. I don't think so. >The fact that you are even capable of pointing out the existence of such things as optical illusions **as such** is proof that humans can know better than what they immediately see in front of themselves in one particular moment in time. I can. Some other people know about this. Will a child make that distinction? I strongly doubt it. >That is exactly what dialectical materialism is, the recognition that truth is in some sense contextual and based on a real configuration of mankind (i.e., how intelligent mankind is at some point, makes it possible to digest more complex truth), which changes over time. This is the "dialectical" part of it, which Hegel advocated. The "material" part of it is what made Dialectical Materialism retarded, and is what ultimately cost the statehood for the USSR. >this is still a finite orientation of the truth made by finite human beings. Whatever comes to improve upon Navier-Stokes, if anything, will **sublate** it, not discard it altogether. Finite things are freezed in time and are incapable of changes. The perdurable nature of those theories is dependent on the perdurance and free will of humans. Dead humans don't write theories, they just provide more nutrients to the biological ecosystem they happened to die in. >> Diagonal argument was abstracted and applied in many contexts >That doesn't necessarily mean anything in itself. Mathematically-flavored reasoning is not infallible, or even necessarily a statement about reality. It is a statement about human models, which, as we established, are real and localized within their heads. It is also a statement about the necessity of change. We can derive the "later" modality from the application of diagonal argument to the modal logic. Dismissal of this fundamental and liberating result is what brought USSR down with its insistence on central planning, and the 2008 crisis as well. Those fools thought they can predict and plan into the infinity, yeah right. >A trivial algorithm is that if you have a Turing machine with finite memory and a Turing machine with larger finite memory, it is possible to write down all of the smaller finite memories per iteration and detect loops when the memory + state machine returns to a previously seen configuration. I'll just plug more memory to the smaller machine so it becomes undetectably bigger for the second machine while its running. What now? Don't tell me that such a scenario is unrealistic, or I'll send you to read the documentation for the virtual memory in the OS kernels and creation of swaps on usb sticks. >because it is not possible to know of Chaitin's constant in general. It can only be computed (to arbitrarily fine precision) Well, read it again. It cannot be approximated even in principle, because it would mean that a single written bit of it solves the halting problem for a class of one-step turing machines. >>10554 >If you are able to singlehandedly destroy Bohmian mechanics (where all of Science and Reality-Experiment has failed so far) without derailing this thread even harder, using something other than "arguments have been made in a different theory-system", it would be interesting to see. Yeah, I already stated that it is deterministic and non-local. Even Dirac had a better idea with his delta functions, for fuarrrks sake. >> Again, "economy is not real" is what caused the USSR to fall. >> Yeah, let the car hit you, its not real anyway. USSR also didn't fall, I assume. >You keep pulling this out like some kind of epic gotcha. That's because it is. Holding on to the Dialectical materialism after such a colossal failure is the definition of escapism to the point of solipsism. >I fully acknowledge the failure of the late USSR. It would also be philistine to attach it directly to the supposed failure of dialectical materialism as opposed to a complex social problem. You acknowledge the failure, but refuse to acknowledge the utter incompetence of Dialectical Materialism to deal with said complex social issues. If you treat human societies and psyches as having no free will, as atoms, which are frozen in time - well, what is it as not the repeated denial of Reality? >The purpose of this claim is to characterize your position, which focuses on internal solipsism (Copenhagen...) at penalty of car-awareness. My position, as I've stated multiple times, is process-oriented, Becoming over Being. I suspect the projection from your side of the argument. >It is true that some redditoid elements in the USSR were militantly anti-religion. The churches have been blown up independently of non-redditoid elements in the USSR. Lenin died, and his "more correct position" didn't matter. By the way, some elements of China, namely, "Maoists and Trotskyists", don't like CCP-style capitalism too much. Guess they are redditoids as well. >without derailing this thread even harder I would argue that this thread is already a good exposition to the philosophy as it stands now.

>>10555 >Marx's critique of the religious structure was not that it was "numbing", but that it fulfilled a place in society that society could not itself provide so far. As humans cannot predict the weather for their crops to grow, they try to influence it with rituals. Now they can influence their crops very well. However, there always will be a place for the uninfluencable unknown unknowns. Spirituality evolved, Religions tried to structure it as a political technology tool. Spirituality is eternal, Religions are temporary. 20th century saw attempts of replacing religions with ideologies, and they have failed hard and fast, mostly because they have tried to dumb down the Spirit instead of helping it. Society will never be able to provide a place where the escape from the "heartless world" will be eternal without killing themselves. That is a law of Nature. Deal with it.

>>10556 > Will a child make that distinction? I strongly doubt it. What does that prove? Again, you're practicing whataboutism. Quite transparently. The existence of stupid or ignorant people doesn't disprove the possibility of knowledge. > Finite things are freezed in time and are incapable of changes. No. Phase change of substances (liquid to solid) is a good counterexample. > Those fools thought they can predict and plan into the infinity, yeah right. No reason to think it wouldn't be possible. Your human body is a pretty good example of a planned system, governed by thyroid hormone (among other things...). Every corporation, internally, is highly economically planned. It is a question of "phase change" of the world. The ability to plan depends on the availability of computing machinery, etc. To your point the USSR's central planning in particular was bad, which is what Cockshott examines in his 1993 book, "Towards a New Socialism". Cockshott presented a good anti-Hayek argument in this video, which is related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BOxfq2gOm4 > I'll just plug more memory to the smaller machine so it becomes undetectably bigger for the second machine while its running. What now? Don't tell me that such a scenario is unrealistic, or I'll send you to read the documentation for the virtual memory in the OS kernels and creation of swaps on usb sticks. You know this isn't an actual challenge to the decidability of the halting problem for real machines. Even if we entertain your argument, there is no reason for an increased memory to be "undetectable" (as the machine has to reach out to it over a channel to use it, which is tappable) and we could even increase the "monitoring" machine's memory by the same principle, if we grant it. > Well, read it again. It cannot be approximated even in principle, because it would mean that a single written bit of it solves the halting problem for a class of one-step turing machines. Perhaps this is true in some technical sense, but this paper computes a particular Chaitin number to 64 bits: https://arxiv.org/abs/nlin/0112022 > Yeah, I already stated that it is deterministic and non-local. That does not invalidate its experimental observations. You just don't necessarily like it. > If you treat human societies and psyches as having no free will, as atoms, which are frozen in time - well, what is it as not the repeated denial of Reality? I emphasize the importance of time over and over again in my posts. I don't understand this attempt at a critique. Free will... for practical purposes free will makes sense, but it probably isn't true. What a thing is defines what it must become. This isn't the end of decent humanity and the victory of Skinnerist psychology necessarily. Just means that you have a particular design to your life. > By the way, some elements of China, namely, "Maoists and Trotskyists", don't like CCP-style capitalism too much. Guess they are redditoids as well. Yes. In an earlier post I explain how Trotskyists collaborated with the Nazis... they have never accomplished anything. >Society will never be able to provide a place where the escape from the "heartless world" will be eternal without killing themselves. Yes, I actually agree. This post is a commentary: https://karimibnrashid.substack.com/p/only-the-proleteriat-can-commit-suicide There is a definite sense in which Communism is the end of entropy and time itself. i.e., death.

