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The twin opposed poles of this world are Mythology and Economics. Crossing the axis they define is another, with its own set of poles, one of which is Geology. It is not certain what Geology’s opposed twin may be, though Music, Fish, and the Internet have all been proposed.Within the space thus defined are the entities of Commerce: Work, Food, Language, and Memory. Thus the world.
But what, you may ask, of Love, Mathematics, Humor, Divine Presence, Desire, the Electromagnetic Spectrum, and Death? The answer is that they are present in all times and places, and so do not fall within the purview of mapmakers.
Whoa. And that's only *three* dimensions.
[western twang]
Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be pages.
[/western twang]
Hmm...perhaps this is what Sony is on about...
Yeah, probably not...
At any rate, it seems to me that the system thus defined is only sufficient if one is a bland-old 2-d cartographer (I would nominate Technology as the logical axial opposition to Geology). What would the third axis be, that we might more precisely place our reality in a map with depth?
I can see Music and Fish as potential other-poles to Geology, but I think I'm missing where the Internet would go on that axis. (I think Internet and Technology are close together.)
Those axes would certainly make for interesting maps.
Why am I reminded of National Lampoon's "Humor Map of the World," which I used to have up on my living room wall? (My sister preferred the map of the state of Minnebraska, which included one of my favorite towns, "Paris, France, Minnebraska.")
This has the flavour of the introduction to Foucault's The Order of Things.
Then again, it also has the flavour of The Girl Detective
I have trouble seeing economics and mythology as opposites. But perhaps the counterpart to geology is Phish?
I have no clue. I'd guess Douglas Adams just before the time buzzer rang out, if only to have a remote chance of winning the game. I forget the rules, is it as close as possible without going over the actual price? Or do I simply have to guess one of the replies that 100 people gave when polled with this question? Survey said?!?
I have a picture of bunny with a pancake on its head if that would help.
Hey look, my first YASID!
A juvie, set on a newly-colonized planet where the wheat comes up with silicate/glass stalks.
Well given the foregoing, I would suggest a z-axis bounded by Reason on one end and Principle or Conviction on the other.
I would also offer some variant on imagination, creativity, or whimsy as the alternate pole for "geology", which term(s) would incorporate music, and possibly fish as well. [Certainly the babelfish ...]
... getting this out of my system now...
"In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that."
from the preface to The Order of Things
I'm not convinced that Economics and Mythology are different axes. They intersect at so many places: trickle-down and other Regan , the Communist ideas about the inherent value of labour, the complete works of Ayn Rand...
(Damn, damn, damn. I was just wondering how I could make this post interesting enough to catch Mr Ford's eye, in the hopes of something like the "bother dinosaurs and sodomy" riff, or what he did with my Serge out of Heck comment. But then I remembered that it would need to be even more interesting than I can ever make it to do so now.)
I think Geology is opposite Physics, since to a physicist, all else is stamp-collecting.
That would put the Internet (and Technology) almost exactly in the middle of that axis, and indeed almost exactly in the middle of the Mythology - Economics axis.
Hence, we may infer that the Internet is the origin of all things.
Which we knew already.
Dan R.:
Have not yet read The Order of Things or The Girl Detective although both are now on my "eventually-gander-at-the-library" list. But, to go totally surreal under the "stark impossibility of thinking that" meme:
The twin opposed poles of that world are Taxonomy and Affectation.
Crossing the axis they define is another, with its own set of poles, defined by the opposed values of Color and Osteomancy.
It is not clear whether that world is flat, or if perhaps -- as some have suggested -- there may be a third axis upon which atmosphere and density may be calibrated although, if such a spindle should exist, its poles have been titularly delineated as Electricity and Equivocation.
Within the space thus defined are the entities of Commerce: Reliability, Remuneration, Retaliation, and Revision. Thus that world.
But what, you may ask, of Syntax, Reproduction, Fashion, System Redundencies, the Thought-Sleep Continuum, and Fruit?
The answer is that these are present in all times and places, and so do not fall within the purview of realtors.
Anyone care to buy?
abi:
Yes, I was having the same thought ...
Of course, if he were to post, that would single-handedly succeed in making it far more interesting ...
The role of surfing in pre-contact Hawaii was central. Men, women, and children apparently participated with almost equal vigor. While the surfing abilities of King Kamehameha and his wife Ka’ahumanu were memorialized in ritual songs and chants, ordinary Hawaiians practiced the sport with equal relish (Lueras 1984; Kampion 1997). Westerners commented on the importance of the surfboard as personal property and one missionary even suggested its possession was as important to the Hawaiians as was the ownership of a light carriage to the Englishman of the day (Stewart, quoted in Finney and Houston 1996:27). In retrospect it is clear that European impressions of surfing reflected highly misguided notions about both the practice and meaning of surfing in Hawaii. Early engravings show the islanders in awkward, often impossible positions on the waves. Many of these engravings depicted naked native women (Figure 1).
—Waves of Commodification: A Critical Investigation Into Surfing Subculture
Kip,
That's a nice exposition. Here's a brand new book of surfing, from the Bishop Museum Press in Hawai'i. I have a copy (and know the editor/author). Its photos are all from the Museum's archives. There are the obligatory pictures of Duke Kahanamoku, but there are lots of others which are rarely seen.
