Right on John... if freedom is being free from coercion then even "light" people know each person's biggest tyrant is between ones own ears and in ones own heart... now put down the pie, John and stop being a slave to it!!! ;-)
In the middle of the 1,000 page biography on Dostoevsky by Joseph Frank (which is phenomenal so far), but wouldn't have made as clear of a distinction like this between between inside and outside freedom. This post really helped clarify a key theme in his work that I hadn't been able to articulate well. Appreciate it!
In this day and age of continuous war, poverty, migration, cruelty and greed Janis Joplin commented in Me and Bobby McGee “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” I’m convinced she was speaking of the same thing - an external freedom without an internal equivalent.
Funny you should bring that up... I can almost not - or it is an effort to avoid - hear the word "freedom" without that damnable phrase "...just another word..." tagging along. No different this read above, either. I have thought it is a lie for years years years and a half. It makes a catchy song that clings to the brain because it was foisted upon the unsuspecting and championed by the rebellious.
I married at 19, back in 1985 when all my friends were liberating their vaginas, and I never felt freer to be myself than within my marriage (still holding). The confines of marriage made it possible to free my soul, my mind and my body. To lose my husband and be back "on the market" as marriageable again would have been anything but "freedom".
John, a very important point here that maybe you missed: the second law of thermodynamics is antithetical to evolution. Thermodynamics say that order breaks down to noise irreversibly, and evolution says that extremely refined order comes out of noise spontaneously. The two are mutually exclusive in a very hard way. The fact that the modern mind needs to believe both, is very profound: to be modern, even rationalist, you have to accept two mutually exclusive things as concurrently true. To pass the initiation rite, you need to sacrifice your independent, "wherever the facts lead" logic. The deeply illogical nature of the particular kind of modern "rationalism" we have today is a core feature...
BTW, Zach, in his response to my original comment, makes an excellent point on how to be sophisticated and not overplay this antithesis between evolution and thermodynamics. But, while respecting all that, we must point out that infinitely complicated things spontaneously springing out of mundane and simple things is NOT what we empirically observe in nature (while thermodynamics is). In fact, the whole debate about AI and consciousness is the same debate at the next level: if life is the spontaneous result of mere inorganic chemistry, then consciousness can equally well be the spontaneous/natural result of arithmetic and boolean operations...
Hi Zach, many thanks for your thoughtful and knowledgeable response. I think I understand what you are saying. Indeed it is possible to kind of justify both evolution and thermodynamics, or at least leave the door open. However, besides evolution, the only known local increase in order in out of equilibrium systems is the development of vortices, shock waves or attractors in chaotic systems. There is no continuum of increasingly complex stuff that could conceivably go up to something like a single cell developing spontaneously even in an out of equilibrium system. So, precisely because I am also trained and working in physics, my personal take on this is that the nominal compatibility of evolution and thermodynamics is a contortion, a stretch, a coping mechanism, and not a sincere treatment of phenomena or a serious development of theory. It is bad science, that in any other case would have been called out. Of course we can always refine the definition of "equilibrium" and "closed" to come up with statements that apply only to very narrow situations -- but the philosophical impact of thermodynamics that the article discusses is precisely that, if it is "true enough" physics, it should eventually apply to the world as we perceive it. Otherwise it is kind of irrelevant to people (the way some particle physics theories are largely irrelevant, because they don't mean anything tangible for the things people perceive). Moreover, good physics has a natural flow to it, you don't need to jump through hoops to explain why newton's first law is not incompatible with the third law... (again this doesn't guarantee that newtonian mechanics is all the way "true", but it does indicate a consistency of the theory with observed facts and with itself).
On one hand, you're right. Evolution can be technically thought to be compatible with a very sanitized, very literal and narrowly applied version of thermodynamics.
But I find this besides the point. In the day to day of science (which I do for a living) we speak a bit more freely and tend to extrapolate a bit when discussing theories. BTW, that's how all scientific theories are created in the first place, by imaginative extrapolation.
Also, I think you may be misunderstanding me: I'm not defending creation or anything like that. I'm defending science, in its basic no nonsense sense of systematic study. If you train yourself to justify acrobatical claims as "technically not completely impossible", next thing you know you don't know what a woman is. Oh wait.