>>10558 >What does that prove? Again, you're practicing whataboutism. Quite transparently. The existence of stupid or ignorant people doesn't disprove the possibility of knowledge. It disproves the *totality* of it. Existence is local in spacetime, not global. Because it is possible to represent some parts of reality in others does not mean that it is possible to do it everywhere. I think that you don't understand the term "whataboutism". >> Finite things are freezed in time and are incapable of changes. >No. Phase change of substances (liquid to solid) is a good counterexample. Damn it, you are literally changing the molecular speed to induce the phase change. Its basic thermodynamics, not even the nonlinear nonequilibrium version of it. You consider heat to be matter, but it is actually a statistical measure of molecules speed. And yean, absolute zero is not real. >> Those fools thought they can predict and plan into the infinity, yeah right. >No reason to think it wouldn't be possible. Your human body is a pretty good example of a planned system Planned by whom? The human body is like kicking dead whales down the beach. The back aches, the eyes lose vision with time and are even wired in the retarded way. Childbirth without contemporary medical help is a coin toss for the death of the mother. Complex system is not stable just because its "governed". Thyroid hormone is just a messenger for some receptors, by the way. >The ability to plan depends on the availability of computing machinery Which is, by your argument, finite. So the event horison is limited. And again, the induction principle is assumed here. >You know this isn't an actual challenge to the decidability of the halting problem for real machines. The actual challenge for *real* machines is the phenomenon of metastability. Look it up, its the example of nonbounded nondeterminism which is encountered in practice all of the time. >Even if we entertain your argument, there is no reason for an increased memory to be "undetectable" (as the machine has to reach out to it over a channel to use it, which is tappable) and we could even increase the "monitoring" machine's memory by the same principle, if we grant it. Side-channels exist. Some channels are very expensive to tap. Some are hidden. Do you want to pursue that argument further? I got a lot of examples for you, starting with the Rowhammer. >Perhaps this is true in some technical sense We are talking Philosophy here. Implications are clear. >this paper computes a particular Chaitin number to 64 bits >Are the bits produced by such a procedure exact? Hardly. Well, you have your answer about *exactness*. Did you even read the paper that you have linked? >> Yeah, I already stated that it is deterministic and non-local. >That does not invalidate its experimental observations. You just don't necessarily like it. If you have several theories about the blueness of the sky, and one of them just so happens to predict it by saying that your local priest paints it blue, it will be *very* stupid to assume that the priest reflects the light in the same way as oxygen does. Do you understand what I'm gettting at? Both determinism and nonlocality are not real. >I emphasize the importance of time over and over again in my posts. I don't understand this attempt at a critique. >Free will... for practical purposes free will makes sense, but it probably isn't true. What a thing is defines what it must become. I will spell it out for you: you assume Global Time and the Universal Convergence. Those assumptions are false. >> By the way, some elements of China, namely, "Maoists and Trotskyists", don't like CCP-style capitalism too much. Guess they are redditoids as well. >Yes. In an earlier post I explain how Trotskyists collaborated with the Nazis... they have never accomplished anything. Your description of "redditoids" seem to correlate with "who does not power currently, but are trying to get it". Churches have been blown up in USSR, and China trades with America. What do you make of it? >There is a definite sense in which Communism is the end of entropy and time itself. i.e., death. Which time and at which place? What a nice description for a death cult, by the way.

>>10559 > It disproves the *totality* of it. Existence is local in spacetime, not global. Because it is possible to represent some parts of reality in others does not mean that it is possible to do it everywhere. You are correct that this is ultimately a question of faith. Because again, there is no formal linguistic argument for the real existence of the moon. And any such argument necessarily presupposes the reader's own familiarity with their own experience of the moon. But Kierkegaard and others have made very similar points (he made it about God). Solipsism is easier than the alternatives. I think scientific knowledge and its fruits is a good point against solipsism. > Damn it, you are literally changing the molecular speed to induce the phase change. Its basic thermodynamics, not even the nonlinear nonequilibrium version of it. You consider heat to be matter, but it is actually a statistical measure of molecules speed. And yean, absolute zero is not real. I am aware of all of this. But it is nevertheless the case that a real qualitative change occurs over the phase change from water into ice over **time**, as temperature stays the same during the phase transition. Insofar as the speed is part of the system's real configuration, it is still matter in the sense of Materialism. > Planned by whom? The centralized brain. > The human body is like kicking dead whales down the beach. The back aches, the eyes lose vision with time and are even wired in the retarded way. Childbirth without contemporary medical help is a coin toss for the death of the mother. Complex system is not stable just because its "governed". Mmmmm. There you have the anti-human orientation of your thought-system creeping in. True, the human body is like kicking dead whales down the beach, it may even be possible to improve in some ways, but it is still all that you will get. You do not recognize your own specific nature as a human. Do you hate yourself? > Thyroid hormone is just a messenger for some receptors, by the way. Intentionally reductive. The thyroid hormone centrally plans the metabolic rate of the organism... sort of an economic process. > Side-channels exist. Some channels are very expensive to tap. Some are hidden. Do you want to pursue that argument further? I got a lot of examples for you, starting with the Rowhammer. It's not an argument. You're just doing whataboutism again. >>Are the bits produced by such a procedure exact? Hardly. >Well, you have your answer about *exactness*. Did you even read the paper that you have linked? The paper produces exact values. You are quoting from the exposition on a different procedure. >>> Yeah, I already stated that it is deterministic and non-local. >>That does not invalidate its experimental observations. You just don't necessarily like it. >If you have several theories about the blueness of the sky, and one of them just so happens to predict it by saying that your local priest paints it blue, it will be *very* stupid to assume that the priest reflects the light in the same way as oxygen does. Do you understand what I'm gettting at? >Both determinism and nonlocality are not real. This is not an argument, nor is it relevant rhetoric. >>Free will... for practical purposes free will makes sense, but it probably isn't true. What a thing is defines what it must become. >I will spell it out for you: you assume Global Time and the Universal Convergence. Those assumptions are false. Please, explain. > Your description of "redditoids" seem to correlate with "who does not power currently, but are trying to get it". Churches have been blown up in USSR, and China trades with America. What do you make of it? The difference is that China is already a dominant power, and is generally growing stronger. Trotskyists were active for decades but only got weaker. > Which time and at which place? What a nice description for a death cult, by the way. As Karim puts it, the same is true of every religious outlook. They are all about the form of the end of the world.

