Love all your programmes. You are a wonderful teacher with the amazing gift of explaining concepts so clearly. This was fascinating. A huge thank you and I hope your subscribers continue to grow exponentially.

Thanks now I realize why I feel overwhelmed by a torrent of stories.

Fascinating discussion Prof Wolff. Please continue to do more videos on philosophy.

Thanks!

Very enlightening video. One of the many things the late great Michael Brooks did for me was introduce me to your channel.

Awesome Prof. Wolff! Thx for patiently, humbly and sincerely sharing these carefully considered truths. Your dedication to mankind's well-being gives me hope for tomorrow.

I suffer from PTSD, most notably manifested in violent nightmares that awaken me in fits of screaming and/or crying. I suffer from severe polyneuropathy, but after one nerve induction test during which I nearly assaulted the technician, I don't my neurologist that I cannot go through another one. Of course, anyone would say, what caused these things and are they related? My answer is yes, due to childhood torture and physical abuse. But from what you are saying, I gather, we cannot simplify it down to those factors (or other closely related factors) which is quite a bit to consider. My original psychiatrist passed a few years ago of old age and I think he would have been interested in exploring this with me, though unfortunately my nightmares manifested after his passing. I thank you and I plan to do some reading up on this subject.

It drives me crazy-wild when you spew Philosophy at us, Prof!!! What an excellent DESCRIPTION of something that is so necessary for raising the thinking to a higher level, so that humanity will have a better future! I first read about it in Nietzsche's book, Twilight of the Idols, the Four Great Errors. 'nuff said. Except, thank you, sir.

Great post! It's been a pretty philosophical week with Putin's speech on top of it... I feel like reading Hegel again :) thanks a lot! ...Shared.

Because my red sweater was the only clean sweater that I had!

Thank you Professor Wolff!

This is somewhat similar to the Buddhist idea of Interdependent Origination. Given that Hegel and Engels were influenced somewhat by Buddhism this might be the cause of similarity. Anyways quite interesting and different. More of this kind of videos is appreciated

You always manage to fill in the blanks for me!

I know there are some issues we would disagree on or dispute which topic is more important or how to analyze it. But... I would love to discuss with Richard Wolff. He seems like someone I respect enough to actually be content to disagree with. You seem to actually think. Thank you.

Excellent!

Thanks for answering my question! I suppose I'll have to read Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Lukács, Gramsci, Althusser to understand how and why they chose overdetermination too!

@GrubbyDave

Жыл бұрын

One might rather wish the prof. would put together an Overdetermination reader, with an appropriate selection of excepts and commentay to help build a better understanding of what overdetermination is and how it can be used as a perspective when trying to understand the world. I tried reading Althuser ('For Marx' Verso books) and didn't get very far.

@johnlewis1333

Жыл бұрын

Kaden, if you haven’t had the chance, check out Resnick and Wolff’s Knowledge and Class for a deep dive on this. He explains how viewing Marx through a overdetermination lens offers often overlooked perspectives on Marxism. It sort of explains how Wolff got to the idea of cooperatives while many other Marxists focus on the state ( at least how I interpreted).

@kaden2936

Жыл бұрын

@@johnlewis1333 I've read the first couple chapters, but I still chose to ask this question because I was interested about he in particular came to choose overdetermination (as opposed to other anti-essentialist ontological/epistemological theories). I'm not sure he answered that exactly tbh, but that's ok

@numbersix8919

Жыл бұрын

@@GrubbyDave Ya gotta work up to it! Takes time. Get into some philosophy courses or watch them online! (Self-disclosure, I haven't tried Althusser of Husserl yet.)

Overdetermination sounds like a symptom of Capitalism in which your raise to overachieve even if it's not required. 🤔

I choose the red sweater because I believe workers should seize the means of production.

Great food for thought, it does shift one's perceptions. Thanks !

thanks

thank you

I really appreciate your expertise on subjects that matter. Thank you Professor Wolff. ❤️

it is the most comfortable sweater and it just happens to be red? the infinite causes of comfort or discomfort will leave you dead before you can account. So on what bases do we decide what to do?

