[FRIAM] Re Rant

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Now that I've finally had a chance to read the entry Roger posted, I have an opinion. (Ha! As if I would ever *not* have an opinion....)

On 9/14/19 7:56 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:> Frank has been unfairly accused.  His was an Anti-Rant Quip. 
> 
> The material Roger cites doesn’t obviously relate  (for me) to Frank’s and my standing argument about the efficacy of inner life.  But its themes, continuity and anti-determinism, are Peirceian themes.  And my respect for Roger is such that I know that he don’t never say somethin’ for nothin’.  So, can somebody explicate?  Perhaps even Roger? 

> On 9/13/19 9:19 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:>> Rant??  
>> I am a proponent, in human affairs, of both/and rather than either/or propositions.  In math I use the law of the excluded middle, however.

First) Both Nick's and Frank's reaction to Roger's classification of Frank's post as a "rant" are "so meta" -- said in the voice of a 20-something hipster. Rants can be both good and bad, subtle and over the top. Reacting as if Roger said anything accusatory is, I think, an example of artificial discretization, over and above what's present in the original discussion. 8^)

On 9/13/19 11:49 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> “dichotomania: the compulsion to replace quantities with dichotomies (‘black-and-white thinking’), even when such dichotomization is unnecessary and misleading for inference.”
> 
> Floating point and multi-precision numbers are used all the time on base 2 digital computers.

Second) Yeah, but it's important to remember that these are approximations to the (ideal) numbers. If an artificial discretization is used to facilitate the resolution/granularity of the lens, then that's where I part ways with the blog entry. I'd argue such artificial discretization isn't inappropriate at all. This is the problem I have with Lee's definition of computation. Free variables can be bound with schema, themselves having free variables, not merely with primitive values. So, *sure* floating point numbers are only approximations... but it's good enough for now ... or even for anything we'd ever need, anyway.

The real trick is *why* we artificial discretizers can't fluidly switch back and forth between thinking of bindings as definite or indefinite? 

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