[FRIAM] where are the "patriot hackers"?
David Eric Smith
desmith at santafe.edu
Wed Dec 30 06:12:40 EST 2020
All points here good to know, Stephen, and many premises I agree with.
It seems to me that, if this conversation is ever to do more than have people talk past each other, all discussants need to find it valuable to use restricted scopes for words, to remain within each other’s scopes along the track of a discussion to figure out what premises are common and what follows from them, and to operate on however many tracks in parallel are needed to include the things people want to talk about.
Here is a concrete example. In the Rights of Nature article, I find:
“Christianity and science, the legitimising powers of the western society, have been in agreement on this fundamental tenet."
Well, that’s one thing the word “science” can stand for in a conversation: one of the two legitimizing powers of ’the western society’, together with Christianity (what lovely bedfellows).
When Nick uses the word science in the sense his original objection, I am willing to recast it in my language as a label for what many of us believe is a new domain of linguistic, behavioral, and social cognitive practice distinguished by the following premises (or tenets):
— there is some truth-notion characterized above and before all else by internal consistency, allowing it to be converged toward by a suitable body of practice which we aspire to build. One could even say that this premise of a stable truth-notion is put forth as the replacement for Descartes’s Cogito, as a starting point on which to build commitments, even if all subsequent steps are fluid and subject to update and overhaul
— the state of knowledge (so, recipes, propositions, lexicons, etc.) is something like a very elaborate sample estimator for the values that make up “what is true”. It’s very fluid, if every instance of the adoption of a term, the commitment to rules of language or logic, interpretations of experiments, and every other habit is considered potentially in error and subject to overhaul; so it is essential to what one means here by “science” that this premise of a stable truth-notion is its starting tenet
— all the methods traditionally invoked as constituting “scientific method” could be seen as some first finite components in an open-ended toolbox for trying to recursively find and identify errors by classes of family resemblances they have, in the expectation that correcting the error makes the state of knowledge a better reflection of whatever is true. So, intersubjectivity or rigorous rules of argument to overcome sample omissions, observation bias, deluded thinking, etc.; empiricism as a corrective to delusions that can persist in group levels of any size, etc. But unlike the Encyclopedists, the body of method for error discovery is just as open-ended as the state of knowledge it has produced at any given time. Since errors tend to propagate recursively, we probably have to assume that the tools to detect them can be expended indefinitely, else the premise that one can converge on true assertions would be implausible
(Apologies that these first three reiterate something I wrote here a couple of months ago. I don’t like repeating oneself either.)
— that the above criteria separate out some propositions at any given time from everything we might be capable of thinking or feeling at that time, making it not all equivalent. Thus the unhappiness of Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each according to its own fashion, is not really a pattern for what a “true assertion” looks like. Or more neurologically, synaesthesics may see the letters of the alphabet in colors. However, each synaesthesic may see a each of the letters in a different color than the other synaesthesics do. Do I deny that they experience the letters with colors? No, of course I don’t. However, do I expect science to arrive at a conclusion that it is in the nature of a printed letter to _have_ a particular color, or to have any color at all? Also No. And so on. If no state of belief a person can sincerely hold can ever be batshit crazy, then there can’t be category distinctions, and the true assertions don’t actually exist in the sense the scientific tenet supposes.
I would argue that any good-faith person has to recognize that these two operationalizations of the word “science” simply are not referring to the same thing. Having recognized it, what can one then do?
1. You can argue, like Richard Rorty, that it is the nature of people that they cannot possess the truth-version of “science” without having it coopted into the “legitimizing power” version, and therefore we should try to exterminate the truth-version in a kind of totalitarianistic PC, William James’s pragmatism-as-social-utilitarianism taken to its limit, which is the annihilation of Peirce’s pragmatism. To me this is only a stone’s throw from the Unabomber argument. One can make and then debate the quality of such arguments. They can be insightful about how the various aspects that are simultaneously present in human life and thought affect each other, and thus can contribute to solving problems and righting wrongs even if one doesn’t think the original arguments hang together as wholes.
2. One could, instead (also like Rorty), insist on changing the subject, but not acknowledge that that is what is being done. Whenever a discussant tries argues for keeping the truth-version, one can act as if the legitimizing-power version was intended, and then give the counterargument for dismantling the latter. That could be done, I guess, innocently, or obstinately, or maliciously. But it doesn’t seem like it resolves to anything.
