zynphull > Recent Status Updates

Soon gonna review it properly. Finished it two days ago

And promptly Hardcastle gives us the answer: we rely on narratives in order to enact self construction because these narratives are anchored in memory, and we have an innate tendency to better store in memory information about events that are emotionally significant to us, or which we find particularly pleasant or unpleasant. In its core, we make our stories out of what we like or dislike.

Hardcastle shows us the goods. Our self-creation is enacted through the narratives about us we tell each other and ourselves. However, the factor determining what gets in the stories (and what is left out), both in our memory and narration itself, is affective valence. Stories have a "point" and that is communicating about how we felt. We normally favour this personal kind of tale over possible "neutral" descriptions

Self-narratives are socially contingent and constantly changing, often fuzzy and open to multiple readings, like cloud formations. Still, they seem crucial to our well-being. How can we cling to such flimsy a device in maintaining our sense of self?

Hardcastle so far sounds a bit scientist (as in adherent to scientism). But that's probably her pragmatic style, I actually like her "handwaving" of otherwise tangled philosophical issues.

Reading this with an eye toward an analysis of "passing" and 'clocking" in the lives of trans women. Goffman is pure intellectual gold and writes magnificently. High time I read this.

Though it started like a pop psych book, filled with cute examples and (questionable) experimental assumptions, this book has started getting to me. Until five or so years ago I'd always been skeptical about the existence of an "unconscious". Being very verbal, I was too reliant on the power of rational/conscious/verbal thinking to believe my body/mind could want unspoken things. And yet, here I am, doing my nails.

Now the past few pages have been dedicated to bashing on the blind context insensitivity of psychometrics. Rightfully so, my inner social theorist would say.

So far a great overview of the picture of the unconscious mind painted by modern cognitive/social psychology of experimental bent. We are not aware, often can't be aware, of how we perceive objects, interpret language, make value judgments, and a lot of other activities we usually deem to require conscious effort are routinely performed without our attending to them explicitly - and that's often to our chagrin, too.

A book I picked up very excitedly imagining the many ways it'd be deeply useful to my dissertation. A quarter in, I realize a Hutchins really really likes boats, I know zero about navigation, and it has in fact not that much to do with litigation automation (which is my Msc object). Still, it is amazing to learn how Micronesian navigators use the night sky to pilot long distances in the open sea.

I regret to inform that the only pdf available online for this book is incomplete and ends at page 74. Now I have to cross the city and get to my uni's ethnology library to get it. Someday.

I actually finished this and might write a review later

By page 10 I already wanted to leave kapluna life in the city and live like an 'Eskimo'

Page 122. I can't add page numbers to the goodreads app due to a glitch .

É uma coletânea de textos sobre - you guessed it - Liberdade de expressão nas mídias digitais (redes sociais, etc), com foco na perspectiva jurídica, já que os autores são todos advogados ou professores de direito.

Pra quem já é familiarizado com os debates minimamente, não há nada muito de inovador. Mas pode ser uma boa introdução ao tema.

Still early in the book, first impressions: Tufte puts together a history of data visualization, from its birth in ancient cartography to abhorrent examples of statistical distortion illustrating newspaper articles. Here's hoping I'll learn some useful things for developing my UX and dataviz skills. Visualization is more than seeing, it's about reasoning based on information that was previously only numbers on tables

Beniger spends a few dozen pages painfully describing DNA structure, replication, and evolution in an appendix on "What is life?" He sounds as if in functionalist craze, seeking essential processes uniting molecular, genetic, cultural, and algorithmic control/programming. But it's all metaphor, of course. Despite that, so far, no epistemology, just a lot of grand statements uniting disparate levels of reality.

Bourdieu writes very long phrases, and maybe not all of their sentences should be together in one clump. Maybe he could learn a bit from Ian Hacking, who does the exact opposite (I can't find a Hacking phrase with more than two or three verbs at most lol). But then again, he's French.

In any case, a tremendous book.

So far, a very, accessible introduction to the main discussions in contemporary philosophy of science, esp. the realism x anti-realism debate. Perhaps even a little "too accessible" - eg. at the chapter on incommensurability, one is left wanting for more details of the views of some philosophers; other than mentioning that Davidson disagrees with the notion of 'conceptual scheme', we don't get much info

I can read like at most two paragraphs a day these days....