[FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

[Nick Thompson]

Hi Steve, 

 

Larding below …

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2019 8:52 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?)

 

 

Nick -

Thank you for your kind words.

We were doing SO WELL until we got to … oh, see my “HORSEFEATHERS!” below. 

I'll see your HORSEFEATHERS and raise you a CONFLATION ALERT!



 

[NST==> HORSEFEATHERS! One or two generations of sociobiologists were directed away from group level explanations by this pernicious metaphor.  <==nst] 

Just to split hairs, I will claim that Dawkins wasn't "striving" (nor was his metaphor by extension) to direct sociobiologists away from anything, he was merely offering another way of looking at the problem.  You of course are in a much better position than I to know how he conducted himself during this time. 

[NST==>Well, I did know Dawkins, a bit: he was not one to “merely offer.”  <==nst] 

 As an entirely outside outsider, I have no idea what he was pushing the community for.   At the time, I just saw him as a disruptor with a significantly novel metaphor to be offered.

At our "Salon" at Jenny's 2 summers ago, we rambled on about metaphor quite a bit for a couple hours in the cool shade of her arbor with cool drinks in hand.   Dave West, as I remember, was mostly incensed at the way the AI community had gone astray for more than a while by taking the "Machine Metaphor for Mind" too literally.   It seems to me that might be what the sociobiology community did?

We often conflate what something was intended to do/be with what we hope/fear most from it.   I offer that might be what happened in both cases, actually granting the worsh(ish) case more power over the imagination than appropriate, then *blaming* the source of the "pernicuous idea" for being more "pernicous" than it really was (intended)?

In any case, even if Dawkins *was* dead set on ramming the Selfish Gene Metaphor through the hearts of all more mature models,  I guess I'm calling out a "group phenomena" where the actual disruptive idea or person ends up being given more power (like a boogeyman) than it deserves, *thereby* participating in a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I think Trumpism is one of those... He was just trying to tweak up his brand and now he's halfway to being the world-dictator, and we helped do it by under-estimating the hope/fear we carry around the topics he tweaked in us?

It *strives* to provide a cognitive shortcut and to establish a fairly strong metaphor which deserves careful dissection to understand the particulars of the *target domain*.   An important question in the target domain becomes "why does the shortcut of thinking of genes as selfish actually have some level of accuracy as a description of the phenomena when in fact the mechanisms involved do not support that directly?"

[NST==>I don’t think it does.  I think it’s a subtle and largely successful attempt to import Spenserian ideology in to evolutionary biology.  <==nst] 

I have to admit to having a nearly belligerent (maybe only willfully) naive view of ulterior motives in the Sciences.  I know that competition of this type exists and that it may well be pervasive, but I have to admit to not thinking in those terms until prompted.   

[NST==>Dawkins became a vigorous and narrow minded anti-religionist.  I forgive him because, after all, “it takes all kinds”, but I don’t think we should be in any doubt about what the “kind” is, in this case. <==nst] 





For all I know, EB has entirely debunked the concept and there is NO utility in the idea of a "selfish gene"...  

Bruce Sherwood likes to make the point that the analogy of hydraulic systems for DC circuits is misleading.   I forget the specifics of where he shows that the analogy breaks down, but it is well below (or above?) the level of "normal" DC circuit understanding and manipulation.   For the kinds of problems I work with using DC circuits, a "battery" is a "tank of water at some height", the Voltage out of the battery is the water Pressure, the amount of Current is the Volume of water, a Diode is a one-way valve,  a resistor is any hydraulic element which conserves water but reduces pressure through what is nominally friction, etc.    As you point out, there is plenty of "excess meaning" around hydraulics as source domain, and "insufficient meaning" around DC circuits as target domain, and if one is to use the analogy effectively one must either understand those over/under mappings, or be operating within only the smaller apt-portion of the domains.   For example, I don't know what the equivalent of an anti-hammer stub (probably a little like a capacitor in parallel?) is but that is no longer describing a simple DC circuit. 

[NST==>I think I am back to heartily agreeing. <==nst] 

A farmer buying his first tractor may try to understand it using the source domain of "draft animal" and can't go particularly wrong by doing things like "giving it a rest off and on to let it cool down", "planning to feed it well before expecting it to work", "putting it away, out of the elements when not in use", etc.  your "excess meaning" would seem to be things like the farmer going out and trying to top off the fuel every day even when he was not using the tractor, or maybe taking it out for a spin every day to keep it exercised and accustomed to being driven.   The farmer *might* understand "changing the oil" and "cleaning the plugs" and "adjusting the points" vaguely like "deworming" and "cleaning the hooves" but the analogy is pretty wide of the mark beyond the simple idea that "things need attending to".

[NST==>OoooooH.  I like the above!  May I plaigiarise it some day?  Do you by any chance know Epamanondas from your childhood.  Very politically incorrect, now, I fear, but endlessly instructive on the perils of over using metaphors.  <==nst] 

Plagiarize at will.  

I do not know Epaminondas and as I look him up (thanks to the pervasive and at-my-fingertips interwebs) I don't quite get the connection with Metaphor nor Political Incorrectness?

[NST==>Try https://www.uexpress.com/tell-me-a-story/2010/8/29/epaminondas-and-his-aunt-an-american  As I read the text, it’s not inherently racist, except that every publication represented E. as a black child.  In that context, it does make me cringe.  In any case, reading it, I think you will see it as I do as a story about the misapplication of metaphors.  <==nst] 

https://www.ancient.eu/Epaminondas/

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