[FRIAM] flattening -isms

[glen∈ℂ]

Herein lies the monist rub. If types of things are the same as things of type, then why do we have 2 words: "thing" and "type"? Why not just have one word: "thing"? The same is true of "kind" vs. "type". Or any 2 words you might choose at random from the dictionary. So, we all turn into "enlightened" people and go around mumbling "mu" all the time.

My answer, of course, is methodological pluralism. It's pragmatic to allow different types, to distinguish one thing from another. And that's the end of the hand-wringing. 8^) Sure, if you can partially unify things in order to make some task simpler/better (e.g. inducing patterns into causal graphs to stress test markets), fine. Do your partial unification. But moderation in all things (including moderation) ... except beer consumption, which cannot be moderated!

On 11/17/19 7:17 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>      "There are two kinds of people.  Those who believe there are an
> irrational number of types of things, and those who don't."

On 11/17/19 7:31 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Yes, I meant to say including the types type.

On 11/17/19 7:40 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Hywel was an experimental particle physicist and a regular Friam attendee.
> He had been a professor at Penn and Cornell and a group leader at Los
> Alamos.  Once he said to me, "the number one does not exist".  He meant
> that there is nothing that is precisely one centimeter long, for example.
> I asked him, "How many biological mothers did you have?"  I don't have
> enough time to repeat his answer.