#14 DaveL: I think Geology is opposite Physics, since to a physicist, all else is stamp-collecting.
But geologists are well known for making field trips to the ends of the earth, whereas, as we all know, philately will get you nowhere.
Peasant, that was elegantly done.
One of the odder things in my collection is a Hawai'ian silver dime from the late 19th century, with Kamehameha on the obverse. The reverse is the style of US dime used in the 1860s, after this style had already been discarded from US use. (I found this in a matchbox in my grandfather's effects, along with a 1909 VDB penny which still has some of the original shine, or "red"ness, and a few other oddities.)
Why did the US give them the old dies, I wonder?
It tasted to me of the Principia Discordia, although I gather it has been identified elsewhere.
It sounds like a good bit of Discordian moral philosophy though.
Although, of course, the existence of the Internet rules out the original Principia.
Not that it couldn't have been updated.
Tom W., a 1909 VDB? I would have given the rest of my collection for one of those!
(I'm no longer responsible for that thought; it was 40 years ago when I had a decent coin collection.)
About your dime, the die thing is interesting. I wonder if there's a Hawai'i Numismatic Society.
texanne,
A juvie, set on a newly-colonized planet where the wheat comes up with silicate/glass stalks.
hey, i read that one in school! don't remember the title, but they called the planet "shine," & there's an hourlong light rainfall every morning instead of dew. & the scariest part is when they eat the ground-up glass wheat & they don't know whether it will kill them or not.
i thought of that book last week, when i was afraid my parrot had eaten glass.
Why did the US give them the old dies, I wonder?According to this article (the accuracy of which I cannot vouch for), the US Mint in San Francisco made the coins. This doesn't surprise me - I don't know how many small countries don't mint their own coins these days, but a lot don't print their own bills, or at least didn't when I was collecting coins and bills back in the 1970s. Look closely at bills from your average Caribbean nation and you will see the name "American Banknote Corp" on many.
Texanne and miriam, I have your answer: The Green Book by Jill Patton Walsh.
Bruno Latour. French intellectual. Impenetrable and unnecessary. Here's Wikipedia on his most popular (for certain values of the word) book, We Have Never Been Modern:
Latour and Woolgar produced a highly heterodox and controversial picture of the sciences. Drawing on the work of Gaston Bachelard, they advance the notion that the objects of scientific study are socially constructed within the laboratory--that they cannot be attributed with an existence outside of the instruments that measure them and the minds that interpret them. They view scientific activity as a system of beliefs, oral traditions and culturally specific practices--in short, science is reconstructed not as a procedure or as a set of principles but as a culture.That is, science has no more connection to the real world that the latest episode of some reality TV show. It's just another culture.
I don't believe Latour & Co. address the question of why this one particular culture keeps generating powerful new knowledge.
Why do you ask?
But what, you may ask, of Love, Mathematics, Humor, Divine Presence, Desire, the Electromagnetic Spectrum, and Death? The answer is that they are present in all times and places, and so do not fall within the purview of mapmakers.
Perhaps they're merely curled up and hidden away...
I don't believe Latour & Co. address the question of why this one particular culture keeps generating powerful new knowledge.
Well, it’s awfully, awfully close to a one-for-one reproduction, but the map is still not the thing mapped.</devil’s advocate>
Theresa - I think you over-state Latour's point. I tend to agree with his assertion that science is a culture. Most of the scientific process (to which I wholeheartedly subscribe!), although it's not taught that way, is post-facto explanation of observed outcomes, with forward experimentation used mostly for verification. Which is to say that most of the process is cultural: research directions are set by social interactions and results are accepted or rejected through social interactions. The element of proof must be presented in a way that lets other scientists believe or disbelieve. Often we abdicate this responsibility to wiser people, effectively forming a culture of proof by authority, but with an of audit trail left by the litterature.
All that said, though, the culture is very much centered around repeatable experiment, and that repeatability is really at the core of our shared understanding of the base truth of our reality.
(Aside - I've met people who don't place that repeatability at the center of their understanding of the world, and the scientific world view works poorly for them. Often we dismiss them as flakes or cranks, or just stupid. Latour's argument points out that to them their world is just as true; from a social-science standpoint their view is just as valid, though perhaps not as useful.)
Sometimes this blog is so far over my head that I have to look down to see if it's going to come at me from below.
Teresa, when I cut and paste your text into google, the only thing that comes up are links to scholarly articles written by Bruno Latour.
This is an open thread, so I hope it's okay to post this:
According to Josh Marshall, Rep. Foley is now informing everyone that he was molested as a child by a "clergyman;" since he was raised RC, presumably that person was a Catholic priest. That's the conclusion his coyness leads one to draw.
Is this meant to explain or excuse his tendency to have phone sex with the House pages?
Why do I feel like I just fell into a big hole while in pursuit of a large white rabbit?
I mentioned this near the end of Open Thread 71, but I'm not sure anybody saw it (or maybe there's just not really any interest).
I have a Greasemonkey script available to help deal with Making Light comments: it makes comment links go the right comment even if you're using the larger text stylesheet; it keeps track of which comments you've already seen and gives them a darker background.
http://www.molehill.org/~jtl/userscripts/makinglight-read-comments.user.js
Sean, I swear it's just Wikipedia. If you want more depth, try Bruno Latour's website.
