[FRIAM] self and next*

[Steve Smith]

On 4/4/22 10:59 AM, glen wrote:
> I wish I knew of a way to navigate metanarratives methodically:
>
> In Hungary, Viktor Orbán Remakes an Election to His Liking
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/world/europe/hungary-viktor-orban-election.html 
>

Glen -

Virtually every conversation here coming from "the cool kids table" here 
leaves me with a heady sense of being Galloped_by_Gish, yet I accept 
(trust/hope/believe?) that this is not the intention, only rather the 
consequence of my having both depth and breadth limits when parsing and 
trying to follow the expanding threads of references and implications.   
With only occasional en-conversation tactical-exceptions I find everyone 
here to be almost exclusively attempting to not only communicate their 
ideas but often to actually build ideas that perhaps require a 
collective that transcends what can (easily?) be built by any individual 
here.

I've had a few sit-down beers (and bites) with you and never felt that 
you arbitrarily raised the stakes (or subtleties) on a conversation 
until I was enough out of my depth that you could perhaps have slipped 
any kind of mickey you wanted into the conversation  without me 
noticing.   It doesn't surprise me that in a weekly (or more often) 
Salon at the Saloon that you *might* in fact fall into such tactics very 
effectively.   I assume your beer-hall compatriots come in a wide range 
of intellectual sophistication, or perhaps after the year or more you 
have been mixing it up there, there is a core group of highly capable 
participants?

I don't know if I know exactly what you mean by "cross-trophic 
rhetorical moves"  though it does evoke in me some specific examples or 
experiences I have with various narratives here and elsewhere.   It 
would probably be trite for me to point out re: "I wish I knew of a way 
to navigate metanarratives methodically:" that "It is Meta all the way 
down!"  or maybe "all the way out!" or "all the way through!".   Science 
(and even more acutely Math) has the convenience of allowing for 
explicating and constraining context ("assume a spherical cow") which as 
the parallel thread here points out is not the way of natural language 
and in fact, what seems to challenge the very idea of "algorithmic 
consciousness" (if not "intelligence" or "life" as well).   I'm sure 
others have gone over this and it went past/over my head, but maybe it 
just comes down to "open" vs "closed" systems of signs and symbols?

Re: Orban...  All I can see/hear/think when I hear Orban/Hungary is the 
cognitive (ethical?) dissonance between Tucker Carlson's cozying 
weeklong broadcast with him and Orban's (apparent) helpfulness with 
Ukraine's plight right now.  I'm probably just not paying enough 
attention.   I like your hair-splitting question about "free but not 
fair" and the syntactic/semiotic conflict implied there?  Or maybe the 
upshot is different than that and I am conflating.  Again.  Some more. 
Forever.

Muddle,

  - Steve

>
> On the one hand, I'm sympathetic with the idea, say, that one needs a 
> state issued ID in order to vote in person. On the other hand, I 
> recognize that getting, keeping, and having the extra time off or 
> cognitive free cycles to remember to bring it to the voting booth are 
> all important factors. Overhead is expensive, especially in a society 
> that doesn't compensate you for the time you spend on overhead tasks. 
> (My company's overhead is relatively very small. But it's still about 
> %20. Behemoths like universities runs much higher like 50% or more. 
> How can 50% of your budget be "overhead"? It boggles. But there's also 
> the inane slogans like "Safety is Job #1!" Pffft. No. The mission is 
> job #1. Safety supports that.)
>
> But like the Federalist Society's takeover of SCOTUS, gerrymandering, 
> and the false equivalence between election and voter fraud, I have no 
> way of explicitly punctuating cross-trophic rhetorical moves. I can 
> scream Composition/Division Fallacy till I'm blue in the face. But 
> it's largely lost. (The other day, 3 pints in, I was trying to broaden 
> a discussant's understanding of confirmation bias by comparing it to 
> survivorship bias, where he accused me of "gish gallop": 
> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop. [sigh])
>
> Anyway, I'd appreciate any opinions on whether Orbán's election was 
> "free but not fair."
>
> On 3/30/22 09:47, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I missed mention in this dialog where the collapse of the USSR is 
>> figured in the analysis.
>> For example, if the conflict with Russia escalated and there was a 
>> full-scale nuclear exchange, and the United States collapsed, then it 
>> would be reasonable to talk about Idahoans becoming their own unique 
>> state.  They'd just have to persuade anyone they were shipping 
>> potatoes to that they were a country.   I would say some Idahoans are 
>> barely recognizable as Westerners.    I'd probably recognize the 
>> values of a Kyiv resident as more like mine.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2022 9:19 AM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: [FRIAM] self and next*
>>
>> On the heels of Marcus' challenge re: next* and EricS' discussion of 
>> iterative inter-subjectivity, Scott's tolerance to Thorfinnsson's 
>> insane comment triggered me:
>>
>> Who Gets Self-Determination?
>> https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/who-gets-self-determination?s=r
>>
>> "A people" is Yet Another convenient fiction only grounded through 
>> repetition and entrainment, a purely social, but no "less real", 
>> construct. Being in that triggered state, this article carried a 
>> little extra intensity:
>>
>> The end is nigh for Northern Ireland as we know it – and unionists 
>> can blame themselves 
>> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/30/the-end-northern-ireland-unionists-blame-themselves-dup-sinn-fein
>
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