>>10552 >None of their texts are beginner-friendly, however. "A History of Western Philosophy" by Russell is beginner friendly. Have you ever read it?

>>10560 >Insofar as the speed is part of the system's real configuration, it is still matter in the sense of Materialism. Do we need to go back to the matter-energy isomorphism again? >> Planned by whom? >The centralized brain. Your brain planned your human body? That's fuarrrking rich. Your embryo was more like a fish then human some time ago, and you are claiming that your brain has planned your body. Read about the *visceral* nerve system, how it "governs" sympathetic and parasympathetic reactions, and how it works even when your brain does not. >> The human body is like kicking dead whales down the beach. >There you have the anti-human orientation of your thought-system creeping in. Holy soykaf, I am actually appalled. I'm stating the reality of the human condition and you accuse me of some kind of wrongdoing. Do you hate Reality? >> Thyroid hormone is just a messenger for some receptors, by the way. >Intentionally reductive. The thyroid hormone centrally plans the metabolic rate of the organism... sort of an economic process. Well, I should have expected that your argument will deteriorate in quality as soon as we enter biology. However, to compare hormonal dynamics to the economical dynamics is on another level of bad. Tell me, is this hormone a machine? How exactly does it plan things? What does it plan towards, what is its goal? Where is the feedback loop, or anything of sorts? >> Side-channels exist. Some channels are very expensive to tap. Some are hidden. Do you want to pursue that argument further? I got a lot of examples for you, starting with the Rowhammer. >It's not an argument. You're just doing whataboutism again. It is an argument. I'm becoming more and more certain that you are parroting the term "whataboutism" at something you don't like. >The paper produces exact values. You are quoting from the exposition on a different procedure. I'm now starting to doubt your ability to read. >This is not an argument, nor is it relevant rhetoric. You can not refute the argument by stating that you don't like it. Sorry, it just not how it works. >>>Free will... for practical purposes free will makes sense, but it probably isn't true. What a thing is defines what it must become. >I will spell it out for you: you assume Global Time and the Universal Convergence. Those assumptions are false. >Please, explain. Go and read Einstein. How can you work with with ERP paradox and not have a clue about relativity of simultaneity? Or is there too much math for you? >The difference is that China is already a dominant power, and is generally growing stronger. Yeah, they got the process thought better than USSR did. Still there is a big room for improvements. >>What a nice description for a death cult, by the way. > the same is true of every religious outlook. They are all about the form of the end of the world Educate yourself about theology instead of blowing up churches.

So, does anyone have any recommendations for good, beginner-friendly philosophy bppls, like the OP asked about? You know, back before the thread got hijacked by pretentious, wall-of-text bullshitters with nothing intelligent to say.

>>10562 I'm just going to stop posting (again...). Nothing you have brought up or continue to bring up is a challenge to my position. Solipsistic/idealistic worldviews such as yours are not "wrong", but they can't really be **right** in a positive way either, or lead you to development. Like the way a self-interested cancer grows out of a normally Communistic human body by means of energy insufficiency and the Warburg effect as the observable product of that. A cancer, like a yeast, is a lower life form, although nonetheless a "valid" one. And so idealism is a lower form of thought compared to materialism, although nonetheless "valid". > I'm now starting to doubt your ability to read. For those playing along at home, this is factually wrong. > The aim of this paper is to describe a procedure, which combines Java programming and mathematical proofs, for computing the **exact values** of the first 64 bits of a Chaitin Omega: 0000001000000100000110001000011010001111110010111011101000010000.

>>10564 >Nothing you have brought up or continue to bring up is a challenge to my position. Solipsistic/idealistic worldviews such as yours are not "wrong", but they can't really be **right** in a positive way either, or lead you to development. Oh, what a sweet irony. You lost, brother, and you know it. >>I'm now starting to doubt your ability to read. >For those playing along at home, this is factually wrong. No, I'm even more certain about it. >0000001000000100000110001000011010001111110010111011101000010000 7-step Turing machine stops, guaranteed. I guess if this is written is a paper then it must be true. I won't even try to make such a machine which will not halt at the 7th step. >>10563 >thread got hijacked by pretentious, wall-of-text bullshitters with nothing intelligent to say. Yeah, sorry about that. Hope you learned something new because that commie didn't. >>10561 >Have you ever read it? I haven't read this particular book by him, and I was referring to his more fundamental works.