I have trouble seeing economics and mythology as opposites.
Me too, until I considered them as opposites in the taoist sense-- that is, that they are the same thing. That's a much smoother fit with my usual reality-tunnels.
I believe you! I'm just saying, what you wrote blew my mind. The fact that you knew who this guy was, and posted it, and then Pedantic Peasant's poetic contribution, and the discussion in the thread, it's heady, I get giddy reading this blog. I'm not complaining one bit, except bemoaning the sad fact of my tiny mind.
I think Geology is opposite Physics, since to a physicist, all else is stamp-collecting.
Physics is stamp-collecting too, but the physicists will never admit it.
Foley's explanations / excuses don't matter much now.
I'm more interested in Hastert's excuses. If only for their dark-comedy value.
The wheels on the bus roll down the ditch, down the ditch, down the ditch . . .
#38, Sean...
It's not that you have a tiny mind, it's that the available space in your normal-sized mind is filled with material other than that under discussion.
(That's how I look at it. It seems to help.)
Latour's a visiting professor at UC San Diego, the place where I earned my posthole digger. I thought the vogue for him had passed a few years back. So reality is, to a large degree, subjective; you're still going to expect that the internal combustion engine will work, that gravity will continue to function, that the medical profession will be able to treat your ailments and so on.
the round earth runs from myth to fiscal fact
and back again through every kind of clime
we say to this that not to disdain tact
all things are made to fit the vagrant rhyme
i construct laws that define only themselves
that's not reality it's merely my own choice
i might as well postulate hidden elves
that do all things at my commanding voice
all knowledges are equal in their power
belief in elves as much as in natural laws
each has its time its proper place and hour
but each arises from mental choice and cause
we might as well believe that the light air
that we see as sustaining is not there
Sarah, thanks! I've passed the info to the friends who were helping me cudgel my brain.
I'm less concerned with Latour being in vogue than in the piss-poor way so many of these philosophers of science present their philosophies to scientists. I used to knee-jerk them into the trash bin of over-blown self-agrandizing piffle, but increasingly I'm seeing some small truths hiding in there.
One of the things that I think holds back science is the where the cuture of science finds itself at odds with the culture of some would participants and contributors. In most of science the mode of discourse is confrontational and argumentative, the quicker to help discover truth - you argue to find holes in your arguments as well as in others' arguments. But that mode of discourse isn't comfortable for some people who could be fine participants - it may have something to do with the relatively small number of women contributing in the hard (non-health-related) science. Although I'm skilled at the traditional form of scientific argument, I've been trying to learn to moderate it so that I can hear the contributions from outside the core culture.
A goodly chunk of what these philosophers of science are trying to point out is that the culture is closed in various ways, and that treating science as a culture might show us ways to communicate better with the other cultures in which we interact. The ones who scare me overstep that bound and start disclaiming objective reality. I believe that there are fields where a subjective model reality is the best you can manage - there might simply be too many variables; down that slope lie the arguments that all science is too complex for a fully objective model, and so the world is subjective - I'll buy that my *model* of the world is subjective, but not that the world itself it. I just don't accept that degree of solopsism.
Avoid crankiness; I will say no no no, but only in the sweetest of terms.
Imagine instead there is a difference between science the ideal, and science as she is wrote. Yes? We dearly love science the ideal. It is a glorious thing and a precious candle in the darkness and I would never say it wasn't but nonetheless: science as she is wrote is or can be messy and nasty and contingent and stupid and dunderheaded and personal and backbiting and a social construct; a culture. And it can be helpful or enlightening or at least sometimes amusing to remember that, to see and study science as she is wrote, all the while keeping science the ideal in mind.
And yes yes yes: the hair's breadth between the thing studied and the social construct in the mind of the scientist that is the tool whereby she grasps the thing studied is or ought to be in, again, the ideal, vanishingly fine, such that insisting on its existence can seem downright comical, but nonetheless: the map is not the thing mapped. NaCl is not actually salt. Dammit. A pedantic point, perhaps. Self-evident. But still worth keeping in mind, and that's the basic takeaway of the above. (Well. That, and its implications.)
Now. I don't know Latour from de France, myself. He may well be guilty of (bullshit) rhetorical excesses that would make even me roll my eyes and turn away. (It is possible. —Certainly, "impenetrable and unnecessary" does not bode well, and We Have Never Been Modern is the sort of title that tries to dare you to unpack it, but really makes you just want to wipe its impish smirk into the mud.) But let's figure out whether that's true and mock him for what he's said and done, rather than carry an interesting idea off in the first hare-brained direction we can think of and then say hey, look, how silly!
Or (sweet!) words to that effect.
Kip - I agree with what you are saying. I think many scientific-minded people forget how much of their research is a product of their cultural environment (you do, after all, have to choose what to investigate!), and how much that culture can fail to resemble the ideal of science.
