[FRIAM] truth, reality, & narrative

Tue Jan 5 15:36:35 EST 2021

Glen, 

Re NST-2.  Stipulated.  What can I say? I am the product of a mating between a publisher and an editor.  To put my ideas before the big world and thus get feedback on them from the world has always been my greatest ambition, silly as it may be.  It's how ideas develop.  That is why I so value friam.  It's not the Big World, but it is a world and I do get feedback, and my ideas do -- you may not have noticed -- develop.  You are right that that is a very conservative impulse and I need to be wary of it.  But I think framing one's ideas for a world is a useful discipline as well as a dangerous concession. 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

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From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, January 5, 2021 1:58 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] truth, reality, & narrative

MGD -- Excellent point! That evokes the Citizens United ruling and incorporation, in general. With very liberal interpretation, we can imagine these organizations, like city-nests, as our (or some subset of us) extended mind. E.g. to the extent that an entrepreneurial enterprise succeeds or fails, it's a representation of how "real" that organization is as a model of the "truth". If manufactured wants ala persuasive advertising do a good job, then they socially construct the truth and the success of that enterprise is at least positively reinforced, if not self-fulfilling. And the extent to which we can get batsh¡t minds like Trumps or ISIS' to reify themselves, we can more effectively *criticize* them than we can by flapping our gums about ideas.

NST1 -- Re: composing for Harpers or Times, it's interesting that a curated, authored artifact like that would be your intention. In a way, I think my post can be viewed as a passive aggressive attempt on my part to demonstrate *that* such narrative-supporting media are part of the problem, *not* part of the solution. At the end of a bloviating Op-Ed or long-form article, I end up in the exact state I don't want to be in, predisposed to thinking in the terms laid out by the bloviation. The wisdom that story tellers arrive at, in order to tell a *good* story, you have to pull your reader along with you. And that applies for science popularizers as well as fiction writers. Nowhere is it more obvious than math. Those theorem-proof-theorem-proof books are nothing if not "pulling you along" ... gaslighting you with every proof. Socially, the most profound effect *I* see is how technologically optimistic, libertarian, and meritocratical sci-fi fanatics are. So, no, a long-form article for this argument would be self-contradictory.

NST2 -- By "validate against", I intend some cognitive dissonance. To validate means interpolate and match observations from a referent. So if I said "validate with" or "validate to", I'd be targeting that confirmation. By saying "validate against", I'm hinting at falsification and extrapolation. I want the data to falsify my model, not confirm it. But, of course, the ultimate objective is to build a model that both [inter|extra]polates in good faith.

JxF (I don't know Jochen's middle name) -- Thanks for that article!

On 1/5/21 9:16 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> They have to establish a bureaucracy and mechanisms for public communication, fixed buildings for use, etc.   Such people and buildings are the basis for a target list.  They can put themselves in a position to take bigger losses per event.

On 1/5/21 9:18 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> I love the grandiosity of your post and will try to slog through the links so I can fully understand it.  If I were you and had had an idea as grandiose and timely as this one, I would be trying to get it to Harpers Mag or a Times op-ed.  Mind you I wouldn't succeed and would waste a shit-load of time in the effort.  
> 
> One teensy clarification:  Can you explicate " build a logic that validates against human reasoning "  I think I am probably reading too much into "against".  

On 1/5/21 10:29 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> It reminds me of the recent article from Muthukrishna about "Psychology as a historical science"
> https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/files/henrich/files/historical_psychol
> ogyv20.pdf

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