[FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

[uǝlƃ ☣]

On 11/7/19 9:55 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> In the spirit of "all models are wrong, some are useful",  what you are
> calling _interstitial_ implies to me that you are thinking of them more
> as "wrong because incomplete" ?  In my decades long work with scientists
> and engineers, trying to provide useful "visualizatoins" of their work,
> I have often been confronted by their eagerness to accept *my*
> model-fitting over their sparse data as somehow "magic".   In the early
> days of animation (roughly flip-books) the time-series interpolation
> required to make it smooth was often mistaken for magically exposing
> some "feature" of the model, when at best, it subdued the perceptual
> jinkiness introduced by their sampling.   I had done nothing more than
> arbitrarily fit a spline to their data, which they themselves could well
> have done, but would not have... somehow outsourcing that sleight of
> hand made it OK?

Well, I was refining Marcus' imperative that we *should* work to model the environment/economy in which our sub-isms live. I think he was, appropriately, pushing back on my denigration of creating GUIs. So, by "interstitial", I meant the glue between -isms. When combining lower-case capitalism with, say, human rights, we have to find a way to model the interstitial space between them, unify them, integrate them. But when doing so, as you point out with your curve fitting example, we arbitrarily *promote* one interstitial space model over another *unless* we provide a way to swap in and out multiple, distinct, ways of integrating them. So, it's less about "wrong because incomplete" and more about "don't believe what you see" ... skepticism.

That's why I prefer "all models are *always* wrong" to "all models are wrong, some are useful". Never place any trust, whatsoever, in anything you think, see, or do. If you trust it, then you're a sucker.


> What is the complement of the "tragedy" of the commons?  Is it the
> "glory" of it? 

My own cocktail party attempts have focused on *entitlement*. So many of my elders (Boomers) criticize Millenials for their entitlement, that it makes for a good hook. When they start bitching about how Millenials expect this or that, I try to turn the tables and say *Yes!* We want them to be entitled. We want them to feel safe walking down the street, entitled to roam the streets at all hours without getting raped. We want them to have avocado toast at their local cafe because avocados are good for you. We want them to "get a prize just for showing up" because showing up is *good*. But my rhetoric rarely works. My GenX peers just look at me and roll their eyes: Who cares? Just drink your damned beer.

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