[jjmarr]

I don't get why people hate on post-structuralism.

The process of reality getting abstracted to the point abstractions stop being representative of reality is extremely common in software engineering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

A hyperreal workplace is one where representations of reality take precedence over reality itself, and the reality of a situation ceases to have meaning. i.e. One where people chase metrics for the sake of metrics, instead of understanding that issue count is supposed to reflect the underlying code quality, and code quality should always take priority over the representation.

The broader philosophical context is relevant because it shows the broader cultural problem instead of assuming the issue is limited to a single tool.

[pdonis]

> I don't get why people hate on post-structuralism.

Because, rather than recognize that overdoing abstractions is a thing and reminding people that there is always reality out there that won't bend to your wishes, post-modernism (which is the term the GP used) tells people that there is no reality out there, it's all just human-created abstractions, and anyone who tries to push back because reality is just insufficiently post-modernist.

[orwin]

That's typically _not_ what post-modernism is, that's at best a misunderstanding, but more likely a strawman.

The only point on which all post-modernists agree is a refutation of meta-narratives (and to be explicit: "here is no reality out there, it's all just human-created abstractions" is a meta-narrative).

A very, very charitable interpretation is that you are maybe conflating it with Frankfurt School of critical theory, because it is also somewhat used/based on psychoanalysis (sigh) (latest postmodernists use psychoanalysis way less, also post-modernism isn't built on it, contrary to critical theory). Postmodernism is mostly post-marxism though, while critical theory is mostly neo-marxist imho (also, i don't want to be too critical of Frankfurt's school, i think most of their bad rep is caused by bad vulgarization/pop-science, most critics i read don't seems to understand why it's wrong either).

I do think that the reason most people conflate the two is because of an idiotic canadian psychoanalyst who can't read (or at least, can't understand what he read), who _clearly_ has no degree in literature or philosophy, and try to appear smarter than he is. He invent citations of the books, and sometime state that Derrida mean something when Derrida hismself wrote the opposite. 8th grader would do better and their reading comprehension assignment. He is wrong. Read and think by yourself.

[pdonis]

> That's typically _not_ what post-modernism is

It's not what post-modernists typically say post-modernism is. But I'm not relying on what they say it is. I've read enough post-modernism to form my own opinion.

> Read and think by yourself.

I have. See above.

[orwin]

> It's not what post-modernists typically say post-modernism is

Worse, it's the total opposite of one core tenet of postmodernism. It's very hard for anybody honest to argue that postmodernism has ametanarrative, when the only thing all authors agree with is that metanarratives are to be recognized and refuted.

> I've read enough post-modernism to form my own opinion.

Who did you read? Deleuze? Derrida? Foucault? Baudrillard?

I will always advise people to read Baudrillard first, I think he is somehow misunderstood in the Anglo world, but it might be mistranslations. Then Deleuze, then Lyotard and Foucault as Derrida is too dispersed imho, and way to complex, as imho you have to read his articles where he explain his books, alongside his books [edit: and to be fair I still don't think I really get Derrida, he's very recognized but to me he is very obscure, probably the weakest imho. I also disagree with a lot I understand from him, except his method, so that's might be my priors who prevents me to really getting it].

If anyone would rather read a novel to try to grasp what postmodernism is about, I think "l'Amour" from begaudeau is the latest (100 pages, really short and sweet), and the one that is still in my mind when I think about postmodern materialism.

[pdonis]

> Who did you read?

I've read all of the ones you mention (except for the novel, I haven't read anything by that author).

[orwin]

Where did you get the "there is no reality out there, it's all just human-created abstraction"? Which book exactly? Because I can't remember a single one claiming that. Maybe 'Simulacre et simulation' has a point that's close to this, but it's about consumption and signifiers, and certainly not about 'all'.

