Are aesthetics really primary when seeking converts?

A common theme I see in some circles online is that many political opinions and other social convictions are downstream of aesthetics. This leads to a sort of propagandizing via art and literature, appeals to physical beauty, etc.

For the everyman, this might be true, since one can observe the “cool-factor” playing out in almost every fad.

But among our elite, can this actually be said to be the case? There’s much to be said about the artistic and literary tastes of these people, and much has been said, but I’d like to focus on what is, to me, a more curious case: our mathematicians.

I cannot find a survey of mathematicians themselves, but if we take tenure-track/permanent philosophy of mathematics faculty as a proxy, 60% report themselves as Platonists. https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Target+faculty&areas0=47&areas_max=1&grain=coarse

Academia skews liberal, but those who have interacted in any online mathematics community (say Twitter, mathstodon) will know that mathematicians skew far further left than that.

Mathematics is a subject that tends to attract what we might describe as “sensitive young men and women.” We cannot deny that a student in mathematics is reasonably intelligent, certainly more intelligent than the everyman. This is the sort of biomaterial that most dissidents seek to sway or at least instrumentalize.

Avowing mathematical Platonism (and objective theories of aesthetics, and deontological ethics — it’s a fun survey to scroll) while indulging in various Marxisms, transgenderism, atheisms, social libertinisms, and etceterisms, seems to be a piece of evidence against the primacy of aesthetic considerations.

This puzzle is most often explained away by the “theory of theorycels,” i.e. those who live, work, and okay with abstractions in a land where logical consistency is the only law are susceptible to all kind of ideologies. The theorycel adopts the ideology for its internal consistency (perhaps an aesthetic judgment?) and turns a blind eye to downstream ugliness.

This is a difficult explanation to buy on its own. Empirically, these people desire the society implied by the ideology (or they lie everywhere all the time online), which means they seek an accordance between their abstraction and their social reality. I find it unreasonable to expect that there is some sort of duality of aesthetic judgments at play, so it stands to reason this people do not find such a social outcomes ugly.

In any case, we’re left with a problem. If consistency is all that matters, then there is no reason to expect that a propaganda focused on beauty will sway. If consistency is not all that matters, then the social outcomes are not considered ugly, and so the audience is aesthetically unreachable, or the social outcomes are considered ugly but otherwise desirable, and so there is no primacy of aesthetics.

If we can accept that philosophers of mathematics are a proxy for mathematicians and that mathematicians in turn are a proxy for the untapped SYM demographic, then it seems that focusing on aesthetics is a misguided way to create converts.

Of course, this might not be the target demographic. But right now, aesthetic propaganda seems to win over young men of middling intellect who purchase supplements from grifters.

>>1309

> ... mathematicians in turn are a proxy for the untapped SYM demographic ...

I think this may be the core error in your thesis. Mathematicians have alway been a very odd lot, very different from those inclined to political philosophy, for example.

(Although an engineering major, I noticed how very strange some of my mathematics professors were, in ways quite unrelated to politics, as an undergraduate, many decades ago. But you're also correct about the "leftist mathematician" phenomenon. I first noticed it in regard to William Lawvere, one of the greats of category theory, who was not only a Leninist but a Maoist.)

More broadly, I'd say the target among SYM is closer to novelists and essayists than mathematicians. Perhaps eventually a few filmmakers.

> ... aesthetic propaganda seems to win over young men of middling intellect who purchase supplements from grifters.

I don't think this is correct. I'm in several group chats in which SYM have taken up the study of classical Greek and focused aspects of philosophy and literature in response to vitalist aesthetics.

If you have high ambitions to change your polis, this requires young, military-aged men. Bringing these men into a mannerbund through the use of shared symbology and uniform is necessary if insufficient.

>>1313
I'm all for giving young men a place, but the median age of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence was roughly 44 (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/signers-factsheet), and Benjamin Franklin was already 70 (and he still went to Paris for nine years after that!). I don't know that they had any particularly unique fashions to distinguish themselves from other Enlightenment-era gentlemen, but I honestly don't imagine so.

Focused study of philosophy might have to come first.

>>1312

>very different from those inclined to political philosophy, for example

This I am not so sure of. The type to study philosophy is not so different from the type to study mathematics. It is not uncommon to see an interest in the structure and functioning of society, in history, and in mathematics inhere in the same person (this, once upon a time, was one of the main pitches used to sell undergraduates in the economics major).

If we believe that there are “born mathematicians,” who do not share any such interests and cannot, then maybe that is the origin of such an odd lot, but of this I am not sure either: modern mathematics is sufficiently “baroque” (in the JvN sense: far removed from their real world inspiration — something beyond the pure/applied distinction, more akin to criticisms someone might lob at certain kinds of modern art).

So really we are talking about relatively intelligent young people with that specific deficiency of character that leads to obsessions with concepts and structures. Modlbug and BAP might be viewed as the exception that proves the rule, but I think they are typical in their youthful interests.