>>10540 >Well, rhetorics is the only tool of the Dialectical Materialism cult I truly agree with you about the retreat to auth-left chauvinism about the various countries that did not become communist. its just not in particularly good faith to assume their only tool is intellectual dishonesty and engage with all arguments as such, which i guess is technically not allowed. >>10543 >past "mistakes" (i.e., failures) let me put it like this: i like how you describe victorious tragedies, those typically associated with mass suffering and death, and the wholesale destruction of cultures, as failures. but I think it does contradict the framework of might makes right to do so. As for whether morality - or rather, ethics - apotheosis is a justification of this or not, I would argue it goes both ways. >I don't think any morality aside of game-theoretic constraints eventually arrived at by human societies exists. Nothing that comes from God or the like. In the specific case of game theory, it is not capable of explaining the consistent principle of cooperation in ecosystems and microbiomes, which seems to be its primary use case outside of its own explorations as a field. applying that in turn to society seems irresponsible which is why sociologists and economists alike don't commit to doing so. this does not make it useless, however, as it is very illuminating in some contexts. just not enough to explain altruism as widely as it seems to be understood. Although, I used to believe something similar: that major religions widespread as a result of social-darwinistic processes that roughly corresponded to the ability of a population to reproduce and persist into the future. I also believed that successive philosophical zeitgeists would win out over one another and in this fashion morality would develop - that the history of philosophy might be understood as a series of revelatory battles, or perhaps an evolutionary sequence of encounters with increasingly challenging problems. this however proceeded into the idea, derived from chaos magick that religion and ethics were forms of social technology, ensuring harmony and stability within a culture. I think these models (the latter of which was derived by one of my acquaintances from Anatoly Lunacharsky's God Building) make the same liberal mistake of an absent-but-necessary state. >>10550 I was being sarcastic for some of my post but its not important that you got it. just understand that i agree with you more than you might think >Throughout history Dangerous Ideas led to large-scale destructions. not to name-call but you invoke materialism and proceed to use the liberal theory of change, that its ideas, especially the ideas of certain great men that change history. its what i don't get about authoritarians like yourself, you all identify as marxists, maoists, etc but those very men argued it was no individual but the sum of human activity, especially working class (due to its size and relationship to reality) that drove history forward. >If this particular kind of person holds power, it does not matter if the serfs are infected as well. See USSR history for confirmations. their relationship to capital is strange but i feel like a large number of the so-called grey tribe techies are in fact workers. if they can fortuitously unionize then their relationship to reactionary worldviews, like rationalism, is in hand with every worker's relationship to every reactionary worldview. but your politics are incoherent, its like you have no engagement with marx whatsoever, you talk about the soviet union as a feudal dictatorship, as if the groups you identify with never existed and capitalism never even occurred. what did you think of this text? https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf >They are hooking up their LLMs to the atomic plants now. What are you going to do about it? in the late 20th century, Japanese unions embraced automation due to their security of employment, which made an interesting difference between their stance and western one. nowadays there exist "dark factories" where no humans work at all - these facilities are being upgraded with the latest in computer learning technology to innovate their own structure and design process. LLMs are not in any way shape or form general intelligence but their over-application will certainly have some stupid consequences, as with any overhyped technology or design trend that gets forcibly implemented into every product. if there is to be a nuclear meltdown it will be due to haphazard safety deregulation of existing standards and not the incorporation of language learning models. >>10545 Bohmian mechanics is underdeveloped by modern standards and must catch up to some of the questions that side of physics is now concerned with. i also seem to recall a piece of evidence lately that indicated a complication in that development that seemingly made some serious problems for BM as classically envisioned. https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot-wave-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011/ >>10549 thank you. God as a supreme philosophical Being is one of the monodeistic arguments i see come up sometimes and was interested in, it seems aligned with our favorite monistic jew christian atheist / satan worshipper, Spinoza. but what about this justifies all the imperialism and violence? how is any of that necessary? >>10553 thanks ill look into it. see next reply also >>10563 Couldn't be me. I gave my recommendations earlier ˚₊‧꒰ა ^^ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ Although, I have began reading What Is Philosophy by Deleuze et Guattari and its surprisingly accessible - definitely alot moreso than their most famous work. i would suggest it as the alternative or addition to the Whitehead / Russel / Analytic recommendations on 20th century philosophy introduction already made in this thread.

>>10566 >>Throughout history Dangerous Ideas led to large-scale destructions. >not to name-call but you invoke materialism and proceed to use the liberal theory of change That's because that post was made by the lain from the process thought stance. I think you mixed up the timeline. Some ideas are more powerful than others. Power can be used for good and for bad. Notion of Dangerous Ideas presupposes that power is bad because it has the potential for unpredictable changes. It would be cowardly to strip yourself from all power, but it would be reckless to be power-hungry. >What Is Philosophy by Deleuze et Guattari >i would suggest it as the alternative or addition to the Whitehead / Russel / Analytic recommendations And Wittgenstein. Note that the timeline should be considered as well, we are talking late 19th century and middle of 20th century. Either way, I have found a quite recent playlist about thought models adjacent to the systems biology. It is an involved critique of the mechanistic approaches in biology. Hopefully it is useful for some lainons. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8vh-kVsYPqOKJOboONJIQBd8ds0ueM_W

>>10566 >its just not in particularly good faith to assume their only tool is intellectual dishonesty As it can be seen by the evidence in this very thread, direct refutations were perceived as "muh le hecking whataboutism!", completely ignoring the very meaning of the term. At some point evidence and belief must replace faith. Commies can not argue for soykaf. Logic is not their strong suit, neither is math, neither is common sense and laws of physics, neither is science in general. They abhor reality for being indifferent to them, and are claiming it anti-human. Dialectical materialism had its place and time, but now its history. It is a warning to younger generations.

