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<p>Aha! <br>
</p>
<p>No, that was not in my childhood training-through-parable, though
my mother did read quite a bit to us from "Wind in the Willows"
and the "Uncle Remus" corpii. Like "Little Black Sambo", both
did demonstrate some of the racism (sambo was Indian, not African
BTW) of the era in which it was created, often hidden within the
choice of animal-characters and their affects. Fortunately my
mother made a point to point some of that out gently and let my
sister and I know that it was (intended to be) in the past, and
not a pattern for the present or future.</p>
<p>I don't ever intend to discount that metaphor (analogical
thinking) can be abused... and I believe that the more colorful
the metaphor, the more seductive it's misuse.<br>
</p>
<p>I also appreciate your first-hand knowledge of Dawkins and do
recognize that he became a rabid anti-religionist somewhere down
the line, and your point that he would never "merely" state
anything is relevant to this conversation.</p>
<p>With that, I have to ask: "can we separate the message from the
messenger?" and "to what extent?"</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
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<div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Hi
Steve, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Larding
below …<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Nicholas
S. Thompson<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Emeritus
Professor of Psychology and Biology<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Clark
University<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><a
href="http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><span style="color:#0563C1">http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div style="border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1
1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext">From:</span></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:windowtext">
Friam [<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com">mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>] <b>On Behalf
Of </b>Steven A Smith<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, March 30, 2019 8:52 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com">friam@redfish.com</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was,
Re: are we how we behave?)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p>Nick -<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Thank you for your kind words.<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">We
were doing SO WELL until we got to … oh, see my
“HORSEFEATHERS!” below. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">I'll see your HORSEFEATHERS and raise you a
CONFLATION ALERT!<br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<div>
<p><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">[NST==></span></i></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">
</span><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:red">HORSEFEATHERS!</span></i></b><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">
One or two generations of sociobiologists were
directed away from group level explanations by this
pernicious metaphor. <==nst] </span></i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Just to split hairs, I will claim that Dawkins wasn't
"striving" (nor was his metaphor by extension) to direct
sociobiologists away from anything, he was merely offering
another way of looking at the problem. You of course are in a
much better position than I to know how he conducted himself
during this time. <span style="color:#1F497D"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">[NST==>Well,
I did know Dawkins, a bit: he was not one to “merely
offer.” <==nst] <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p> As an entirely outside outsider, I have no idea what he was
pushing the community for. At the time, I just saw him as a
disruptor with a significantly novel metaphor to be offered.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>At our "Salon" at Jenny's 2 summers ago, we rambled on about
metaphor quite a bit for a couple hours in the cool shade of
her arbor with cool drinks in hand. Dave West, as I
remember, was mostly incensed at the way the AI community had
gone astray for more than a while by taking the "Machine
Metaphor for Mind" too literally. It seems to me that might
be what the sociobiology community did?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>We often conflate what something was intended to do/be with
what we hope/fear most from it. I offer that might be what
happened in both cases, actually granting the worsh(ish) case
more power over the imagination than appropriate, then
*blaming* the source of the "pernicuous idea" for being more
"pernicous" than it really was (intended)?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>In any case, even if Dawkins *was* dead set on ramming the
Selfish Gene Metaphor through the hearts of all more mature
models, I guess I'm calling out a "group phenomena" where the
actual disruptive idea or person ends up being given more
power (like a boogeyman) than it deserves, *thereby*
participating in a self-fulfilling prophecy?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I think Trumpism is one of those... He was just trying to
tweak up his brand and now he's halfway to being the
world-dictator, and we helped do it by under-estimating the
hope/fear we carry around the topics he tweaked in us?<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<div>
<p>It *strives* to provide a cognitive shortcut and to
establish a fairly strong metaphor which deserves careful
dissection to understand the particulars of the *target
domain*. An important question in the target domain
becomes "why does the shortcut of thinking of genes as
selfish actually have some level of accuracy as a
description of the phenomena when in fact the mechanisms
involved do not support that directly?"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">[NST==>I
don’t think it does. I think it’s a subtle and
largely successful attempt to import Spenserian
ideology in to evolutionary biology. <==nst] </span></i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have to admit to having a nearly
belligerent (maybe only willfully) naive view of ulterior
motives in the Sciences. I know that competition of this type
exists and that it may well be pervasive, but I have to admit
to not thinking in those terms until prompted. <span
style="color:#1F497D"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">[NST==>Dawkins
became a vigorous and narrow minded anti-religionist. I
forgive him because, after all, “it takes all kinds”,
but I don’t think we should be in any doubt about what
the “kind” is, in this case. <==nst] <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<div>
<p>For all I know, EB has entirely debunked the concept and
there is NO utility in the idea of a "selfish gene"... <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Bruce Sherwood likes to make the point that the analogy
of hydraulic systems for DC circuits is misleading. I
forget the specifics of where he shows that the analogy
breaks down, but it is well below (or above?) the level of
"normal" DC circuit understanding and manipulation. For
the kinds of problems I work with using DC circuits, a
"battery" is a "tank of water at some height", the Voltage
out of the battery is the water Pressure, the amount of
Current is the Volume of water, a Diode is a one-way
valve, a resistor is any hydraulic element which
conserves water but reduces pressure through what is
nominally friction, etc. As you point out, there is
plenty of "excess meaning" around hydraulics as source
domain, and "insufficient meaning" around DC circuits as
target domain, and if one is to use the analogy
effectively one must either understand those over/under
mappings, or be operating within only the smaller
apt-portion of the domains. For example, I don't know
what the equivalent of an anti-hammer stub (probably a
little like a capacitor in parallel?) is but that is no
longer describing a simple DC circuit. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">[NST==>I
think I am back to heartily agreeing. <==nst] </span></i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p>A farmer buying his first tractor may try to understand
it using the source domain of "draft animal" and can't go
particularly wrong by doing things like "giving it a rest
off and on to let it cool down", "planning to feed it well
before expecting it to work", "putting it away, out of the
elements when not in use", etc. your "excess meaning"
would seem to be things like the farmer going out and
trying to top off the fuel every day even when he was not
using the tractor, or maybe taking it out for a spin every
day to keep it exercised and accustomed to being driven.
The farmer *might* understand "changing the oil" and
"cleaning the plugs" and "adjusting the points" vaguely
like "deworming" and "cleaning the hooves" but the analogy
is pretty wide of the mark beyond the simple idea that
"things need attending to".<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#993366">[NST==>OoooooH.
I like the above! May I plaigiarise it some day?
Do you by any chance know Epamanondas from your
childhood. Very politically incorrect, now, I fear,
but endlessly instructive on the perils of over
using metaphors. <==nst] </span></i></b><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Plagiarize at will. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I do not know Epaminondas and as I look him up (thanks to the
pervasive and at-my-fingertips interwebs) I don't quite get
the connection with Metaphor nor Political Incorrectness?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><i><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">[NST==>Try
<a
href="https://www.uexpress.com/tell-me-a-story/2010/8/29/epaminondas-and-his-aunt-an-american"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.uexpress.com/tell-me-a-story/2010/8/29/epaminondas-and-his-aunt-an-american</a>
As I read the text, it’s not inherently racist, except
that every publication represented E. as a black child.
In that context, it does make me cringe. In any case,
reading it, I think you will see it as I do as a story
about the misapplication of metaphors. <==nst] </span></i></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Epaminondas/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.ancient.eu/Epaminondas/</a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
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