[FRIAM] metaphor run amok!

[glen∈ℂ]

Since I've whined, here, about our tendency to believe it's "metaphor all the way down" ... and maybe in relation to Hoffman's idea that evolution may select for false beliefs, I thought I'd post this as a twisty follow-up:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/22/no-filter-my-week-long-quest-to-break-out-of-my-political-bubble
> Its founder and chief executive is John Gable, who has a “lean right” rating, and an affinity with the Republican party. Nearly 25 years ago, his internet career began at the trailblazing company Netscape. “Like everybody else, I drank the Kool-Aid back then,” he says. “I completely believed in the possibilities of the internet to connect people. But I was concerned that the internet might also train us to discriminate against each other in new ways. The main thing I saw was that it would encourage us to think in terms of metaphor, or category: ‘This is similar to that.’ I thought that it might also train us to stereotype people, and think less of them. It got a lot worse than I ever thought it would. But I had my first concern back then.”


I don't like the way the article ends, though. I do agree that serendipity and noise are good for you. But I also think it's that *canalization* of our rather arbitrary ontogeny that leads us into local minima from which we can't escape. And noise (as in annealing) can be the problem as well as the solution. If there's not enough of if, it can cement you into a bad place. If there's too much of it, you become goo and dissolve. So, some arbitrary "add noise" setting on your Facebook search bar ain't gonna fix anything. But it's still a cool idea.