There is no agreed-upon meaning of the word "capitalism", and nowadays you should not trust anyone who uses the *word itself*; they are not trying to help you think clearly. Knowledgeable helpful people will talk about "market prices" or use other words that mean things.

u/DELETED 55 points at 1589654604.000000

its just astounding that The Market, the most powerful information processor in the universe has delivered to us this incredible insight about words that mean things

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u/RedGrobo 11 points at 1589667932.000000

>its just astounding that The Market, the most powerful information processor in the universe has delivered to us this incredible insight about words that mean things And somehow still has to be tiptoed around lest too much saving people from a pandemic spooks it.

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u/finfinfin 3 points at 1589814737.000000

It's basically a horse. Poor market, thought of Marx and died.

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u/Masebrock 47 points at 1589654863.000000

I’m convinced of the same thing, but for anyone who talks about “markets”

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u/snafuchs 28 points at 1589655431.000000

Same but “meerkats”

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u/Soyweiser 30 points at 1589658020.000000

Now im reminded of when glinner was being all transphobic and ranting about the definition of woman, and people were trolling him by asking him for a definition of table (his definition included horses). E: Thanks [Blumka](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/gkzosc/there_is_no_agreedupon_meaning_of_the_word/fqvckz8/): > It's this thread. It was about chairs rather than tables. > https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/1015984460678955014

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u/ElSaico 26 points at 1589667690.000000

The Diogenes approach to sneering is always very amusing when successfully pulled off.

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u/snafuchs 14 points at 1589673297.000000

Behold! A basilisk!

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u/finfinfin 13 points at 1589661616.000000

You're going to have to be a little more specific. Probably even on the table/horses thing.

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u/blumka 11 points at 1589674416.000000

It's this thread. It was about chairs rather than tables. [https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/1015984460678955014](https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/1015984460678955014)

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u/finfinfin 11 points at 1589674742.000000

Just imagine if he put all the energy he puts into posting into learning how to beat Beaver Bother.

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u/Soyweiser 3 points at 1589711146.000000

Thanks that explained why i couldnt find it. I gave up after i found out just how much glinner went all in on the transhating. He even has a blog where he writes wierd shit. That guy really needs to just log off for a while.

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u/athiev 3 points at 1589907576.000000

He thinks it's a righteous crusade. And also he's arguably the most famous he's ever been, so self-interest.

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u/DELETED 4 points at 1589669008.000000

[deleted]

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u/finfinfin 7 points at 1589669829.000000

No I mean like he goes on stupid transphobic rants literally all the time and even "that time people dunked on him for a specific stupid argument" doesn't narrow it down much.

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u/N0_B1g_De4l 3 points at 1589669263.000000

I imagine he came up with something like "something with four legs that you can put things on". Which actually excludes some tables. But the broad point is that there are a lot of things where an exact definition and colloquial use are not especially similar.

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u/Soyweiser 2 points at 1589711260.000000

Yeah sorry my bad. I couldnt find the tweets. (Glinner is a bit prolific, and well i used the wrong search terms which made mw think it was about tables not chairs. (As apparantly he has also pulled this definition weirdness on tables).

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 6 points at 1589806375.000000

Ok fair but if anyone talks shit about meerkats we’re gonna have a problem

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u/snafuchs 2 points at 1589818338.000000

Only ever people who use the word itself! Never the meerkats.

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 2 points at 1589819714.000000

Just a warning, nothing personal

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u/snafuchs 1 points at 1589844397.000000

Hah, understood! I wasn’t ever worried about a ban, I do worry about (for) meerkats tho

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u/Edmund-Nelson 9 points at 1589664223.000000

Interesting could you explain? I do agree people say the word "markets" which doesn't make sense but saying "the oil futures market shows that speculators have no fucking clue what they are actually doing sometimes" or "The toliet paper market is messed up" often have meaning maybe the more you speak in generalities the less meaning your words have (*cough EY cough*)

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u/Masebrock 26 points at 1589669785.000000

90% of the time, it's libertarians playing hide-the-ball with the existence of private property. Specifically, an attempt to hide the non-market mechanisms that the creation and enforcement of private property inherently require. See: David Friedman

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u/ledique 32 points at 1589656687.000000

Rationalism is when you believe the people who use the right phrases, almost like magic spells or something

Don’t they have like a scheduled monthly griping about shibboleths?

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u/DELETED 25 points at 1589656941.000000

It's Sovereign Citizens, but for computer touchers.