It is recommended to study the basics on philosophical methods first. Philosophy is a very difficult subject, jumping headfirst into it without the right toolset can be a daunting task. Pic related, read this first

>>10481 This video is not specifically literature per se, but I found it to be very illuminating for my background. It's a very nice introduction to logical fallacies and cognitive fallacies. "The Art of Trolling": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZuPfeY-3QA

>>10565 >> Nothing you have brought up or continue to bring up is a challenge to my position. Solipsistic/idealistic worldviews such as yours are not "wrong", but they can't really be **right** in a positive way either, or lead you to development. >Oh, what a sweet irony. You lost, brother, and you know it. But this is exactly what Lenin writes in "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism". And then proceeded to show his position correct by defeating the both the idealists within his own party and those of the Tsar, whether they came from Britain or America or Russia. >>10568 > As it can be seen by the evidence in this very thread, direct refutations were perceived as "muh le hecking whataboutism!", completely ignoring the very meaning of the term. The nature of idealism is such that you can always find a limited critique (i.e., when you point out that children are ignorant in an attempt to argue against the concept of material knowledge) of the position. But those are not refutations. Almost by definition, because any example you could possibly cook up comes from the shared reality we are in and the shared language people have developed secondarily to communicate this primary reality. > They abhor reality for being indifferent to them, and are claiming it anti-human. You described the human body as being inherently decrepit and broken. Not only is it indicative of (your?) poor health (ironically, health science and medicine is a prominent place in which materialist philosophy shines, demonstrating my prior point about development), but it also devalues everything you have to say if we take it at face value, because you are human. Which on the other side of the coin is exactly why your position produces fascism. Much like Trotsky (an effective fascist) you fetishize a "human condition" of poverty and misery as immutable rather than sweeping all of this garbage away. I am a specific kind of animal. My function is to exploit reality to my own human ends. Everything outside of this (if there is such a thing, it could only be conceived of theoretically, a la Cantor's "Numbers known to Zeus") is definitionally pointless.

OP, this thread itself is a good lesson in one of the things to beware of in the philosophical world: The more long-winded people are usually the ones with the least to say.

>>10574 Yeah-yeah, we get it, you are the biggest fan of the Lenin and other big boys. Can you stop soykafting up the thread with your schizo bullcrap?

>>10579 lets all love l[enin]

>>10563 The Gospel. I recommend the Orthodox Christian Study bible. It is both fruitful for your soul and your mind.

>> Christianity has been a cover scam for pedophile rapists for centuries, mass murderers like Charlemagne who had several thousand people beheaded in a single day for not accepting Christianity, atrocities like burning at the stake, institutionalized torture like the Spanish Inquisition, and every other form of degenerate criminality known to mankind. When the missionaries show up, you know it's all over for your people and your culture, and the conquistadors or the cavalry are right behind them. Just ask indigenous people anywhere in the world. No amount od happy, phony, bullshit evangelism can cover that up. It's a mental illness that allows people to believe they're righteous, holy, and moral while spreading some of the worst evil to ever befall humankind. You can keep your con.

>>10585 I think it could be a con for some people. But many people do believe in god and believe in the bible, and I agree that they still carry out atrocities against they perceive as against god, evil and therefore should be returned to so-called "hell".

>>10585 > Christians do bad things. The examples, true or otherwise, you cite are contrary and incompatible with the faith. Whether people who claim to be Christian are following the tenets of the faith is a different question from what the faith teaches. That people are fallible, miss the mark, and commit wrongs which are contrary to the example set before us in Christ only shows how much more we need to pay attention to Him. >Christians do the worst things Christians have also stopped the practices of slavery, human sacrifice, and the worst abuses of state oppression, often becoming martyrs in the process. The 21 new Libyan martyrs forfeited their lives because they would not renounce their faith. The knife was at their throats and yet they persisted. Their faith was so great a man not among them, and free to leave, chose to join them declaring he is a Christian also, so becoming the 21st. Did they persist for a con and degenerate criminality as you suggest or did they persist for something different? > just ask the indigindeous people I am Slavic, I am an indigineous people. The Christian Saints Cyril and Methodius loved us and lived among us and gave us our written language. Instead of worshiping creation as pagans, they showed us how to worship the Maker. We are very thankful! Perhaps a Christian has hurt you or someone you care about in some way. I am sorry if that happened. May peace and forgiveness find you and be with you.

>>10587 Slavic... Russian? Trying to con people into swallowing the Russian Orthodox Church, a well-known de-facto branch of the Russian glowie service? I see, And your arguments are so stupid they don't even require a response. Any con man will tell you he's trying to help you while exploiting you every possible way. In most cases, the church *is* the oppressor. See 1000 years of Holy Roman atrocities and oppression during the dark ages. When Charlemagne started his genocide, He was king. But aggressors love to play the victim. It's part of the scam. And, surprise, this didn't all stop a long time ago. Today, all over the world, clergy are raping kids under the color of authority, and being sheltered and defended by the church. You've also made a mistake in thinking I'm any more sympathetic to Palestinians, or any other nut-case religionists or ideological fanatics. Every fanatic of every flavor is a danger to sane, moderate people. Even those who truly believe that their nonsense is true and holy and good are dangerous and evil once they cross the fanaticism threshold. In fact, they're the most dangerous and evil ones. And we're not talking about fringe cases or a few bad incidents down through history. The overwhelming effect of Christianity and every other form of ideological nut-case zeal down through the centuries has been evil and oppression. And no, I'm not reacting to some personal offense against me. I'm just an average lily-white guy with two eyes in my head a brain capable of understanding what's going on. And Slavic people aren't "indigenous" They're part and parcel of the Indo-European genetic and cultural wave that created modern Europe. Slavs, Germanics, and Celts all descended from them. So that particular line of bullshit isn't going to work, either. Now go back and tell your FSB supervisor that the attempt to spread Russian Orthodox religious propaganda to the West isn't going well.

>>10588 The OP asked for book recommendations. Do you have any you would like to provide? > All Slavs are Russian. Therefore all Slavs are Russian Orthodox. Therefore you must be FSB. What are the Ukrainians, Czechs, Bulgarians, Slovaks, Slovenes, Polish, Carpathians, Lithuanians, etc. Are they Slavs and therefore FSB too? > they are brown and therefore Palestinian Kek > you're not a real indigenous person unless I say so! Ok lol.