Regarding Latour, and most french philosophers for that matter, much of the criticism for the opacity falls on the translators. French academic discourse is a highly stylized form that doesn't move to english easily, and certainly not without some interpretation on the part of the translator. Sometimes that interpretation is "correct", but too often it comes down firmly on one side or another of an intentional ambiguity - there seems to be a pride in some of those constructs, much as many here pride themselves, rightly, for their verse.
#41 Linkmeister
It's not that you have a tiny mind, it's that the available space in your normal-sized mind is filled with material other than that under discussion.
(That's how I look at it. It seems to help.)
*sage nod* None of them except possibly Power Twin would know a two-slide mazurka from a three-slide racket if it bit 'em, and none of them except Power Twin could actually do them even if they did know them. Power Twin (being the goddess that she is) could probably do them without knowing them.
To each hir own.
Linkmeister (#25), it's the 1909 S VDB penny that's worth the most, though by now I expect even the non-S one is at the very least desirable.
Googlegoogle... ah, yes. You can buy a 1909 VDB for $5.95 at the first website that turned up in a search for "1909 s vdb penny."
46: "...the map is not the thing mapped. ... A pedantic point, perhaps. Self-evident."
Kip, I don't find this point pedantic at all, but rather vitally profound. Through this particular filter, so many impasses to understanding that I find between myself and others just vanish. It seems self-evident until one really applies it in the real world. Then, the realization that we are dealing with (n-1)abstractions of perceptions of reality, rather than looking like hopeless subjectivity, becomes a vast array of different tools to be used to measure experience. I'm constantly amazed at its usefulness, and even more often amazed at how easily I forget it.
Speaking of filters, does anyone here find e-prime useful? I find it particularly difficult to use, but a useful and enlightening exercise nonetheless.
My question is: does We have Never Been Modern set up modernism or post-modernism for a strawman argument?
As a physicist who works with geologists (and just back from Canada's Northern yonder), I looked at sociology-of-science studies for one of my comprehensive exams. Philosophers can be very convincing, and it was a depressing rite of passage to get through. What helped to bring me out of it (apart from moving on to a more concrete comprehensive)was Woolgar's admission that none of us can help but be naive realists almost all the time (with the possible exception of Wittgenstein).
I'm finding that 'Iron Sunrise' and Rammstein are going amusingly well together - but ginger beer doesn't seem to match as nicely.
Vodka strikes me as being incompatible with an evening of reading, while most of the beers that come to mind (Fin du Monde is what's handy, and apropos in some ways) just don't seem to match up either. Any suggestions? (or for that matter, any music/book/beverage pairings that work well for other folk?)
Xeger # 52 - Anything red. Seems that red wine goes well with just about any reading. Tonight was a recent Inniskilin Pinot Noir release that could have handled another 2-3 years in the bottle. I might have to get a case to do the every 6 months experiment. The book was Eco's Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna, perhaps influencing the wine. My Making Light reading of late has been giving me more patience for reading Eco's numerous cited poems and translations in there. I wish I had learned in high school that poetry is the highest form of word play, instead of learning it as the dullest form of pedantry.
Got a copy of Grease Monkey for my birthday.
Also, a small Sock Monkey.
I'm not sure where this is leading.
#39 ::: j h woodyatt -- "Physics is stamp-collecting too, but the physicists will never admit it."
The mathematicians will, however, remind them of it from time to time.
#50, from nobody, -- "46: "...the map is not the thing mapped. ... A pedantic point, perhaps. Self-evident."
Kip, I don't find this point pedantic at all, but rather vitally profound."
As have I, ever since my highschool's Librarian handed me a copy of Hayakawa's book, back in the early '40s. Korzibski came a bit later, with not-much-new presented stultifyingly. Maybe it didn't do much good, but I hate to think what my mind would have become without it.
Paul, Sean, Kip, et. al. -
If you think Latour is problematic, let's leave Baudrillard completely out of the discussion....
(Generally, I agree with Paul about Latour, particularly about the culture of science and what's useful about Latour's commentary)
If anyone here is responsible for scheduling staff, congratulations. You've just lost your right to unionize.
...the new definition could affect 8 million workers who give direction to fellow workers in fields ranging from construction to accounting.
From the WaPo.
As I observed in passing, on rec.arts.sf.fandom, "Doc" Smith, in The Skylark of Space, blithely over-wrote all of Einstein with the more-or-less scientific point that theories have to gave way to observations. The Skylark, in its bone-crushing acceleration, had travelled far more than the few light-days that Relativity predicted, and so Relativity was disproved.
The trouble was, I recall later realising, was that the Skylark's clocks were in that accelerated frame of reference, and so were running slow.
So observation still trumps theory, but you'd better be sure you take into account all of the theory.
(Yes, folks, I know that in Science, "theory" is a word with special meaning, but my teenage sensawunda didn't know that.)
But, please, can we have a comment thread that doesn't degenerate into politics quite so quickly. We all know that this world is run by vile scum, who should be nailed to the nearest church door and left to rot. We don't need to read such opinions all the time.
All @50, 51, 52.
But at some point doesn't that philosophical concept get on into "What the bleep do we know" space? Where you get people buzzed on the idea that what you see depends on what you believe, so if you don't have a word for red you can't see 700 nanometer light?
OK, wfbdwk didn't say that, it had something along the lines that the Caribbean islanders couldn't see Columbus's European ships, because they didn't have a concept/word for 'giant sailing ships." That to me is crazytalk. Er, I see that talk as crazy.
