[FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Sat Feb 22 01:24:01 EST 2020

So, how do you understand the authoritarian pandemic.  

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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

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

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 10:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

India.

Being afraid is a good thing. It heightens our senses, causes us to be better prepared to react against threats (dictators) when they happen.

As of now our 2 mutual (respective ?) dictators are confabulating. 

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 10:23 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

I suppose, as a behaviorist, I have to conclude that “being afraid” is a doing.  What else would you do?  

Are you afraid of dictators where you are?  Where ARE you, by the way.  I am guessing UK or India, but I don’t want to presume. 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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

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

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 9:39 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Hi Nick

To reply to your question,

a) I would not be living in the US if I could help it  In fact I have never come anywhere close to the USA for a variety of reasons.

b) If I were living in the US I would be very scared of dictators

Sarbajit

On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 9:58 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Enclosing every elephant in the room is a larger, more hideous, elephant in the room.  It’s elephants-in-the-room all the way down.  

Sarbajit, human to human.  If you lived in the United States, what would you now be doing?  

N

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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

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

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 8:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A longer response to Dave's question

Nick

1. Since Christ has never been proved to have existed, it seems to me (as a non-psychologist) those consuming his 'blood' religiously appear as victims/participants of group mass delusions reinforced by their regular shared consumption of a narcotic in a controlled environment replete with symbols to reinforce their delusion. 

2. Now to your more important question for us outside the USA.  "Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him. "

In my view, and in the  <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opinion/taliban-afghanistan-war-haqqani.html> view of many non-Americans, it is the nation of USA collectively which is the tyrannical dictatorship, and it is quite irrelevant who heads it (symbolically), because all US Presidents carry on the same acts of raining bombs from the sky on those who disagree with US policies or the US' aforesaid mass delusion called Christianity.

Sarbajit Roy

Brahma University

On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:31 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Geez, Dave, 

 There's an awful lot here.  Do you mean to take the hardest case?  A person?  And particularly a person who has been so much in all our faces that it's hard for most of us to think of him rationally, if at all?  

 Let's take a simpler example.  An example that Peirce takes is transubstantiation, the idea that in ritual of the mass the communion wine becomes the blood of Christ.  Once consecrated, is the communion "beverage" wine or blood?  Let's say we disagree on that point.  We both see that it's a red liquid in a chalice, on which basis we jump to different conclusions.  From the properties or redness and liquidness that the substance in the chalice shares with both blood and wine, you abduce that it is wine, I abduce that it is blood.  So far, we stand equal. But now the chalice is brought to our lips.  For me, (forgive me, Catholics, for I know not what I say) I feel momentarily cleansed of my sins, uplifted.  Since part of my conception of Christ's blood is that if I drank some of it I would feel cleansed and uplifted, I conclude that it is indeed, Christs' blood.  You, on the other hand, experience the flat, sour taste of inexpensive wine, feel no uplift whatsoever, and conclude that the chalice contains wine.  We are still on equal footing. 

 But now the science begins.  We whisk away the stuff in the chalice to the laboratory.  As a preliminary, each of us is asked to list in their entirety all the effects of our conception.  We are being asked to deduce from the categories to which we have abduced, the consequences of our abductions  They are numerous, but to simply the discussion, lets say each of us lists five.  I say, if it is Christ's blood, then I should feel transformed when drinking it, and then I pause.  The scientists also pause, pencils in hand, and I have to go on.  Well, in addition to its red-liquidity,  I say, it should be slightly salty-sweet to taste, be thick on the tongue, curdle when heated, sustain life of somebody in need of a transfusion, etc.  So we do the tests, and the  results are yes, no, no, no, no.  The scientists now turn to you and you say, it should, as well as red and liquid, be sour, thin on the tongue, intoxicating in large amounts, produce a dark residue when heated, etc..  So, the tests come out yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. 

 So, is it really blood or really wine?  Well, that of course depends on one’s priorities.  If the sole criterion for a red fluid being Christ’s blood is that it produces in one person, Nick Thompson, a sense of cleansing, then the fact that it doesn’t pass any of the other tests for blood will make no difference.  I can assert that that Christ’s blood is a very special sort of blood that cleanses the spirit of Nick Thompson, but does none of the other things that blood does.  Indeed, I might assert that anything the priest handed me in the chalice, once duly consecrated, would be Christ’s blood.   The idea that it “works for me” makes it “Christ’s blood for me and that’s all that matters.  And if I could bring a regiment of Spanish soldiers with spears to friam, and have them insist that you drink from the chalice and feel cleansed, many of you might begin to agree with me.  

 This is the view of pragmatism that James has been accused of, but it is definitely NOT the view that Peirce held.  If the position is, “whatever the officiant says is christs blood is christ’s blood by definition”, then, Piece would say the position is either 

Meaningless or false.  It might be meaningless, because there is no possible world in which it could be false.  Or it might be false, because our best guess as scientists is  that in the very long run, in the asymptote of scientific inquiry, our best scientific guess is that the contents of the chalice will be agreed upon to be wine. 

 Again, let me apologize for my ignorant rendition of Catholic ritual.  It IS the example that Peirce takes, but I now see that that is probably a poor excuse.  Peirce was, after all, a protestant, and one with many prejudices, so it would not surprise me if he was anti-catholic and himself chose the example in a mean-spirited way.  So, be a little careful in how you respond.  

 Is Trump a proto-dictator?  What are the consequences in experience of believing that he is?  What does that belief cause us to expect in him.  Tim Snyder, in his little book ON TYRANNY, does a very good job of laying out the parallels between what is going on in our politics right now and what goes on in the early stages of the establishment o a dictatorship.  Trump is fulfilling many of Snyder’s expectations.  Whether Trump succeeds in establishing a dictatorship or not, I think the long run of history will conclude that he is making a stab at it.  

 Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

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

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

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