[FRIAM] self-care

Tue Jul 12 17:07:57 EDT 2022

I'm wondering if I'm expected to only respond to the paragraph you wrote to me explicitly. >8^D Particularly, to your question of whether or not there are *ever* any cross-trophic attributes, I'd have to say "yes." But as with every *actual* thing, given that any complete description of any *actual* thing will be infinitely long, there are always opportunities to split off. To boot, the infinity is most likely dense.

For that reason, "equivalence" is a better word than "conflation" because it implies some sort of functional replaceability ... the ability of one actual object to stand in for another actual object. But in order to argue such equivalence, you kindasorta do have to say what function is being achieved by the 2 equivalent things. So in particular, are the *attributes* of a cell also attributable to an organism? Well, it depends. Under what use case would you swap out 1 cell for an entire organism? I'm guessing you could get to such a place with some parasites, pond scum, and the like, but not in many other cases. Since the number of such use cases seems so close to zero, I'd have to gloss with a "no." But if we asked something like "Can the attributes of an autocrat like Putin facilitate the replacement of the nation of Russia with the man, Putin?" There, the use cases seem significantly non-zero. So, I'd have to answer with a timid "yes" ... like when a small business dies because it's primary leader retires or whatever.

So, Sarbajit's accusation of hypocrisy *might* make a lot of sense, depending on what replaceability function is being discussed. But Carl's right. Hypocrisy isn't an argument. It's a particular informal fallacy (tu quoque) best used rhetorically to raise skepticism of someone else's argument. My response is the same as it is to all the righties at the pub who loudly claim "I don't trust the gub'ment!" Of course you don't trust the government. NONE OF US trust the damned government, not least because "the government" is an incoherent concept ... it's not even logically possible to trust it because there is no "it" to trust or distrust. The only options when presented with such not-even-arguments is to ask clarifying questions or sit quietly quaffing your ale.