>>10585 >apists for centuries, mass murderers like Charlemagne who had several thousand people beheaded in a single day for not accepting Christianity, atrocities like burning at the stake, institutionalized torture like the Spanish Inquisition, and every other form of degenerate criminality known to mankind Without the Bible, no one would even think that those acts were wicked. Your (completely justified) outrage just disproves your point. People have had slaves for 4000 years, and yet for some mysterious reason around 2000 years ago things slowly started to change? I wonder why

>>10590 >Without the Bible, no one would even think that those acts were wicked. If you really believe that the Bible or Christianity are the source of morality, you must be a complete retard. Ethics and morality were around before anybody ever heard of Christ, and even before anyone ever heard of Abraham. Have you ever read Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, or the Analects of Confucius, or the Tao by Laozi, or any of a multitude of other famous works by brilliant ethicists whose works predate Christianity? Of course you haven't. If you had, you wouldn't have said something that stupid. You must have your head so far up your ass that you're incapable of seeing anything beyond your Christian fantasy world. If you had a working brain, you're be ashamed of the stupidity of your post.

>>10593 >If you really believe that the Bible or Christianity are the source of morality, you must be a complete retard. >Have you ever read Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle Christianity ended slavery. Aristotle lived in a literal slave society and saw no problem with it.

>>10594 how did christianity itself end slavery?

OP you should ignore all of the thread's pretense. if you REALLY want to get into philosophy, there is one work you must read. Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher. this game was made 5 years ago and simulates a debate with several of history's most well-known intellectuals. all in the format of an ace attorney fan game. it does not hypercite other works or demand ANY background to play. and it is free on steam

>>10595 >There is neither slave nor free, neither greek nor jew, for all are the same before God. With this one verse, slavery dies. >>10593 >If you really believe that the Bible or Christianity Today's christianity is rotten to the core, I agree. However they are so because they have adulterated the Bible with human philosophy and other pagan nonsense, not because they have followed it closely. There is a reason why in the middle ages almost no "witches" were burned at the stake, yet many so called heretics, especially those seeking to translate the bible into the language of the commoners: The church was really scared of the common man finding out just how much BS he had been fed his whole life. All human philosophy including the books you cited and including, for example, the stoics which I like to read, are at best just cheap knockoffs of the absolute truths found in the Bible and directly inspired by God himself.

>>10597 Stoicism predates Christianity.

>>10598 no but it doesn't predate God and His influence

>>10595 >how did christianity itself end slavery? It didn't. That's just something he pulled out of his ass and thinks people will start believing if he repeats it often enough. Western society began to frown on slavery with the rise of humanism during the Renaissance, and its focus on the rights of man, and the reawakening of interest in Classical Greece. It's no coincidence that that's the time when Christianity's influence was beginning to weaken. The thousand years of Christian ignorance, illiteracy, and oppression during the dark ages was finally losing its iron, authoritarian, murderous grip. Anyone who thinks Christianity played any major role in the end of slavery has no clue about history, or reality in general. There were just as many devout Christian slaveholders as there were Christians opposed to it. Probably even more. They don't call the racist American South "The Bible Belt" for no reason. They fought and lost a civil war in an attempt to preserve slavery. It was the secular, industrial North that freed the American slaves from the Southern Bible-thumpers.

>>10594 Why didnt Constantine or any of the roman early christian governments abolish slavery ? Why didn't the earlier christians, while eschewing so many core parts of roman society, have any energy for opposing or not participating in slavery ?

>>10600 I don't think Lainon meant it historically for sure. I think it was meant that slavery would not have existed if people didn't twist things but this is ignoring the most accurate translations from the NRSVUE also have scripture clearly showing an acceptance of slavery. >>10601 Parables of Jesus. It seems to just be saying treat your slaves well not that slavery is bad. >Luke 12:41-48 >Luke 17:7-9 You see this elsewhere in the NT >Ephesians 6:5 >Colossians 3:22 >Colossians 4:1 >1 Timothy 6:1-5 >Titus 2:9-10 >1 Peter 2:18 It was the Romans all along. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmEScIUcvz0 Now can we move on back to proper philosophy?

>>10481 OP, here are some more philosophy books inspired by the thread discussing Christianity in addition to the gospel: - "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius - stoicism applied by a roman emperor - "The Obstacle is the Way" - modern book discussing stoicism for every day affairs - "Sun Tzu" - surprisingly applicable ancient warfare knowledge can be applied everywhere >>10593 >Ethics and morality were around before anybody ever heard of Christ, and even before anyone ever heard of Abraham. >>10598 >Stoicism predates Christianity The priestly order of Melchizedek, contemporaneous with Abraham, tells us that 1. Good recognizes good and 2. Good is derived from God. God is eternal and was with us in the beginning. There was goodness in the world before Abraham. Not all ethics and moral systems are created equal as some are from men and some are divine. Man-made ethics and moral systems have their uses but are inadequate when dealing with matters of the soul. >>10600 > western humanism during the Renaissance definitely didn't study or attempt to draw any positive inspiration whatsoever from Christianity Putting on my humanist hat, who are those inalienable rights granted by? > during the civil war there were an equal number (probably more) of Christian slaveholders as Christians opposed to slaveholding That math doesn't check out. Slaveholders were a small percentage of the overall population. On a single plantation the Christian slaveholder would be outnumbered by Christian slaves! > the northerners were secular good guys and those Bible thumping southerners just wanted to enslave people and be racist The north ignored the right of self determination and association and militarily occupied the south and then bound both the north and south into bondage under the federal government and now all US citizens are tax slaves. On top of that, our secular government today imports tens of thousands of slaves every year to work menial jobs as slave labor. Today the north votes to continue this state of affairs. The south votes to end it. >>10601 >Why didnt Constantine or any of the roman early christian governments abolish slavery ? Why didn't the earlier christians, while eschewing so many core parts of roman society, have any energy for opposing or not participating in slavery ? The early christians spent a lot of time hiding from the authorities, worshipping underground, and getting fed to lions. Understand that as Christianity became legal it became fashionable to convert for political reasons not spiritual ones. This gave birth to monastic communities who fled the cities to practice Christianity in isolation as monks. Also, slavery was the huge economic engine producing food and goods for everyone and there are barbarians at the gates, so what do you prioritize as emperor? And when you say slavery, what do you picture in your head? Slaves could routinely be set free and given businesses to run. Roman patricians would spend their mornings meeting with former slaves and assisting them with their businesses. So imagine for a minute that slavery was always a thing and that individuals who own slaves have enormous latitude in how to treat slaves for better or worse. It makes much sense to appeal directly to the slaveholders who can willingly treat their slaves better or even set them free than it does to upend an entire economic system by force that you either don't have (poor christian monks) or are unwilling to expend (emperors defending cities from barbarians)

