[FRIAM] basis for prediction — forked from the tail end of anthropological observtions

Sun Apr 19 13:36:38 EDT 2020

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2020 10:17 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <Friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] basis for prediction — forked from the tail end of anthropological observtions

I've watched people leave red to port on their returns, and some even get away with it.

-- rec --

On Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 12:09 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Hi, Dave n all, 

"Outlook" has collapsed leaving me in gmail, which I don't understand..  So forgive me if... etc. 

The thunder lightening thing is both apt and strange, because of course nothing is possible between lightning and thunder EXCEPT that it is going to thunder.  CF living in SFO or Seattle.  You've seen the lightening, folks!  "One banana,.... two bananas.....three bananas ….."  Yet I still like the aphorism.  

By the way, how many people on this list have heard the expression, "Red, Right, Returning" and know to what it refers.  

Ach!  I don't know how you all tolerate this interface.  

Nick 

On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 9:31 AM Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com> > wrote:

Dave -

I do remember your reference to the Bellamyists and probably wrote a long-winded (well-over 300) commentary which I then deleted.   

What I remember of that (my aborted response) was somewhat reactionary to Utopianism and Nationalism.  In the spirit of productive optimism, I realize(d) my reactionaryisms was maybe not very productive.   I don't want to devolve into the splitting of hairs we are so fond of here in this forum.

With that caveat...  I am struggling against those two things I impute to what little I know of "the Bellamyists".  "One (hu)man's Utopia is another's Dystopia".  And.  "Nationalism is (dangerously) out-of-scale Tribalism".

I guess I would ask why such a grandiose scale structure would need to be put in place?  Would not an emergence from discussions among small groups (such as the threads on FriAM) not be a more practical and perhaps "safer" route?   Is such a structure/container required, or perhaps it might be inevitable?   But then it would not be Bellamyists, but rather DaveWestist?

With that in mind...  perhaps it is worth discussing the Bellamyites primary focus (as claimed in the Wikipedia Article that is my only source) of "nationalizing industry".  That seems to be what the Left is leaning toward... or at least regulating/taxing industry at the federal level to the point that it IS effectively nationalized?   What is the Right's version of that?   In the spirit of NeoLiberalism and free-markets  of which the Right is most fond, nationalization is anathema.  

And yet, it seems that the "free market" is best at innovation... and once an industry has been commodified, perhaps the next step IS to nationalization.   There might have been a time when gasoline stations had something significantly different to offer, one from the other, but even the detergents and oxygenators seem to have become pretty standard(?lame assertion?) and the only difference is how big is the big-gulp soda in the convenience store, is it filled from the Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola pantheon and are more triggered by a giant yellow clam-shell logo or a green baby brontosaurus?

I'm entirely with you on the diversity of foodstuffs referenced earlier...   but IF/When I'm going to feed from the same trough of the same hybrids as my fellow piggies, why put so many different (or any?) labels on them?  And then why not plant your own garden with seeds exchanged with friends and neighbors, localized to your conditions, and buy/trade what you can't grow from small (tiny) farms within a short drive (walk)?

And I agree on the liminal, though I see liminality everywhere at all scales, like the fractality of an estuary and this moment is more acute and offering/demanding more focused/proaction?  If we did live in our everyday liminality more-better, then this would just be an extrema(ish) of scale... but since we (mostly) don't, it feels like a change in quality in it's quantity.  There I go, splitting hairs?

- Steve

Steve,

This should be a time between lightning and thunder, liminal, a time "when all things are possible."

I would love to be optimistic, even guardedly, 

Prerequisite, perhaps, is for everyone to accept Hywel's dictum, "Ah, but it is more complicated than that" coupled with a heady dose of agonizing reappraisal of one's unexamined positions.  Healthy doses, of "you have a point," "errors were made," "our ontology should incorporate those distinctions," etc.

A while back I spoke of the Bellamy Clubs as a social / civic/ phenomenon focused on a "constructive way forward." Something of that sort would be required to instantiate your optimism.

davew

On Sun, Apr 19, 2020, at 7:14 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:

Dave, et al -

These are fecund times.   The time between the lightning and the thunder - "when all things are possible".  Or maybe, if you have a more apocalyptic bent, the beginning of the "end of times".   William Gibson's "Jackpot" perhaps (to be more ambiguous).  

I think Churchill tried on (in oratorial style):

    "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

In closing your "trip report" a dozen posts back you referenced once again, the likelihood of a violent clash between Left and Right or Red and Blue as a next logical/likely step in the path we seem to be stumbling (shambling?) down right now.

The recent (armed) protests at state capitals, demanding that the Governors "open up the state" do seem foreboding.  An almost self-abusive desire to trigger a breakdown in social order.

The (""failing!!!!"" double-scare-quotes) New York Times opinion piece The America We Need <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-inequality-america.html>  from 10 days ago (feels much longer in Corona Time) exposes one side of the challenge (how modern society/America has been failing) and a hopeful response (how this crisis could help galvanize us to become who we need to be collectively).   I'd love to hear something from the Right with an equally constructive perspective.  Maybe I just have my ear on the wrong rail but I only hear "boom or bust" talk from the Right.

Living with one foot in each camp (Red and Blue) I believe that the divide we feel is on one hand very real, but on the other deliberately aggravated as a way to keep us in dynamic tension (or more simply pitted-against one another) while those with most power keep stirring us up and raking off the top.   Red/Right sees the threat of government/wealthy/elite/??? one way while Blue/Left see what I think is roughly the same threat very differently.   But it might very well be the very same threat, and the pointy end is designed to keep us divided.

And lest we create a strong "other" to reject/resent/hate/fear:   "We have met the enemy, and they is us".   

