[FRIAM] mathematics and politics

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Glen wrote:

 

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.

Boy, Howdy, do I agree with this!  The Orwellian normalization of violent language is as obvious on the left as on the right.  Try to get through a Sanders or a Warren speech without encountering the word “fight”.   In that context, Trump’s “Go down to the Capital and fight….” Is going to seem poor evidence of incitement to assault.  

 

While I am on a Orwellian rant, please consider the defanging of words like unbelievable, incredible, and their cognates.  Incredibly-unbelievably has come to mean “very”, and unbelievable-incredible to mean “good.”  When we have abused these words in this way,  where do we go to express the meaning, “unreliable, implausible, not worthy of belief or consideration”.  As Orwell would have predicted, the abuse of these words exactly coincides with our national crisis in credibility.  And “absolutely”.  Absolutely has come to mean. “yes” or “I agree”,

 

Nick 

‘

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Thursday, February 4, 2021 12:42 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] mathematics and politics

 

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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