[FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Hi, EricS

 

You faith in my consistency is touching (};-)]. 

 

I know that, in response to this, Nick will reply with a sequence of English-language words that I find even more unparseable than the ones above.  

 

Frankly, you shouldn’t have any faith that my average psychology colleague will rescue me.  90% of them, directly or indirectly, make their living off The Hard Problem.  

 

EricC and JonZ might do so, but they are  probably too busy.  

 

Given that I find my inability to communicate with you alarming and distressing, and given that you find what I write so exasperating, is there any way forward?  

 

Please understand that I am not fooling around, here.  

 

Are there any baby steps we could take?   If I can’t communicate with you guys, small chance I will be able to communicate with ordinary mortals. 

 

 

Nick  

 

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

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

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2021 5:32 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Could this possibly be true?

 

This is where there is a style of use of language that may be unique to Nick among all humans, or may be a tribal custom among the psychologists, but which the common man needs to be aware exists, so that he knows that the way Nick/psychologists use words will be directly opposed to the way the common man has always used them.

 

If that question disappears for you under those circumstances, then I can simply admit that a pleasure is just the behavioral transition that occurs upon the achievement of set of circumstances, and escape the tautology by defining  a goal as the organization of behavior that points to a set of circumstances.  

 

So, in archery, the way the archer points the bow (organization of behavior) is the “goal”, and the event of an arrow’s hitting a bullseye is somehow not a goal.  Nick didn’t happen to use the word “function” in the clip above; I have no idea what he would say a “function” is, but in the earlier posts, it was as bizarrely glossed to me as this glossing of goal, so I can’t even come up with a guess for how to imitate it.  

 

The plugging in of an address for the supermarket to the GPS while sitting in the car in the driveway (organization of behavior) is the goal, not the event of my arriving at the supermarket.

 

For me as a mechanic, the bullseye as a position for arrows is the goal (applied to an object), or the event of the arrow’s arriving there is a goal (applied to an outcome of a behavior) that serves as a selection criterion among directions in which a bow might be pointed.  My pointing the bow one way versus another is to me a function for attaining that goal.  The event of arriving at a supermarket is the goal that serves as a criterion for selection of which GPS location I plug in; the act of plugging in that address is then a function for attaining that goal.

 

I know that, in response to this, Nick will reply with a sequence of English-language words that I find even more unparseable than the ones above.  

 

The meditators do this too.  If I comment that, as a mechanic, I am interested in what would get people to be more restrained in the use of excesses of power when they find themselves in possession of such, to try to unwind the death spiral that is leading to the dissolution of the society, I know that the meditators will say “Poor child, lost in samsara, he doesn’t realize that all these things he refers to are just illusion.”  If I say to them that this is what I expect them to say, the meditators get annoyed at me because they think I am insulting them.  They say “when we say, over and over again, in the first pages of every piece of our literature, and again every three pages after that, that `all that is illusion’ “, we don’t mean that all that is illusion.  You strawman us.  Seriously?

 

I guess that’s how either discipline-specific or idiosyncratic speech habits work.  What is unexplainably self-evident to one person is mystifying to somebody else.

 

Eric 

 

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