The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out

[9thdoctor]

And Shayne must not be doing well, if he's reduced to posting at SOLOP where all he can stir up is Perigo, Claudia, Gregster, cobwebs, and dust bunnies.

I don't think he was banned, but I took part in his last discussion here, about the stock market, and what a beating he took for his utter ignorance. He ought to be too embarrassed to show his face, and remembering what he's like, I say that's a good thing. He should fit in well over at the SLOP trough.

[caroljane]

Since I would rather live on turnips for a week than read this book I should not comment, but of course I will.

It reminds me of nothing so much as the masterwork of Casaubon in Eliot's Middlemarch,THE KEY TO ALL MYTHOLOGIES" .

In the novel, his idealistic young wife thirsts to help him complete his toweringly revelatory tome. But try as she might, she finds only dust and dead ends and piles of erudition with no point to make.

Perigo, who can turn a phrase, called it "turning politics into algebra".

It must have been a fun, absorbing exercise. Leonard has said it was the only book he enjoyed writing,

As they say, hard writing makes easy reading, and vice versa.

[caroljane]

And Shayne must not be doing well, if he's reduced to posting at SOLOP where all he can stir up is Perigo, Claudia, Gregster, cobwebs, and dust bunnies.

I don't think he was banned, but I took part in his last discussion here, about the stock market, and what a beating he took for his utter ignorance. He ought to be too embarrassed to show his face, and remembering what he's like, I say that's a good thing. He should fit in well over at the SLOP trough.

Whatever he said he does not deserve to share space with the likes of Doug Bandler. At first I thought Bandler was satirising but he seems to be serious. it is like reading Breivik before he amassed all his weaponry.This guy is not right in the head. But everyone seems to treat him seriously.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne isn't banned or even moderated.

I like Shayne, but he comes and goes at his own pleasure.

I always tell people that in terms of posting or staying away, what they find best for themselves is best for OL. The people who are here want to be. All of them. They are not coaxed into it.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I'm free to leave?

I had no idea.

Why didn't somebody tell me years ago!!???

Sob.

--Brant

too late now--I can't make it on the outside--not at my age

[Robert Campbell]

Brant,

You didn't know you could leave?

As the man in the white coat said, "The experiment must go on."

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

As far as I've been able to tell, Doug Bandler is completely serious. Which is indeed kind of scary.

Whatever his past quarrels with folks at OL, Shayne Wissler does not deserve the company of Gregster, Claudia, Bandler, Perigo, and whoever else remains in that miserable crew.

Shayne, you hear that? You'll get a much more sympathetic response to your critique over here.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

You didn't know you could leave?

As the man in the white coat said, "The experiment must go on."

Robert Campbell

Ah, the famous Stanley Milgram authority vs electricity experiment.

When I was discharged from the army in 1967 I was susceptible to authority, but the Milgram experiment would not have worked on me. A differently constructed one would have. In my early army training we were put through a simulated POW exercise wherein all the trainees were POWs. As such we were subject to various stressful situations and humiliations. The culmination of all was a few of us were selected for special treatment--not me. About 200 hundred of us POW trainees--give or take a hundred--were seated in this Ft Ord, California very large room--call it a theater of sorts. There was a stage in front of us. The stage and audience area was separated by one-way glass. We were instructed to keep quiet. Anyone on the stage could not see the audience but the audience could see the stage. One of the trainees was brought in and seated in a chair to which electrofdes were attached to him. He was interrogated with the aid of electro-shocks--that is, mildly tortured--only it didn't seem mild to anyone but maybe the staff doing the torturing. I mean, they had two or three guys in a row screaming. Then came the last guy. A real big, husky guy. They started this shit on him and after he had a couple of shocks he got real mad and started to stand up and rip up his restraints. That was the end of that and after the training staff calmed him down he was released to go out to the unseen audience while we all cheared the heck out of him.

Today I'm all but impervious to authority, but it took decades of learning and growth, part of which was introspection, part of which was reading about the Milgram experiment, etc. But this all begs the question of why I wasn't so armored coming out of adolescence as I am now all grown up? Why was such not part of my education? Because I was educated to the contrary. I had to de-educate myself. I'm still de-educating myself even today in other areas.

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

Brant,

The Milgram experiments come up every semester in Experimental Psychology, when we get to the ethics of research with human subjects.

I had them on my mind because I've been talking to two different classes about them during the past week—mine, and a colleague's (I was filling in while he was out sick).

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

The Milgram experiments come up every semester in Experimental Psychology, when we get to the ethics of research with human subjects.

I had them on my mind because I've been talking to two different classes about them during the past week—mine, and a colleague's (I was filling in while was out sick).

