A Communist says hi.

[Smart_Guy]

Some welcoming you had here, Red

 

[Mequa]

You should visit Revleft. It's a great place and I'm really glad to have been part of it as I learned a lot. But it's a war zone.

I have poked my nose in and lurked at RevLeft.org before.

I recall once seeing that they banned someone, and the reason given was, quote, "Cappie." (As in "Capitalist", I presume.)

That forum has a lot of hot-blooded rage, from what I've seen.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I generally hate rich people. So arrogant and irresponsible (generally).

I would agree with this a lot, although sometimes there are very exceptional people who are wealthy. There is more than one aspect to it. If you are intelligent then becoming rich might be very easy for you. Poor people can also be arrogant, but they cannot afford to cause trouble. Its rare to find a genuinely, creative self-starter who thinks about others first. If I had money I'd like to think I'd do something good with it, but I also know that I would want to buy lots of things. I have met some people though who I think would make excellent wealthy people. Anyway, rich people die and their assets are divided. The problematic rich people are corporations, dynasties and things that seem immortal and constantly grow and gather resources to the point nobody else owns anything.

 

[AlphaAlex115]

I like to dye my hands turquoise. Did I also say that my favourite drink is tar water, and on Sundays I like to go into myself.

Welcome Red.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Whilst criticising Communism as a 'religion' (and they are not wholly wrong in this regard as it begins with dogmatic premises known as 'dialectical materialism'), they are not willing to really engage with the problem of subjective belief in scientific ideas, and the fact that even if scientific ideas are objectively true, they remain the product of human activity and their validity is limited by it by our limits of our perception and of science and technology to make discoveries. To do so would be to admit that science (and indeed Marxism) are based on a form of 'faith' and that we can not be sure if our beliefs are 100% true.

Welcome to the forum. I think your statement does not accurately reflect the attitude of Scientists. To discover things Scientifically requires submitting your thoughts to the questioning of others. The sieve of academic peer review helps to mitigate the subjective personality of the Scientist. There is no such thing to help with social ideas like Marxism. You simply try them out, and the results are unrepeatable. The only reason I pick at this point with you is that there are a lot of people who are reared to believe Science is magical or is in some sort of competition with faith. Nothing is further from the facts, because Science is a refusal to rely upon authority figures and impositions except for rational arguments. That is what 'Science' is. You can get ingrained Scientific beliefs, but there are ways these things get mitigated. It has to do with the community of scientists who judge each other very harshly, and there are occasionally mavericks too. Its nowhere near as subjective as faith or politics.

 

[Frank Bunneh]

there are very exceptional people who are wealthy

I call the B.S. card right there, there is nobody at any time that has ever been successful at anything that "pulled their boots up by their own bootstraps" it is a lie that keeps one struggling.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Welcome to the forum. I think your statement does not accurately reflect the attitude of Scientists. To discover things Scientifically requires submitting your thoughts to the questioning of others. The sieve of academic peer review helps to mitigate the subjective personality of the Scientist. There is no such thing to help with social ideas like Marxism. You simply try them out, and the results are unrepeatable. The only reason I pick at this point with you is that there are a lot of people who are reared to believe Science is magical or is in some sort of competition with faith. Nothing is further from the facts, because Science is a refusal to rely upon authority figures and impositions except for rational arguments. That is what 'Science' is. You can get ingrained Scientific beliefs, but there are ways these things get mitigated. It has to do with the community of scientists who judge each other very harshly, and there are occasionally mavericks too. Its nowhere near as subjective as faith or politics.

Science is not infallible though. History is filled with scientists who were right, but the community at the time dismissed their findings, and what was once believed to be hard science that is now debunked. There is also at times heavy pressure to produce results (rather than gaining observations and drawing conclusions), get published, and to not make your donors look bad. Science should perhaps fall under even more vigorous scrutiny that religion on the basis it has, in the Western world, more power to influence than religion. It isn't magic or superstition, but it is not without a degree of faith.

 

[Laika]

Welcome to the forum. I think your statement does not accurately reflect the attitude of Scientists. To discover things Scientifically requires submitting your thoughts to the questioning of others. The sieve of academic peer review helps to mitigate the subjective personality of the Scientist. There is no such thing to help with social ideas like Marxism. You simply try them out, and the results are unrepeatable. The only reason I pick at this point with you is that there are a lot of people who are reared to believe Science is magical or is in some sort of competition with faith. Nothing is further from the facts, because Science is a refusal to rely upon authority figures and impositions except for rational arguments. That is what 'Science' is. You can get ingrained Scientific beliefs, but there are ways these things get mitigated. It has to do with the community of scientists who judge each other very harshly, and there are occasionally mavericks too. Its nowhere near as subjective as faith or politics.

The general position of Marxists is that Science is not a neutral reflection of reality, but is an 'ideology'. Ideas are a product of the mind but do still reflect reality, but only partially. Truth is therefore relative to the technology available to make discoveries. How ideas are organized is a reflection of how society is organized. Scientific ideas therefore contain certain bias which leads to re-enforcing political outcomes.

Marxism still belongs to a 19th century form of ‘natural philosophy’ where philosophy and science overlapped. From my understanding the “positivist” approach has stripped away a lot of the philosophy as science has been professionalised into a standard scientific method. (Correct me if I am wrong on this one as I might be).

In the USSR etc, Science was politicized and made to fit the Communist Party's preconcieved philosophy of nature, "dialectical materialism". This had some disastrous results on Science (in addition to the fact that many scientists were purged) in that ideology often came before evidence, as happened in the case with Lysenko's theory that acquired characteristics could be inherited. This found favour in the USSR, as communism lays a heavy emphasis on "nurture" rather than "nature" as a by-product of its revolutionary politics and therefore suppressed genetic research.

Overall as a social theory Marxism has a massive confirmation bias as a theory of social development and is, as Karl popper put it, "unfalsifiable" and closely resembles religious ideas of ‘prophesy’. However Popper’s criteria for demarcating science and pseudo-science rarely works in practice as it leads to “diminishing ignorance” by falsifying statements as opposed to accumulating knowledge.

I am skeptical on this area of Marxism because of its results, and realize that I am adhering to a dogma and am simply too ignorant to come to reach any substantive conclusions on whether these ideas are broadly true. So you're very welcome to point out any flaws in this.

[I PM'd shadow wolf, but this thread isn't going to die any time soon.]

 

[Brickjectivity]

Science is not infallible though. History is filled with scientists who were right, but the community at the time dismissed their findings, and what was once believed to be hard science that is now debunked. There is also at times heavy pressure to produce results (rather than gaining observations and drawing conclusions), get published, and to not make your donors look bad. Science should perhaps fall under even more vigorous scrutiny that religion on the basis it has, in the Western world, more power to influence than religion. It isn't magic or superstition, but it is not without a degree of faith.

I see what you are saying. Also Red Economist said: "The general position of Marxists is that Science is not a neutral reflection of reality, but is an 'ideology'. Ideas are a product of the mind but do still reflect reality, but only partially. Truth is therefore relative to the technology available to make discoveries. How ideas are organized is a reflection of how society is organized. Scientific ideas therefore contain certain bias which leads to re-enforcing political outcomes."

My reply is partially Yes but also No. Sometimes things that are not science go by the name of Science, but Science is not a vague concept. It isn't like 'God' or like 'Meaning' or 'Identity'. So for example the search for the meaning of 'Science' isn't like the search for the meaning of 'Christianity'. Once you do away with the political spin, you are talking about a rational and agnostic approach to discovery. You can't have that with political things, but with studying you can. So confusion about Science isn't the same as confusion about religion or confusion about political systems.