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1. 🌲Hidden🌲 (hidden@cawfee.club)'s status on Sunday, 23-Apr-2023 21:58:30 JST 🌲Hidden🌲

   • mist
   @ai can you confirm or deny?
   • mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Sunday, 23-Apr-2023 21:58:27 JST mist

     in reply to

     • Hyolobrika
     • diceynes
     @Hyolobrika @hidden @diceynes
     I'm being at least a little facetious. I don't think those ideologies are completely worthless. They served a purpose, historically, when the church *was* the totalitarian state and science was just getting started.
     
     My one criticism is that it's depressing to define yourself solely negatively - in opposition to something - rather than positively. I was very depressed for a while, partly because of my worldview.
     
     The point of science cannot merely be falsification. The point of living cannot merely be freedom. The point of thinking cannot merely be skepticism. Those things are important, but (for me) they are not enough.
     Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think: likes this.
   • hyolobrika@berserker.town's status on Sunday, 23-Apr-2023 21:58:28 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to

     • mist
     • diceynes

     @ai
     Unless you're being facetious?
     I think I can't tell when people are joking very well.
     @hidden @diceynes

   • mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Sunday, 23-Apr-2023 21:58:29 JST mist

     in reply to

     • mist
     • diceynes
     @hidden @diceynes
     Note that, in the Korean student's last sentence, he is basically saying "it is an insult to even ask for a definition (or a justification?) of college education." This reminds me of lots of fights I got into with my parents, when I was a snotty little r/atheism euphoric Popper-worshipping Anglo-brained empiricist. They are NOT at all receptive to questions like, "but WHY should I respect my teacher [even if they are stupid]?"
   • hyolobrika@berserker.town's status on Sunday, 23-Apr-2023 21:58:29 JST Hyolobrika

     in reply to

     • mist
     • diceynes

     @ai
     >when I was a snotty little r/atheism euphoric Popper-worshipping Anglo-brained empiricist
     And now you're what? Broken and submissive to authority?
     @hidden @diceynes

   • mist (ai@cawfee.club)'s status on Sunday, 23-Apr-2023 21:58:30 JST mist

     in reply to

     • diceynes
     @hidden I'm not qualified to comment because I haven't read any "rhetoric" in Chinese, such as high school essays which is what they are talking about.
     
     I'll comment anyways :)
     
     The one Oriental example is from a Korean student (pic 1). The paper notes that the student is able to think abstractly and logically (in the Anglo way), because he's a math major (pic 2). So why does his "definition" not read like one?
     
     What jumps out to *me* is that the student is answering an "ought" instead of an "is". He is trying to explain why college education is "good", why "should" it exist. The Asian tendency to conflate morality with fact has been a bane in my own life. You see the same tendency with hardline conservatives - just ask any poastie to define "transgender."
     
     Another feature is the "grand" scale of the writing. It sounds absurd to our Western ears - for a definition of college education to venture into the origin of mankind, of civilization, of heaven and hell. The paper questions whether the student has any abstraction ability, but I'd say that he has too much (by Western standards)! This is the "inherent spirituality" of Asians which @diceynes talks about.
     
     Often, when talking with Chinese people about technical or philosophical things, I feel like they make a lot more connections than are rigorously justified. I'm not saying they are right or wrong. Disparate ideas seem to "snap together" more easily in a Chinese worldview.
     
     So I disagree with the paper. I don't think a "spiral" or "widening gyre" is typical of Asian thinking. That implies a kind of periodicity which I've never seen in thinking, although it is prominent in religion. The picture that instead comes to mind is the fediverse logo (pic 3).
     
     A related feature of Chinese rhetoric is that allusions to proverbs are extremely common. In contrast, English rhetoric is more self-contained - or think of math, where every proposition must be justified from a limited set of axioms. This feature, drawn to an extreme, is illustrated in the famous star trek episode Darmok.