[FRIAM] mathematics and politics

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OK. I suppose I can chalk this up to the same complaint I (too often) lodge at EricC. We can shock-jock start with an appeal to machismo, expecting AOC to suck it up and act like a man, exhibiting bravado even if there's a scared little kid inside. *Then* as we continue to intellectualize everything down to our inferential endpoint with lots of big words and sophisticated reasoning, come to an opaque, obscure, and irrelevant agreement.

Or, we can simply accept that *I* would have been scared as hell if I were in AOC's heels on the 6th. And because I admit that it would scare the hell out of me, when I see her or Porter talk about the experience, don't immediately rush to cynicism or post-modern power deconstruction. My immediate reaction is that such emotions *prevent* me from doing my job in the same way it prevents them from doing theirs. And that would be true even if my tolerance of violence is way higher than theirs.

On a tangential note, our pervasive "battle rhetoric" around slogans like "fight cancer" or Trump's "fight like hell" is overwhelmingly AT FAULT for this machismo. And the first step to realizing why "fight cancer" and "fuck cancer" piss me off in the worst way is to know that such language is at least 1 primary reason we have so many morons out there refusing to wear masks and believing QAnon crap.

AOC is right to have been afraid and right to show vulnerability in expressing that fear. And those of us afraid to show vulnerability or lionize (fake) bravery to the world are as much at fault as the criminals themselves.

p.s. It should be clear that I'm not accusing *you*, Jon, of any of this ... only making clear that what one reads is never what another has written.

On 2/4/21 10:18 AM, jon zingale wrote:
> To some extent I agree, though I reject the choice of either A *or* B. I
> prefer to make room for longer formal expressions and attempt to make use of
> them as their own thing. When confronted by need I partially evaluate as
> needed.
> 
> We live in a post-net-neutrality era of Instagram influencers, Twitter mobs,
> doxers, and cancel culture. The post-net-neutrality constraint seems
> important as it contributes to defining an optimizing function for our
> polity. Today, the most politically savvy of us is so exactly because they
> *internalized* this. These are social times, and by that, I mean political
> times. Persona trades high and nearly all of us, especially in these
> unprecedented times, have a steady diet of dynamically curated media. There
> is to my mind ample reason for caution and skepticism regarding the rhetoric
> I, and those around me, adopt.
> 
> My concern with acting on appearances, and seeking the Polly Anna I wish to
> see in the world, is one of Hebbian correction and is similar to the concern
> I feel when reminded that Jesus has a plan. The disconnect can be very real
> in its facilitating of future canalization, the very real danger of forming
> a banality of evil. OTOH, I agree that we *must* care for how rape victims
> respond to their treatment and elderly neighbors respond to news of gang
> violence downtown. That is if we hope for polity at all.


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