Anyway,
Eric
> On Dec 29, 2020, at 4:53 PM, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com> wrote:
>
> Nick writes:
> > But some assertions are bat-shit crazy, and provably so
>
> Knowing some of the background where Merle is coming from: Rights of Nature, Ecocide Law, etc <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fmedium.com%2f%40pella.thiel%2ftime-for-a-universal-declaration-on-the-rights-of-nature-ad97263a39f4&c=E,1,ha5xvTdo930eMaFGkiL4IUimWlPxPYP1fZxWILAfpGKkX-v1oALMN-WfuYufVJwkHo_lHbCj7UUsrjo0JCOcuomJHTYVjKGfWZLkab5FvhTwr3ayJUClVVEPRQ,,&typo=1>, it just may be our current Economic and Scientific paradigms (Evolution/Competition/Captalism) in Science are literally driving us batshit crazy.
>
> Provably batshit crazy.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act>
>
> BTW, I got to the Guano_islands_Act starting from a google search of "metabolic sovereignty" * as I thought it might get at Merle's idea scientificially.
>
> This quickly got me to Marx's metabolic Rift <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_rift> from which the Guano Islands Act popped up.
>
> -Stephen
>
> * I'm supposed to be writing a paper today that has something to do with self-sovereign identity in decentralized systems which is why sovereignty is on my mind.
> _______________________________________________________________________
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> On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 12:39 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> I think I disagree, Merle. If we lose faith that there is a truth to be found concerning the matters of which we speak as scientists, we lose everything. When we speak as poets, etc., of course, we relax that constraint. But what defines science for me is that there are truths to be found. I am pretty sure Glen also disagrees with me, and DaveW and maybe Kim, so you are in good company. If anything characterizes the assault on society of the last 4 years, it is the undermining of faith in the notion of convergent inquiry. The first domino to fall was anthropology, in the sixties, which led to a mayhem of political correctness and purges that destroyed the field. Sure we have to respect people equally. Sure we have to treat their metaphysical non-sense on a par with our own. But some assertions are bat-shit crazy, and provably so, and if you entertain the notion that all assertions are equally true, you might just as well drink the kool-aid and climb the ramp into the space ship, so far as I am concerned. I will wave you a sad good bye because we everybody’s shoulders to the truth-wheel if we are to survive.
>
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> Nick
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> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,fKipON29OlOuWT1N2gvHAI8b2ONt_qlHmSKABgGGQynwY-Tb0PZQI7sgUZT2noVjr_FpnRdYIPUDrRXSEeleBLvWg0MkiQZ_7gGL9lc1P_M,&typo=1>
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> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
> Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2020 1:15 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] where are the "patriot hackers"?
>
>
>
> "True" things about the world beyond the reach of science must be included in the expanding dialogue, like a mountain that is also an earth being, or forest animals that are spirit masters of their worlds. We can think of them as other-than-humans, but they "exist" in indigenous cultures. They are only "beliefs" in ours, but for those of us who are "Animists", they are always present in the dialogue.
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> On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 9:40 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> So, I'm once again down in a rabbit hole over whether Dave's (cautiously backed by Kim) idea of a "science of the mind" is reasonable, wherein subjective/reflective techniques like psychedelic drugs or meditation can say "true" things about the world, particularly that may be beyond the reach of science. And there I am reading about Falun Gong <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong>> and its "outlets" like The Epoch Times, which spew constant nonsense, feeding the delusional QAnon narratives:
>
> https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-newest-trump-boosted-viral-maga-star-has-ties-to-the-epoch-times <https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-newest-trump-boosted-viral-maga-star-has-ties-to-the-epoch-times>
>
> And I'm wondering, where are the "patriot hackers" and Anonymous?
>
> What happened to all that rigmarole about protecting the world and the internet from insidious sh¡t like The Epoch Times? Is it that ostensibly white hat members are combating shallow techniques like DDoS so well that the script kiddies who used to claim to be Anonymous are outmatched? Maybe Assange siding with Trump fractured the group? And what about the Jester <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jester_(hacktivist) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jester_(hacktivist)>>, who was arguably more capable than the large majority of hacktivists? Was he hired by the NSA and now works alone in a steel cage? Or has his mind been infected by the attractive conspiracy theories and persecution complexes we dorks are so susceptible to?
>
> I feel confident that some of you have some insight! Please share.
>
> --
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> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
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