Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 332

Thanks for the Byung-Chul Han recommendation. Is this guy a comedian?

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/topology-violence

That's one of the most pretentious blurbs i've ever read (book title is pretty lol as well).

Edit: Well i got curious and read the first chapter. I wonder what the medical profession would make of this gibberish he's writing about ADHD, depression, ect?

On July 18 2022 07:37 Stroggoz wrote: Thanks for the Byung-Chul Han recommendation. Is this guy a comedian? https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/topology-violence That's one of the most pretentious blurbs i've ever read (book title is pretty lol as well). Edit: Well i got curious and read the first chapter. I wonder what the medical profession would make of this gibberish he's writing about ADHD, depression, ect?

The blurb probably isn't his fault.

I've found his writing on depression to be incredibly insightful.

I'm not that surprised. Pretty sure you give no respect to any continental philosophy and maybe culture theorists as well.

I give about as much respect to Byung Chul Han as he deserves, which is zero. This guy's book is riddled with concepts from topology all throughout the book (interior, exterior, transformation). He clearly just either opened a book on it or read the topology wiki page and put them in, but he has no understanding of topology. Not even an intuitive one.

I'm contradicting myself, but no one has ever "read" this guys book, because to read means to understand. Like, i'm not perfect. I remember when i was 12 i told my friends i understood a david lynch movie so i could seem smarter. But there comes a time where you gotta grow out of such behavior.

Open up the book and most of it is like the blurb. There's a few things here and there that make sense, like his comments on violence in Greece. All science books can be downloaded for free from library genesis.

I actually had a bit of respect for Henry Giroux because i made it pretty far through his work before i had to put it down. Also Foucoult was alright, well, before i found out that he molested third world children i respected him a lot more. Lol.

You also chose in my opinion his worst book.

Read Burnout Society, Psychopolitics, or Into The Swarm.

from Burnout Society, i got 3 pages in:

"The immunologically organized world possesses a particular topology. It is marked by
borders, transitions, thresholds, fences, ditches, and walls that pre-
vent universal change and exchange."

More nonsensical statements about topology. Though what is more worrying is that I had to look up what positivity ratio is and apparently most psychologists / medical experts think its a long debunked pseudoscience. I'm not sure whos right, of course. Just that it's a sign that this guy may not care about spreading medical misinformation (or misunderstanding?)

"Because Otherness is disappearing, we live in
a time that is poor in negativity. And so, the neuronal illnesses of
the twenty-first century follow a dialectic: not the dialectic of neg-
ativity, but that of positivity. They are pathological conditions
deriving from an excess of positivity"

edit: critical positivity ratio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_positivity_ratio

I am ok with being that person that is unbearable to watch movies with because they point out every flaw. I takes a lot of effort to restrain myself.

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This here on p7 is straight misinformation.

"Depression, ADHD, and burnout syndrome
point to excess positivity. Burnout syndrome occurs when the ego
overheats, which follows from too much of the Same. The hyper in
hyperactivity is not an immunological category. It represents the
massification of the positive"

People don't have ADHD from excessively positive emotions. Burnout happens when you overwork yourself. The reason for overworking yourself vary a lot for each person.

He's not referring to positive versus negative emotions (though there is something to say about that, e.g. the positive thinking movement could only exist in a society with an excess of positivity, a society that idolizes self-achievement through work). He's referring to the presence or absence of things that affect the ego and its orientation in the world. Positivity is self-referential/self-obsessive/over-stimulating, it reinforces the ego. Negativity weakens it. Negativity is slow, contemplative, other-regarding activity, or something that directly attacks the self and chips away at it. He's saying the increase in these specific psychological disorders is a sign that our society makes us increasingly self-centered and narcissistic, that the human being is not naturally inclined to be adapted to living in a competitive capitalistic society devoid of strong communal bonds that are other-regarding, and without stable, consistent periods of rest.