[goes outside and kicks rocks.]
Null-A thought me that the map is not the land as well as that if onyl I stare at a given spot long enough I can record a snapshot of it in mind to a high enough degree that I could teleport back to it when in danger.
The former has served me better than the latter.
Speaking of Stross and beer, as #52 did, the Stross book to drink beer by is Accelerando and if you're in Amsterdam you can do it in the same pub as that novel opens in. For musical choice Laibach seems to capture the spirit of that book better than Rammstein.
Kathryn #60: Where you get people buzzed on the idea that what you see depends on what you believe, so if you don't have a word for red you can't see 700 nanometer light?
That sounds like Orwell's newspeak idea that people wouldn't experience love if the word was removed from their vocabulary.
Stefan Jones #54: I'm not sure where this is leading.
I'm afraid my first thought was, "socks soaked in monkey-fat."
Kathryn #60 - most of these philosophies were developped for the social sciences rather than the hard sciences; this is the place where Latour takes issue with Foucault. It's much easier to miss seeing patterns of relationships that you don't understand than it is to miss seeing physical things you don't understand. The "couldn't see Columbus's ships" is the reductio ad absurdum of a straw man version of the arguments being made.
The reason "what do we know" has become interesting is because of observations that rationalizations back up our beliefs rather than the other way around. Science gives us rationalizations with solid theoretic backing and an audit trail, but no-one I know of can honestly say that they take all their science back to first principles, which themselves become slippery under sufficient observation. Not invalid, just slipperty :-).
Instead, what we know (claim some semioticians) is really a web of interacting definitions rather than a strict hierarchy. In some sense, it's turtles all the way down. It's (relatively) easy to see this in individuals, and the various philosophers of science apply that same reasoning to how science is organized and show how that forms a cultural context in which science is done and interpretted.
If I want to get all post-modern about it, I can say that my interpretation of their text doesn't scare me too much, particularly since it's divorced from their intent with the text. If I want to back off and be modern about it, I might be mis-interpretting their intent by not driving it ad absurdum, but at least this model of the text gives me some useful tools.
Forget Baudrillard
(um, sorry)
One of these days I may actually know what Latour said; I would not condemn the man's philosophy on the basis of a wikipedia article, or even a reading of the man in translation. I will say, though, that science is a social project seems self-evident at this point; it is not like there are tablets sent from Schenectady with scientific truths on them. The philosophical status of scientific truth is a very difficult problem, though, and mathematical truth an even more difficult problem. The more philosophical of scientists and mathematicians--Poincaré comes to mind--will occasionally admit to surprise that mathematics describes physical reality and that scientific consensus does produce truths which seem to approximate the physical world.
Paul, #63: The "couldn't see Columbus's ships" is the reductio ad absurdum of a straw man version of the arguments being made.
But, having seen "What the Bleep Do We Know?", the program did in fact make that very assertion. I was already a little skeptical by the time that bit came on (with video of a Noble Savage, excuse me, a Carribean shaman standing on the shore staring at the distortion in the water that was all he could see), and when the "expert" who was a woman channelling some sort of ancient being came on, I gave up in disgust.
What I mean to say is, the "couldn't see the ships" thing may not be what serious scholars think on this topic, but it's what the particular program said they think.
WtBDWK had the thing with the Japanese water guy too.
In retrospect it is clear that European impressions of surfing reflected highly misguided notions about both the practice and meaning of surfing in Hawaii. Early engravings show the islanders in awkward, often impossible positions on the waves.
So they couldn't see the surfboard. For some values of "see." Or "surfboard." Not sure which. Wasn't there.
It's been asserted that the producers of Bleep also fortuitously edited some of their interviews with participating physicists to make it seem as if those eminences grises held astonishingly silly positions which they do not, in fact, hold. Perhaps instead the producers simply didn't see those portions of the science for which they had no understanding?
So, theoretically, if someone didn't understand the concept of "insurgency", they wouldn't be able to see it?
Caribbean islanders couldn't see Columbus's European ships, because they didn't have a concept/word for 'giant sailing ships."
I think this sort of thing is a linguistic myth of the same general flavor as "eskimos have 126 words for snow" and "there is no word for 'no' in SomeLanguage." It's a cardboard version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (which opines that language shapes thought).
Caribbean islanders had boats, and I'm reasonably certain they had boats with sails, and I'm even more certain they had modifiers meaning "really, really big."
The folks at Language Log have fought this fight many a time. (It's a great site, btw, if you don't know it. Lately they've been discussing the report that Neil Armstrong really did say "small step for a man" after all.)
#54, Stefan:
How about a Code Monkey?
I think what's more interesting than Foley's possible allegations against clergy is his associations with the Super Adventure Club. O, South Park! Why must you predict reality so well?
Were I to nominate one pole of our mysterious third axis as Sexuality, what would its opposite be?
Carrie #65 - Mea Culpa. My TV-fu is weak; I missed that WtBDWK was some piece of television edutainment. Now I'm *certain* that the "they couldn't see the ships" is a strawman designed to make various bits of science look silly.