>>10595 >how did christianity itself end slavery? It was the dominant religion of these European empires that abolished all forms of slavery across large parts of the world. Christian ethics was the foundation of many abolitionist movements and arguments e.g. all men are equal under god. Or if you want to put it another way the only parts of the world that continued practicing slavery in the 20th and 21st century are all non-Christian countries. >>10600 >Anyone who thinks Christianity played any major role in the end of slavery has no clue about history, or reality in general. There were just as many devout Christian slaveholders as there were Christians opposed to it. The world is bigger than just north america. If it wasn't for the revolution then what is now USA would have still been part of the British empire and would have been covered by the 1833 slavery abolition act. Asserting that the super enlightened and empathetic fedora-tippers of the north killed 1 million people to end slavery 30 years after the rest of the world is not the slam dunk you think it is. >>10601 >Why didnt Constantine or any of the roman early christian governments abolish slavery ? Economic reasons I guess. Widespread abolitionism didn't start happening until the 18th/19th centuries, when people were starting to get wealthy enough to not need slave labor anymore. If you want to say that capitalism was responsible for ending slavery then I guess you could say that too.

>>10598 irrelevant and not at all connected to the argument. Besides, as someone who has read all the original stoics besides the Meditations (ironic, I know), Stoicism does not at all speak against slavery. In fact since everything is predestined, it is the slaves job to be the best slave possible as this would be living in accordance with nature.

>>10605 >asserting that the super enlightened and empathetic fedora-tippers of the north killed 1 million people to end slavery 30 years after the rest of the world is not the slam dunk you think it is. pretty sure the fedora tippers of le north were the cousins of the fedora tippers of le britain who just were a little behind the times partially because it was much more economically practical in le dixie than in le britain. also obviously slavery never ended in le whole world just in certain parts >>10605 >Economic reasons I guess. If you're willing to compromise you're religion that hard for economic reasons then its not much of a religion is it. The fanatical heretics under Constantine and co seem to have been concerned about trivia like specific definitions of the trinity and whether Christ literally was God or whether he was just materially the same as God or stuff like this. Slavery was as far as I can tell not a concern at all, and its definitely accepted in the Bible. Even before Constantine the Christians did not seem particularly concerned with this stuff. see >>10602 Colossians 3:22 Servi, obedite per omnia dominis carnalibus, non ad oculum servientes, quasi hominibus placentes, sed in simplicitate cordis, timentes Deum (latin vulgate which is like a century post constantine). If Christianity now opposes slavery it is a modern innovation. >>10603 >The early christians spent a lot of time hiding from the authorities, worshipping underground, and feeding lions. If you're already getting treated like that then you can afford yet another grievance to the system that exists very easily. They didn't care, at least for the most part. What they did care about was idolatry and plenty were willing to die for that. >plenty of other things to be concerned with before economic revolution yeah yeah, but that just means that if antislavery was one of their platforms they'd have a harder time getting power. Guess what though they got power and didn't care about slavery. >And when you say slavery what do you picture Any general opposition to slavery is ideological, and to someone so opposed it does not matter how the slaves are treated materially but that they are slaves.

>>10603 only one of those was written in the last 100 years. disregarding hypothetical accessibility and reference to other works, as well as whether or not somebody can really be considered a Philosopher, The philosophical Books directly suggested that meet the OP's criteria ITT are Process and Reality, by Alfred North Whitehead "The End of Certainty" by the Ilya Prigogine. "The Metaphysics of Time: a Dialogue". Bradley Dowden "the CCRU", with no elaboration on who or what that even is The Virture of Selfishness. Ayn Rand Bentham's mugging, Johan E. Gustafsson The Trivium by Miriam Joseph Passwords by Jean Baudrillard Rick Roderick's series, Self Under Siege The Wind's 12 Quarters, no author mentioned "A Histoy of Western Philosophy" 1945 Bertrand Russell. "The Problems of Philosophy." Bertrand Russell "Towards a New Socialism". Cockshott What Is Philosophy by Deleuze et Guattari The Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods, by Julian Baggini and Peter S. Fosl "The Obstacle is the Way" Ryan Holiday Some essays were mentioned in the thread, too: How Ayn Rand Became an American Icon, Johann Hari How Ayn Rand became a big admirer of serial killer William Hickman, Mark Ames, Alternet Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin The Bolsheviks and Islam, Dave Crouch Brief history of Orthodoxy in the USSR, m4r!x Only the Proleteriat Can Commit Suicide: A Critique of Nick Land's Ontology. Karim Philosophers from the past 100 years recommended without any works include Wittgenstein, Deng Xiaoping, Vladimir Lenin, Mao, Boris Nemtsov, Evald Ilyenkov, Mr. Beast, John Cobb, and a few others. There were many other philosophers and books mentioned here too, such as Karl Marx, Nietszche, Engels, Sun Tzu, who weren't writers of the past 100 years. There were also two anthologies of classical works mentioned, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy by Bryan von Norden , and, Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle by S. Marc Cohen; Patricia Curd; C. D. C. Reeve I can't pretend that I've read most of these, but from titles alone, and the background I do have, very, very few of them seem like they don't require familiarity of other works. most of the books mentioned don't seem to be particularly great introductions to the field of philosophy or naturally compelling to somebody interested in philosophy at all. Rather they give the impression of cursory recommendations by the various ideological turf wars between capitalism and socialism, christianity and atheism, even continental and analytic philosophy although the last of which seems excuseably unavoidable. I should also add that very few of these posts recommend any works whatsoever and seem more interested in the aforementioned turf war than even the subject they are warring over. If I could add my own suggestions to the mix, I would recommend The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, which is an introduction to Taoism Mindfulness in Plain English, by Bhante Gunaratana, and is an introduction to Theravada Buddhism These two books helped me answer a lot of questions and develop critical thinking skills, the ability to listen to and and examine ideas without resorting to the factionalized sophistry, as well as important life skills like thinking before acting and not getting caught in my own delusions, either.

