Monday, December 20, 2021

Republic Book 6, All Sections

"The good philosophers he sees around him, Adeimantus says, are worthless to the society they live in, and the bad philosophers are rogues."

Is that because they're not logiomancers, or is that because Adeimantus is blind to long-term consquences? Ideas matter.  

"To the surprise of the auditors, Socrates concedes to Adeimantus' statement."

Ah. Not logiomancers. 

"So of course such a society, such a public, has no use for a good philosopher."

"In fact, in a bad society, the more intelligent a young philosopher is, the more attractive he becomes to people who want to use him, and the more such people corrupt him."

Rather, the more intelligent a young scholar is, the more likely he is to realize the rewards of truth are minimal or negative, and thus take up a parasitic disposition. 


"At the same time, although good philosophers are useless to a bad state (Plato's view of his society)"

In reality being a philosopher - being especially wise, I mean - in a bad state is especially profitable. The bigger the delta between general wisdom and your wisdom, the more easily you can prey on the surrounding society. Further, the less honourable your society, the less reason there is to attempt to cooperate with it. Become wise, because that's a good in itself; exploit the wisdom for predatory purposes, because that's delicious. 

"Or the day may come when a ruler in political power might become a philosopher."

...and you can turn your powers back toward justice.


--


"Socrates adamantly denies that he can identify a single state at the time of this dialogue that might prove fruitful for the growth of a philosopher-ruler; he says that, because of his environment (the society in which he finds himself), the naturally good, budding philosopher becomes warped."

Yeah. 

It's normal for States to be so unjust that heavenly wrath is inevitable. They are already doomed, such that any attempt to fix them at best delays the inevitable and gets the heavens pissed off at you too.


"But intelligent people may be intemperate and unreliable, and they may lack courage. Reliable people, conversely, are often indolent and bored when facing intellectual tasks; such people are often ignorant and may be stupid."

Even in ancient times it was well-known that virtues are common but combinations of virtues in one person are rare. Have to multiply the probabilities. 20%*20% = 4%. 


"Socrates then says that he will not precisely define Goodness"

Plato then admits he has no bloody idea what he's talking about and doesn't intend to. 

Goodness is an event which satisfies a conscious agent's values. Eat it, bottom bitch.


"Analogy of the Sun."

It's shit. 

You'll find a thing can be [good] even if it's not true; however, it will tend to conflict with other [good] things more than not. Dissonant, rather than harmonious. 

 

"The Analogy of the Divided Line"

It's real shit.

Moderns produce the same sort of nonsense when they try to think about programming data. They like to pretend that human prejudices really exist in the underlying physics. So, narcissism. 

Admittedly it may be necessary to study consciousness to understanding before you can really grapple with definitions. Nevertheless, it's still important to start with a list of things you've seen it doing, rather than start with some weirdo abstract model malarkey.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was a pretty big scientific revolution that pissed a bunch of people off when they proved that animals don't have an internal model of the world.

People hate it when you point out that, yeeesss, Nietzsche is right and you killed God, but noooooo this doesn't automatically make you into one.

>but you have to take responsibility for that
BUT NO

Repeat ad nauseum about literally every topic.

>Theres some evidence that a ketogenic diet may make your cancer go into remission
So, no icecream?
>No icecream, OR cookies
See you guys on the other side.

>"At the same time, although good philosophers are useless to a bad state (Plato's view of his society)
Plato whining that he isn't worshipped as a God because he had the good fortune to be allowed the time to sit and think.

And has the additional nerve to shit on the people who built his cozy house and feed him cozy food regularly.

Alrenous said...

I had a little chat and learned that while gods can start religions, it's unhealthy.

The simplified explanation is that mortals end up misunderstanding the god because they're dumb, and then their worship of the false idol corrupts the real god, because it's not the same but it's too close to dodge. The intent to worship the now-corrupt god gives the god spiritual influence over the religion, corrupting it further, whereupon the mortals misunderstand some more...

Basically proselytizing is a sin even if you're a divine spirit. Yeshua should have quietly kept to himself. It's a toss-up whether he even should have mentioned anything special to his closest friends.

The fun part comes when you realize it's extremely natural, Darwinian even, for mortals to worship something. But...if they worship something that straight-up doesn't exist, it's going to be/come Satan...