The deficit-hawk, small-government GOP has been building up a State like none before it, and while they (and the NRA) are encouraging their loyal followers to arm themselves to the teeth, double down on ammunition, all the while militarizing the police, loading them up with armored personnel carriers and fully-automatic weapons (opposite the citizen's semi-autos), and bullet-proof vests, helmets and shields to maintain overwhelming force.   Meanwhile,  the Dems might be trying to nurture us out of our dysfunction and misery, sometimes disabling us more in the process, and the wealthy on that side are raking their share off of that, elbow to elbow at the same trough.  

We ship our (two hybrid strains of tomato and two germ-lines of beef) food halfway across the country (add coffee, avocados and bananas - world) from agri-industry-chemical soaked feed-lots and (formerly) fertile valleys and plains, burning fossil fuels (not just in the machines, but to make the hyper-fertilizer now needed).  Whether we shop at Trader Joes, or Whole Foods, or Bob's Butcher or just order up Trump Steaks,  we HAVE built a house of cards which is bending under the weight of this pandemic. 

Why does it feel like a segment of the population just wants to knock it down?

Is there a constructive route up and out of this mess?  The pandemic has exposed a LOT more of the weaknesses in our economy/society as this current administration has exposed the weaknesses in our government.   It seems like an opportunity to try to rebuild thoughtfully rather than "tear it down" or "patch it back the way it was".

Guardedly Hopeful,

 - Steve (574)

Nick,

There is truth in what you say, but only a bit.

I have certainly spoken as if "Science was a bunch of nasty people with vested interests acting in an exclusionary manner."

Hyperbole.

A better metaphor / analogy would be the way we have hybridized our food supply; e.g. 90 percent of all dairy cows have one of two bulls in their ancestry, there are one or two tomato hybrids, one or two strains of rice, wheat, corn, etc.

This creates a huge vulnerability — a novel pest or disease and presto, no food supply.

Now imagine that there are multiple species of investigation, thinking, knowledge.

Since the Age of Enlightenment, the western world has been hell bent on hybridizing but one of them — Formalism (aka, roughly, Science).

Yes, I believe that Formalism has attained such a privileged status that it tolerates no criticism and critics are "excommunicated" with prejudice.

I would like to think of myself as someone interested in growing heritage tomatoes in my garden and marveling at the differences in taste and texture and finding very deep value from the use of them in culinary creations.

davew

On Sat, Apr 18, 2020, at 8:58 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

Dave, 

No, wait a minute!  Thou slenderest me!   For you, Science is a bunch 
of nasty people with vested interests. Science, on that understanding, 
has the power to exclude.  For me, Science is a set of practices that 
lead to understandings of experience that endure the test of time.  It 
is not the sort of thing that can exclude.   If pot smoking in bubble 
baths leads to understandings that endure the test of time, then it is 
a scientific method.  Something like that seemed to have worked for 
Archimedes.  

Nick   

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam  <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 6:31 PM
To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] basis for prediction — forked from the tail end of 
anthropological observtions

Nick,

I won't lose the argument, because I pre-believe that, IF alternative 
means with some kind of criteria for falsifiability and repeatability 
THEN they should be incorporated into that which is deemed "Science" — 
ergo there is no argument to lose.

If there is an argument — and there is clearly a difference of opinion 
— it centers on the the issue of why Hermetic Alchemy, Acid 
Epistemology, Anthropological Thick Description, Ayurvedic Medicine, 
Adams' "rhetorical analysis" et. al. are, at the moment and for the 
most part, excluded from Science.

davew

On Sat, Apr 18, 2020, at 5:28 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

Dave,

You're going to lose this argument with me eventually, because any 
investigatory practice that works in the long run I am going to 
declare to be part of "the scientific method."  So if you declare that 
discovery is enhanced by lying in a warm suds bath smoking pot, and 
you can describe a repeatable practice  which includes that as a 
method, and that method produces enduring intellectual and practical 
structures such as the periodic table, then I will simply say, "That's science."

I am not sure this works with my falsifiability schtik, but that must 
have been at least 4 hours ago.  So "before lunch".

 Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University 
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>  https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam  <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 5:07 PM
To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 
Subject: [FRIAM] basis for prediction — forked from the tail end of 
anthropological observtions

Consider three entities making 2016 political predictions and their predictions.

1- "cognoscenti" those citing poll data, Nate Silver (albeit as 
everyone notes, the citation was more interpretation than citation), 
pundits, et. al. — Trump, at various times, has 1/1000 to 1/3 chance of 
winning the election.

2- Scott Adams - Trump "very likely"  will win to "almost certain" he will win.

3- davew - Trump will win.

# 3 is a fool because he made no effort whatsoever to hedge his prediction.

The first group used traditional polling, statistical modelling, etc. 
to come to their conclusions.

Scott Adams used none of those methods/tools but, as described in his 
book — Win Bigly — the language and rhetoric analysis tools/techniques 
he did use.

davew remains coy about how he came to his certainty.

QUESTIONS:  Are there different approaches, different avenues, 
different means, for acquiring "knowledge?" I am being vague here 
because I do not know how to make the question precise.  But it would 
have something to do with different definitions of what is considered 
data and different techniques/tools for digesting that data to form 
conclusions — in this instance predictions.

If there are different approaches, is a comparative analysis of them 
possible? desirable?

Different approaches — useful in different contexts? How to determine 
appropriate contexts.

Or, is there but one avenue to knowledge — Science — and all else is 
idiosyncratic opinion?

Personally, I think there is use in pursuing this type of question and 
then using the answers / insights to makes sense of the multiple 
conversations concerning COVID and the response thereto.

davew

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