What is writing?

[version]

Why wouldn't this apply to all language including speech, or casual chit chat on the board?

It would in some circumstances, say, informing someone of a medical diagnosis, but there's a difference between casual chit chat on the board and writing what claims to be nonfiction.

I can understand writing poetry or fiction or about film, but not philosophy or science or history or something where you're trying to claim some sort of authority and say "This is what happened," or "This is how the world works,".

 

[linebaugh]

I find it near impossible to have strong political beleifs beyond the obvious

 

[Clinamenic]

It would in some circumstances, say, informing someone of a medical diagnosis, but there's a difference between casual chit chat on the board and writing what claims to be nonfiction.

I can understand writing poetry or fiction or about film, but not philosophy or science or history or something where you're trying to claim some sort of authority and say "This is what happened," or "This is how the world works,".

Yeah I agree there is a sort of epistemic naivete in making statements like that, and that much of science makes this mistake (and philosophy, EG Laruelle's "principle of sufficient philosophy" as I understand it).

I think you can communicate working solutions while also foregrounding fallibility and room for development/learning. As for what constitutes a well-enough informed solution, I'd say it just depends on pragmatism, what one is trying to achieve, and what the stakes are.

 

[Clinamenic]

And the savvy scientists know this, IE scientists who are epistemologically scrupulous, and not just blindly dogmatic about fundamental theories and models and whatnot

 

[version]

It's not just about dogmatism. There are so many factors which can make something unreliable.

 

[Clinamenic]

It's not just about dogmatism. There are so many factors which can make something unreliable.

Totally - I'm not sure I believe any human discourse is completely reliable, IE infallible, and I also don't think thats quite necessary, unless someone is looking for a thesis to granularly guide their every move. I'd say it just need to be reliable enough, reproducible enough, to render the risks associated with relying on it negligible - a threshold which, itself, is subjective and liable to be unsoundly determined.

 

[sus]

It's not just about dogmatism. There are so many factors which can make something unreliable.

yet you post and read news stories and nonfic essays constantly 😆 so what gives? What are you getting out of them? Maybe that's the reason to write

 

[Clinamenic]

I tend to view a lot of this stuff probabilistically, lately. EG given a certain working solution, over an arbitrary number of iterations, how likely is it that the person relying on said solution will ultimately consider it to be effective. Then its about trying your best to estimate this risk in realistic ways (and to to account for the margin of error in doing so), and then trying to minimize said risk past a certain threshold you deem satisfactory, given what you are trying to achieve, by refining the working solution. Multiple subjective judgements being made, multiple occasions for fallibility, but ultimately much of this is more about practical effectiveness than ideal infallibility.

 

[version]

With theory in particular, I can't help wondering "But what if they were wrong?" when I see this edifice built on Marx, Freud, Kant, etc.

The obvious counter's that's precisely what a bunch of the people responding to them have asked and the thing isn't built entirely by true believers, but I also wonder whether they were so wrong that all the time and energy invested in arguing over it's been wasted.

 

[Clinamenic]

With theory in particular, I can't help wondering "But what if they were wrong?" when I see this edifice built on Marx, Freud, Kant, etc.

The obvious counter's that's precisely what a bunch of the people responding to them have asked and the thing isn't built entirely by true believers, but I also wonder whether they were so wrong that all the time and energy invested in arguing over it's been wasted.

I also think there is a bit of a question of faith in humanity here, IE do you think that increasingly robust civilizational discourse like this, which at least notionally promotes critical thinking, naturally nudges the collective intelligence in a direction which is beneficial to human welfare? I tend to think so, albeit not evenly nor equitably, but in terms of net effect.

 

[version]

yet you post and read news stories and nonfic essays constantly 😆 so what gives? What are you getting out of them? Maybe that's the reason to write

Just stimulation, really, like eating food out of boredom. I think the dynamic's different to writing them too. My reading a news article and thinking "Yeah, that might be true," doesn't feel the same as someone taking on the responsibility of reporting it as fact.

 

[sus]

thinking "Yeah, that might be true,"

That's about how I feel about anything I write

 

[Clinamenic]

That's about how I feel about anything I write

Totally - one can advance a given area of discourse without deluding oneself of one's own fallibility. Theres the matter of conveying this, via disclaimers and whatnot, and also the matter of being mindful on a conceptual level of how willing one is to take one's own prior assertions for granted, in building out a larger argument or theoretical framework.

 

[version]

That's about how I feel about anything I write

Do you write it in that way though, or do you assume a confident, authoritative voice?

 

[sus]

Do you write it in that way though, or do you assume a confident, authoritative voice?

You know, I used to do more hedging & ambivalence, but it all comes back to that ancient bulletin board quandary: do you preface your posts with "IME" and "IMHO," or do you just spit it out, because of course it's your opinion, how could it be anything other?

 

[sus]

How do we neg Version into writing a sprawling metamodern internet era novel from the materials in his archive

 

[Clinamenic]

How do we neg Version into writing a sprawling metamodern internet era novel from the materials in his archive

Easy: VersionGPT

 

[version]

You know, I used to do more hedging & ambivalence, but it all comes back to that ancient bulletin board quandary: do you preface your posts with "IME" and "IMHO," or do you just spit it out, because of course it's your opinion, how could it be anything other?

Right, there's something unappealing about a dithering, neurotic voice. That was one of the things I found grating in David Foster Wallace.

 

[DLaurent]

I'm quite sure one of the romantics said Poetry is Gay. I got that from Errol Morris on Twitter.

 

[version]

For those who write, do you feel you're generating something or removing something? Is it a birth or an exorcism? Would you even make that distinction?