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<p>I've spent my self-conscious life/energy trying to understand
whence comes "understanding", and fortunately the bulk of my life
(<i>what happens whilst making other plans</i>) has been
un-selfconscious, with a lot of breathing, walking,
wood-splitting, tree-climbing, hell-raising, etc along the way. </p>
<p> "understanding" as a placeholder for other related terms like
"insight" and "apprehension" implies (for me) an act of
model-fitting (primarily) and by extension, model-extension?
If/when there are "leaps" ("revolutions") of intuition
(personal)/ scientific paradigms (collective), I presume there
is some kind of "pull back" to a meta-understanding of one's
personal (or collective) model of modeling. It is fascinating to
me that we (can and) do this at all. </p>
<p>As LLM's expose *(behaviour* which appear to some degree,
indistinguishable from incredible model-fitting and meta-model
fitting unto model extension/revision, we have a new line of
parallax.</p>
<p>My love of metaphor is probably little more than my appreciation
of stereoscopic vision (or more aptly, motion parallax?). Having
a plethora of POVs to look at phenomena through, a plethora of
meta-models to munge into (maybe more?)apt models to choose from
can be very powerful (or at least obsessive/addictive?)</p>
<p>I suspect that most use of metaphor in science is post-hoc, it
gets added (e.g. ES' -Verschränkung/ entanglement, interlinking,
entwining, interlacing) after a more A)intuitive to those steeped
in the topics and B) formalized in mathematical models with an eye
to communicating said models/intuition to the un(der0initiated.
glen has occasionally challenged with something like: "why use
'metaphor' when you really just mean 'model'?" and I do in fact
concede that most use of metaphor is acutely
figurative/convenient/superficial and as it gets more and more
formal/grounded it approaches a formal model. </p>
<p>Without significant machinery for manipulating metaphorical
models formally, it is perhaps an art to manage metaphors
honestly. The likes of Lakoff, et al... would seem to be good at
it (up to a point) and there are in fact huge (by number not
percent) communities of people who study the use and application
of (conceptual/blending) metaphor formally. I ache for (yet)
more formal tools to normalize all of this. As Marcus references
- hypergraphs/graph-matching is a domain which has melted
somewhat under computational power (O(N^2)). </p>
<p>I'm going to go back to talcing the surfaces of my lenses so I
can inspect them under a (lensed) microscope now... there is
nothing more interesting to a navel than it's own navel.</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/21/26 6:21 am, Santafe wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:E61CF1BA-7927-4676-B95E-44157DC936C6@santafe.edu">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
It has seemed to me that there is a bit of a parallel to the thing
Nick does that I mostly post objections to (and that I read Glen
as objecting to, though I should only speak for myself), and the
thing Kuhn does that I object to in reading him.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So I\u2019ll talk about Kuhn (TK):</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In Structure of Scientific Revolutions, TK plays sociologist,
and comments on power structures, economies of scale,
thoughtlessness, exploitation at the expense of exploration
until one\u2019s back is completely against a wall, and other such
sociological phenomena. No argument from me, against all that's
happening. Also in Venture Capital, consumer behavior, finance,
religion, political movements, cults, instigation and
prosecution of wars, etc. Indeed, were I to describe it in
_any_ area of the interplay of individual and group cognition, I
could take up TK\u2019s characterization and not change much
(sometimes nothing at all) except the name of the subject
matter. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>But along the way in that sociology, TK treats the role of
scientific empiricism as if it were somehow just given, and one
can refer to it as an adjudicator (a kind of toss-off), without
any attention to whether it actually is given, whether it is
hard, or whether the indefiniteness of that problem of
_reasoning_ and _analysis_ plays any role in when people think
they can exploit versus when they decide as clans that they are
forced to explore (so, I am granting much of the rest of the
structure of TK\u2019s sociological picture, and not pursuing the
many places I think he errs in imposing it). TK\u2019s
passing-over-in-silence of this dimension is more striking,
since the previous generation or two of philosophers of science
had mainly wanted to worry about that question, and had clearly
run aground on giving a good analysis of it, though they made
many practically sensible and apt observations in the general
direction. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>To me, if there is anything that makes describing the pursuit
of scientific understanding a topic to write about under its own
name, as opposed to writing a completely generic treatment that
might have a title like Mass Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds, or perhaps bookended by something titled The Wisdom of
Crowds, the nature of the reasoning problem of what constitutes
empiricism would be at the center of putting \u201cscience\u201d in the
title of that monograph.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>To come back to the Nick/Glen exchange, I don\u2019t mind that
lens grinders look at lenses, while hopefully they also
sometimes look through them to decide what good criteria are for
grinding strategies. (Indeed, I don\u2019t think anybody in the list
would argue against the need for both). It\u2019s also perfectly
fine to write very general treatises on human behavior. So,