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u/Soyweiser 7 points at 1589711622.000000

Well yud style rationalism comes from the worrying about dnd wishes. Where a malicious (and shitty) dm can just take your words and corrupt them to kill you via a wish even if it doesnt make sense. Im assuming people here are aware of how dnd wishes kinda work and the rules lawyering bs around it.

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u/athiev 3 points at 1589907802.000000

How to fix 2/3 of D&D problems: "DM: your job is to make the game fun for everyone. Everything else is second to that. If someone isn't having fun, you have made a mistake and need to start over." I also suggest this house rule. Mentioning Bayes' Rule at the table once gets you a warning. Mentioning it twice earns a lifetime ban.

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u/DELETED 19 points at 1589663912.000000

“I don’t read books and therefore everyone else is dumb” is a very rationalist take.

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u/finfinfin 3 points at 1589813696.000000

He knows the alphabet, numerals, and punctuation. He even knows the fancier bits like interrobangs. The rest is just layout.

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 19 points at 1589687761.000000

Massive respect for the sheer audacity Yud has complaining that other people use words vaguely

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u/Soyweiser 7 points at 1589711803.000000

Now i wonder, has he ever been self aware enough about this to realize that his rationalist project needs an actual dictionary? (After which you should realize the project is doomed to fail). E : not that it matters tbh. As the rationalists are already failing in their own project here. This whole tweet just shows Yud has given up on steelmanning people he disagrees with. (If you steelman somebody talking about at term you think it is vague you obv should just pick the definition of the word which closely fits their argument, or just ask them to elaborate in a non shitty way (imho a good way is to repeat what you got from the argument back to them, which shows you understand, or are trying to understand what they are trying to say). "Don't mention capitalism around acausalrobotgod, if you do, they don't consider you a full human anymore, and it will stop listening to you"

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u/Soyweiser 16 points at 1589657585.000000

Brave of yud to become anti Elon Musk

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u/maxmarx4206969 13 points at 1589664175.000000

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and THE MARKET

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u/seanfish 7 points at 1589702540.000000

In the beginning was a need for a heaven and earth and the invisible hand of the market brought them into being in a maximally efficient way.

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u/titotal 12 points at 1589691824.000000

There is no agreed upon meaning of “feudalism”. Knowledgeable people will instead talk about “serf lord relations”

There is no agreed upon meaning of “pornography”. Knowledgeable people will instead talk about “videos of penises”

There is no agreed upon meaning of “Forest”. Knowledgeable people will instead talk about “collections of individual trees”

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u/analogsquid 3 points at 1593826146.000000

>There is no agreed upon meaning of "Forest". Knowledgeable people will instead talk about "collections of individual trees" If this were on a mug, I'd buy it.

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u/RedGrobo 7 points at 1589667842.000000

War is peace, freedom is slavery!!

This word is meaningless because its meaning is inconvenient to me!!!

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u/DELETED 10 points at 1589678346.000000

[deleted]

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u/finfinfin 7 points at 1589813568.000000

That's just regular marxbro.

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u/LordoftheNetherlands 14 points at 1589655389.000000

First piece is true, but we shouldn’t act like “market” is any more solid. The solution isn’t to stop talking about it, the solution is just to define your axioms better

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u/G0ldunDrak0n 25 points at 1589658894.000000

Then again the same is true for *almost any word*. People regularly have arguments about whether hot dogs are sandwiches or not, ffs. "Words can have different meanings" isn't exactly groundbreaking insight. And "you shouldn't listen to people who use this word I don't like" isn't exactly a recipe for good communication either. (Honestly I'm just impressed that Yud manages to be so full of shit so often and yet people manage to take him even vaguely seriously. As with a lot of "internet personalities" everything he says is either extremely trivial or extremely wrong.)

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u/LordoftheNetherlands 8 points at 1589663613.000000

This is true, but most words generally have -some- degree of universally understood definition. Even if these definitions are not exactly the same, they usually point in the same direction. When someone says "dog," you generally understand the range of possible scenarios even if individuals have different images which pop into their heads. This is not true of politically-charged words. "Capitalism" does not bring to mind the same range of possible scenarios in everyone's head. Even more so for "socialism, markets, authoritarianism" etc, etc. The problem with these words isn't *just* that they're difficult to pin down, but that everyone *thinks* that they have it pinned down and talk past each-other due to extremely disparate definitions. By qualifying the statement, saying "by Capitalism, I specifically mean a system which includes x y and z," you can help to solve this disparity significantly. Not all indefinitions are made equal.