It is maybe more, and for the reasons implied above maybe more welcome, that we are seeing more engineers take an interest in these things. Veblen might be smiling somewhere.

>the target among SYM is closer to novelists and essayists than mathematicians. Perhaps eventually a few filmmakers.

>I don't think this is correct. I'm in several group chats in which SYM have taken up the study of classical Greek and focused aspects of philosophy and literature in response to vitalist aesthetics.

This is fair enough. In fact this might be the answer in either case. Different target, or perhaps you’re getting the same raw material while it’s young before it decides to go and study mathematics (or XYZ). Aesthetics as intervention.

If it weren’t fed-coded, I’d love a survey. What were their interests, are their interests, plans of study, career goals… A person who picks up classical Greek for the beauty is not so different from a person who falls in love with number theory. Maybe they’ve been saved from a terrible fate.

>>1312

> Mathematicians have alway been a very odd lot, very different from those inclined to political philosophy, for example.

There's an important distinction to be made here (take it from a math major). Guys who do competition math as kids and end up in Math 55 are very odd, whereas guys who crush Calc BC in high school and grit their teeth through 4 years of proofs tend to be more SYM / 'inclined to political philosophy'.

Sliced another way, striver parents and math camps yield Talmudic, syllogistically intelligent priest-types that stick close to the ruling regime, whereas middle class parents and youth sports yield embodied, spatially intelligent engineer-types that value self-sovereignty.

It's much better to target the latter for conversion, and at least for me, the aesthetics didn't work. The canonical texts did.

>>1330
>Guys who do competition math as kids and end up in Math 55 are very odd, whereas guys who crush Calc BC in high school and grit their teeth through 4 years of proofs tend to be more SYM / 'inclined to political philosophy'.

>Sliced another way, striver parents and math camps yield Talmudic, syllogistically intelligent priest-types that stick close to the ruling regime, whereas middle class parents and youth sports yield embodied, spatially intelligent engineer-types that value self-sovereignty.

I never thought about this distinction, but it rings true. I and a few of my friends fit tour description here, down to the class aspect. Many of us have parents who were not college educated.

I would not say we all grit our teeth through proofs, but we did not disdain application or math “of the world.” We liked textbooks in the Russian style — math campers liked textbooks in the Bourbaki style (it’s not a hard and fast rule, but a pretty picture — a lot of competition literature is very Soviet-inspired).

I can only speak for myself, but I often felt behind those with earlier exposure and more mathematical maturity. To some extent, enjoying problems that are if the world is a matter if taste, but I’d be lying if I didn’t also admit it was sometimes a matter of cope: I needed to make money, and no one in my family knew what grad school was, let alone what pure mathematicians do.

You have to wonder though whether these priest-types can’t be useful, and why and how they get produced. Again I look at the Russians: we would never apply these descriptors to the bulk of Russian mathematicians from WWI onward.

But if all that taste is a facade over class dynamics, then I have to say again that some of these bright young kids could be very useful. And I don’t want to disdain higher math as a whole, I think it really is a jewel. All amateur classicists are constantly looking toward Greece and Rome — well only one of these civilizations produced any mathematics of note. What that tells us, I don’t know, but as we all pretend to be engineers of a new society, we might chew on that.

It’s funny to me that to some extent the tension between, say, mathematical Platonism and nominalism (with maybe Aristotelian realism as the middle ground no one gives a shit about) mirrors tensions in this “sphere” between idealists and pragmatists, monotheists and secular “pagans,” rationalizer and hard-nosed observers. It’s the same song and dance twenty times over.

>Avowing mathematical Platonism (and objective theories of aesthetics, and deontological ethics — it’s a fun survey to scroll) while indulging in various Marxisms, transgenderism, atheisms, social libertinisms, and etceterisms, seems to be a piece of evidence against the primacy of aesthetic considerations.

This feels like overthinking. Mathematicians are lefty because mathematicians are academics and academics are lefty. Call it aesthetics or whatever why people are drawn to what are propagandized as beautiful ideas within their formative environments, but I don't see the contradiction of that with belief in mathematical essences and truths. There may even be alignment between gnostic ideas of gender and the essential gnostic ideas of mathematical platonism. In any case these kinds of abstract consistencies have never been a particularly strong argument for anybody but shills trying to bamboozle you. "Oh you believe X so you're supposed to also believe Y. Checkmate Z." Not persuasive.

>there is no reason to expect that a propaganda focused on beauty will sway.

The key variable with propaganda is not beauty or no beauty but *which* beauty. Blast your idealism from the rooftops and preach your ideals of beauty and many in the next generation will be swayed and formed in this vision of beauty. If you like the beauty of strong bodies formed in struggle and purpose, others may find the implicit systems of oppression and genocide behind that beauty to be a great ugliness. Any conception of beauty is also a theory of attention: what should be our moral focus? On heroism and strength vs wretchedness, or compassion vs oppression?