Robert Campbell

If I had been a pre-army college student, say 20 years old and fell into that experiment I do not know what I would have done. The army increased my susceptibility to authority somewhat because everything was so much about rank, rank, rank. I did have tremendous freedom of action and responsibility in Vietnam as a medic. These included some officer responsibilities even though I started there as an E-4 Specialist and ended as an E-5 Sergeant. That was because team members' areas of responsibilities did not overlap respecting occupational specialties, only outside those, as in combat. I did not talk to the intelligence sergeants about their work and they didn't talk to me about medicine. That was one of two or three big reasons I volunteered for Vietnam--to get away from state-side horseshit you were subjected to outside training. Half of my three-year enlistment was training. One third of it was Vietnam. After Vietnam it was enough already. I didn't want any more to do with any of it and this was five months before the famous Tet offensive that ripped the scab off the whole rotten war effort betrayed by Johnson and McNamara. (Did you know a veteran tried to literally throw McNamara, decades later, off the Martha Vineyard's ferry and almost did it? That SOB grabbed hold of something and held on for dear life. No charges. A year or so later they were both eating in the same island eatery and NcNamara acknowledged him with a nod. I always wanted to ask the bastard how he felt about being on the wrong side of everything important throughout his public career. Many of his ~small~ decisions and policies were crap too.)

I think the greatest psychological impediment to individualism is the prolongation of childhood through adolescence and even the early 20s--and not growing up soon enough creates susceptibility to authority that can last a lifetime thanks to the educational e-enforcement not just in those years but starting at least in first grade with its conforming regimentation and no teaching of true critical thinking.

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

Then came the last guy. A real big, husky guy. They started this shit on him and after he had a couple of shocks he got real mad and started to stand up and rip up his restraints. That was the end of that and after the training staff calmed him down he was released to go out to the unseen audience while we all cheered the heck out of him.

An experience we can all learn from.

Robert Campbell

[davidgordon]

Thanks to the posters for their interest in my views on Peikoff. I've done a short review of The DIM Hypothesis: http://mises.org/daily/6215/The-DIM-Hypothesis

When I said that my opinion of Ominous Parallels had gone up, I meant only that I'd wouldn't have been quite as negative if I were to do a review now. But I still think my criticisms were right. In particular, Peikoff's understanding of Kant is wildly off, a problem present in the new book as well. One way to see this is to ask yourself, "Given the way Peikoff presents Kant, how could any sane person have believed such things?" He calls Kant a great philosopher, but it's impossible to see why he is one from Peikoff's account.

[Robert Campbell]

The difference between the two books being that in Ominous Parallels, Peikoff made use of a pretty close reading of some of Kant's works, while in The DIM Hypothesis, it's "been there, done that," a quick summary that has no chance of convincing anyone not already lined up behind his first book.

From David Gordon's review, criticizing Peikoff for a slanted view of the thinking that prevailed during the Middle Ages:

Of course, as Peikoff is aware, Aquinas held the view of concepts that qualifies as correct, but never mind him.

Not fully, from Peikoff's standpoint. But Aquinas's view is close enough to qualify by the standards of a book in which much of the technical apparatus of Objectivism is never invoked.

Probably the oddest assertion in the book is this:

In ethics, the most influential expressions of Knowing Skepticism are Comte's Religion of Humanity and the Utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill.… Being Kant-inspired, both regard elements within consciousness as the only basis for a distinction between good and evil. (p. 59)

This is decidedly a nonstandard view, and one would welcome evidence that either Bentham or Mill was influenced by Kant. If Peikoff's failure to respond to earlier criticisms of his interpretation of Kant may be taken as precedent, he is not likely to offer such evidence.

I think this particular passage has a few competitors...

The underlying problem is that Peikoff won't credit anyone, or any system of thought, as Disintegrative, until Kant has launched the D₁ and D₂ modes.

Since modern empiricism obviously draws from pre-Kantian roots, his contention makes no sense at all.

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

David,

Welcome to OL.

It's an honor.

Michael

[Selene]

Mr. Gordon:

Are you with the Von Mises Institute?

Adam

[caroljane]

That VMI via Rockwell is a genius at fundraising, purely through ideas.I believe the prominent classical liberal Lord Black is an admirer and subscriber.

[9thdoctor]

Thanks to the posters for their interest in my views on Peikoff. I've done a short review of The DIM Hypothesis: http://mises.org/dai...-DIM-Hypothesis

A warm welcome to OL. You’ve provided more evidence for my current view that the book is not worth bothering with. It seems it would merely be an exercise in identifying Peikoff’s latest errors, and to a large extent they’re just the same old errors. Meanwhile, David Harriman (was he named after the Heinlein character? The man who sold the moon?) has posted his review on Amazon. Here’s a choice quote:

The reader will be struck by how the various approaches to literature, science, education, and government fall so neatly into the DIM categories; no "force-fitting" is required.

