[FRIAM] Talent and Moral Luck - Steelman attempt

[jon zingale]

Thank you for moving the discussion of ethics further along its bifurcated
decision tree. Marcus' *it's all levers* remark summarizes (as far as I
understand it) a serious post-modern position/observation. Many on the list
(though not uniquely so) strawman PM by the silly boys and girls producing
the worst of critical race theory or whatever, but this often strikes me as
an attempt to *shoot the messenger* and divide-and-conquer a way back to a
simpler time. This impulse may very well be inevitable.

At the heart of PM appears the admissible interpretation provided by Marcus
and the honoring of complexity[1] that brought many of us (I suspect) to
reject strict reductionism and to recognize along with Zarathustra that
"Santa Claus is dead (as well as the panopticon for judging naughty and
nice), and (sorrowfully) we have killed him!"

In a mostly off-list conversation, I am struggling to elucidate the
possibility that a limit point for *truth* (in analogy to analysis or
topology more generally) may not belong to the interior of a given logical
system but to its boundary. In this way, proceeding within a particular
logical context (intuitionism, say) may provide no possibility for a
construction to terminate with *true*, yet another logic acting as closure
(or analytic extension) does[2]. I mention this because the concept suggests
to me that non-true (thus in a limited sense non-real) factors in life may
very well shape the course of knowable truths. Ok, now that I have said my
speculative, possibly non-defensible, and likely terribly flawed thought, I
will offer this possibly controversial thought wrt gender roles[3].

Perhaps we recognize the non-truth (in a strict sense) of gender roles, but
find ways to thoughtfully enact them anyway. We identify the places where
the benefits outweigh the costs as-well-as where they don't. That is, we
recognize that they are *false* and useful. This idea seems similar to the
approach that Steve puts forward. Yes, power is not the daddy of free men,
but it ought to act on public life, administering *punitive retribution*, in
some thoughtful way. That thoughtful way may not come with a natural choice
for an *analytic extension*, and so we may be doomed to make an artful
choice.

[1] I am thinking in particular about the contract of tree-like structures
versus "rhizomatic thought" as investigated by Deleuze and Guattari and
tangentially discussed here on the list in the form of algebras for
diffusion-limited aggregation.

[2] Ah, but how do we even choose such an extension. There has always seemed
to be a bit of *art* in this, for example, with finding analytic extensions
of the Collatz function:
https://chamberland.math.grinnell.edu/papers/3x_survey_eng.pdf

[3] This idea surprisingly seems to be gathering steam and is endorsed by
some PM *thinkers* like the Red Scare ladies.



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