The first point seems rather impulsive. Should we give up functional but old paradigms simply for innovation's sake, even if we know they work? Socrates clearly did not ever argue the topics brought up by Eco, so what you're saying is Eco should come up with a different way to express himself. Innovation is great, but why should anything not innovative in its method simply be disregarded?
The second point seems to be an argument against any social science in general, rather than a critique or analysis of the essay. If every political science discussion had to start with a justification of why such phenomena are studied in the first place, we would get nowhere. Should we not study "democracies" or "states"? Is anything not tangible not worthy of study?
This also ties in to my last point: it's very disingenuous to call fascism "not sensible" without any real argument for it. It's been a giant hurdle in the history of many nations, it makes sense to want to analyze it and understand it. If your argument is that it's not sensible as in fascism is a far too general concept for it to be an effective label, then I'd expect you to directly challenge the list proposed, as it seems to me Eco does manage to describe an acceptable way to do such labeling.
>Should we give up functional but old paradigms simply for innovation's sake, even if we know they work?
Of course no! We should give up old paradigms that don't work.
>Eco should come up with a different way to express himself.
No, I am saying that Eco should come up with good, convincing and coherent arguments and we shouldn't judge him by the standards of 400BC.
>The second point seems to be an argument against any social science in general, rather than a critique or analysis of the essay. If every political science discussion had to start with a justification of why such phenomena are studied in the first place, we would get nowhere. Should we not study "democracies" or "states"? Is anything not tangible not worthy of study?
That's a weird way to understand what I've said. Do you think political theorists don't study and argue about what "democracy" or "state" means? That's a part of their job. They also study what "fascism" is. And that's what Umberto Eco tries to do in his essay. The problem is that the way he does it is rather unconvincing.
>This also ties in to my last point: it's very disingenuous to call fascism "not sensible" without any real argument for it. It's been a giant hurdle in the history of many nations, it makes sense to want to analyze it and understand it. If your argument is that it's not sensible as in fascism is a far too general concept for it to be an effective label, then I'd expect you to directly challenge the list proposed, as it seems to me Eco does manage to describe an acceptable way to do such labeling.
What exactly was a giant hurdle? You have a list of fourteen properties. Some movements in some countries shared those properties. Can we understand and analyze them by deferring to the study of nebulous ur-fascism that Umberto Eco proposes us to accept? Will it help us understand Nazism, Fascism, Stalinism, Baathism, Conservatism, Progressivism, modern US, modern Russia, modern China, modern Sweden, McDonalds, Amazon, Tesla, SF VC culture? Can it even help us determine which of those things are fascist and which are not? What is even the connection between ur-fascism that Umberto Eco invented and real fascist movements that you say are a giant hurdle?
I'm sorry but it is very hard to understand what you said when the arguments against my various points are, in order:
> we should give up old paradigms that don't work
Why and how don't they work?
> Eco should come up with good, convincing arguments
Why are they not good? Why not explain how they don't convince you?
> The problem is that the way he does it is rather unconvincing
Again, how is it not convincing you? Elaborate...
> Can it even help us determine which of those things are fascist and which are not?
He does provide a very simple way to do exactly that. Why not argue against such a method, instead of implying it be a stupid method through countless examples, but never explaining how it would not work in such scenarios? This seems like such a destructive way to approach conversation. I can agree rhetorically on some points, but you are just pushing for the impossibility of effectively describing anything intangible.
I apologize if I am misinterpreting your arguments, but as I think I've shown there's very little of it around for me to meaningfully engage with it..
If you tell me exactly how the Socrates’s dialogue with Meno is relevant to this question, I will explain to you what's the problems with that particular argument.
> Why are they not good? Why not explain how they don't convince you?
I've already tried to explain by example. Let's look at Umberto Eco's own words,
> But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
I want to emphasize "many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism". And as he notes before that quote, "fascism had no quintessence". How can that convince that ur-fascism Eco talks about is a real phenomenon worth studying and not a mish-mash boogeyman like postmodern queer neo-marxism?
> He does provide a very simple way to do exactly that.
He doesn't. There is no operational definition. He says that a fascist movement may or may not have some of that properties. And moreover, he says that non-fascist movements may or may not have those properties too. So what are the criteria?
> Why not argue against such a method, instead of implying it be a stupid method through countless examples, but never explaining how it would not work in such scenarios?
The examples show why it doesn't work. Again, you have a bunch of properties that apply to a set of things. And then you claim that those things don't have any quintessential properties that they all share. Ok, so is this kind of things a useful grouping? Why should we even care about it? How can I explain that it wouldn't work? Well, maybe it would, but the onus of proving such weird things is on Eco.
> This seems like such a destructive way to approach conversation. I can agree rhetorically on some points, but you are just pushing for the impossibility of effectively describing anything intangible.
People use vague and ambiguous language all the time. But when whether you should be punched and outlawed depends on a mere definition, it is very advisable for the speech to be as precise as possible.
It's a bit naive to compare it on those terms while completely ignoring the sheer superiority of ER's world building. It is of course personal opinion, but no open world RPG has amazed me as consistently when discovering new regions to explore. Fromsoft has provided what is probably the most beautiful and diverse world ever crafted at a macro level, while staying true to the Souls formula at a micro level. Even the worst of the small dungeons retain a very Souls-like quality to them which allows them to keep you always on your guard, hence making exploration much more dynamic.
It's also pretty disingenuous to state the differences between ER and other open world RPGs and then pretend it has to compete with other titles exactly on those points. It is true that ER has moved into a more popular genre, but it still remains a very niche type of game. It's not this incredibly popular because it moved to a full-on mainstream genre: it took some more widely appreciated concepts and adapted the souls formula to them, but what everyone is praising is how well they managed to keep those core souls values intact while moving to this new genre.
Excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject, but from a few comments/articles it seemed that although Tritium can be recuperated through contact of the charged neutrons with lithium "blankets" surrounding the enclosure, it is still incredibly hard to achieve self-sustainability, to the point where we might need fission reactors just to produce that isotope. Am I missing something or isn't Tritium not so readily available?
The margins for 'breeding' tritium from lithium are slim, yes. I don't think fission reactors can help in the long term, but right now that is how we get tritium for our experiments.
The second point seems to be an argument against any social science in general, rather than a critique or analysis of the essay. If every political science discussion had to start with a justification of why such phenomena are studied in the first place, we would get nowhere. Should we not study "democracies" or "states"? Is anything not tangible not worthy of study?
This also ties in to my last point: it's very disingenuous to call fascism "not sensible" without any real argument for it. It's been a giant hurdle in the history of many nations, it makes sense to want to analyze it and understand it. If your argument is that it's not sensible as in fascism is a far too general concept for it to be an effective label, then I'd expect you to directly challenge the list proposed, as it seems to me Eco does manage to describe an acceptable way to do such labeling.