[FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

[Eric Charles]

Glen,
I've definitely read and processed your prior posts.

The reality of a someone else's situation does not limit whether or not a
third party can be envious, or jealous, or any of those other related
concepts. You can be envious of someone's wonderful life, even when that
other person's life is absolutely horrible.

But to return to my point, the question is still open: When grasping for
something with which to fake adding-depth to their writing, why do people
so often grasp at physics? If we agree that "envy" is the wrong term, what
is closer? What do you call the relationship between person A and person B,
in which person A thinks person B is in inherent possession of something
they need, so much that they are willing to play dress ups with a shoddy
version of person B's schtick?

Like, I get that a child who puts on their Spiderman underoos before they
go into surgery is probably not perfectly described as being "envious" of
Spiderman's bravery... but that's not too far off... and I'm not sure what
the better term would be. He didn't pick a random set of underwear, he
didn't pick Scooby Do underwear, even if he loves Scooby and Spidey evenly.
The kid reaches for Spiderman because (from his point of view) Spiderman
has something that the kid thinks he needs in that moment. And he'll tell
others too, because then others will know that he has what he needs,
because (from his point of view) others will understand that an association
with Spiderman bolsters him.

And yes, most (but certainly not all) of the time I see people reach for
physics, in a situation where they are not trying to do physics, but trying
to use physics to bolster some totally unrelated stuff they are working on,
it seems like some intellectual-elitist version of being earnestly told
that everything is going to turn out alright, because they are wearing
Spiderman underoos.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
<echarles at american.edu>


On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 10:49 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, "physics envy" is VERY far off. 1) As I tried to claim before,
> physicists don't speak with authority in that way. The way these people
> speak is very different from the way physicists speak. 2) While Firestein
> knows some physics, my graphic artist friend has NO idea what quantum
> mechanics actually is, probably doesn't even know classical mechanics. So,
> even if they're envious of something, it's neither physicists' ways of
> being, nor the physics that physicists do.
>
> But I'd go even further that they're not *envious* of anything. What they
> want is something, anything, to justify their rhetoric, which is basically
> that there's stuff we don't know (explicitly in Firestein's book on
> "Ignorance" and implicitly in my friend's claim that a good attitude
> mysteriously helps one recover from cancer). That's not envy. It's
> justificationism.
>
> Now, when Nick and Frank talk about psychologists having physics envy
> (neither Firestein nor my friend fit that bill), *envy* does seem to come
> close. But I'd argue the same way with (1) and (2) above. They're not
> envious of physicists or physics. But they might be envious of ready access
> to plentiful DATA. And you can get that from some types of biology. In any
> case, that's not what I was talking about when I complained about everyone
> pulling woowoo quantum mechanics out of their hat everytime they want to
> say something about stuff we don't know.
>
> Many people accused Penrose of the same thing, conflating quantum theory
> with consciousness merely BECAUSE they're both mysterious. And I sincerely
> doubt Penrose has "physics envy".
>
>
> On 7/7/20 7:00 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> > "Envy" might not be the exact right word, but it isn't far off, is it?
> There is an inferiority complex of some sort, and a wish that you had
> whatever thing those specific other people /seem /to have.
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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