The question for the deeper theorists of beauty who are aware of this dynamic is which conception of beauty is most needed right now? This is the work that great prophets and folk-forming hero-leaders do. They discern what leap of faith we must make as a people, and persuade us with their visionary foresight to take it.

>>1315
While I was never tempted to pursue mathematics as a career, I've spent a great deal of my life obsessed both with abstruse branches of applied math and with muscular political aesthetics of the neo-hellenic "uniformed mannerbund" type. A data point for your survey, and a point against the "middling intellect" theory of those persuaded by aesthetics.

A lot of perspectives here are completely alien to me. I thought mathematics was a comorbidity with many of the interests on this forum. Looking forward to doing a Musil reading thread in the future with you all and digging into some of these differences.

Whether or not you can Hari Seldon your way into an effective conversion protocol is doubtful. Men are too dissimilar and idiosyncratic for a proselytization approach to be generalizable over ideologies.

Consider the counterfactual: some general conversion method exists and can tractably be known and implemented by an extant human organization. What was the CIA attempting to do with psyops? Did they succeed? Has anyone else attempted more to achieve their goals more directly than they did? Did they have more, or less, funding and manpower?

An obvious contemporary candidate for successor is the cluster of occulted groups and individuals commonly called the Deep State, which has learned from the experiments run by the CIA, and presently controls and coordinates messaging and narrative on mass media and social media. My question is: are they converting the masses to their ideology successfully? How? Do those methods generalize? Why or why not?

I don't want to be annoying and end on a question, so I'll state my opinion. It is far easier to convince weak men of gentle lies than hard truths. To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, "the line between strength and weakness runs through every human heart." It's not really a paraphrase though, because I am using the term strength here to refer also to goodness; virtue in general is essentially difficult. And it seems that for one reason or another, men are simply weaker today than they were in 1900, or 1500, or 500. They more readily corrupt and they are more readily corrupted into cloying deceptions. This is just the vibe I'm getting. The Deep State, or whatever is behind Big Trans, race riots, and so on, is an empire of lies that attempts to rule from behind the smoke of the burning buildings it sponsors. So their methods are tainted. Maybe not irrecoverably - we can always learn from enemy action, and thus extract gain. But it is almost certainly the case that the foundation of evil that undergirds the enemy's tactics and strategy entails that we pursue an entirely different method of evangelization.

>>1423
How then do we recover strength and virtue in ourselves, and speak to those capable of it? How to get out from under the taint of the age? No doubt we can expect this to be quite hard. I fear it's the kind of question that can't be answered. Not that there isn't an answer, but that the answer is inherently inaccessible to any discourse that would ask the question. You cannot ask or learn, only know. But somehow as you say fewer today seem to know. All I can think to do is speak truth, build infrastructure for those who will, and live as much without compromise as is available to us. But it's not much.

>>1426
I disagree that the question cannot be asked or the answer learned. Solomon did. Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas. Whether apocryphally or not, these man asked God for wisdom and received it. We may not believe that goodness is a Person Who can hear us, but just in case, we should act like He is in case He helps us, or we need Someone to thank, or to answer our questions.

It is as simple and as complex as striving to do the right thing at all times in all places. Seek virtue and cleave to it. With others, insist they do the same. "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpeneth another."

> and live as much without compromise as is available to us

There can be no compromise. Become good and die trying. Either we will be intelligent enough to determine the implementation particulars in our own lives, or we won't, but it doesn't get more abstract than this. Seek goodness recklessly and relentlessly. Avoid evil always and everywhere.

Ok, sermon over. What does it mean for us now? Mostly, getting others on board on the one hand, and "protecting your neck" on the other. (The civil war isn't going to end just because you decided to be good. In fact, the battle is only beginning for you now.) If you want others to do good, you must "preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words" (Francis of Assisi). Lead by example.

In my own life, it means keeping in contact with friends old and new, and staying on good terms with them, for the sake of being there in a crucial moment when they need to hear that God is good and God is waiting for them to look for Him. Listening, truly listening, and shutting up until it is clear - not always *what they are saying*, but what what they are saying means about what they are feeling and thinking. Everyone approaches the truth from their own beginning, and the process of evangelization is inalienably individualized, and cannot be walked by anyone save the man in the shoes. We cannot believe for them. We cannot choose on their behalf to be good or to listen to the small, still voice.* All that is to say - we aren't going to do better than the ancients here. Look how they treated Socrates for "just asking questions" - the guy the oracle at Delphi said no one in Greece was wiser than.

* (Depending on your theology, of course, it may be possible to offer up your daily sufferings for their sake.)

>>1439
Ok if praying for revelation counts as a way to answer the question, then yes it can be asked and answered. What I meant was that there is a self defeating aspect to trying to ask certain questions rationally and instrumentally.

Right - well, I think the process - the ideal, fully-engaged process - is simply to continually ask the question ourselves (i.e. pray), and encourage others to do the same.

That is to say, if everyone who can be good is attempting to be good, then we need no other plans. If God is real then He will guide us; if not, then our efforts are already in vain.