As a working scientist, I am only aware of two claims of a spontaneous emergence of a hugely increasing cascade (virtually infinite) of self organizing complexity out of a simple mechanistic (non alive, non intelligent) background: in evolution, and in the "computational theory of mind" (which is, essentially, evolution but for intelligence, not for life). Not in fluid mechanics, not in chemistry, not in any branch if mathematics, not in quantum mechanics, not in relativity and so on. In all those fields moderately complicated things can and emerge out of very simple settings, but they peak pretty soon, and never reach anything that could claim to stretch to the complexity of a single cell (nevermind an eye or a whole organism). BTW you can quantify complexity for this exercise eg with information theory methods. While it doesn't have the "gotcha" value of "disproving" evolution in one move, it does show that evolution is NOT "just a normal scientific theory, however unlikely some people may find it, like quantum mechanics".
I mean, if it was, I would have zero problem to admit it. But scientifically speaking, it is an aberration and it does require in particular a very uncomfortable explanation of why it really doesn't conflict with thermodynamics. Just like the Pope explained last week that his blessing of gay couples doesn't really conflict with the longstanding position of the catholic church...
I guess if you are smart enough, you can convince yourself of anything...
Best phrase here for me, by far: "Scientifically speaking, it [evolution] is an aberration and it does require in particular a very uncomfortable explanation..." For me, a non-scientist extraordinaire, evolution makes me feel like i'm wearing a hairsuit of old. Like... it just doesn't fit. Is it supposed to not fit? Maybe like an ascetic outfit, it is supposed to bring us back to our senses?
Freedom from what? To do what? Freedom to do the lords work is good. Freedom to do whatever you want isn’t going to turn out well. It seems like it is a bad idea to talk about these things in a theoretical disembodied way.
The Idiot is indeed about a beautiful soul. Years ago, my clinical neuropsychologist told me that neuropsychologists are fascinated by Dostoevsky. He tried to tell me why.
"We think that much of the - ( he was stuck for the moment, then the word came to him ) - weirdness in his novels is there because of his temporal lobe epilepsy." And lovers of The Idiot know that Prince Myshkin is being carried away to invalidism sooner than later because of his own temporal lobe epilepsy.
I'm not a temporal lobe epileptic, but ten years ago, another doctor's error provoked an apparently extraordinary thing in me, a double temporal lobe seizure which may have lasted as long as eighteen hours. It was a wild, extremely rare elongation of an ordinary temporal lobe seizure. I can confirm that Dostoevsky got it exactly as it is, first, the elation, then the seizure, then the post seizure, occasional visitations of dread, which for me took a full year to cease.
Myshkin hasn't got the ability to be anything but an idiot as society would judge people; he's not stupid, but he is guileless, without hate, and wishes only good for those he meets. That is indeed a guaranteed formula to create one of the world's nonstarters.
It's always fascinated me that Myshkin falls in love with the courtesan for reasons he doesn't understand. He just loves her. And so a little Calvinistic election makes its way slyly into this great Russian Orthodox writer's novel.
Your experience is incredible and it offers so much insight for you, that I can’t imagine how Dostoyevsky‘s books must be different when you read them, as opposed to when I read them. Gosh, I’d love to discuss this more as per how you saw the world after the seizure so interesting. So much more to be sad. Thank you for your comment. It’s incredible.
I am definitely banging away! I think the real target is the narrative found in education, the one that is imbibed by young people. Because that narrative is very different from the one you are describing. There is no wonder in it in our education system, it is taught more as the answer to the question. And the question for all young people is, why do I exist. Of course, young people don’t ask it that way, but life is imbibed this way. We are Y creatures. And for so many years now the science narrative is the answer to the question. And I just want to destroy that narrative because it is bad. Like… It is bad. It’s a bad answer. So forgive me because of course, inquiry is beautiful. wonder born out of beautiful questions about the universe, that’s just amazing. But this other thing going on, and that has been going on, and that has been given to us by very smart people with very very bad ontology, that’s got to go!
Brother, re-eadingn a bit, I really like this point you made:The problem with evolution and entropy is not with evolution and entropy per se. The problem is that they arrived in an intellectual time that had already rejected telos, especially one connected with the nature of a thing, one that had rejected a sacramental cosmos, and one that had already embraced a deterministic, materialistic fatalism.
Also... science is never "a problem". I talk like that all the time, and in some ways it is not fair. But in much the same way our education about science generalizes and elevates a simply process into a god, I am trying to tear down that false god of science, and do it using popular teaching about science as a starting point. Science, like Christianity, gets lumped up and jargonized and misunderstood. I get all that. The problem is it is not by chance. It is the problem of sin at play, the problem of ego and pride, and for me those types of problems are best exposed with some humor and a solid dose of subversiveness. A true scientist knows that his experiment is but a flea on a beasts back in the end. His work won't change reality. It simply reveals it (if it is good science). God is reality.
