How post-rational potentials aggravate pre-rational habits

Layman Pascal started an IPS thread by the above name. My initial response follows. Check in with the thread periodically to see the ongoing discussion.

Thanks for starting the thread, as it reflects several of my concerns in recent posts. I'm even going to have to give in and accept the premise of IT as the current meta-marker, just not particularly kennilingus. I'll say more as I ponder, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. For now I'll just re-post some representative examples of this phenomenon from other threads:

From here. (Also see the one following it.):


This Krugman post notes that tribal regressives who don't believe in climate change--it's a massive liberal conspiracy--are trying to thwart and roll back renewable energy programs. The Koch brothers are of course one such sun block, as are other usual suspects like ALEC and Americans for Prosperity. Krugman rightly notes that these folks are paranoid.

Unfortunately we also have the RIFTers on the tribal left, also a bit paranoid who don't trust government or tech and thereby add fuel to the regressive agenda and make it all the harder to reverse climate change.

From here:

At around 10:00 in the Picketty interview he responded to a question about the economics profession. He said part of their problem is the ideology, in that in order to be taken seriously they focused on mathematical formulas. Thing was, the formulas were isolated from data and facts in some abstract Platonic and/or Aristotelian ideology (my translation). So it was quite a shock to the economics world when Picketty and his team of international economists actually complied the data on income inequality over several countries and centuries. That it contradicts the ideology is evidence that the latter needs to get up to speed to match the facts. Naturally progressives welcome this task and regressives are still in denial.

And here:

Also see this post quoting Thompson:

"I describe a dialogue on this question I had with the Dalai Lama at his refugee home in Dharamsal
a, India, and I explain the basis in Buddhist philosophy for the Dalai Lama’s view that consciousness transcends the brain. I argue, however, that there’s no scientific evidence to support this view. All the evidence available to us indicates that consciousness, including pure awareness, is contingent on the brain. Nevertheless, my viewpoint isn’t a materialist one" (33).

And here:

Btw, relating this to the paper in the first post this is exactly one of the problems of Ferrer's kind of pluralism. On the one hand  he presupposes there is no ready-made metaphysical reality and accepts the postmeta notion of it being undertermined multiplicity. He also accepts that empirical knowledge should be verified by empirical grounds. Spiritual knowledge should be verified otherwise, one way being based on "the potency of its emancipatory effects." But what if the latter emancipate one in certain ways but is still interpreted in a way that conflates those effects with metaphysical, objectivist claims about empirically unsubstantiated survival of physical death?