[FRIAM] more agonism

Wed Oct 25 13:08:32 EDT 2023

Yeah; restricted reply.  I wasn’t going to write it at the time, but given the linked article below, which is _much_ more sophisticated, I feel obliged to say that the problems are much lower-level.

I don’t know if the whole blog is written by Zach Elliot, and I only read the one page you linked.  So my reply is only to that one page.

There was never a chance for that page to have a meaningfully wrong point, because it was already dead on the criterion that “words should refer to something”.

Here was the content of what he actually did and showed:

1. There is a summary statistic that takes one of two values for 99,8% of the individuals in some sample.  (Here, a 23rd-chromosome-pair description type).  If I ignore the other 0.02%, I can group the individuals into  two sets from the value of that summary statistic.

2. There are a lot of other summary statistics that are also defined, which take ranges of values, such as height or whatever.

3. For any other summary statistic, I can plot the conditional distribution of its values over either of the sub-populations I constructed from the first statistic.

4. The act of being plotted, for those other summary statistics, doesn’t reach back into the material world and change my having first grouped the individuals into two sets and then plotted conditional distributions.

There is some program on “public literacy” or something recommended by such observations.  Not sure how to characterize it.

Eric

> On Oct 25, 2023, at 12:29 PM, glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Along these same lines, I know there's a significant contingent of "Presties" on this list. And I still don't have a good note-taking app that I find convenient enough to use. So I'll post this here, in part because it's a higher order form of ad hominem, in part because of our Presty friends, and in part because I need to note it somewhere so I can find it again.
> 
> Bayesian Injustice
> Why rational people often replicate unfairness
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fkevindorst.substack.com%2fp%2fbayesian-injustice&c=E,1,qf8la1ZXp90RP5ovOvlQlsD2eBsn5XL_lbse7h-GK-U5Iir8Q9FGEZB_G7AqnBSaLP2hbtdDzn_-nW4eldc3LX5EQJ3vJp7UP3TOQqts&typo=1
> 
> A tiny part of the red flag for Zach Elliott's bullshit (cf https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fsimonesun.com%2fblog%2f2022%2f5%2f12%2fstop-pretending-transphobia-is-scientific-debate&c=E,1,dAq8WLSUwlWyrTV2gDDuZ-hqOCl0wXb8GgBiyKnjz15SSJ-1PG4VCf_5xHiaWEQ3KoOLWBApCZnjeqWtHmlX8qTO3QhOu6hqlAYUet27OuBk3SadxC_G&typo=1 for why I assert his rhetoric is designed bullshit), is his training institution, Oklahoma State. I'm sure it's a fine school ... maybe not as good as mine (Texas A&M), but prolly in the same tier. And neither OSU nor TAMU produce what I'd call well-rounded students ... at least not like what I've seen come out of Reed (in Portland) or Evergreen (here). And while Reed definitely has some prestige, I don't think Evergreen's in the same tank.
> 
> Yet another tangent: We have an upcoming election for several commissioner and director spots on various local boards. Now, I don't know most of these people. I see all the yard signs and such. We got a flyer in the mail where a challenger pointed out the entitlement of an incumbent. ("Do you know who I am? I'm the fscking mayor of Tenino!" 8^D) Yaddayadda. But what do you do when you're aware of your own ignorance but still believe in voting? You have a similar risk for zetetic injustice. I ended up almost blindly taking the recommendation for 3 of the board seats, the candidates for which I was completely ignorant. But everyone else on the ballot was equally "legible" ... I think.
> 
> I've had the same complaint about the fideistic shunt surrounding open source software. Just because some package is open source, doesn't mean you should import it, for a wide variety of reasons. A really funny example is https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fqz.com%2f646467%2fhow-one-programmer-broke-the-internet-by-deleting-a-tiny-piece-of-code%2c&c=E,1,PbHiCW_HWqyXH_fi689XhoejIBPpwRz-qny-zIVr9z6F6I_ahgSJ3f4__sRoKFIrORMPzWNekCEWjybibONroaQAda32TPnIzpINfeOM0IgPx6yPdZFMjLbFR0s,&typo=1 which provides a moral something like "Yeah, maybe reinventing the wheel isn't as bad as they say it is." High order legibility is not only a function of the legibility of the atoms, but also of the composition, including both composition through time (e.g. provenance of data) and composition over space (high-order or cumulative structures).
> 
> And finally, just a tangent about Zach's trumpeting that he's written books. https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-launches-boom-ai-written-e-books-amazon-2023-02-21/ To be honest, I think I'd ascribe more *Authority* to a ChatGPT-written book on Gender Dichotomy than to a Zach Elliott book on it ... which is to say, Authority=0. Is Zach more or less legible than ChatGPT? I just don't know.