Right on John... if freedom is being free from coercion then even "light" people know each person's biggest tyrant is between ones own ears and in ones own heart... now put down the pie, John and stop being a slave to it!!! ;-)
In the middle of the 1,000 page biography on Dostoevsky by Joseph Frank (which is phenomenal so far), but wouldn't have made as clear of a distinction like this between between inside and outside freedom. This post really helped clarify a key theme in his work that I hadn't been able to articulate well. Appreciate it!
In this day and age of continuous war, poverty, migration, cruelty and greed Janis Joplin commented in Me and Bobby McGee “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” I’m convinced she was speaking of the same thing - an external freedom without an internal equivalent.
Funny you should bring that up... I can almost not - or it is an effort to avoid - hear the word "freedom" without that damnable phrase "...just another word..." tagging along. No different this read above, either. I have thought it is a lie for years years years and a half. It makes a catchy song that clings to the brain because it was foisted upon the unsuspecting and championed by the rebellious.
I married at 19, back in 1985 when all my friends were liberating their vaginas, and I never felt freer to be myself than within my marriage (still holding). The confines of marriage made it possible to free my soul, my mind and my body. To lose my husband and be back "on the market" as marriageable again would have been anything but "freedom".
John, a very important point here that maybe you missed: the second law of thermodynamics is antithetical to evolution. Thermodynamics say that order breaks down to noise irreversibly, and evolution says that extremely refined order comes out of noise spontaneously. The two are mutually exclusive in a very hard way. The fact that the modern mind needs to believe both, is very profound: to be modern, even rationalist, you have to accept two mutually exclusive things as concurrently true. To pass the initiation rite, you need to sacrifice your independent, "wherever the facts lead" logic. The deeply illogical nature of the particular kind of modern "rationalism" we have today is a core feature...
This is extremely helpful. And if I could write this again, right now, I see 1 million ways to incorporate this most excellent comment.
BTW, Zach, in his response to my original comment, makes an excellent point on how to be sophisticated and not overplay this antithesis between evolution and thermodynamics. But, while respecting all that, we must point out that infinitely complicated things spontaneously springing out of mundane and simple things is NOT what we empirically observe in nature (while thermodynamics is). In fact, the whole debate about AI and consciousness is the same debate at the next level: if life is the spontaneous result of mere inorganic chemistry, then consciousness can equally well be the spontaneous/natural result of arithmetic and boolean operations...
Hi Zach, many thanks for your thoughtful and knowledgeable response. I think I understand what you are saying. Indeed it is possible to kind of justify both evolution and thermodynamics, or at least leave the door open. However, besides evolution, the only known local increase in order in out of equilibrium systems is the development of vortices, shock waves or attractors in chaotic systems. There is no continuum of increasingly complex stuff that could conceivably go up to something like a single cell developing spontaneously even in an out of equilibrium system. So, precisely because I am also trained and working in physics, my personal take on this is that the nominal compatibility of evolution and thermodynamics is a contortion, a stretch, a coping mechanism, and not a sincere treatment of phenomena or a serious development of theory. It is bad science, that in any other case would have been called out. Of course we can always refine the definition of "equilibrium" and "closed" to come up with statements that apply only to very narrow situations -- but the philosophical impact of thermodynamics that the article discusses is precisely that, if it is "true enough" physics, it should eventually apply to the world as we perceive it. Otherwise it is kind of irrelevant to people (the way some particle physics theories are largely irrelevant, because they don't mean anything tangible for the things people perceive). Moreover, good physics has a natural flow to it, you don't need to jump through hoops to explain why newton's first law is not incompatible with the third law... (again this doesn't guarantee that newtonian mechanics is all the way "true", but it does indicate a consistency of the theory with observed facts and with itself).
On one hand, you're right. Evolution can be technically thought to be compatible with a very sanitized, very literal and narrowly applied version of thermodynamics.
But I find this besides the point. In the day to day of science (which I do for a living) we speak a bit more freely and tend to extrapolate a bit when discussing theories. BTW, that's how all scientific theories are created in the first place, by imaginative extrapolation.
Also, I think you may be misunderstanding me: I'm not defending creation or anything like that. I'm defending science, in its basic no nonsense sense of systematic study. If you train yourself to justify acrobatical claims as "technically not completely impossible", next thing you know you don't know what a woman is. Oh wait.