Sadly the naive interprettation of most modern philosophy is that "all viewpoints are equaly valid", which is patently bogus. Better to say "everyone is entitled to their own viewpoint", which can be mis-interpretted into the former statement, but at least makes sense in the reality-based condinuum.
Well, to be a devil's advocate for just a minute here: there is a sense in which people with domain knowledge do, at least, encode and remember more of what they see. Chess masters, for instance, have a much easier time recalling positions from chess games, after brief exposure (2-15 sec.), though their advantage over novices disappears if the pieces are just strewn randomly on the board. (There's a paper here which starts by summarizing and citing a lot of this research, before going into how things look in the actual brain, as scanned by fMRI).
Which might explain how, for instance, Europeans trying to draw a picture of a surfer wind up drawing a guy standing on a board; they're drawing everything about the scene they can remember, but they didn't note the posture at the time, and can't reproduce it later. Likewise, it's not reasonable to suppose that a Carib indian saw a distortion of the water when looking at Columbus's ships, but perhaps more reasonable to suppose that they'd see a large wooden boat with lots of people in it, but not make note of (or remember later) details of the rigging that would have been immediately obvious and memorable to a European.
Which is not to defend the movie, of course. It sucked.
65What I mean to say is, the "couldn't see the ships" thing may not be what serious scholars think on this topic, but it's what the particular program [What the Bleep Do We Know] said they think.
It seems aptly titled then, if you take 'we' to mean the crew that produced the program, and not in any larger or more inclusive sense.
60But at some point doesn't that philosophical concept get on into "What the bleep do we know" space? Where you get people buzzed on the idea that what you see depends on what you believe, so if you don't have a word for red you can't see 700 nanometer light?
Use this concept as a tool for understanding others, and for improving your communication skills, not as an excuse to dismiss rational thought, or empirical science. If you carry it into 'what-the-bleep-do-we-know space' you wind up treating a useful exercise as dogma, and losing the ability to think for yourself.
For example, if I realize that Joe doesn't have a word for red, then I should stop using the damn word and find out which of Joe's concepts applies to the same phenomenon. Or at least explain what I mean when I use the word 'red,' rather than giving up and classifying Joe as stupid, blind, insert-political-label-here, savage, uncivilized, or whatever I view as being impossible-to-communicate-with.
To this longtime English major (Purple Has Digits!), the sciences seem more like a very human mixture of open-minded rationality with varying degrees of subjective belief systems possessing their own arcane vocabularies. Squabbling scientists can accuse each other of the same kind of thing -- witness the recent books attacking String Theory -- but on my own lowlier level of understanding, I just get annoyed when the occasional Scientific American article renders an interesting idea incomprehensible. (No complaints so far about the October issue, which has lots of cool stuff.)
The subjective outlook (inlook, really) can lead to impenetrable philosophies or corrupt "sciences" like eugenics, but obviously it's most dangerous when it drives the Powerful, both political and religious leaders, who grant themselves Divine Rights and act on them. "Absolute power...," well, we all know how that goes.
It's a cardboard version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (which opines that language shapes thought).
As a life coach, I get paid to help someone shape their thoughts and all I have for acces is language.
Why do I feel like I just fell into a big hole while in pursuit of a large white rabbit?
OK, as an ethnic Celt, it falls to me to give you this caution: Do not hunt, chase, pursue, feed, molest, or in any other way interact with wild animals who are pure white. This is especially important if there's something a little...heyiya...about them. And if you forget yourself and chase one, and it crosses water (whether it fords a river, jumps a brook, scuttles across a trickle in the gutter, whatever) do not follow.
Reverse all these recommendations if you're tired of life, want to lose decades, or are yourself one of the Daoine Sidhe and want to go home.
TexAnne @ 10: newly-colonized planet where the wheat comes up with silicate/glass stalks.
Ah, physical proof of the I Can Eat Glass Project!
#60: Where you get people buzzed on the idea that what you see depends on what you believe, so if you don't have a word for red you can't see 700 nanometer light?
The complicated bit here is in what "see" means - vision goes through quite a few levels of processing, in quite a complicated way, with a lot of interpolation and filling in gaps based on assumptions. This isn't exactly controversial, but words and assumptions tend to go together.
It's not "can't see", but "can't differentiate" - I've known a lot of really infuriating people who'd simply class things together like that. "Try some of this cherry lambic, it's gorgeous." - "I don't like beer." (Lumper!)
There's also the linguistic (the non-Sapir-Whorf kind) case, where non-fluent listeners simply can't hear the differences between two phonemes, let alone reproduce them. (English R and L is the case I recall seeing quoted most often.)
So the problem in communication is not explaining what you mean, but convincing them there's a need for differentiation in the first place. Which, of course, is a fairly arbitrary line - where's the cutoff for "red"? 700nm (which is actually magenta, to my eyes) plus or minus 10nm, 50nm, 120nm? It makes less difference when painting houses than when painting pictures, but for UV/vis spectrophotometry you need to be pretty exact.
So there's no useful difference between "Boss, there's a three-masted caravel in the bay" and "Boss, there's a really big, weirdly designed canoe in the bay, with all white stuff on it" until you both know and care what difference it makes, and that you really can't get to the other place in a canoe.
