There's something great about physics and astronomy when it comes to naming things.
What is it? An odd circle of radio waves. What are we going to call it? Well, if we call it an "odd radio circle" the initialization is the same as the monstrous bad guys from a classic fantasy novel.
Continuing the thread, my favourites are the sequence of telescopes named "very large telescope", "extremely large telescope" and "overwhelmingly large telescope"!
In the post-modern era (roughly 1945-20??) people were highly skeptical of their egos and of power, advertised humility, and consequently had a sense of humor about themselves and the world. Thus you get names like quark and Google.
Now in the newly-born (reactionary?) era, ego is our God, and we get names like Uber. Physics perhaps hasn't quite joined the new era, yet.
Yeah, ironically when i think of Uber, i think of Ubermenschen, which featured prominently in Nazi propaganda[1], so 1940s. So much for ego being a new thing and cherry picking how in olden times things were better.
Even so, your thesis was falsifiable which makes it good in my book :)
> So much for ego being a new thing and cherry picking how in olden times things were better.
I never said ego was a new thing, or that all of history was better. In fact, I chose the post-war period - whose culture, I would guess, was partly a reaction to the fascist ideology (or any ideology).
Also, the culture of science is inescapably post-modern. The new era aggressively rejects the Enlightenment bases of science such as the supremacy of fact, the weakness of subjectivity, resolving issues by reason, empowerment by our intellects, etc.
As somebody who's interested in postmodern philosophy, I'm not sure I'd characterise it as being against reason or intellectual empowerment. It's primarily skeptical of metanarratives, like the idea of historical progress or the inevitable triumph of reason. The big one it expresses skepticism towards is the modernist project, but that doesn't mean a rejection of reason. After all, postmodern philosophy uses arguments from reasoning to make its case!
Social constructivism and the like also aren't anti-facts or pro-subjectivity (assuming that's what you were implying, just a guess though) - it's about acknowledging which things we consider objectively true are actually only true by convention or tradition rather than being rooted in physical laws. Also how the human mind models knowledge and the relations between our models of reality and reality itself, so we don't mistake the map for the territory.
> As somebody who's interested in postmodern philosophy, I'm not sure I'd characterise it as being against reason or intellectual empowerment.
I agree completely! The "new era" to which I referred is not post-modernism, but what I describe as the current 'reactionary' era in my earlier post (the GGGP, beginning "An hypothesis ..."). Sorry if that was confusing.
So what do you think? Are we in a new period after post-modernism? What would you call it? When and how did it start? I can't be the first to think it - by who and where is it talked about?
Some humantities and social science academics I know disdain post-modernism, with all the scholarly reason and social momentum of being 'no longer cool' in high school - 'you're still wearing those shoes?'. I asked one, in front of their friend, about the post-modern person on whom they wrote their thesis. They changed the subject and then later told me quietly, 'I don't read that anymore'.
For all the ridiculousness of that, it's serious business. Post-modernism contained the weapons and armor against fascism and other ideology, and we've disarmed ourselves. What do people intend to replace it with?
If you are referring to Uber the app, "Uber" had nothing to do with ego. The cab experience was poor, and the service was called UberCab to delineate a better cab experience. Cab++ if you wish.
They got sued for using the word "cab" in "UberCab", and just shorted the name to "Uber".
The people who named it no doubt put much more thought into the name than we are, and I am confident they knew the implications of the word 'uber'; also, emember that it was founded by Travis Kalanick whose public actions seem to fit some of those implications.
Also compare the word 'uber', however you interpret it, with words like 'google', 'yahoo', 'GNU', 'quark', 'charmed', 'C', 'C++', etc. Those have wit, humor, and disarm ego. (In fairess, maybe there are similarly witty names now that I'm not thinking of?)
You are overthinking this by a wide margin. UberCab was being used with the same meaning of “Ubercool”.
And you are factually wrong: UberCab was created without Travis Kalanick, by Garrett Camp. Travis invested in UberCab 6 months later or so, and he became CEO as part of the deal.
This can be really annoying. I went into an ENT for an ear infection. Doctor looks at me really seriously and tells me I have "otitis media". I look it up. It's just latin for "ear infection". That's nice, but I came in to learn what to do about it.
I blew up my knee in a motorbike incident, turning my ACL into a puddle of goo in the process. Imagine how impressed I was when after two minutes of research I found out "Ante-cruciate ligament" is "Back-crossy tying thing."
"Middle-ear infection". So, more specific than just ear infection. But the same number of syllables as "otitis media". But when you say the latter, you are not only saying you know what it is, but hinting you know what to do about it. (Which you might not.)
There is also plenty of bad names in physics, the "colour charge" and all other colour related names in quantum chromodynamics would be a very notable example.
What is it? An odd circle of radio waves. What are we going to call it? Well, if we call it an "odd radio circle" the initialization is the same as the monstrous bad guys from a classic fantasy novel.
ORCs it is then!