[FRIAM] The Self Case

Fri Apr 10 07:47:25 EDT 2020

I don't know the difference between "nomothetic" and "idiographic", but I am interested in the area between idiosyncratic, irregular descriptions and symmetric, regular theories. History is often the former, an idiosyncratic description of events and names specific for a certain time and country. Mathematics is usually the latter, because it is based on symmetries and precise rules to describe regularities. In the area between we can find phenomena like path-dependent evolution and adaptation.For example as Edwin Holt ("The concept of consciousness") noticed the concept of an environmental cross section helps to explain subjective consciousness which is in a sense both specific to an individual but also predictable if we know the exact cross section of the environment. George H. Mead ("Mind, Self & Society") also argues that all individual selves are reflections of the social process. I believe we discussed it a few years ago.In the case of Donald Trump we can also observe how subjective objects and objective theories overlap. There is certainly no one like Donald, and yet there are many people especially among managers who have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder as mental health professionals have warned us ("The dangerous case of Donald Trump"). In addition to this psychological interpretation Sarah Kendzior describes in her new book ("Hiding in plain sight") that his behavior is not uncommon for authoritarian systems.-J.
-------- Original message --------From: thompnickson2 at gmail.com Date: 4/10/20  06:01  (GMT+01:00) To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam at redfish.com> Subject: [FRIAM] The Self Case OK, Glen, fair enough and stipulated.  I hope you know  how much I value your perspective.  But ...One of the constant debates in my field (well, perhaps more accurately, in the field of most of the members of my Department, was between the "nomothetic" and the "idiographic".    Knowing you as well as I do, I know that before I get to the end of this sentence you will have looked those terms up and come to understand them better than I do.  But still, to bolt the argument to the ground, a bit, let me explain them myself.  It is like the difference between the graph in a scientific paper of the mean value of the independent  variable and the values of the dependent variable, as interpolated -- that's nomothetic -- and the picture of three individual subjects which represent the values of the independent variable -- that's idiographic.  Nomothetic study seeks to get at the laws that relate one kind of thing to another; the other seeks to capture the ... dare I say .... essence of a phenomenon through a single instance.  Physics writing is often said to be nomothetic; history writing is said to be idiographic.  Psychology is said to be both.  Studies of rats in mazes are nomothetic in intent; we really DON'T give a damn for the individual rat.  But clinical case studies are definitely idiographic.  My field -- ethology -- has often been torn between the two impulses, and the idiographic gave way in the end to the nomothetic.  To my regret, while I was on sabbatical in the Maddingley {ethological} Field Station in Cambridge, England I met a woman, Joan Hall Craggs, who had managed to record and sonogram all the song types sung by a single male black bird during his 18 year (could that be right?!) career.  She had binder upon binder of them in her office, all beautifully preserved, dated, and fieldnoted.  I am afraid, when she died, the whole lot went in the dumpster.  A nomothetical scientist would argue that such a record would tell one nothing about "blackbirds";  an idiographic scientist would claim that without such a record, we would never know what was possible for a black bird.  (By the way, a "black bird" in England is a very close relative of our American robin'\; robins, in  England are something else entirely.)   Now, I have already stipulated that, in a sense my focusing on my individual case is to some extent narcissistic and, well, stupid.  However, focusing on a single case is not necessarily either.  And since I know my case best of all, and since the home church is living it right now, I think keeping the Santa Fe numbers before us GROUNDS us and helps us, perhaps, not to think of "cases" and "deaths" in the disembodied way that we do when we are performing as nomothetic scientists.  Every nomothetic case is an intersection of just a few variables of interest; every idiographic case is the intersection of an infinity of variables, any one of which may be of interest to somebody.  Thinking of the “self-case”, helps to keep that fact in view.  Thanks as always for you insights,  Hope to see you tomorrow.  Nick  Nicholas ThompsonEmeritus Professor of Ethology and PsychologyClark UniversityThompNickSon2 at gmail.comhttps://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/   -----Original Message-----From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 4:26 PMTo: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] covid19.healthdata.org OK. This is definitely a different message from what I thought you said. I thought you were saying their estimates were optimistic. And since their estimates include their uncertainty bands, that includes not peaking till much later than what their chart might suggest, maybe 4.5k deaths PER DAY at the peak,  125k dead overall, etc. If we consider the outside of their uncertainty, that's not optimistic at all. You can go back to MA right now. And if you're super careful, you can most likely do it without getting infected. So, your "pessimism" is not about the peak, total bed availability, or whatever. Your pessimism seems to have more to do with *you* (and your immediate clique). That you could go ahead and do what you need to do now, but won't, isn't pessimism about these estimates. It's fear for your own condition. That's understandable, of course, but not really about this estimate or its methods.  On 4/9/20 2:49 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:> Perhaps they seem optimistic to me only because mine have been so pessimistic.  I have assumed that I am immobilized here in Santa Fe for the next year.  I even put up a list on my wall of 365 days and have been crossing them off, one by one.  What I see on that site suggests to me that I might actually get  to  my garden in Massachusetts by early June.  I just heard an interview with Daniel Kahneman (who is in my age range) who says essentially that he expects to stay home for the rest of his life because of the disease.  I just heard from Dave West (He's fine!) who decided to make a run for home from Amsterdam and essentially had a 747 to himself.  Perhaps now is exactly the time to make a run for MA.  > > So, you see, my thinking about all of this is deranged and intensified by its personal implications.  So perhaps I ought to be keeping my thoughts to myself.  I have my favorite dog in this fight; too much skin in this game.  > > My pessimistic  view is that until we are back to contact tracing levels everybody should stay home.  Others seem to imagine essentially eliminating the disease from the population by social distancing in the next month. and then going back pretty much to business as usual.  I WANT those "others" to be right, but I am having a hard time selling it to myself.  At the minimum, any restarting would require public health departments to have the power to snatch contacts off the street, throw them in sterilized vans, and cart them off to motels to watch Fox News for two weeks.  Apparently, people boarding airplanes in Wuhan, are doing so in hazmat gear.  I just don't see that happening, here.  Even at the current "peak", SW airlines is not screening passengers or taking temps at the gate.  > > I read some where that Trump is losing a Billion dollars (a month? from the crisis.  Hey, every cloud has a silver lining.   --☣ uǝlƃ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservZoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.comarchives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/   Nicholas ThompsonEmeritus Professor of Ethology and PsychologyClark UniversityThompNickSon2 at gmail.comhttps://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/   
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