>>10609 >If you're already getting treated like that then you can afford yet another grievance to the system that exists very easily. >they didn't care >plenty of other things to be concerned with before economic revolution >Any general opposition to slavery is ideological >they just cared about power Christianity commands you, of your own free will, to treat others as you would want to be treated yourself. Are you able to say with a straight face that you think that means "I should keep a slave in bondage, treat them badly, and enslave more people"?

>>10610 Thank you lainanon for summarizing some of the book recommendations ITT and offering your own. OP asked for >Good philosophy books >that don't require previous knowledge of other philosophy books >prefers something written in the last 100 years but is flexible depending on worth. Here is a case for the Gospel according to OP's criteria, since it was not in your list: >If philosophy does indeed mean love of knowledge then the Gospel can and should be considered bc it communicates (or, if you doubt, purports to communicate) knowledge and wisdom directly from God, i.e. divine knowledge. >the text is regularly updated with modern translations and one can buy study texts with footnotes to contextualize the reading and aid understanding of the text. >many of the important messages are communicated directly or in parables told by the protagonist. >it's an engaging story. Here's a trailer description for it: >"As the Roman Republic transforms into the Roman empire in the shadow of Caesar's death and the rise of his son Augustus, the Roman empire's eastward expansion now includes the troublesome and rebellious backwater province of Judea and its city Jerusalem. Dominated by the power politics between the Roman governate and religious Sanhedrin council, the local people whisper of a prophecy yet to be fulfilled: a chosen one to overthrow the Romans and reestablish the Kingdom of Judea. In an effort to maintain order and control in the province and keep the local government in line, the Emperor has dispatched the capable Pontius Pilate to oversee the province " >"Meanwhile, in the hinterlands, poor fishermen encounter a wayward woodworker who convinces them to follow him for a time so that he can teach them to fish a different way. They quickly come to suspect this is no ordinary woodworker and follow him through the countryside as he makes his way towards Jerusalem as rumors of the chosen one spread like wildfire across the province."

>>10611 As >>10603 points out a lot of slaves in Rome were pretty fairly treated, and its certainly not necessarily the case that they're abused. The late roman courts were full of slaves, and in almost all the courts if not all there were freedmen in important and well rewarded positions. Christianity seems to be against treating people badly, your slaves, your masters, your peers, your lessers and your betters. If it began with a general pacifistic streak this seems to have been washed away with the obligate idol worship in the Roman Army, and if you can square pillaging cities with the Golden Rule as evidently the Roman Christians did, then I think you can tolerate reasonable amounts of enslavement as well.

Does anyone have a specific recommendation for someone who failed exams, and hasn't read a whole book in more than a decade, and has spent most of that time with youtube slop? >>10483 Is there a particular process to follow when trying to analyze something you're reading?

>>10761 Trial and Death of Socrates literally the easiest thing to read in the world, excepting a single argument in Euthyphro (the one on carrying vs being carried) good translations: jowett (style > substance) h m grube (balanced) cannot remember others atm Option #2: The new testament pros: - critical to understanding history - pharisees getting beatdown is funny cons: - the actual "philosophical reasoning" is obscured

>>10762 the older testament is better than the new one. i recommend the Odyssey

>>10763 Agreed. I feel like I don't really get the New Testament. Maybe because of the way its been presented to me? Jesus has been mocked and turned into a meme by a secular culture that its hard taking the New Testament seriously now.

>>10762 >Trial and Death of Socrates Good reading, short, master orator at work (assuming Plato's account is accurate). But it was futile because he had offended so may powerful people over the years. >The new testament >critical to understanding history Sorry, but I had to laugh at the notion of any part of The Bible (or most other religious texts) being "critical" to understanding history.

>>10765 sage b/c offtopic but the new testament literally reshaped european history/culture and european culture is now effectively global culture ill concede it's not critical, but i found it very useful (esp. for understanding how modernity came about) also re: trial and death, make sure you get a five-dialogue version (should be: euthyphro, apology, crito, meno, phaedo) meno is not a 100% traditional inclusion, but it is useful to understanding phaedo

The Golden Sayings of Epictetus and the Cynic Epistles are cream

>>10764 >>10766 The New Testament makes more sense in context of what was proposed in Caesar's Messiah by Joseph Atwill. There is also a documentary version of it on YouTube if that's easier on you than reading but I'd think reading may be more convincing if you are more hung up on the idea. Basically the philosophy of the New Testament is largely based on Stoicism.

Socrates Jones Pro Philosopher mentioned! Definitely a clever gem from the Newgrounds-era web. I'm ashamed how much the maxim that is its conclusion impacted my own thought... I skimmed the thread, but it looks like some solid choices. I would add: The most philosophical Old Testament book is likely Job, since it deals with both theology and the problem of evil. The most philosophical New Testament books are somr of Paul's longer letter, like Romans 1 Corinthians. If you want to read, get an NRSV with a commentary. I would suggest some Raymond Smullyan if you're interested in epistemology, Taosim or comparitive philosophy. His essays are accessible without talking down to the reader. If you're up for something about mythology and its influence on human thought and culture, almost anything by Roberto Calasso is fascinating. He's a bit loopy but quite insightful.

>>10481 Start with Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius. But take whatever it says with a grain of salt. But it's a fun survey of ancient philosophy. Then go read the complete works of Plato and then Aristotle.

Best book ever in my opinion, also very short and easy to read. an essay on Social darwinism from 19 century England.(USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST, You should always elaborate on your opinions rather than just spilling the soykaf.)

>>10795 Christian Stoicism is max kino. Truly they are interblended concepts, same with cynicism.

This might be out of left-field (heh), but I guess that Stirner guy could be something fun. It's not "long-winded" and if You notice anything weird, then it's most likely a bit that makes fun or Hegel or young hegelians. It will still be a weird read, because what Stirner predominantly ridicules is the Geist of his own era, so of course some remarks will be missed by You, but this (in turn) creates a groundwork to build later on, on the stuff that interests You.