TK\u2019s book could have been entitled People are Often Lazy in Ways
that Make Them Effectively Stupid, and That Can Lead to Cycles,
and I could then have reviewed the book as a useful if not
terribly surprising sociological analysis. I tend to take those
things as established for so long by now. that repeating them
isn\u2019t so engaging, and I itch to move on toward differences in
the substrate, where maybe we can say new things that weren\u2019t
said before. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It is tempting to laugh at the way Nick deliberately refuses
to take Glen\u2019s meaning; where when Glen argues that one should
look through the lens in the sense of meaning-making, Nick
claims innocently to understand that as looking through the lens
at (invented?) Freudian-style emotional motives. There will
never be a thrust that gets through that parry, we have watched
it for decades. All good fun.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I do want to distill and call out from the thread what seem
to me to be several clean formulations of questions that
interest me, and that seem still very open:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>From SteveS:</div>
<div>
<blockquote>
<p>Scientific language is a <strong data-start="6748"
data-end="6813">lossy compression layer over a
high-dimensional formal plenum</strong>, not a generative
metaphor system.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>(I would modify that it has elements of both \u2014 as I know
Steve already intends \u2014 and that their co-traveling is one of
the interesting aspects)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>and then:</div>
<div>
<p><i>What might we know anecdotally of the contexts where
generative metaphors are used in recognizing new models for
observed phenomena? </i></p>
</div>
<div>From DaveW:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><span style="font-family: Arial;">... the proper, even
essential and inevitable, use of metaphor is as and
"exploratory tool (epistemic scaffold).</span></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>(that whole note actually).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Hard to offer good content in reply to these, because that
would require an actual insight, as does all work that might
become satisfying. I like the well-articulated problem, though.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Eric</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>On Mar 20, 2026, at 14:51, glen
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com"><gepropella@gmail.com></a> wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div>
<div>This seems like a fantastic attempt! It's still
layered with sophistry. You're saying I've stripped you
of the capacity or interest. Yet that's clearly not
true. You're reifying a thought experiment, a
counterfactual. That's fine.<br>
<br>
The attempt to look at the world naively is a good one,
though, even if what you're looking at is the
*presentation* of my meaning ("anger", "contempt",
"rage", troll metaphor, etc.). It's good to strip away
layers of the narrative like that to see if you can view
something naively, "objectively". But it's still an
analysis of the presentation, not the target of the
arrangement of lenses and mirrors I tried to assemble.<br>
<br>
IDK. I've done all I can, I think. My intent was to
circumscribe and directly target why Schmulik would/will
eventually ghost you: because you look at his metaphor
instead of through it.<br>
<br>
I'd like to leave off congratulating you on the attempt
in the hopes that you'll do it again later, in some
other context, but without adding the pedantic
counterfactual. Just for grins, I'll add that a medium
dose of psychedelics, in the proper set & setting of
course, can help doff one's debilitating obsessions. And
I recommend shrooms. You can buy the spores on the
internet. They're legal pretty much anywhere. And grow
them in your closet. Doing so adds a little connection
to nature and the plant to help layer the trip. Cleanse
your doors of perception! 8^D<br>
<br>
<br>
On 3/20/26 11:21 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Ok, Glen, You win. You have
stripped from me any capacity or interest in how
metaphors mean, the limits of what they do and
don't convey. I am in that state. Now, without
reference or exploration of any metaphor, please help
me understand what you meant by the following passage:<br>
*/But if you actually want to *understand* what some
other agent is trying to say, you read *through* their
text. You use it as a lens. If, every time you picked
up your eyeglasses, you only looked *at* the lenses,
those glasses would be useless as a tool. Every time
you meet a missive focusing on the metaphors used, you
are explicitly/purposefully misunderstanding the
author. If metaphors are a tool, you're ignoring their
tool-ness. You promote the means/tool to an end. [\u26e7]
/*<br>
It's funny, because before you stripped me of my
ability to think about metaphors, I thought I
understood you precisely. You want me to take life
just as it presents itself. Ok. I can do that, sort
of. It's what I do most of the time. As we both know,
there is nothing simple about how the world presents
itself. There is always a past and a future and the
naive present is always an amalgam of the two. We
live neither in nor for the moment. But I will hum
along. What do I see in this case? Well, first I
naively see anger and contempt. I could try to
mitigate that experience, by examining the text, but
no, I am not permitted to do that in this world of
naive perception. What I see, is a man incoherent
with ... rage? What I see is a creature lurking in
the dark moist crevaces under a bridge shouting,
"Who's that treading over my bridge?" Thats what I
naively see. But none of that is helpful to me in
trying to reap the benefit of your prodigious mind.