I don't think I remember anything from Lyotard about that, he talk mostly about legitimation and fragmentation. Weirdly, the only place I could see him talking about 'all just human-created abstraction' is in his criticism of metanarative (and in this case, replace 'all' by 'metanarative' and it's pretty close, but also very obvious).

Foucault isn't a postmodernist (he predate them), but he might have talked about that, I remember him talking about objective truth not existing, but it was in the context of words' meanings, and while a Canadian dumbshit took his words outside of its context, it's quite clear it's not about the physical world, but about meaning. Said Canadian proved him somewhat right by misquoting him on purpose. Also it's clear he lacked Wittgenstein's insights on how we describe reality , I would have loved to read Foucault with analytical philosophy insights.

Derrida, I don't know tbh, I don't think anybody but himself understands him, but I do not remember him writing about anything but art or philosophy.

[watwut]

> It's not what post-modernists typically say post-modernism is. But I'm not relying on what they say it is. I've read enough post-modernism to form my own opinion.

You are relying what someone who earns money from making people angry about postmodernism say it is. Outrage culture and addiction.

Generally when you want to know what postmodernism is, you should read what postmodernists say. And if you want to know what nazism is, you should include readings of nazists.

[pdonis]

> you should read what postmodernists say

Which is exactly what I did, as I explicitly said in my post. I just don't rely on what they say postmodernism is, as authoritative about what postmodernism actually is. Reading what people say is not the same as accepting what they say at face value.

[Solololo]

Who did you read?

[Log_out_]

Come on,you goto fill his/her plotholes else your evil. Remember its not an ism,if its about who can outshout reality the loudest.

[squigz]

This doesn't seem to actually address any of what GP said

[Spooky23]

You need to learn to game it. People care about this stuff are usually stupid. When I led a large support organization I had an SVP who really cared about open incident duration.

His pattern for giving a fuck was predictable. My strategy was to hold certain tickets in an undead state (not impacting the metric), then reopen them and close them, demonstrating a metric improvement.

He got his improvement and big shot street cred, users weren’t impacted, and I didn’t have to ruin support to try to grind out small gains.

[nunez]

It's less stupidity and more "if we don't prove that we meet x control in y compliance framework, our auditors will deem us non-compliant and we will be fined into oblivion"

[Spooky23]

Or “my bonus depends on metric x being above y”

Smart leaders know how to balance it. The stupid work to rule

[ocodo]

I mean, it's still stupidity, but it's upstream stupidity with the ability to punish.

So, snafu.

[TSP00N3]

I think rather than calling it post structuralism or hyper reality, we can just look at goodharts law[0] for the general understanding that metrics cease to be useful when they become the thing that leadership looks at. Like Spooky23 and others are saying in other comments, once you learn that it’s all a game you can use it to your advantage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law

[OJFord]

Whenever I want to feel completely stupid, I just open a Wikipedia page on some philosophical term/idea and go down a rabbit hole of links that it's a concept in/argument against/etc.

Just completely impenetrably baffling to me in a way that other fields like chemistry or microbiology or physics or whatever (despite also not being my own) aren't. Not that I understand them, but they're penetrable, I can read more and more and form some kind of understanding.

Is it just me? I don't know what it is, can it really be as simple as philosophy not being taught at school (compulsorily, or young) so I don't have that kind of rough overview of the landscape I do for other broad subjects? (I did take one course in 'contemporary philosophy' at university, which I enjoyed, but we covered only what we covered I suppose - I might be able to hold a (very) basic conversation about Sartre or Wittgenstein, but that page on post-structuralism.. no idea!)

[Solololo]

It can be a grand number of things, but lack of the highschool curriculum is unlikely to be one of them, in my opinion. Rest assured, you're far from the only one struggling, I'd say most people I've encountered in academic philosophy tend to struggle a tad more with it than (their) other fields of studies. It is what it is, really, it sort of comes with the territory.

Of course there are just some that are less accessible than others, due to writing style or size of their philosophical project (Hegel is an example of both of those qualities). A lot of French philosophy since the second world war, Baudrillard being no exception, is generally characterized as such as well amongst the anglo audience, although I don't think that this is entirely fair.