One of the things that drew me to the study of rhetoric is the fact that rhetoricians have been thinking about cause-and-effect, and especially what causes people to behave as they do, since at least 600 BC. Ancient rhetoricians took great pride in their ability to use symbol systems, language and stories above all, to transform the realities we live in. Plato hated rhetoric because he wanted to tell a story about a stable underlying Reality, and rhetoric challenges that idea; so rhetoric had no place in Plato's ideal Republic except as a sales tool, a means of propaganda. But rhetoric actually represents a way of knowing and interacting that resists platonic philosophy and rationalism. Unfortunately, Trump and Tucker Carlson and all sorts of other mountebanks and criminals utilize rhetoric to undercut rational thought--but in so doing, they prove its power: a lesson that Althusser in particular started to explore, and one that more thinkers on the left would do well to pay attention to.

Woah thanks

All causes are determined by one cause

Brilliant. By the way, this leads to an interesting observation: Big Data works on Marxist/ Hegelian principles. It observes dozens or hundreds of tiny correlations to develop a model of an individual's behavior. You also made me realize that the fictional "psychohistory" from Asimov's *Foundation Series* uses a stochastic, Marxist view of history. This leads me to an inevitable question: *How do you account for Black Swans that upset the applecart, like Asimov's character the Mule within an overdetermined worldview?*

@DerekFullerWhoIsGovt

Жыл бұрын

random chance?

@jacpratt8608

Жыл бұрын

the spirit of revolution. the birth of Venus.

@The.Ghost.of.Tom.Joad.

Жыл бұрын

@@DerekFullerWhoIsGovt Not necessarily. The Mule would be outside the bell curve. And since a bell curve determines random chance within a stochastic system, random chance cannot account for him. Instead, you need a new system. Example. Until the mid-17th century, Europeans only saw "white" swans. A close observer would notice their actual coloring ran in several gradations of light grey to off-white. Swan's coloring would exist in a bell curve. But as a rule, you'd be able to simplify, saying, "All swans are white." And then, Europeans explored Australia. And saw... black swans. Which rendered Europe's reasonable assertion about swans being white moot. The Mule is that black swan. He's not even a statistical outlier, a fancy-pants way to say "random chance," because he's outside the bell curve. There is no way to assign odds to his showing up or not since he exists OUTSIDE the system. Sort of how you can assign odds to your poker hand, and know you have, say, a 50/1 chance of winning a pot... until a slick thief steals everyone's money. That collapses the odds curve, bringing the players' odds to zero, and makes the thief's odds to 1 to 1. Biologist Stephen J. Gould calls this a "punctured equilibrium." Of course, going back to the swan, we now have a new system built around two normal distributions-black swans and white swans-with a gap of tones that no swan has in the center. Thus, we have a new truth: "Swans are either black or white. There are no color gradation in between." The mule and poker thief may, however, also be part of a larger system: a statistical distribution called a "power law." If we had enough observations of these punctured equilibria, we possibly could assign odds. But is that even possible? Or would you just be building another "system" to be disproved by reality? Anyway, I'll lay off. This is fun. I'm 55, and this makes me sort of remember the long philosophical discussions I had as an undergrad.

Thank you Prof. Wolff! But I never would have believed that you basically share my philosophy...Thinking about individual causes does seem natural when we are not attuned to the ideas of natural possibilities and radical freedom...technically, every possible movement of every possible particle in your head or throughout society in your metaphors of the sweater and civil war create the "Probability" that an event will happen at a larger scale, but the scale must be accounted for both up and down the chain of cause and effect, creating exponentially more possibilities as scale shifts and interacts with it's constituent parts... The universe is so complex that you would need a computer AT LEAST double the size of the universe to calculate all the possibilities...once we realize the illusion of self and the science of how nature operates, we understand that "Knowing" what the future holds or why the past occurred to any concrete degree is just beyond us as you mentioned, we just can't hold that many thoughts or get enough data to calculate precisely...that's why it's so fascinating to me, it's like we're ancient mariners, forever peering into the mists beyond our tiny ship of the senses, hoping we can discover just enough so that we don't wreck on a rock or reef...