So I try to NOT take what I see naively to be all that
is there to be seen. I say to myself, this is a man
who has given me some really great working metaphors.
This is a man whose thought is respected widely by
people whose thought I respect. Before he stripped my
of my analytical powers, I was led to try and squeeze
every bit of juice out of the dry- skinned fruit he
grumpily proffered. Now, I just see an angry man
living in an incoherent world.<br>
Please, please Glen give me back my powers of analysis
so I can see you as I used to see you.<br>
N<br>
On Fri, Mare 20, 2026 at 7:28\u202fAM glen
<<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com">gepropella@gmail.com</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com"><mailto:gepropella@gmail.com></a>> wrote:<br>
Fools have more to say, and more impact, than, for
example, nit-picking grammar nazis.<br>
Anyway, here is the counterargument, AGAIN! OK. I
grant you all 5 of your points. As a fan of
postmodernist approaches, the examination of every
layer of every narrative in the stack *can* be
worthwhile and interesting, especially for academics.
I'm glad you are also a postmodernist.<br>
But if you actually want to *understand* what some
other agent is trying to say, you read *through* their
text. You use it as a lens. If, every time you picked
up your eyeglasses, you only looked *at* the lenses,
those glasses would be useless as a tool. Every time
you meet a missive focusing on the metaphors used, you
are explicitly/purposefully misunderstanding the
author. If metaphors are a tool, you're ignoring their
tool-ness. You promote the means/tool to an end. [\u26e7]<br>
People use their deeply embedded metaphors to
communicate. If all you can do is yap about their
metaphors, you are blocking their ability to
communicate and your ability to understand what they
mean.<br>
I'll turn your moral back around on you. You can
choose to ignore my counter argument, yet again. Or
you can tell me why it's more important to look at the
lens than through the lens. [\u26e4]<br>
[\u26e7] A good analogy, here, is that of paraphilia
<<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia"><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia></a>>.
You have a fetish. Rather than a metaphor *enhancing*
your ability to see the world, you've fetishized them.
You think the metaphor *is* the world. Like a
fetishist, you're aroused by the tool, not the
objective.<br>
[\u26e4] I can shunt a counter-counter argument in
advance. In a mostly rhetorical world, if you merely
look *through* the metaphor, you're at risk of being a
victim of purposefully designed narratives, intended
to exploit or mislead you. Therefore, a critical
thinker must *also* look at the lenses, not merely
through them. But this argument fails because if you
can't even look through the lens in the first place,
then you can never critically analyze how it
[mis]directs your gaze. So the *first* and primary
skill is to be able to look *through* metaphors.
Looking at them is a secondary skill. And, like the
grammar nazis, a fetish for the form preemptively
excludes an understanding of the function.<br>
On 3/19/26 1:10 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:<br>
> 1. Metaphors are everywhere. We can disclaim
them all we like, but they are deeply embedded in the
way in which we proceed from thought to thought. They
lurk in how professionals talk to one another and also
in the manner in which professionals talk to the
public.<br>
> 2. There is a lot of evidence these days that
scientists have "lost" the public. This is a very
dangerous situation. My suspicion is that this has to
do with the metaphors we use when we talk to the
public about what we do.<br>
> 3. We all seem to agree that there is truth
and falsehood disguised in every metaphor.<br>
> 4. Given the ambiguity of metaphors, I am
interested in a method for understanding their role
in thought and communication, particularly in
understanding the manner in which truth and falsehood
is deployed in them. How are we to distinguish
between a better and a worse metaphor if all contain
elements of falsehood. What am I to take from your
metaphor? What are you to take from mine?<br>
> 5. Given the entanglement of truth and
falsehood in metaphor, it's worth exploring
distinctions between what implications a speaker
intends by a metaphor, what the coherence of the
metaphor can logically sustain by way of implication,
and what implications hearers take from the metaphor.<br>
-- <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
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\u1f45\u03c4\u03b5 oi \u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u1f04\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03b9 \u03ba\u03cd\u03bd\u03b5\u03c2 \u03c4\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c7\u03d1\u03c1\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u03b4\u03ac\u03ba\u03bd\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd, \u1f10\u03b3\u1f70 \u03b4\u1f72
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