The people I've had closest to me in my life have had burnout syndrome and ADHD diagnoses and personality disorders and I can tell you that this is 100% the case. Their interest for me, for art, for philosophy, or for the world, is almost non-existent. The obsession with themselves, their status, their performance, makes space for little on the side of contemplation. Instead of living with Socrates's dictum "know thyself" or "the unexamined life isn't worth living", they compulsively do the opposite. The ancient Greeks would consider such people slaves. BCH says they are not just slaves, but slaves who tend to think they are the masters, and in truth they are both slave and master in one, because they have the freedom to exploit themselves. This is what makes neoliberalism so resilient, and activism appearing so futile.

From a medical perspective, he's using virology and I can't remember exactly what he says (I read that book 4+ years ago) but you can also use auto-immune diseases as an example of excess positivity. The body is receiving too much of something rather than less, and it attacks itself as a result. They are diseases of affluence if we look at where/when they occur. In fact, it's recognized for some auto-immune diseases like Crohn's or UC that fasting (when done safely) is healing for the body, and dietary restrictions or intermittent fasting are the most commonly used practices aside from medications. But if I remember correctly, he was saying that people suffer less nowadays from things that attack them on the outside than they do from things that attack them on the inside, i.e themselves or what they have internalized from covert power acting upon them, and that this marked an historical shift. If we set an event like the pandemic aside, that seems obviously true. A lot of this is a natural extension of Deleuze's work, some of which was criticism of Foucault's work, especially in his "Postscript on the Societies of Control".

The language that he uses, like the French theorists that Chomsky despised, has to be understood in its context, based on his influences, with a lack of rigidity to allow for occasional artistic/poetic expression. If you have never read his influences, you will not be able to understand much out of it, and indeed it will be more irritating than anything else. And when you're so "left-brained", i.e. rigidly analytical/science-minded, you're not going to have an interest in continental philosophy as a whole, so it's not a problem of Han specifically being a "bad writer". You've said more or less the same things about Nietzsche and your complete lack of interest of him despite the fact that he is widely recognized as one of the greatest philosophers. It is not that hard to set some things aside and look for the meaning beyond the words or just disagree with it and move on to the rest of the text for most people. BCH openly says that he practices philosophy as art, which is very Nietzschean, and not everyone's cup of tea.

I think Burnout Society is especially not a good book for people like you because it's the one that is heaviest in the type of offending/science-y language. He has books that make no references like this, where he'll focus on the effects of big data or smartphones, for instance. A lot of it is just fairly straight-forward phenomenological work, with few references to scientific works. I think he has a Zen Buddhist background also and that from this he has a tendency to write things very succinctly, matter-of-factly, instead of elaborating. It's something I'm fine with because I've always enjoyed aphorisms, I like to be able to create the argument in my mind instead of read it, but it's also not suitable to the strong analytical types. That said, I think aside from maybe one or two essays of his, I would have sooner recommended him to whammbot than to you Stroggoz.

'forgive me Stroggoz san, I would have sooner recommended him to whammbot than you sempai, yamedete kudasai UwU <3"


Not gonna lie, I like this based Loco femoboy buff tsundere waifu phase.

Lol, i'm not fighting anyone here.

---

There's no link between ADHD and any of the things you mention (self obsession, performance driven obsession, status anxiety, and lack of self reflection or interest in philosophy). If he's actually claiming that, and i doubt he is since it's all poetry anyway, then that's just misinformation.

There's no reason to believe more people have ADHD now than they did 30 years ago even if diagnosis's had increased 100x fold. That kind of data says something but it doesn't say ADHD has gone up or not. Increased mental illness probably does have a strong correlation with neoliberalism though, if we are to associate neoliberalism with tech monopolies and massive inequality. Sure, that's fine.

I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to poetry and art than just using gibberish sentences like this as well. There has to be a good aesthetic form to it. I don't see it here, but w/e.

L0C0

On July 19 2022 10:18 Stroggoz wrote: Lol, i'm not fighting anyone here. --- There's no link between ADHD and any of the things you mention (self obsession, performance driven obsession, status anxiety, and lack of self reflection or interest in philosophy). If he's actually claiming that, and i doubt he is since it's all poetry anyway, then that's just misinformation.