Incidentally, I can see red. It's pretty.
Geology - - - - Art
unless it's moved past this now...
Paul: ...I missed that WtBDWK was some piece of television edutainment. Now I'm *certain* that the "they couldn't see the ships" is a strawman designed to make various bits of science look silly.
No, alas: the people who made that stupid program really thought their "science" had a connection to actual fact. Unless including the channelling woman was the subtle hint that what they were actually trying to do was discredit modern physics, which I suppose is possible.
Stefan #54: To a hockey monkey (mp3 link), perhaps. Or maybe a blastoff monkey (mp3 link). Or maybe the whole album
when the "expert" who was a woman channelling some sort of ancient being came on, I gave up in disgust.
That would be J.Z. Knight, another of my more newsworthy neighbors. That film is a product of her (cult + school/2) "Ramtha School of Enlightenment" and has, as Lord Peter once said of advertizing, the same ratio of truth to volume as yeast in bread.
There are actually anthropological studies, mostly in functional linguistics, which support the Worf-Sapir hypothesis, and it's still important when handling empty barrels to remember what it is they're empty of. However, people who use words and images to convince us to disbelieve words and images are, shall we say, not exactly clarifying anything.
Incidentally, I can see red. It's pretty.
I see red whenever I hear Dubya talking. It's not at all pretty.
in #47 Paul Lalonde wrote
Kip - I agree with what you are saying. I think many scientific-minded people forget how much of their research is a product of their cultural environment (you do, after all, have to choose what to investigate!), and how much that culture can fail to resemble the ideal of science.
A point well taken.
That, and scientists are human, prone to all the territoriality, avarice and squabbling that other humans are prone to. There's always enough overlap between the set of all geniuses and all jerks to cause problems.*
I've noticed some people who aren't very scientifically educated get in heated arguements with people who are, over wether or not science is right about x. If you** find yourself in one of these arguements, it may help to defuse it if you acknowlege up front that:
a. some scientists are jerks
and
b. science is an open method for producing a more accurate model of the world, not for producing "truth."
These two acknoweglements are designed to save you a great deal of time, and steal away most of their thunder about the biased-ness or unfairness of "Science." Once they get that you aren't one of the "bad guys***," sometimes you can explain what it means that science is an open process, what a testable hypothesis is, etc.
For all their bloviating, the post-moderists did rather well with the whole "the map is not the territory" thing, but really, they could have trimmed it down to a pamphelet, or at least novella length. The people I've noticed who have the most trouble remembering that the model is not the thing modeled aren't scientists (I know a few) but engineers (often software engineers). Sadly, an irate, close minded, technically trained person can be just as much of a pain about their belief in science as any other kind of fundamentalist.
Bonus round:
And as long as I'm bloviating, with extra italics and everything, I don't believe that postmodernism is an excuse for invalidating inconvenient truths. One still must be prudent, about global warming, say. Being prudent, of course, is a matter of policy, not science. (Or a matter of character, morals, virtue, public good, etc, etc, pick your poison.)
*insert favorite examples from sf, here.
**I'm just spitballing here, but I'm guessing if you are a regular poster, you'd probably be on this side of the arguement. No offense if you aren't.
***the mental image I get is of one of the men in black. Hmm, if I am one of the bad guys, does that mean I get a black helicopter?
Any Mac users have an application they wish existed, which doesn't?
I could use some ideas to spur a reentry into Mac development. My dayjob and current Mac usage patterns haven't really fostered such ideas. I've been a real web potato for a while.
#86 ::: Jon H asked:
Any Mac users have an application they wish existed, which doesn't?
Hm. I use gtodo and ptimetracker under Linux, but I haven't found equivalents for either under OSX. I know that I could run both under X11, but it's a dreadful amount of overhead for two tiny applications.
The reason why I use both apps is that they're bog simple. The only thing I'd add to gtodo is hierarchy/linkages, and that's not really a requirement - and ptimetracker is lovely as is. Simple, no funky extras, just tracks time against a given project/item, and gives a total for the day (and uses plain text editable files).
I'm not sure if either of them is sexy enough... but for me, it's the simple solid apps that make the difference.
Jon H, all I want is an OS-X shell that looks and acts exactly like OS 9.6 while giving me full access to OS-X apps. Preferrably before my 5 year old iMac goes flooey and I move my stuff one desk over to the G-5 dual.
And get them damned kids off my lawn...
JESR, our personal geography crosses yet again--I was wondering if someone would mention J.Z.'s or Ramtha's name before I reached the comment-box.
I went to school out in Yelm, the small-town headquarters of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment; one of those deals where we lived on a district boundary-line. Most people there who aren't actively involved with the RSoE tend to regard the whole deal with amused confusion. (The folk at Gordon's Garden Center like 'em well enough, on account of Ramtha's fondness for personal vegetable gardens.) And driving past the compound on the way to school became less and less odd as the years turned on.
We definitely found the release of What the Bleep weird for slightly different reasons than the rest of the country did.
An addendum to Xopher's PSA at 76: there is something a little bit heyiya about all animals, and especially all wild animals, white or otherwise. (On the matter of running water, I defer to him, not being an ethnic Celt.)
As a life coach, I get paid to help someone shape their thoughts and all I have for acces is language.
