Dialectic of Enlightenment

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1. delusionalMar 2026
   > I realize that I may not be getting perfect information, but LLM output gives me ideas that are a combination of live web searching and whatever innate knowledge the LLM holds in its weights.

   I don't mean to be judgemental. It's possible this is a personal observation, but I do wonder if it's not universal. I find that if I give an inch to these models thinking, I instantly become lazy. It doesn't really matter if they produce interesting output, but rather that I stop trying to produce interesting thoughts because I can't help wonder if the LLM wouldn't have output the same thing. I become TOO output focused. I mistake reading an interpretation for actually integrating knowledge into my own thinking, I disregard following along with the author.

   I love reading philosophy as well. Dialectic of Enlightenment profoundy shaped how I view the world, but there was not a single part of that book that I could have given you a coherent interpretation of as a read it. The interpretations all come now, years after I read it. I can't help but wonder if those interpretations would have been different, had my subcouncious been satiated by cheap explanations from the lie robot.

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2. DiscourseFanDec 2024
   There has been discussion on this topic for about 100 years, but the most prominent is in the books Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor Adorno or One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse. They are a bit heavier than this article but they go into the problem with far more depth.

   The Frankfurt school in general deals with this problematic of Capitalism losing its revolutionary potential and becoming a stagnant, homogenous, unchanging system. Walter Benjamin, the spiritual father of both the above authors, in fact did extensive work attempting to uncover the wondrous possibilities of early high capitalism before it collapsed under the rule of Louis Bonaparte, which was the subject of Marx’s quite famous article The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Disagree with Marx if you want but he did believe that capitalism, if left to run wild, would produce a new form of hypermobile, freely associating society, but when that gets close to happening in times of crisis a certain section of elite seize power for themselves and prevent the revolutionary social changes from occuring, thus producing this endless mediocrity.

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3. DiscourseFanSep 2024
   you should read this fun book called the Dialectic of Enlightenment[0]

   [0]https://monoskop.org/images/2/27/Horkheimer_Max_Adorno_Theod...

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4. delusionalNov 2022
   Dialectic of Enlightenment crystallized a lot of thoughts in me around critical theory and philosophy in general. Before that book the closest I had ever been to philosophy was John Gall's excellent "Systemantics" which although wonderfully written and a delightful read didn't leave me with much insight into how to actually critically examine my surroundings. Dialectic of Enlightenment on the other hand left me with some basic tools I can apply to understand my surroundings, some understanding that the problems faced by a system (society) echoes the features of that society. That the ills we feel are the ills we create.

   Dialectic of Enlightenment convinced me that philosophy itself is actually useful and constructive, rather than just a pointless navel gazing activity.

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5. throwaway7281May 2020
   As a German, the idea that mass murder and high tech are different sides of the same coin has shaped my world view forever (after reading Dialectic of Enlightenment and On the Critique of Instrumental Reason).

   Horkheimer red-pilled me on our western societies and I'm grateful for it.

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6. malenoDec 2019
   'Dialectic of Enlightenment' might be a good place to start when it comes to thinking about thinking. If you want something a bit more fragmented/playful/debatable, then 'Minima Moralia' would be interesting. 'The Culture Industry' is well worth reading too.
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