Dialetical Materialism, itll change your life folks

Thanks for this clear explanation. Which Hegel text would you recommend and how long did it take you to finish it?

😊Excellent. Are you getting *younger* Prof.? 👍

Adam Smith claimed that the blind pursuit of individual self-interest and the competition of profits would automatically promote the general welfare of society and increase economic growth. The government doesn’t have to do anything but sit back and watch the wealth of the nation grow. In fact, Smith believed that individual selfishness and competition are more effective than if everyone collectively worked together and intentionally tried to promote the general welfare and increase growth. I think cooperation will do better.

We're either determined to succeed or attached to the real ideal of failing all along.

@adams6412

Жыл бұрын

what is success? you succeed without jumping over the empire state building

@adams6412

Жыл бұрын

i am smarter than this loser

If I had teachers like you in school I would have gone far beyond a high-school degree.

But we can say with some certainty the overwhelmingly major cause of us taking - or pushing us to take - a side on an issue whose causes we know very little directly of, most of what we know being from different stories told to us about it. Culture and/or groupthink.

I thought the doctor was going to mention the Pareto principle.

Is there a way to download a transcript of this?

What are professor wolffs thoughts on studying economics as a socialist?

Genius!!!

I've listened a few times and I gather that there are fewer variables when reaching conclusions about economics. Am I correct?

Is this a form of post modern reasoning?

decentralization choice

🤔😶

Underdetermination?

This makes sense to me. There are so many things that just happen, in front of us or out of direct view, like a world of dominos falling. Each piece hitting another, and sometimes they crash into each other, some we can see, some we can't, but it happens, and the effect culminates in a single event, alongside an infinite number of other events, which then become a cause of future events. If the big bang was the first domino to fall in a string of countless dominos falling that makes up our universe, then picking a red sweater one particular day was just one example of a domino falling that can be traced back to that first domino. But so many other things happened between those two points in time, that you couldn't hope to see or even comprehend everything that had to happen to lead to that particular event.

I am somewhat puzzled. One of the reasons that I am a huge fan of Richard Wolff, is that he gives clear explanations of what is going on in the world of economy.

@dandylandpuffplaysminecraf8744

Жыл бұрын

It’s Zen.Dharma interpretation is not exact.

@flamboyantstudioscom

Жыл бұрын

You might consider that 99% of his videos are about economic matters. Then consider that he might just be a more complex person. Then consider that it's the philosophies he talks about that are the reason you enjoy so much where he's coming from when he does talk about the economy.

I didn't know Marxism says invade your neighbors. Interesting take 🤔

@joelpettlon9650

Жыл бұрын

Marx obviously didn't say that, and that obviously wasn't Wolff's take, which brings us to the conclusion that you're likely trolling unless you just have really faulty reasoning capabilities.

Comments for the Algorithm

No, that's not all dreams are. Because I and others have had dreams that predict the future, like some catastrophe, something that couldn't be known even if you're super tuned in. Anyway, Freud is always full of crap.

@joelpettlon9650

Жыл бұрын

He described part of Freud's view. Of course pretty much everyone disagrees with at least part of another person's views, and that is undoubtedly true of Wolff for Freud. Freud came up with many seemingly original ideas, some have been shown to be useful and some have turned out to be crap after further study. That Freud produced a bunch of crap doesn't mean we can't take advantage of some of the things Freud got mostly or at least partly right, same for any famous thinker. As far as dreams predicting the future, that's generally based on a few fallacious forms of reasoning. Matt Dillahunty has at least one excellent video on this topic, the one I can remember off-hand is about prophecy which is closely related to your statement and it addresses what you brought up.

@cev12

Жыл бұрын

@@joelpettlon9650 Well, you know everything, so you must be right... do you ever get tired of your massive ego?

There's something wrong with clinging to Marx so tightly, as though he's a god. The man was mortal, not some omniscient being. After considering his thoughts, let's move on.

