Why Do I Hate Flatland?

Why is everyone in love with the book flatland?

The spatial analogy and concepts are dead simple to understand and completely unsatisfying.
I feel the odd sensation that it’s all stupid and meaningless, disguised as charming and interesting.

I feel like people smart enough to grasp math and analogies and the humility of science and human limits,
love this book. but people with a deeper intuitive grasp of philosophy’s problems, and maybe even a hint of understanding
of wittgenstein’s semiotics, would hate this book. But i’ve googled “flatland sucks” et al and everybody seems to like it.

Will you hate flatland with me?

I feel like it does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. They talk about it like it is supposed to open your mind and help you think. But I think it does the opposite – it gives you permission to close your mind. It forces you into a kind of humility and also over-zealousness for mathematics as a way to describe reality. It’s almost like a form of brainwashing.

I can’t tell you how sickening it is to hear people say “there’ a wonderful book called flatland, where…” blah blah blah. It’s not wonderful, it’s not smart, it doesn’t point out anything new to ME, and it’s maddeningly hollow and meaningless.

I’m all for the we don’t know what we don’t know ethos. But this is a very bad way to go about depicting it. Not to mention the awful caste system analogies and political satire throughout the book – I hate that stuff, too.

Anyways, it just seems to me the whole meditation of flatland fails from the very first premise. And its a perfect example of why I hate very smart people who are smart in a prosaic way, and I hate mathematicians and teachers who talk about Flatland because it teaches people not to think.

I figured if I’d find anyone who agrees with me that flatland sucks I’d find it here. Pls tell me someone hates flatland, and articulate why i hate it, because I’m having a hard time. HINT: It’s NOT because I hate feeling powerless like I can’t comprehend a fourth dimension. I don’t mind powerlessness at all. And it’s not because I think the fourth dimension is time, or that I think a fourth spatial dimension can’t exist as a mathematical concept.

You don’t seem to understand the psychology of this site.

At ILP if you want to find out what’s wrong with something or who all hates it, you don’t say, “I hate this. Now who’s with me?” Instead you praise the absolute perfection of it, proclaiming that it is greater than any philosopher, especially Kant and Nietzsche, or any philosophical perspective. Point out the details that you want to have criticized; “The book points out the real truth that mathematics really is the supreme understanding, fourth spatial dimensioning is unquestionably true, … blah, blah, blah …”.

From that, you will get what you [say that you] seek.

ILPers love to hate (it’s an ego thing).

=D>

Yes, at least most of them. And that ego thing is one of the main parts of the nihilism.

I assume you mean a tale of two dimensions (or something like that). I’ve not read it, as when I heard the premise I thought it too absurd to bother with.
So, no, not everyone loves it. As far as I am willing to pursue this book, it is not worthy.

Flatland cannot exist. You can only represent 2D, but you need a third dimension to do that. The idea that there could be 2D objects bumbing into each other is idiotic, as that would have to imply a third D.
Years ago when I heard the premise I simply growled unde by breath and said something like “Urumph!!”

I’m not looking to manipulate anyone. I’m just being honest.

You’re right, the psychology of this site is lost on me. I am a very literal person.
I say it how it is. I don’t understand irony or sarcasm or any of that.

You will see me and my intentions coming from a mile away. I was born that way.

Now please, hate flatland.

This thread will contradict that… not everyone is on an ego trip here, when they agree with a topic, they generally won’t comment on it, and let the topic stand for itself.

You and James make it sound like we all have ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) - it’s just parsimony that everyone generally agrees with an OP and doesn’t reply to it. ILP is corrective, not “egoistic”.

Just by reading a synopsis on it, it looks like just another propaganda peace from the arrogant lesser minds trying to convert the world into a more chaotic demented mass, easier to manipulate (same ole, same ole). But I avoid hatred (ILP keeps me in practice ).

Flatland just used the allegory of the cave several thousand years later with some political commentary, implying that those who disagree with the political commentary are looking at the shadows and aren’t fully present. Nifty trick if you can pull it off. Like in Buddhism where they say you are awake or not awake, you are with the king of death (christianity and hinduism as well) or walking with the living. It’s rhetorical in nature trying to pass someone off as “this is what being human is” and you are all sub-human unless you agree with me.

I do this myself, but I do it with axioms nobody can disagree with.

I did not say that “everyone is on an ego trip here”, but I said “most of them”. Perhaps you did not read my whole post.

Most of them.

I was talking about most (about 80%) of the ILP members, thus not about ILP itself. Perhaps you did not read my whole post.

Most of them. I estimate: 80%.

Point and correction taken.

Gamer, I don’t know this book, but I have a feeling that I hate it. The way you described the whole, “everyone wants you to read it because it’s so profound” bit made me think of how I felt the entire time I was getting a philosophy degree. Like seriously. If you’re the type who’s mind is always churning and who thinks and contemplates things as a way of life or by your nature, then you’ll probably end up disappointed with almost every book you read. I mean I got to a point to where I considered a book “good” if it were complex and it took me a while to get what the writer was saying. But even then the complexity is usually just obfuscation and bullshit and the point that gets made is usually something that a kid could come up with given the free time and the right stimuli. People just aren’t that smart, and anyone can get a book published nowadays. Even on the campus of most universities, you have to search high and low to find people who are truly gifted. The world is a shit hole.

I can’t share Your negative about it, James, since it seems to advance by Habermas the notion of some similarity with Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man and and the dawn of the Wasteland. it tries to be integrative, so I hold my opinion in suspense, until, I like Reasonable have a chance to look at it.

Oh, Orb, no. Not the “Frankfurt School”. That “school” is definitely out!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBEcLxnXVAc[/youtube]

In flatland everything is 2D and it describes how creatures in flatland don’t have a concept of up or down. Then a sphere visits them and all sorts of weird shit goes down. Of course they only ever see cross sections of the sphere in flatland, but it’s doing all sorts of things that things in flatland shouldn’t be able to do. If you have the tiniest grasp of Euclidean geometry I’m sure you can imagine. from this we are all supposed to gleen an important and humbling lesson: a creature from a 4th dimension were to visit us, we wouldn’t have the anatomy to truly perceive it. We might be just as dumb as the 2D creatures and not know it! Well now you know it! Applause applause. Weehee. …fuck

This parable is long winded and heavy handed and wrong, but at least it’s corny and pretentious in that unpretentious way that science geeks are when trying to be amusing.

Like a bad episode of the twilight zone.

2D creatures would not be aware of the sphere, or of themselves. In fact without a third dimension they could have no existence at all. The problem is self defeating.
The idea that the sphere passing through their plane of existence would appear as a circle that appears from nowhere, gets bigger, then smaller then disappears. Sadly this implies a thin section of a third dimension which negates the premise of the problem.
That’s why the thought experiment was stupid and deserving of contempt.

Dimensions are not forces of nature that you can just add. They are human conceits by which we measure the world. You don’t get to just add more, when you feel like it. The whole thing is an exercise in idiocy.

Except if there is a metaphoric dimension, then it isn’t.

A metaphorical dimension is an oxymoron.
But Flatland breaks the rules of what a dimension is.

Yes, but an oxymoron corresponds to breaking rules.