On 7/12/22 13:18, Steve Smith wrote:
> Carl -
> 
> I think your point is very well taken, that *much* of what renders out as hypocrisy is often a reflection of overly ambitious aspirations.  However it IS often easier to hold those aspirations for *others* and then criticize *their* failure which is the more traditional stylization of "hypocrisy".  As I age, my aspirations wane but so does my ability and I often wonder at the ratio of my reach/grasp, whether it is convergent on 1:1 or more likely radically divergent.  At death, I suppose, the denominator goes to 0 in the limit?
> 
> Glen -
> 
> Your point about whole/part conflation is interesting.   I do think that this conflation can be very problematic, but I also find it interesting that there *might* be something to it as well (independent of the specifics of hypocrisy).   As I've tried to understand more of the implications of holarchies and heterarchies, I sense that the evolutionary consequence/mechanism of "stacking" holons into holarchies is complemented by the crossing of those lines with different levels in the *archy.   One version of these heterarchical crossing of levels would seem to be an example of what is implied when we try to attribute qualities of a subsystem to a supersystem?   Are these always and entirely a false equivalence/conflation?  Do the qualities of a cell re-present themselves at the organ or organism level?  The qualities of an individual in a population?  A species in an ecosystem?
> 
> Nick -
> 
> Your point about "a Unified System" is very aligned with what I'm trying to gesture above with my *archy points with Glen.   I'd like to understand more about your own perspective on these ideas... though I don't know where to start.   I recently took a deep dive into Bateson via Charlton's "Understanding Bateson" and am now elbow deep in Deacon's "Incomplete Nature".   I feel that my own adherence to the "hard sciences" steered me away from some important and deep thinkers (e.g. Bateson) and that history is now beginning to support some of their more intuitive and less rigorous claims...   a continued variation on the "effing the ineffable" discussion here I suppose?
> 
> Sarbajit -
> 
> I can only (barely) imagine what the US govt and maybe more to the point, the US information-industrial complex must feel like to members of non-Western cultures/countries.   I am not a fan of abortion nor of much of Western Medicine, though I *am* a strong proponent of women's rights including right-to-choose to terminate a pregnancy.   Without following the threads of your specific implications, I would not be surprised to find that your assertions about abortificants being toxic, even carcinogenic were spot-on.   I believe that *many* (if not all) Medicines (Western and otherwise) *are* toxic (see virtually all forms of cancer remedy) but represent a presumed "lesser evil".   A great deal of the abortions promoted in our (Western) culture, at best, qualify (to me) as "lesser evils"  which is a sad statement about our culture... but in my value system, nevertheless "lesser" if still tragic.
> 
> While I am often shocked by some of your statements and claims, I can attribute a lot of that to the very *valuable* cultural parallax you offer when you make those statements here...   We are a fairly monocultural group, even *with* yours and a few other voices here... I appreciate the added spectral spread your offerings induce.
> 
> On 7/12/22 1:23 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:
>> Well, hypocrisy is not an argument.   Our reach exceeds our grasp, is all.
>> C
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 12:53 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     What's a bit bizarre about Sarbajit's accusation of hypocrisy is the overwhelming diversity of US Government components. It would make sense to accuse a single agency, say, the FDA of something like hypocrisy. But even there, we have different regimes ran by different people and there's a turnover of individuals within the affiliated organizations.
>>
>>     I suppose this is the heart of the "stare decisis" arguments against willy-nilly overturning "precedent" and cross administration changes like Trump rejecting the nuclear deal with Iran. It reminds me of the Citizens United ruling and the false equivalence between national debt/deficit and household debt.
>>
>>     Can a materially open thing like a (somewhat) representative government be *hypocritical*? What is hypocrisy, really?
>>
>>
>>     On 7/3/22 18:23, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>>     > Sarbajit,
>>     >
>>     > Could you post materials on the Guttmacher dispute and the science behind it?
>>     >
>>     > I am guessing that this is all new to us.
>>     >
>>     > As to hypocrisy, the term is only appropriate to a unified system, usually a person.  But perhaps the metaphor works the other way around.  Perhaps people are just badly integrated systems, hence sin in all its form, deception, hypocrisy, loving thy neighbor too well, and all of that!  So instead of saying that governments are sort of like people, we might say that people are sort of like governments.
>>     >
>>     > N
>>     >
>>     > Nick Thompson
>>     >
>>     > ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto: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:* Saturday, July 2, 2022 2:57 AM
>>     > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
>>     > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] self-care
>>     >
>>     > The hypocrisy of the US govts is amazing.
>>     >
>>     > For decades they have been desperately promoting pill based self induced abortions as "safe" abortions in India and Latin America through their puppets like the Guttmacher Institiute and by using misrepresentations and outright lies.
>>     >
>>     > These pills are highly toxic / carcinogenic and Guttmacher was caught red handed by us for using fake accounts on Wikipedia to shape the "self induced abortion" article to depict it as safe and as an at-home remedy. We got Guttmacher delisted in India for about a year, but they made their way back through the USAID RMNCHA programs used to bribe foreign government servants to shape policy
>>     >
>>     > Sarbajit
>>     >
>>     > On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 8:52 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>     >
>>     >     In the aftermath of the activist Justices overturning RvW, this popped up in my feed:
>>     >
>>     >     How to Give Yourself an Abortion
>>     > https://jewishcurrents.org/how-to-give-yourself-an-abortion <https://jewishcurrents.org/how-to-give-yourself-an-abortion>
>>     >
>>     >     I remain torn on the issue of self-care. And lots of energy was added to my oscillators with the whole "horse dewormer" thing for COVID-19. (Yes, I'm poking fun both at the people who bought veterinary ivermectin and the people who used the disgusting sneer "horse dewormer".) To boot, this post came up this morning about a homeopathic packet sent home with the patient after surgery: https://centerforinquiry.salsalabs.org/2022cfimidyearemailversion11 <https://centerforinquiry.salsalabs.org/2022cfimidyearemailversion11>. (Placebo is a thing, despite Blumner's write-off.)
>>     >
>>     >     Nick is fond of asking people whether they take multivitamins or not. And while it's true most experts claim that *healthy* people just pee them out. *Who* amongst us actually qualifies as "healthy"? What does "health" even mean? That's not an idle or rhetorical question. Am I "healthy", despite the excruciating chronic pain in my shoulders, neck, and lower back? Despite my sporadic debilitating migraines? Despite my now abated follicular lymphoma? Sure, I *seem* healthy because I can do pull-ups, shovel dirt, drink 5 pints without a hangover, and maintain a full-time job with a bit of time for hobbies. But what you see from the outside doesn't reflect what I feel on the inside, which is like a sick puppy where the slightest bad event would topple me into the "disabled" category. "Healthy" is at best a misinformation concept, at worst a malinformation concept: https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/mdm-incident-response-guide_508.pdf
>>     >     <https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/mdm-incident-response-guide_508.pdf>
>>     >
>>     >     Sneer all you want at the new-age descendant reading self-help books, cutting out magazine ads for their "vision board", or self-administering veterinary de-fetus pills, but there's something important, here. Fad diets, bottled water, alcoholism or pregnancy as an indicator for moral failure, etc. all point at that thing, whatever that thing is.
>>     >
>>     >     In that context, self-administered abortion is legit.

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