@ExPwner

Жыл бұрын

Well said

@joelpettlon9650

Жыл бұрын

He's not treated as a god, just a a person who wrote a lot of very useful things. Conversations keep coming back to Marx because of the depth and breadth of his considerations in his works and the desire to properly attribute to the source material so as to not be plagiarizing.

@ExPwner

Жыл бұрын

@@joelpettlon9650 actually he is. He was wrong on practically everything he wrote and yet his cultists treat him as a deity.

tragic case of a academic marxist who has read their kapital but doesnt have a grasp of dialectical materialism, which by application shows how nonsensical the argumentation in this video is. pure subjectivism, by which the world doesn have any real explanation, the postmodernists are thrilled to hear this! in light of this, i cannot enough recommend the introductory text "what is dialectical materialism?" by rob sewell available for free online, a truely view expanding text!

Wolff provides a reductio ad absurdum of his own position. Given the logic of Wolff's postmodernism, his own Marxism is just another 'story'. In contrast, Marx was what we would now call a modernist in the sense that he believed that he was telling us the truth by picking out the most important explanatory factors for understanding socio-economic reality (i.e., he believed he was offering not just a story but the true one). Consequently, to challenge *modernist* Marx, you consider alternative explanations to his own - you ask whether what he said was actually true, whether it was supported by the evidence etc. In contrast, to challenge *postmodernist* Wolff, you just note that, having abandoned any serious notion of truth, he has abandoned the belief that one explanation ('story') is better than another. Having done so, he implies that his own focus on Marxist explanations an arbitrary fixation that no one else has good reason to share.

So determinism implies that the people making money from the Ukraine war can't help their greed. Identifying greed of the industrial military complex as one of the causes ( drivers ) of the war. And the soldiers dying from the weapons which these people make. Do we have to accept that as enevitable ? If you have an amorphous self serving conscious and you are making shit loads of money from the Ukraine war you will probably be happy or relieved to think of it as enevitable.But if you have a conscience ( which you can't help having if you have one ) then you will oppose this war. And when people are being blown to pieces the finer points of philosophy seem irrelevant.

Man makes his own way, nobody gives it to you, you got to take take it. James Joyce Any means necessary. Malcom X There is no fate, but what you make for yourself. Terminator 2 God is dead. Fredrick Nichie

@sheezle3

Жыл бұрын

Nichie 😂😂😂

😂 professor the truth seems Extremely basic & understood. If Russ1a invades your actual homeland i would expect any man to defend his territory. wouldn't you? OK 👌 We have an understanding. VERY SIMPLE.🙏🇺🇦

@joelpettlon9650

Жыл бұрын

The majority of the people in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the Donbas are mostly Russian speaking, having Russian as their primary language, and wanted to continue to have economic and cultural ties to Russia. After the 2014 coup against the admittedly corrupt previous administration, the new government in Kiev (also corrupt) did a few things that were found to be unacceptable to the majorities in the Donbas as well as Crimea. It should be remembered that Crimea voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia before Russia annexed it. The new Kiev government started persecuting not just the Russian speaking people but also minorities, with some being massacred. They restricted the use of the Russian language, taking broadcasts in Russian off the air and prohibiting government documents from using Russian. These and other grievances led that part to break away from Ukraine through first an internationally recognized as legitimate vote and then after Kiev refused using military force to keep them as part of Ukraine there was a subsequent civil war. Initial negotiations, the Minsk Protocol failed to stop the fighting, with the latter Minsk 2 agreement, which would give the regions partial autonomy only stopped the fighting briefly with Kiev's forces continuing to shell and do small-scale attacks in the areas sporadically, leading to large amounts of refugees fleeing into Russia. The agreement broke down completely when Kiev failed to allow for the agreed upon elections and continued shelling and banned some political parties. Russia stepped in militarily when Kiev massed troops along the border of the Donbas regions. Even the people running Wikipedia acknowledge most of this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbas#War_in_Donbas_(2014%E2%80%932022). That's just one set of reasons leading up to the "Russian Invasion". Others have to do with the USA breaking agreements with Russia both militarily and economically as can be learned about through various documentaries, speeches by diplomats and academics, articles by journalists, and even speeches and interviews with current and retired generals from the USA and elsewhere.