As a working scientist, I am only aware of two claims of a spontaneous emergence of a hugely increasing cascade (virtually infinite) of self organizing complexity out of a simple mechanistic (non alive, non intelligent) background: in evolution, and in the "computational theory of mind" (which is, essentially, evolution but for intelligence, not for life). Not in fluid mechanics, not in chemistry, not in any branch if mathematics, not in quantum mechanics, not in relativity and so on. In all those fields moderately complicated things can and emerge out of very simple settings, but they peak pretty soon, and never reach anything that could claim to stretch to the complexity of a single cell (nevermind an eye or a whole organism). BTW you can quantify complexity for this exercise eg with information theory methods. While it doesn't have the "gotcha" value of "disproving" evolution in one move, it does show that evolution is NOT "just a normal scientific theory, however unlikely some people may find it, like quantum mechanics".
I mean, if it was, I would have zero problem to admit it. But scientifically speaking, it is an aberration and it does require in particular a very uncomfortable explanation of why it really doesn't conflict with thermodynamics. Just like the Pope explained last week that his blessing of gay couples doesn't really conflict with the longstanding position of the catholic church...
I guess if you are smart enough, you can convince yourself of anything...
Best phrase here for me, by far: "Scientifically speaking, it [evolution] is an aberration and it does require in particular a very uncomfortable explanation..." For me, a non-scientist extraordinaire, evolution makes me feel like i'm wearing a hairsuit of old. Like... it just doesn't fit. Is it supposed to not fit? Maybe like an ascetic outfit, it is supposed to bring us back to our senses?
Freedom from what? To do what? Freedom to do the lords work is good. Freedom to do whatever you want isn’t going to turn out well. It seems like it is a bad idea to talk about these things in a theoretical disembodied way.
The Idiot is indeed about a beautiful soul. Years ago, my clinical neuropsychologist told me that neuropsychologists are fascinated by Dostoevsky. He tried to tell me why.
"We think that much of the - ( he was stuck for the moment, then the word came to him ) - weirdness in his novels is there because of his temporal lobe epilepsy." And lovers of The Idiot know that Prince Myshkin is being carried away to invalidism sooner than later because of his own temporal lobe epilepsy.
I'm not a temporal lobe epileptic, but ten years ago, another doctor's error provoked an apparently extraordinary thing in me, a double temporal lobe seizure which may have lasted as long as eighteen hours. It was a wild, extremely rare elongation of an ordinary temporal lobe seizure. I can confirm that Dostoevsky got it exactly as it is, first, the elation, then the seizure, then the post seizure, occasional visitations of dread, which for me took a full year to cease.
Myshkin hasn't got the ability to be anything but an idiot as society would judge people; he's not stupid, but he is guileless, without hate, and wishes only good for those he meets. That is indeed a guaranteed formula to create one of the world's nonstarters.
It's always fascinated me that Myshkin falls in love with the courtesan for reasons he doesn't understand. He just loves her. And so a little Calvinistic election makes its way slyly into this great Russian Orthodox writer's novel.
Your experience is incredible and it offers so much insight for you, that I can’t imagine how Dostoyevsky‘s books must be different when you read them, as opposed to when I read them. Gosh, I’d love to discuss this more as per how you saw the world after the seizure so interesting. So much more to be sad. Thank you for your comment. It’s incredible.
I am definitely banging away! I think the real target is the narrative found in education, the one that is imbibed by young people. Because that narrative is very different from the one you are describing. There is no wonder in it in our education system, it is taught more as the answer to the question. And the question for all young people is, why do I exist. Of course, young people don’t ask it that way, but life is imbibed this way. We are Y creatures. And for so many years now the science narrative is the answer to the question. And I just want to destroy that narrative because it is bad. Like… It is bad. It’s a bad answer. So forgive me because of course, inquiry is beautiful. wonder born out of beautiful questions about the universe, that’s just amazing. But this other thing going on, and that has been going on, and that has been given to us by very smart people with very very bad ontology, that’s got to go!
Brother, re-eadingn a bit, I really like this point you made:The problem with evolution and entropy is not with evolution and entropy per se. The problem is that they arrived in an intellectual time that had already rejected telos, especially one connected with the nature of a thing, one that had rejected a sacramental cosmos, and one that had already embraced a deterministic, materialistic fatalism.
Also... science is never "a problem". I talk like that all the time, and in some ways it is not fair. But in much the same way our education about science generalizes and elevates a simply process into a god, I am trying to tear down that false god of science, and do it using popular teaching about science as a starting point. Science, like Christianity, gets lumped up and jargonized and misunderstood. I get all that. The problem is it is not by chance. It is the problem of sin at play, the problem of ego and pride, and for me those types of problems are best exposed with some humor and a solid dose of subversiveness. A true scientist knows that his experiment is but a flea on a beasts back in the end. His work won't change reality. It simply reveals it (if it is good science). God is reality.