> 
> 
> On 10/19/23 14:39, glen wrote:
>> Ha! I care much less about any particular false dichotomy than I do about the causes of dichotomies. The causes of dichotomies lie in agonistics, us versus them, this vs that, inside vs outside. Whatever triage methods we *happen* to adopt (or have impinged upon us) are always subject to fining and coarsening. When policing your tribe, you have to choose a (set of) scope(s). Which tribes are you policing?
>> One element of the 5Ws approach to media literacy is "Who". Who is Zach? He writes books! And makes videos! Surely, as a trained architect, he's an authority on gametes, right? An expert on probability distributions? Of course! >8^D This post is helpful in determining who Zach is and whether you might want to propagate his bullshit:
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCynical/comments/h81ymm/trust_fund_cismale_20_year_old_undergrad_is_new/
>> He's abandoned his named TLDN. But it's still available here:
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20220915143439/https://zacharyaelliott.com/about-me.html
>> and here:
>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.genderparadox.com%2fabout-me.html&c=E,1,nCl9mhWz3dDJL9MYMW_SWBzxbANBvH1fdTTZCiUgnPMAkn3R3PdIQYb6fx8kKYPiMi3x7eIIIwCvLSnq1z2MT7UoXEcp5SKS7ya0ce3eQxgbM17V&typo=1
>> Yes, I'm guilty of ad hominem. But, as I've argued here before, the assessment that a fallacy is always a fallacy is, itself, a fallacy. I guess, as an admitted postmodernist, I should be proud of Zach for his ultracrepidarianism ... the same way I'm proud of my anti-vaxx friends who think they understand vaccines better than, say, their PCP. It's OK. They prolly stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Network theory seems helpful, here. When deciding which tribe to police, it's useful to track the cliques and components of the graph. We're known by our friends as much as our enemies.
>> On 10/19/23 09:48, Steve Smith wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 10/18/23 11:27 AM, glen wrote:
>>>> Here's PZ Myers policing his community:
>>>> 
>>>> The Gamete Delusion
>>>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2ffreethoughtblogs.com%2fpharyngula%2f2023%2f10%2f17%2fthe-gamete-delusion%2f&c=E,1,8yQUChn_MEOZ0s3qmVGTs5W7-rTavKT_6i34HwgMufT0dtShg6uXpsMmXrdk0sQEhnF6L00hFQqNWQ_O99mkJ8U3KLJNwVQIXyvopWj52XRs_JTH&typo=1
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theparadoxinstitute.com%2fwatch%2fis-sex-bimodal&c=E,1,7lBSYGDSkI12rmlDLId8OqHHDmj4HIRFfp-VySs6-xc7_-_wmRYQehbzFyTkZmJaZdCoL7OQhSGLCW7RNZs84wfJIDQ0moubSwLEVuvionDI22xfMxQnTuAdDg,,&typo=1
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I don't really have a dog in this fight other than the general feeling that I support underdogs (and not just the ones who fly off in all directions at once).
>>> 
>>> 
>>> to paraphrase one of the more notable FriAM-Sages... "people should be called what they want to be called"...  harping on the emic/etic conflation some more, I find these discussions (e.g. Dawkins et al) rather off-point in this regard.   I understand (vaguely) why we all feel we must make sweeping generalizations about *other people's business*... some of it is an empathetic response, wanting to understand, but some of it is the response of someone who wants to control others.     These *are* conflated by circumstance in the sense that  in spite of the pithy aphorism "your opinion of me is none of my business", most of us actually *do* care what others think of us and it does effect how they interact with us.   It always feels unfortunate that those who want to tell others how to present/feel/be too often set the subject of debate.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I *expect* someone with their own dog in the fight to have an insider/personal view of these things and am generally interested and curious about their perspective up to their privacy.   For those who mostly just want to stir up a dogfight, I'm not particularly interested in their view beyond preparing myself for when *they* might choose to try to stir up a dog(cat?)fight in *my* backyard.
>>> 
> 
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
> 
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,8BPlkbH72ds3vILvvYpe1BJWO0MineVT09LreAj51jeXrPV3tSLHOad9JrZnW5BBhCdfvIi-1yzB3moZw7z0WkLkW7zcgLkHGDYSe5v-gZQcRhXgKw,,&typo=1
> to (un)subscribe https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,7puu7o8V7J1V1xMajlwrbaC7JdBho-lnsMwFEk3_JnzjMN5Xz3ZdF2EGcn6_J1-GQa5WL9Pc6dl9F5FiY0MR7UFWot00qSRNpOaL4QA4&typo=1
> FRIAM-COMIC https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,8t8HxW56BLrgxfbOf_E_w94RiOG8EKvnfzc6E4tzJzNVqG1GdqIhAy8H4b-QFe2UygHLqz886l6kiVIerC9e9mTHZKAHYh-Fgl7skP20aUF7NMsTcYLCUiTkpA,,&typo=1
> archives:  5/2017 thru present https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,8LWYqzAY7_aEEeMNyRFEPeya5kFHnWqVHZXSsBRCo7XPr-OQcRRTH7BxoO97FcMhvc6NfKBjC27bD132lkkSQnh7YpCrg8asvDnbeXq1&typo=1
> 1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/