Relatively recently I was dating someone who was diagnosed with ADHD. Aside from reading a couple books by MDs on the condition to better be able to understand her, I spent close to a year reading stories on https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD_partners/. That is not the gold standard for data but it is the equivalent of surveys with people who know ADHD best; those who live with it, who often have their lives ruined by it. I can tell you with 100% certainty that the people who have been intimate with ADHDers will have this as one of their most common criticisms of them: they are obsessed with themselves, struggle with self-reflection and the ability to understand the consequences of their actions on others. They are driven by compulsion a lot of the time. I mean, ok, you're a data guy. You know what percentage of the prison population has ADHD or would be diagnosed with ADHD if they were tested? Look for that stat. Extrapolate from that. How about traffic accidents of those with ADHD versus the general population? Also look at the co-morbidity rates of ADHD with depression and anxiety disorders.

Gabor Maté is known for his writings on mental illness and he has a whole book dedicated to ADHD. He's had it since youth, and in fact all of his family members have it, including his son activist that you know. He has a chapter where I remember him mentioning narcissism inherent to the condition. As a medical doctor who was serving people he still had this to say about himself, about the effects of "masking" to fit in: "I have also often behaved with narcissistic self-regard. The more the core self—the deepest impulses—is suppressed, the more compulsive are the attempts to compensate by satisfying superficial, infantile, instant-gratification impulses and desires."

There's no reason to believe more people have ADHD now than they did 30 years ago even if diagnosis's had increased 100x fold. That kind of data says something but it doesn't say ADHD has gone up or not. Increased mental illness probably does have a strong correlation with neoliberalism though, if we are to associate neoliberalism with tech monopolies and massive inequality. Sure, that's fine.

There is a part in Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" that has stuck with me:



"The first of the seven famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas took place on August 21, 1858, in Ottowa, Illinois. Their arrangement provided that Douglas would speak first, for one hour; Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply; Douglas, a half hour to rebut Lincoln’s reply. This debate was considerably shorter than those to which the two men were accustomed. In fact, they had tangled several times before, and all of their encounters had been much lengthier and more exhausting. For example, on October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois, Douglas delivered a three-hour address to which Lincoln, by agreement, was to respond. When Lincoln’s turn came, he reminded the audience that it was already 5 p.m., that he would probably require as much time as Douglas and that Douglas was still scheduled for a rebuttal. He proposed, therefore, that the audience go home, have dinner, and return refreshed for four more hours of talk. 1 The audience amiably agreed, and matters proceeded as Lincoln had outlined.

What kind of audience was this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully accommodate themselves to seven hours of oratory? It should be noted, by the way, that Lincoln and Douglas were not presidential candidates; at the time of their encounter in Peoria they were not even candidates for the United States Senate. But their audiences were not especially concerned with their official status. These were people who regarded such events as essential to their political education, who took them to be an integral part of their social lives, and who were quite accustomed to extended oratorical performances. Typically at county or state fairs, programs included many speakers, most of whom were allotted three hours for their arguments. And since it was preferred that speakers not go unanswered, their opponents were allotted an equal length of time."

Is this conceivable of today? Postman asks that question after, except he asked it in 1985:

For one thing, its attention span would obviously have been extraordinary by current standards. Is there any audience of Americans today who could endure seven hours of talk? or five? or three? Especially without pictures of any kind? Second, these audiences must have had an equally extraordinary capacity to comprehend lengthy and complex sentences aurally. In Douglas’ Qttowa speech he included in his one-hour address three long, legally phrased resolutions of the Abolition platform. Lincoln, in his reply, read even longer passages from a published speech he had delivered on a previous occasion.

How much did people's attention spans suffer since 1985, where he was already noting a big difference? There's data on this too which is not great. Is lower attention span not correlated with an increase in compulsive, self-regarding behavior? Surely it is. Not everyone who can't pay attention like these people did would be diagnosed with ADHD of course, but the ADHD-like behaviors are there, and they have only gone up.