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u/seanfish 4 points at 1589702010.000000

The real problem is that x, y and z will all have their own meanings depending on the value system from which the individual is developing their discourse. Definitions rest on a long chain of assumptions.

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u/N0_B1g_De4l 9 points at 1589669369.000000

The solution is to use more words when you talk about it. Which you would think Big Yud would be all over, but I guess he views it as cheating if you use more words to make your point clearer.

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u/LordoftheNetherlands 1 points at 1589679333.000000

Fully agree

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u/MarxBroshevik 14 points at 1589679637.000000

There’s no agreed-upon definition because not everyone has read Marx’s objectively correct definition.

Someone tweet this at Yud for me.

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u/snowtime1 4 points at 1589695284.000000

When did Marx ever use the word “Capitalism”?

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u/zedority 10 points at 1589695810.000000

"Capitalist mode of production" is generally considered to be close enough as to not make much difference

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u/MarxBroshevik 6 points at 1589700522.000000

You can find it in a few of his pieces. e.g.: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch21.htm He tends to use "capitalist production" or "capitalist mode of production" more often instead which is basically in the same spirit. I don't know German but it might be interesting to look up the exact original German phrasing in the few instances where the translator has specifically written "capitalism".

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u/Quietuus 6 points at 1589711470.000000

My German is pretty partial and rusty, but looking over a German copy, it doesn't seem like Marx ever directly uses the term 'Kapitalismus'. Comparing to Fowkes' translation, it seems the few uses of 'Capitalism' are used to translate German constructions that would be awkward in English.

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u/Snugglerific 5 points at 1589658412.000000

Capitalism? Don’t blush folks, it’s nothin’ to be ashamed of.

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u/wholetyouinhere 7 points at 1589728441.000000

The neverending fixation on specifics is the best possible way to avoid ever having to discuss anything difficult or defend your worldview. People aren’t granular experts on everything (nor should they be) – that doesn’t mean they can’t have thoughts or opinions.

I absolutely despise the idea that in order to criticize something, you must have detailed plans on how to fix every aspect of it. That’s jordan Peterson’s whole shtick. And it does exactly what it’s intended to do: keeps the power in the hands of the existing establishment – they know what they’re doing, and we simply wouldn’t understand, so we should just not worry our pretty heads.

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u/vsbobclear 6 points at 1589661620.000000

I don’t disagree with his first statement, but how is “market prices” any more specific?

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u/N0_B1g_De4l 6 points at 1589669619.000000

He's trying to say something like "don't say Capitalism, because it's a poorly-defined term, say specific things that are relevant to the specific problem instead", and then giving "market prices" as an example. I think. It would have been useful for him to engage with a specific example and explain how he thought it could be clearer.

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u/Edmund-Nelson 2 points at 1589664477.000000

You'll agree that "Market price of X" is actually specific. I guess he's saying something like "market prices for goods XYZ?" though this is EY so his words could be totally meaningless too.

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u/DELETED 3 points at 1589663816.000000

[deleted]

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u/Edmund-Nelson 7 points at 1589664644.000000

Socialism means 2 very different things and it's annoying that the first is often conflated with the second 1. Socialism as in Romainia during the cold war 2. Socialism as in modern Sweden. When Bernie Sanders says he is a socialist he refers to the second one, but when people use it as an insult they are trying to evoke the emotion of the first one.

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u/Arilou_skiff 11 points at 1589667708.000000

The issue is that "socialism" as most ideologies is a tree: Communist Romania and modern Sweden *does* at a certain point in time (somewhere pre-1917) share a common ideological root. It's just that they reacted differently to various historical events and has interpreted their shared history very differently.

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u/N0_B1g_De4l 9 points at 1589669830.000000

Socialism doesn't just mean two things, it means as many things as there have been groups identifying as Socialist. More, actually, because there are plenty of groups that get called Socialist without using the term themselves, or that get lumped under a Socialist banner despite substantive disagreements with other Socialists. Also fictional things, like Star Trek's Federation or Ian Bank's Culture. The problem with ideological labels is that people feel very little need to change the labels they use when their beliefs change, or to label their ideology in a way that is consistent with others.

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u/Zondatastic 2 points at 1590081078.000000

This whole comment is quite /r/badpolitics

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