Hello, comrades. I was wondering why we allowed “liberal” to become a dirty word? A “liberal” is someone favorable to progress or reform, and also someone in favor of individual rights and liberties.
I understand American fake liberals largely discredited the word, but in Lemmygrad forums, I see true liberalism every day: people discuss progressive ideas all the time, and are very tolerant of each other. Why do we allow American fake liberals to ruin the experience for us all? The word “liberal” should once again ring positive, while fake liberals should be called “faux liberals” which they are, don’t you agree?
I have not ignored, but tried to understand what people told me. How exactly did you conclude I did anything “in bad faith”? What is wrong with you?
That’s not my world view. Physicists are materialists, yet they can also insist on alternative interpretations. For example, energy is the ability to do work, but according to a relativistic interpretation, it is also equivalent to matter.
I learned that interpretetion long before I even heard about the US definition.
…that’s just not how natural sciences work, that’s not even what energy is, those are not different interpretation for the same thing and i’m afraid to ask how that translates into politics, that’s the dumbest thing i’ve read, i’m just done with you. This isn’t even about what liberalism is anymore, so whatever.
That’s exactly what energy is. Energy is a property of a body which becomes apparent when it is doing work. Work is, then, the amount of energy transferred to or from a body. In relativistic terms, E=mc^2 a.k.a. mass-energy equivalence. That relation tells you a completely different thing about energy.
This doesn’t translate to politics, but goes to show that completely different interpretations of the same thing can exist in materialist sciences.
I’m toning down my aggressiveness but i can’t avoid to comment how you seem to think you’re smarter than you are, but that’s okay, the thing is not all energy does work but yet it still exists, energy is a mathematical abstraction and not a material thing, the definition of energy is much more complex than that and it’s most modern accepeted definition in academia is mostly by Emmy Noether as the quantity that is conserved in a system with time translation invariance, and Albert Einstein’s relativty is not even E=mc^2 but E =√((mc2)2+(pc)^2), it only refutes the conservation of energy of a system but it is not a different definition of energy and that is not how epistemology for natural sciences works, because how limited the theory is to the things you observe you’re not reinterpreting a meaning, you’re creating a new theory. This doesn’t works in political theory works, the Marxist theory adapts to the material reality because of dialectical materialism and the different conditions they migh find themselves in but it doesn’t get reintrepeted like it is a fucking bible, fuck it, you might even do a little revisionism from time to time if you think it’s better. Not to mention what a grotesque error it would be to try and compare marxist theory with natural sciences.
Listen, if you’re a liberal just call yourself such and stop calling yourself a socialist or if you’re a socialist don’t call yourself a liberal, have in mind this: the words you use to describe things doesn’t matter, they don’t reflect the material reality, it’s just a tool of communication, if you keep changing the meaning of things and pretending you’re doing something you’re only going to create confusion and embarrassment, all you’re doing is having a different meaning than everyone else inside your head but you’re communicating as if the definition you give to a word matters in a clash of ideas.
although i’m pretty sure your actual politics will end up being liberalism because you seem to be a proud idealist.
I am very much a socialist. I simply thought it would be a good idea to recognize how things evolved over the last century and perhaps assign new meanings to certain words, including liberalism. I see that creates a lot of confusion and negative karma, so I concluded it is more trouble than it is worth.
As to E^2 = (mc^2) ^2 + (pc)^2 there is a typo in your post I believe, but that’s beside the point. This equation is for the total energy when a particle is moving. When it’s not moving, p=0 so the rest energy is E=mc^2. I disagree that energy is an abstraction. I believe it is very real.
What makes you believe I think I’m “smarter than I am”? You keep analyzing me, trying to investigate my motives and whatnot. I don’t really understand why you’re doing that. I have no special motives beside what I wrote: I wanted to see if people want to assign additional meaning to the word “liberal”, mainly because without that word, it’s difficult to explain the difference between Yugoslav and Soviet style socialism. The Soviets were far more rigid, so how would you call the Yugoslav style?
there is no typo, read it again, and the other form of the equation is just in a ideal case scenario which is impossible, but i didn’t even need to bring it up anyway, and you are wrong, it is a mathetical abstraction and you’re not a materialist if you believe it isn’t, or you just don’t undertand physics, people will agree with you calling yugoslav more “liberal” because it was what we call (or some of us) “market socialism”, not because it was more progressive, as a matter of fact it could be the opposite considering the dialectical model of history.