Loco u try so damn hard 2 sound smart but all the ppl think ur dum

On July 19 2022 19:33 hiems wrote: Loco u try so damn hard 2 sound smart but all the ppl think ur dum

I'm trying hard to impress you because I secretly want your 4 inch dick up my pooper

On July 19 2022 22:21 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On July 19 2022 19:33 hiems wrote: Loco u try so damn hard 2 sound smart but all the ppl think ur dum I'm trying hard to impress you because I secretly want your 4 inch dick up my pooper

I know two liquidpoker members who have ADHD. Me and Byrnesam. I know quite a few others. So if we are simply going off personal anecdotes, it hasn't been true from my experience that people with ADHD are self obsessed or struggle with self reflection any more than the average person. This is not any real evidence, but it's just suprising to me that you and I have completely different data gathered from personal experience.

The problem with these subreddits is that they often just places for people to rant and talk about everything that is shit with their lives. So they go on the subreddit that they use and have a good old rant about how their adhd partner did X, where X isn't something that is associated with ADHD, it's something associated with being a douchebag. That's my impression of them anyway

I wouldn't be too surprised about the data on car crashes or incarceration. Yes, attention spans have definitely been declining over the years and someone has to live in a cave not to notice it. It's hard to say whether that could be associated with ADHD or not though. A lot of ADHD'ers tend to say they oscillate between extreme focus and uninterest in something and can't really control it very well.

Oftentimes it's impossible to separate the "being a douchebag" part with the ADHD part, because the ADHD leads to impulsive behaviors and emotional dysregulation. When you can't regulate your emotions and you can't think before you act, you do stupid things, sometimes dangerous things, and sometimes they affect other people, like when you drive recklessly, or like if you are married and sharing the same bank account and your priority was buying a bunch of stuff in a game when rent is due next month and that was all the money you both had. These stories are extremely common, and they can be found in general surveys about living with people with ADHD. Children with ADHD are very well known to struggle to make friends because of their impulsivity, but the same is true for the adults struggling to maintain real life relationships. Usually the line is drawn at abuse - abuse is said to not be a part of ADHD, but it can make it a lot easier to be abusive when you have ADHD (using manipulation to avoid feelings of shame or guilt or to get what you want, just as it is seen in children, is present in adults. Oftentimes it's unconscious, such as not being able to remember having done something bad/irritating, so they won't apologize for it). If we look at the prison population (by definition people with anti-social traits that got them in trouble with the law) being overwhelmingly represented by individuals with ADHD, we can confirm that the propensity towards abuse (an anti-social behavior) is higher. This has been confirmed in my relationships with at least 5 people with ADHD. These issues are not necessarily present or visible when you have a casual relationship, but the closer you get to them, the more you will experience them.

The hyperfocus part that might serve you very well when you are studying or playing poker is not serving you very well when you have intimate relationships with others and you can't bring yourself to be interested in what they have to say, since you are hyper-focused on your own thoughts and interests, and patience isn't exactly your top virtue. (I would say your elitist views and lack of patience when it comes to the philosophy you aren't familiar with is a fitting example). There's also often extreme sensitivity to criticism in those with ADHD which can make other people feel like they are walking on eggshells and constructive criticism not being heard/taken seriously.

I'm not only referring to places that exist for people to vent, but the general feedback seen in surveys, such as those found in Gina Pera's book. Couple examples:





Yes, online support groups are biased towards the negative, but obviously that doesn't make the reason that the users need a support group any less significant. Alcoholism is no less of a problem just because you can find positive drunk stories too. But the balance of the evidence is that it's destructive when untreated, and the same is true of ADHD. A lot of people in those support groups have been there for years, just like any other support group. It goes well beyond the normal need to vent about your partner's quirks or faults if you find yourself needing a support group.

So you have/had a shitty GF Loco?

Obviously. Had, yes.

Also took a personal example; I was on the right side here



Also my brother is diagnosed with ADHD and this is a perfectly normal driving habit for him at 39 years old