I swear The Selfish Gene by Dawkins did irreparable harm to a huge cohort of smartdumb psychos.
'I bought two plants from the garden centre. When I got home I repotted one in the right compost, put it on the windowsill and watered it. The other I bunged in the airing cupbord and it died. Guess the first one just had stronger genes.'
Calvin and Hobbes and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Not Bill Watterson, though. He's a national treasure.
This isn't even a hard determinism argument - it's genetic determinism. A hard determinist wouldn't argue that changing an individual's environment to one that has a support network is pointless, they'd just argue that whether you do or don't wasn't really your choice
Yeah I don't think determinism is the problem. I'm a determinist, and I see it as fundamental to my leftist perspective - like it is the foundation to my conception that people deserve human compassion because they didn't choose their lives.
Also last I checked Dennet isn't a really determinist, he's a compatibilist
Dennett is definitely a compatibilist. When he says that consciousness is an illusion, he means that there's no real pattern that corresponds to our folk psychological notion of qualia (ineffable, incorrigible, private, etc.). Mentality more broadly is real for him in virtue of their being a predictive stance we can take that uses it as an assumption and generates good (in the information theoretic sense) predictions.
His argument against qualia is dumb though. Hard problem remains uncracked.
I don't exactly think it's dumb, but I do think it's wrong.
I could go into my opinion that determinism, if true, doesn’t necessarily have helpful or useful application when it comes to improving society somewhat.
This is where I land too. I do think the universe is deterministic but like, okay? Then what? I still have to live my life as if it isn’t.
Same goes for the “are we living in a simulation” thing. I’m pretty convinced by the math argument, I think it makes more sense that this reality is a nested one rather than the top level one. But until someone can give me cheat codes to break the simulation it impacts my life exactly not at all.
There’s functionally no difference to me if my molecules are made up of atoms and quarks or 1s and 0s, I still need to eat and sleep.
His genes played the main role. The rest is scenery. You impede solutions by hallucinating they exist.
reminder that genetic determinism is the ideology of worthless nazi failsons, like Donald Trump who have no real accomplishments to demonstrate their virtue.
As a victim of childhood neglect who still has trauma as an adult because of it, this makes me very, very sad.
Blaming a fucking child because you are too neglectful to help them when they need it the most should be an instant gulag for the parent. Especially if that parent is wealthy enough to afford to put them through therapy.
There is nothing more cowardly than an adult that ignores obvious signs of distress in a child and then proclaims there was nothing they could do to save them. Absolutly vile level of cope and a sick way of blaming a victim.
Particularly gross is the assumption that violence is genetic rather then environmental. Anything to avoid taking responsibility, right?
Weirdly misandrist imo. Didn't anyone tell him that right-wing grifters are supposed to pander to young men?
I still can't believe this is the guy who wrote a fairly unobjectionable boomer comic about IT workers.
Yeah, isn't the comic kind of about how the boss sucks, doesn't know what he is doing, corporate culture is bullshit, and stuff like that?
This man still fucking questions why he was kicked out of all the papers when he's spewing these views into the public.
So firmly committed to the belief that there is nothing more he could have done to help his stepson that he's making a political program out of it.
This is misogyny that is so fucking :grillman: boomer-brained that I don't know whether he thinks he is making a serious, intellectual and logically sound point, or he is trying for open mic at a bad standup-club.
:warf-wtf: is he saying he wants to r*** farm animals? :what-the-hell:
I'm pretty sure he's referring to "local women" as farm animals.
No, I read it as trying to absolve someone/themselves for practicing polygamy or cheating on their spouse via "in the past if your ***** wife had a headache your only option was to go out back and fuck a goat, so monogamy was easier. Nowadays you just find someone online to fuck so monogamy is basically impossible."
difficult but possible
Surviving capitalist holocausts is possible you idiot slaves
He should of stuck to drawing Dilbert. :rust-darkness:
Edit: He's doubled down on this fake genetic determinism, religiously, because he couldn't confront the possibility that he killed his stepson. "If it all starts at the genes, I'm not to blame", a horrible stepfather would say this. He wants to believe he chose #1 but he chose #2
Edit2: some funny reply guys there that GOT👏HIS👏ASS
What the fuck am I reading what the fuck am I reading WHAT THE FUCK AM I READING
Could it be that the way I was raised, and the way I raised my step-son, was abusive, neglectful and unloving? Could I, as the main character in this story, possibly have made serious mistakes leading to the death of my step-son?
No, it was the genetics that were wrong.
society
soulless neoliberals: "we do not live in a society, we are individuals who make rational choices in the free market. We need to destroy the Stalinist state for trying to ruin my Randian satanic libertarian cathedral!"
The Current Affairs writeup on his descent from Boomerism to Trumpism was pretty good.
