[FRIAM] A bold meteorological theory

[Marcus Daniels]

Different canals could be in frustration, so I suppose it isn’t quite as bad as you say? 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of glen <gepropella at gmail.com>
Date: Monday, March 16, 2026 at 11:45 AM
To: friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A bold meteorological theory 

I don't see how that could be true. At best, metaphor is a means to keep one in a canal *and* a means of escaping a canal. And that it's both means neither usage is a property of metaphor. I think it's better to state that metaphor is a means of escaping *reality* ... to say things that are not true ... lying, falsehood.

Of course, some lies/falsehoods can be good. When a science popularizer lies about, say, entanglement in order to provide *some* type of intuition the laity demands ... maybe that's a good thing. The liar may justify their lies in claiming that lie set A is "better" than lie set B. (Or maybe it's a bad thing.) But metaphor is a liar's tool. Attempts to rehabilitate it are the essence of postmodernism (at least as *that* concept is bastardized by the laity).

Of course, those of us who are OK with being called a _liar_ have no problem with this. But there are those amongst us who blanch at being called a liar even as they lie, the epitome of Bad Faith, reflective or not.

On 3/16/26 11:04 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Metaphorically stated, unfortunately: a metaphor is just a means for escaping local minima and channelization.
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2026, at 8:55 AM, glen wrote:
>> That's some good advice, there. Narratives like the naked Emperor are
>> crucial tools for posers and con men. Each and every metaphor you
>> identify in a missive is evidence of the authors' (plural possessive -
>> no such thing as a sole author) Bad Faith. And the number of metaphors
>> is directly correlated with the extent of the Bad Faith.
>>
>> None of us are innocent. None of us are the child in the narrative.
>> It's a venomous fiction, injected by the fangs of the storyteller. Even
>> literal babies bring along their own "genetic memory", in utero
>> accretion, biases, and expertise. The story, that story and all others,
>> is there to persuade, to trick you, to canalize you into thinking in
>> some particular set of ways.
>>
>> Now I'd like you to stop thinking about elephants.
>>
>> On 3/15/26 10:17 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>> Perhaps I should just drop the metaphor and speak to the beliefs the metaphor represents to me. Expertise both sights and blinds us; great expertise sights and blinds us greatly.
>> -- 
-- 
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