and i’m not going to enter into that discussion, it’s not about how i would name the yugoslav socialism, socialism is a progress of shaping the economy and material reality with a dialectical analysis, eventually the goal is abolish the commodity-form and what the soviet union did probably was the quickest path to that as you need somewhat of a planed economy to abolish the commodity-form although it was very much a thing that was made specific for their material conditions at the time while the yugoslavia had another historical and material context and this is very important to have in mind, but what matters is if yugoslavia could move to socialism as a model of production eventually and not if they were strictly socialists at the time, that’s a big complex discussion and yugoslavia very sadly doesn’t exist anymore, for multiple reasons from erros by the communist party (which were many and should be criticized) but also counterrevolutions, exterior interferences and a terrible geopolitical context.
but all of that is besides the point, i’m not talking about that
and like i said > the words you use to describe things doesn’t matter, they don’t affect the material reality, it’s just a tool of communication, if you keep changing the meaning of things and pretending you’re doing something you’re only going to create confusion and embarrassment, all you’re doing is having a different meaning than everyone else inside your head but you’re communicating as if the definition you give to a word matters in a clash of ideas.
The definition is crucial to the exchange of ideas. Inadequate definition leads to issues later on. There is a very good reason why mathematics insists on formal language. Every theorem proof starts with a careful set of definitions.
Only if others don’t agree to updated definitions. That’s why I don’t insist on that.
There is no communication (exchange of information) without exchanging matter/energy. The two are connected.
…and probably the most unpleasant, unfortunately. It caused far more suffering than the Yugoslav approach. People also liked the Yugoslav approach better.
It is, and that is part of the reason I believe we need broader definitions of terms.
What is “ideal” about an object not moving? Why is it impossible for a thing not to move?
I believe the electricity in my home is not a mathematical abstraction, and the chemical energy in my laptop and electrical screwdriver battery is also not an abstraction. How does that make me less materialist?
Mathematicians insist on very formal and precise definition because they shouldn’t cause confusion and dissonance between them, it’s not like i or this community here is the only one with this definition of liberals, liberal in a lot of third world countries (south american countries for example) are very much considered reactionary.
this is the weirdest thing you said, not gonna comment on that.
sigh, you might a liberal, you’re just forgetting the Soviet Union was the major target for basically every single capitalist country in the world because it was the country exporting the revolution around the world and leading global communism, not to mention the soviet union did to massivaly improve the conditions of the avarage worker and peasant living in the Soviet Union who were constantly brutalized by the monarchist state and had to constantly face massive periodic crisis of hunger until the bolcheviks industrialized, build all the infrastructure and create a system where everyone has access to literacy, jobs, equal oportunity and decent social wealth, you’re judging their struggles and discounting their material conditions and historical development, you’re being stupid and showing slight anticommunist bias if i interpret you in the most good faith, not to mention, WHAT PEOPLE think yugoslavia was better? the people in the balkans? the people in your country? in ex-yugoslav countries? no shit, stupid ass, historians and marxist intelectuals on the other hand? that’s a whole other story, not to mention how much critic yugoslavia is also deserving for, like how you kept tooking IMF loans, Tito never had a successor, never managed to resolve the major national problems and the country broke down in war later, but i don’t want to shit on yugoslavia and i hold it’s historical existence and experience very dear to my heart too, however i would advise thinking twice and seeking to educate yourself more before proclaiming to have had a superior experience to the Soviet Union.
i’m not sure i’m confusing the terms here, the thing is how you use einstein’s equation, for example to calculate relativistic mass of objects in extreme high speed or to smash particles in a nuclear reactor, the E=MC² is not a pratical equation.
The electricity on your laptop is a result of electrons moving and their eletric forces interacting with objects in the system, chemical energy is also the mathematical abstraction for a complex physical development of a chemical system oxidating an reducting substances in the battery, energy is not this magical “thing” that is present in matter, it’s a mathematical construct to describe and predict the development of physical systems that would be incredibly complex and hard to describe without it.
Will you please stop debating me? we’re already finished with your semantics and the liberal question.
I like a civilized debate. That’s why I posted, and you replied.
Physics (thermodynamics) says you can’t transfer information without simultaneously transferring matter or energy. What’s so weird about that? Can you describe a single experiment that proves otherwise?
So is everything else in physics. The model, however, describes something that is really there. I could say the same thing about “force”.
The people in Yugoslavia liked their system better than what they could see when they traveled to the USSR. It’s true Tito took loans from the IMF, but in the end, the external debt was relatively small compared to the capitalist countries. If you ask the Polish or the Bulgarians if they liked their socialism, that the Soviets introduced, the majority will answer no. Most of the fmr. Yugoslavs, who lived back then, will say theirs was good.