[FRIAM] Strawman/Steelman

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Very nice fuzzification of the interplay between top-down and bottom-up. I thought about preemptively pointing out that in either usage for the text (yours: extracting reasoning, mine: extracting context), there has to be some prior model. All measurement has a prior model. But your characterization of *harsh* (or not) imposition of that model is a good one, especially w.r.t. the newer ML methods.

After I learned OSC was a dyed-in-the-wool racist, I had to back off and reconsider his work. Compared to Lovecraft, I don't think OSCs work is redeemed. I can live without OSC. I don't think I can live without Lovecraft. So I won't re-read his stuff. But I admit it had a big impact when I did read it. I just won't get the benefit of discovering whether or not I'd see a similar difference to yours, reading it later in life. I'm constantly presented with this "cancel culture" issue. When do you simply stop listening to the monster in the corner who peppers his noxious effluvium with (slightly) useful epiphanies?

Speaking of noxious effluvium, Brett Weinstein will be on Bill Maher tonight: https://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/ 8^D

On 1/29/21 12:04 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Hah!  Yes, tools that help with individual and group self-regulation are
> definitely of value and I share any implied bottom-up or peer-peer
> regulation over *harsh* top down.  Like many good things, I think there
> is a distribution of "archies" as well as "scales"...   which means
> there is always room for *some* top-down regulation.
> 
> Grooming the "syntax" of my own logic and being able to detect flawed
> (especially deliberately tricky) logic in others is valuable, but so is,
> as you indicate, softening the advantage gained by psuedonymous
> engagement... 
> 
> I just re-read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and it's sequel which
> includes a couple of siblings who, as frienemies engage in a multi-year
> pseudonymic online debate with the covert intention of building one of
> them (brother) up to become world-leader (Hegemon), even though the
> other (sister) does not agree with the brother's methods or values, she
> does agree with the logic of the ends he is pursuing (ends-means
> conflation/justification).   It's pretty clever and lame at the same
> time (as I find much of OSC's work, compared to how I received it when
> written 30+ years ago)?   OSC (IMO) has demonstrated to me a
> sophisticated variation of a common Right Wing strategy that I can't
> describe well but is probably in those lists... probably headed with a
> variety of "false equivalences".
> 
> I appreciate your elaborating/enumerating your own ad-hominem character 
> questions on the alt-right.   Such is only in my peripheral vision, but
> still of interest.  I may dip at least one level into those characters
> and see what they are up to.  I've been noticing that Prager U. has been
> really upped their game on YouTube for me at least...   talk about
> duplicitous.
> 
> FWIW, I inherited a copy of _Straight and Crooked_ thinking from my
> paternal grandfather who was slightly ahead of his cohort, having been
> born right before the turn of the 19th century and being the first in
> his family to get a post secondary education and probably the first
> generation to get much if any formal education.   His family and peers
> were broadly illiterate and as they became so were not necessarily
> prepared to parse sophisticated rhetoric laced with deliberate logical
> fallacies (e.g. general/yellow journalism of the time).

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