Who to believe?

[caroljane]

Mr Gordon,

I have read your excellent review of DIM. I cannot agree or disagree on your views of the philosophical arguments Peikoff puts forth, because nothing could induce me to read Peikoff's terrible, awful writing in the original. Your first quotation from him, seems to translate as, "Philosophy needs to use metaphors to get across to the public --- clearly labelled." This is news?

Your own writing and your knowledgeable assessment of this book are by contrast a pleasure to read, thank you.

[caroljane]

Harriman "not to be confused with Delos" is also not to be confused with "Dr, David Harriman" as he frequently is by his fans. Or perhaps his long association with the upper reaches of ARI academe have got him through grad school by osmosis.

[Robert Campbell]

David Harriman, historian of physics, was my greatest intellectual ally in writing this book. I talked with him often to help me clarify my ideas. (The DIM Hypothesis, p. ix)

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

David Harriman, historian of physics, was my greatest intellectual ally in writing this book. I talked with him often to help me clarify my ideas. (The DIM Hypothesis, p. ix)

Robert Campbell

That's embarrassing: to be under the thumb of a "yes man." Physics is so special and so difficult you can't learn what you need to know from it unless you yourself are a physicist--unless you are a second-hander. Physicists make very poor philosophers and philosophers make very poor physicists. Because philosophy is basic to science, Peikoff has inverted the relationship with this acknowledgement. Only thus can Peikoff write a book informed by physics. No physicist will write a book on physics with conclusions based on philosophy outside standard scientific methodologies. I predict DIM cannot be applied to physics and this inversion is a contradiction unless LP goes on in the book to contradicting the contradiction coming up with something useful--to philosophy, not physics.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

Meanwhile, David Harriman (was he named after the Heinlein character? The man who sold the moon?) has posted his review on Amazon. Here’s a choice quote:

The reader will be struck by how the various approaches to literature, science, education, and government fall so neatly into the DIM categories; no "force-fitting" is required.

Who to believe?

Also from Harriman:

With The Dim Hypothesis, Dr. Peikoff reaches the summit of his brilliant career and shows us how much can be seen from the mountaintop.

Yeah, Peikoff shows us that what can be seen are lots of much higher mountaintops.

This theory of history was induced from many, many concretes. But the clear presentation of the theory requires Dr. Peikoff to omit the details of those concretes.

Ah, is that what required Peikoff to omit the details? He did it for the sake of clarity? Heh.

As he puts it: "An essentialized account is not of course a proof that the account is accurate; to offer such a proof is the province of specialized study. In the context of my book, I must leave the decision to the reader." In my judgment, a knowledgeable reader will find the book convincing.

I'm knowledgeable, and in my areas of expertise, Peikoff's views are far from convincing.

J

[Robert Campbell]

Physicists make very poor philosophers and philosophers make very poor physicists. Because philosophy is basic to science, Peikoff has inverted the relationship with this acknowledgement. Only thus can Peikoff write a book informed by physics. No physicist will write a book on physics with conclusions based on philosophy outside standard scientific methodologies. I predict DIM cannot be applied to physics and this inversion is a contradiction unless LP goes on in the book to contradicting the contradiction coming up with something useful--to philosophy, not physics.

Brant,

David Harriman is actually a second-order yes-man. A yes-man reporting to a yes-man.

In the next few days, I will be putting up some quotations from the DIM volume about physics. They will do nothing to undermine your case.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

I just tried to read in the chapter on physics. I'm not a physicist. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a brain surgeon. To be lectured by a purported philosopher on physics would be like being lectured on brain surgery by the same man--after a brain surgeon had informed him about brain surgery--makes my own brain go WTF? WTF? WTF? I am a pilot and expert truck driver. To be lectured by LP on either subject after a third party had educated him about flying and driving would make me throw the book into the trash. I can barely restrain myself now. Here's the kicker: Is LP really a philosopher or merely someone who has been told about philosophy by Ayn Rand et al. and is now telling us about philosophy? I know that's one step too cruel, but most philosophers with PhDs are purveyors of garbage anyway.

--Brant

scientists hold the Doctorate in less esteem than social scientists; they tend not to care about the credentials so much as the work; if you want a job with Google or Microsoft you cannot get it with an academic credential and probably don't even need it; they will credential you in house

[Brant Gaede]

Writing a book for many years with inadequate feedback may result in a disaster when it's published, especially if you're not a genius novelist with a new novel.

--Brant

not yet claiming a disaster