[FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

[Nick Thompson]

Steve Smith wrote:

 

I sense frustration in many of us when we try to talk about our various topics of specialty (as amatuers or professionals) with our significantly educated (but in other (sub)disciplines) lay-colleagues.   It seems that in the attempt to be more precise or to make evident our own lexicons for a particular subject that we end up tangling our webs in this tower of Complexity Babel (Babble?) we roam, colliding occasionally here and there.

Right, Steve.

 

I wouldn’t have it any other way.  It is one of the few places on earth where, fwiw, people are struggling with the problem.  Fighting the good fight against semantic hegemony.

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2019 12:20 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

 





Nick writes:

 

< Ok, Marcus, I am standing my ground as a realist here: ():-[) >

 

There you go trying to claim semantics for terms in a public dictionary again.   (That’s an example of taking ground, like in my Go example.)    Doing so constrains what can even be said.   It puts the skeptic in the position of having to deconstruct every single term, and thus be a called terms like  <https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kellyanne-conway-embarrasses-cnns-jim-acosta-during-heated-exchange> smartass when they force the terms to be used in other contexts where the definition doesn’t work.   A culture itself is laden with thousands of de-facto definitions that steer meaning back to conventional (e.g. racist and sexist) expectations.   To even to begin to question these expectations requires having some power base, or safe space, to work from.  

I think this is the "genius" of Trump's campaign and tenure... he operates from his own (and often ad-hoc) Lexicon and that reported 39% stable base of his seems happy to just rewrite their own dictionary to match his.   That seems to be roughly Kellyanne's and Sarah's only role (and skill?), helping those who want to keep their dictionaries up to date with his shifting use of terms and concepts up to date.   

It has been noted that Trump's presidency has been most significant for helping us understand how much of our government operates on norms and a shared vocabulary.   He de(re?)constructs those with virtually every tweet.   While I find it quite disturbing on many levels, I also find it fascinating.   I've never been one to take the media or politicians very seriously, but he has demonstrated quite thoroughly why one not only shouldn't but ultimately *can't*.

In this case, you assert that some discussants are software engineers and that distinguishes them from your category.  A discussant of that (accused / implied) type says he is not a member of that set and that it is not even a credible set.  Another discussant says the activity of such a group is a skill and if someone lacks it, they could just as well gain it while having other co-equal skills too.   So there is already reason to doubt the categorization you are suggesting.    

I took Nick's point to be that the Metaphors that those among us who spend a significant amount of time writing (or desiging) computer systems is alien to him, and that despite making an attempt when he first came here to develop the skills (and therefore the culture), he feels he has failed and the lingua franca of computer (types, geeks, ???) is foreign to him.   Here on FriAM, I feel we speak a very rough Pidgen (not quite developed enough to be a proper Creole?) admixture of computer-geek, physics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, hard-science-other-than physics, etc. 

I sense frustration in many of us when we try to talk about our various topics of specialty (as amatuers or professionals) with our significantly educated (but in other (sub)disciplines) lay-colleagues.   It seems that in the attempt to be more precise or to make evident our own lexicons for a particular subject that we end up tangling our webs in this tower of Complexity Babel (Babble?) we roam, colliding occasionally here and there.

- Sieve

 





============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20190109/77ebf6e8/attachment.html>