[FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

[Frank Wimberly]

Good, Glen.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:50 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'll try again to describe why constant talk of metaphors is distracting
> nonsense, at least for me. When I use a word, that word is a variable bound
> to some context. We can bind any string of letters to any subset of any
> context. So, a string like "xyz" can be bound to "that green thing in the
> distance". Even *after* you and Joe or whoever later come to call "that
> green thing in the distance" by the string "tank", I can *still* call it an
> "xyz". I can do this for decades. "xyz" need have no other binding for
> which to "metaphorize". So, regardless of what *you* think when you read
> the string "xyz", I'm not using a metaphor when I say "xyz". You may think
> it's a metaphor until you're blue in the face. But I didn't use a metaphor.
> >8^D
>
> For me, a "strawman" has always meant that 1 single thing: rhetorical bad
> faith rewording. I've never used a straw man as a scare crow. I've never
> used it to train in combat. I've never used it to burn in effigy. I've
> never used it to mean anything but that one thing. So, therefore, it's not
> a metaphor. It's a meaningless string of characters bound to that one thing.
>
> Sure, *you* can read whatever I write however you *want* to read what I
> write. That's the very point of the
> privacy-despite-the-"holographic"-principle threads. How you read it CAN BE
> entirely unrelated to how I write it. When you *impute* metaphor status
> into arbitrary strings you see on your screen, you are *inscribing* your
> own understanding of the world *onto* the thing you're looking at. You are
> *not* blank-slate, receiving a message.
>
> Now, if you listened empathetically, you might choose to *ask* the author
> "Did you mean that as a metaphor?" You could even be a bit rude and
> continue with "Or are you too stupid to know the history of that string of
> characters?" This is a common thing. E.g. when someone uses a string of
> characters they grew up with to innocently refer to, say, a marginalized
> group, without *knowing* the marginalized group thinks that string of
> characters is offensive. Like wearing a Washington Red Skins jersey. Or
> when a 12 year old white kid sings along with some rap lyrics.
>
> You have options when you decode a string. It doesn't always need to be
> metaphorical. Even if, deep down, you're a complete pedant and you
> absolutely must point out that everything's always a metaphor, you CAN
> suppress that need for a little while ... sometimes ... just sometimes ...
> you have that power.
>
> So, no. Strawman is not a metaphor. If it helps you, I can stop using the
> string "strawman" and use "xyz" for that fallacy from now on. Please avoid
> the xyz fallacy.
>
> On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> > [...] “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? [...]
> >
> > The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a
> metaphor at the first state.  We did not all get the same “image” when it
> was first deployed.  That failure is instructive for me because it reminds
> me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete.
> Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument.  For
> 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X.  In other words, we must be humble in
> our use of metaphors.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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