The act of naming the terminating points of my upper appendages itself is an inherent problem. It is the transformation of the subjective into the objective, and that's a path with horrible results we should avoid.
"How goes the liquidation of the mathematicians, comrade?"
"It goes very well Commissar! We have so far eliminated an estimated eighty percent of...wait! NO, I DIDN'T MEAN IT!"
Uncritical support. Without standards of measurement, nobody will be able to tell me I have a little wiener ever again!
Finally my wiener can stop being objectively small and start being subjectively small!
I live for these kinda anprim-style takes because I can see the pill of truth in them but the bacon wrapping of dumb takes is delicious
I would argue that over specification and the need to categorize everything into smaller and smaller groups, while useful in a scientific sense, is less useful in a sociological sense.
Now, is that what that user intended? Fuck if I know.
The attempt to quantify everything to more easily commodify it (trying to objectively measure abstract things like happiness, for example)
Measurement is the first step in the process of commodifying the commons
In the beginning of Three Body Problem, there's a scene from the Cultural Revolution where an astronomy professor is accused of being a western imperialist stooge because she teaches astronomy instead of eastern astrology. It's nice to know that these kinds of people are still with us, still just as nutty. Just don't give them any pig-iron furnaces to put academics in.
Can't tell by this person's feed if this is just a high-concept bit or not
https://phys.org/news/2007-08-indians-predated-newton-discovery-years.html
I mean, on the one hand, there's literal Phrenology and The Bell Curve and a genuinely serious attempt at pidgin holing every individual in society into their caste via bullshit race science. This technique was executed with shocking effectiveness by the South African apartheid state for decades. And it's common enough in the modern day that "You don't have the right chromosomes to wear a skirt" is a serious line of agreement.
On the other, folks love to just go all reactionary and DebateBro concepts to insane conclusions. They know it won't actually impact their material conditions because it'll never be put into practice. So they get to look smugly Big Brain on the internet without worrying about real application of hypothesis.
This is what happens when people outright reject the very idea of historical materialism.
