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

Sat May 30 01:03:17 EDT 2020

I think I just saw Marcus blocking 880 in Oakland!
> Nick, for the record, and this will not change from my end:
>
> Your right to be interested in whatever you are interested in is
> sacrosanct, here or in any other forum.  I don’t think there are
> thread boundaries on that, though there are all the normal courtesies
> which I see more clearly for a while after I transgress one.
>
> Eric
>
>
>> On May 30, 2020, at 1:03 PM, <thompnickson2 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> <thompnickson2 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> All –
>>  
>> I feel norm formation going on here, and it is making me a bit
>> nervous.  I am not sure what follows from that, but there it is.  I
>> thing that we at FriAM have long worked the boundary between work and
>> play.  I think that’s where the best work is done.  
>>  
>> But this is my thread, right?  Can a man bust his own thread?  */_I 
>> d o n t  t h I n k  s o_/*.  I want to talk about metaphor.  And it’s
>> relation to models.  And it’ relation to the concept of
>> intentionality.  The question is, To what extent do our norms allow
>> me to bring those concerns to other threads.  And the answer I am
>> hearing from many of you is, “Less than I have been”.
>>  
>> Well, I will do my best.  But, for instance, I think the “work” we
>> did on “strawman” was tremendously important.  In my introductory
>> graduate lectures at Berkeley, where, one by one, the the grey-backed
>> gorillas  of the department laid down the law.  Somebody, I think
>> David Krech, announced that if “I say that the number of rat turds
>> left by a rat in an open field maze is “anxiety”, then that is what
>> anxiety IS for the purposes of my research, and there’s no more
>> discussion to be had.”  And even in the tenuous position of a first
>> year graduate student I knew that was wrong.  Meanings have
>> momentum.   Words have meaning that is independent of their users. I
>> have fought for 50 years to rescue ‘teleonomy’ (=natural design) from
>> the dualistic thieves that abducted it.  And SteveG and I could be
>> thought of as battling for nigh a decade and half about which
>> specification of the metaphor of natural selection is best for the
>> purposes of understanding natural design.  (I thought we made a lot
>> of progress on that issue today.)   Much of what we do in scientific
>> discourse is fight over metaphors and we need to develop methods for
>> fighting fairly, skillfully, and expeditiously.  
>>  
>> I don’t think I have EVER introduced the idea of metaphor in a
>> conversation where I didn’t think a clarification or specification of
>> the metaphors implicit in our conversation might move the discussion
>> forward.  I may be playing with words but I am not /just/ playing
>> with words.  God knows, I may have been WRONG in many cases, but I
>> absolutely defend the idea that attention to the metaphors at play in
>> a conversation is often essential to any development of understanding
>> or convergence of opinion.  
>>  
>> Is it /always?/  No.  Of course not.  And I will try to be more
>> careful about that. 
>>  
>> Thanks, as always, for all your thoughts.   My life would not be half
>> of what it is without them.   Really.  It’s perhaps pathetic for me
>> to admit that, but it’s true. 
>>  
>> 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/
>>  
>>  
>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com
>> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
>> *Sent:* Friday, May 29, 2020 9:11 PM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games
>>  
>> Hi Jon,
>>  
>> No, actually not any issue with any of what you had posted, as also
>> just affirmation toward various historical posts by Glen.  
>>  
>> Yes, sorry about a thread-rudeness.  I had sort of dropped a chunk of
>> something that had been accumulating for a week in the middle of your
>> thread which was in the coarse of solving other problems, where it
>> didn’t belong.  Partly this was because yours had been the latest
>> snapshot, partly it was because the overall frame you and Glen and
>> Steve are building is one that I would like to think of my own
>> additions as finding a place in, and partly I was probably using the
>> measured tone of this sub-thread as cover, since my own was rather
>> crabby and aggressive.  Strange that it seemed formally impolite to
>> me, to use your thread as a point of departure and not direct the
>> salutation to you, while I blew past the fact that it was
>> substantively rude to use the thread, rather than to participate in it.
>>  
>> Very good.  Thanks for calling me on this,
>>  
>>  
>> Eric
>>  
>>  
>>
>>
>>> On May 30, 2020, at 9:43 AM, Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:jonzingale at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>  
>>> Eric,
>>>  
>>> I am not sure that I disagree with you anywhere, but I am
>>> unsure whether you are taking issue with me? The proliferation
>>> of threads are sometimes hard for me to follow, inevitably I mis-
>>> determine who is talking to whom. Are there places in my writing
>>> that you would suggest I revisit and reconsider? Pointing things
>>> out to another can be an expensive and thankless task, so thank
>>> you in advance.
>>>  
>>> Jon
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>>  
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