@2Goiz_1ShanDA

Жыл бұрын

@@joelpettlon9650 I don't read propaganda that has to be explained in a book. I know Russ!a gives a higher pension. But even in the DNL they still claimed Ukrainian

It sounds like Prof Wolff is saying that he believes everything in life happens for a reason. Sometimes that reason is because some people are just plain stupid and make poor decisions.

@benangel3268

Жыл бұрын

Sometimes the reason is because sombody who is already insanely rich sees an opportunity to become even more insanely wealthy. Also because somebody or a group in a strong position sees their position is threatened.

@shakere101

Жыл бұрын

@@benangel3268 Most of the time it is that somebody wants more for themselves than everybody else and can rationalize all of their behavior to suit any means or methods to do so

@benangel3268

Жыл бұрын

@@shakere101 That is true. It can also be a person or group who feels that they are being unfairly suppressed.

@GrubbyDave

Жыл бұрын

'Just plain stupid and make poor decisions' is a reason in itself. And of course there are reasons people are 'stupid', and their stupidity and poor decisions are also affecting other things which influence each other, and also the stupidity and poor decisions a person might make. Oh, that sounds like overdetermination.

@shakere101

Жыл бұрын

@@GrubbyDave We were all stupid once. But some of us have resources available to us that stupid and poor people do not. Being stupid will always be accomodated if you have enough money. Being poor and stupid is unforgiveable especially when the rich and stupid must forgive.

OK, so "what determined" how a guy with 3 economics degrees failed to learn the connection between monetary inflation and price inflation, or how did he come to say obvious erroneous/stupid things such as "competition creates monopoly and monopoly creates competition"???

@kevinschmidt2210

Жыл бұрын

You mean capitalism, not competition.

@clarestucki5151

Жыл бұрын

@@kevinschmidt2210 That is a direct quote from Wolff. He said "comptetition", not capita;ism.

@kevinschmidt2210

Жыл бұрын

@@clarestucki5151 He misspoke, if he really did say that. Obviously, he meant to say capitalism.

@joelpettlon9650

Жыл бұрын

As with anyone, Wolff occasionally misspeaks. That's not the only time he has misspoken in a video but most people understand what he meant through either the context or the fact that he has generally said the misspoken thing correctly either earlier in the video or in previous videos.

@joelpettlon9650

Жыл бұрын

As for the connection between monetary inflation and price inflation, he merely shows that it is a much more tentative connection than generally claimed for varied reasons that he lays out, especially under our current fiat money system, not discounting it completely.

Unlike Marx, Lenin was a politician, brutal and genocidal. His were the works that the Soviets needed to justify the brutal regime they imposed over countless nations and ethnicities. I wouldn't put the two, Marx and Lenin, into the same sentence, though the Soviets did that create the illusion that they represented the working people.

@sheezle3

Жыл бұрын

Yeah right. That's why real people all over the world have nothing but praise for the Soviet Union. I'd take their word over yours. GTFO

@tusharsingh4543

Жыл бұрын

lenin literally called for the liberation of the working class and peoples of oppressed nations. What a monster! 😂

@AlbertSirup

Жыл бұрын

You are thinking of Stalin, Lenin only lived a couple more years after the end of the Russian civil war. We shouldn't assume everything Stalin did was in the spirit of Lenin

@231rosslyn

Жыл бұрын

@@tusharsingh4543 Yes indeed, he called for it and once he concentrated the power, he started building concentration camps, well before Hitler did. Study history, you will see.

@231rosslyn

Жыл бұрын

@@sheezle3 I'm sure that those who lived all over the world might have had nothing but praise for the Soviet Union. But why don't you ask those who actually lived there? Not so much praise!

1.5x playback speed. You’re welcome.

People are victims of circumstances and products of their environment. Poverty breeds poverty. Apple don’t fall far from the tree, like father like son, monkey see monkey do.