I'd say the best thing you can do is never attempt to understand it through Wikipedia, but pick up a full book instead and read it a second time if the argument doesn't make sense the first time. Of course there are some authors I would avoid as a beginner, but someone like Kant is fine for even your first philosopher, and is amongst the biggest names in modern philosophy. Prolegomena and Critique of Pure Reason are two books of his about the same thing written in two opposite ways, the former from easy to difficult, the latter vice versa, I always recommend those.

Sartre and Wittgenstein are both somewhat odd for a contemporary philosophy course. I'm curious why they chose that arrangement. Nevertheless, being able to hold a conversation about either of them is already quite solid, plus you get three philosophers for the price of two! :)

[_dain_]

you aren't stupid. philosophers forgot how to write clearly sometime in the past century.

[orwin]

Most modern philosophers papers are 5 to 20 pages long and are mostly understandable, more than a particle physics abstract at least, you should try:

- https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/9/177... (it's about rationality, it changed the way in manage my emotions and made me question my consciousness, which in the end made me stop alcohol)

- https://philpapers.org/archive/KAMCYB.pdf which made me realize an intuition i had sonce reading the first book (i think the writing is better and clearer, but it might be because the author isn't USian/english and doesn't try to much)

- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-018-02071-y (i noticed my access wasn't revoked, it's been 4 year since i've stopped working for an institution. Hopefully you have an access too, else you might find it on scihub)

[roenxi]

More than likely it is "just you", the page on post-structuralism seems clear enough to me (as far as I can tell, the post-structuralists are criticising structuralism because they don't think the structures are sufficiently powerful). What that means in detail is unclear - understanding a position and thinking it is obviously silly is a completely valid stance when dealing with philosophers. Or just having no interest in the questions philosophers often ask (for example, if structuralism seems to be fundamentally invalid then bothering to take a post-structuralist stance to criticise it it requires a certain type of pedantic and argumentative mind). Or the easy explanation which is misunderstanding [0].

I liked the Barthes example on the post-structuralist page - if a text's author doesn't necessarily have the authority to assert the meaning of a text, then the idea that they text is necessarily part of some identifiable structure is open to question. I assume that means that the same text might fit into multiple contexts with different meanings and trying to fit it with one static meaning based on its initial context is doomed, and that suggests structuralist critique is either insufficient or overly reductive.

[0] Although arguably all of philosophy is people misunderstanding each other; otherwise it may as well be a settled field.

[marcus0x62]

> More than likely it is "just you", the page on post-structuralism seems clear enough to me ... > What that means in detail is unclear

So the article is clear in describing an idea, the meaning of which is unclear to you?

[roenxi]

Ah, sorry. The intended parsing turned out badly. That is meant to be "More than likely it is "just you". What that means in detail is unclear." Ie, what it means for it to be "just him" is not clear.

In hindsight I like the irony that the statement was also unclear, for all that it doesn't do my comment any favours.

[financltravsty]

Philosophy is mostly wordcellery.

Hard sciences are shape rotation.

One is basically stochastic parottism, and the other is dealing with reality.

Philosophy has no end-game or practical applications. You can make anything up, and so long as enough souls latch onto it via pattern recognition, you have achieved memetic reproduction.

With hard sciences, you can talk all you want, but if your hypotheses are consistently disproven, only the untrained and deranged will latch onto your ideas.

There is nothing to penetrate in philosophy. It's not a reflection of reality, but a reflection of the people it captivates.

It's very little different than music, or any other sort of entertainment. Dare I call it an art. In that case, I would say its recent interpretations are lacking.

A personal aside: much of this era's approach to philosophy reminds me of Fabianism -- wretched, cowardly, and completely superfluous to living an integrated life.

[Solololo]

For Baudrillard specifically, The Matrix is of course to blame ;)