Sure, but the S-W Hypothesis states (again, in a somewhat cartoon version) that the structure and vocabulary of the language you speak makes certain thoughts possible and others not possible.
See Jack Vance's book "The Languages of Pao" for an SF treatment of the idea. He has manipulative overlords shape languages that push their users to become scientists, or masters, or artists respectively.
Great fun if you don't take it seriously.
n #92 ::: DaveL wrote:
Sure, but the S-W Hypothesis states (again, in a somewhat cartoon version) that the structure and vocabulary of the language you speak makes certain thoughts possible and others not possible.
For example, remember that the terms "date rape" and "sexual harrasment" are relatively new*, and before they existed it was difficult to describe certain kinds of suffering inflicted on a person in a way that did not suggest that it was their fault.
-r.
*mainstream terms by the late 80's? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Nick, until I was fifteen I lived kitty-corner to where the Ramster world headquarters is now; there's a small cinderblock store building where my parents ran a country store from 1955-1958 and my mother's aunt before that. I used to keep my 4-H calf picketed where JZ Knight's mansion is.
Then we moved down to Lacey, closer to the 20th Century.
Nick, also, rereading your post: Evergreen Valley? Me, I live in Union Mills.
Todd Larason 35 -
What do I have to do to make this wondrous script work on my computer?
Anybody need a typing-powered USB hamster wheel?
Possibly I read Augustine too early in life (is graduate school too early?), but it always seemed to me that Foucault and Derrida insisting that you were always trapped in a web of language and had no way out foundered on the very simple reason that eventually you got down to things, which were not signs, and so you had some soil in which to plant the Tree of Language.
Sure, there are difficulties in finding, and sometimes you have to teach someone for about twenty years before they understand, or even have a chance to try and understand, what you're talking about -- but that doesn't mean you can't talk.
Meaning can be communicated. Knowledge has a foundation. Truth can be known.
(Admittedly, as Kipling's poem has it, sometimes she has to ask her sister Fiction to help.)
What is truth?
(Palm leaf? Rope? Tree trunk? Wall?)
Tony #98 - the Foucauldian and Derridian response is that you don't know they are things - just your sensory impressions of things. The less tongue-in-cheek version is that things are all very nice, but they have different meanings (positions in the semantic networks) for different people. Some linguistic elements we all agree on fairly well (chair, automobile) where others we agree on less (elephant [a bow to Kip there], computer) and some we might agree nearly not at all (liberal, torture [to be topical]). If all people's interpretive pathways from the word to the "base truth" (which I use here as a notational shortcut, hoping we agree enough!) were he same, Foucault and Derrida would have little to say. But the reality is that our experience of the base truths differ, and as we get further away from concrete objects discussion becomes more difficult and more likely to hang up on the semantics of the words themselves.
I think there is value in examining our usage and treatment of language because words encompass more than just one path from concrete things to the particular word we use. If we want to communicate well with others it's useful to know how their 'language' differs from our own, even if we all speak english.
Good God! Take my wine away. I've become an apologist for post-modernism. That's a frightful thought to take to bed!
Juli Thompson, #96
Step the first: be a Firefox user.
Next, go to http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/ and click the "Install Greasemonkey" link which is cleverly disguised as step 2 on an instruction list. This will likely bring up a yellow bar at the top of the window complaining about an untrusted website trying to install an extension. Click the button on the right side of that bar to give the website permission, then click the install link again.
Restart Firefox.
Go to the script page, http://www.molehill.org/~jtl/userscripts/makinglight-read-comments.user.js . There should be a yellow bar at the top of the window telling you this is a userscript and offering a button labelled something close to "install user script". Click that button.
Enjoy!
If you aren't using Firefox, there are some options which _may_ work. I don't have experience with any of them and haven't tested this script with them, so they may not be something you want to try. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greasemonkey#Greasemonkey_equivalents_for_other_browsers for everything I know about those other choices.
Alton Verm?
"Higher Worm?" or maybe "Raised the pest?"
I feel my knee stretching. Just a bit.
Paul @101,
Never mind the apologetics. The fact that I don't have the language to distinguish between post-modernists and wrfdwk-theory,* is a prime example of how language affects one's ability to see differences.
* Other than one is driven by the French and the other by a 35,000 year old Atlantian.
All-
After reading the news, I feel like a nutbar ala conspiracy theorist.
So, what's the recipe for that type of nut bar? I'm thinking something like a Nanaimo bar crossed with Schadenfreude Pie.
Re the colour red: I can see it, but because I have some weird form of what used to be known as "colour-blindness", I see it in strange places. The strangest such place would be when I look at particularly lush, well-maintained grass or lawn. Bright red grass. Lovely stuff.
Folk have asked me here and there how I can possibly know what "red" looks like, and I explain that when I was a wee nipper, years ago, when I learned about colours, I locked away that impression of red. So now I see it on postboxes, where it belongs, and on grass, where it doesn't.
EXCEPT when I see grass/lawn on TV or in movies, when it appears truly green, often vividly, disorientingly so. It looks *wrong*. Makes me want to adjust the colour settings on the telly.
As to the "native islanders couldn't see Columbus' ships" thing: I've heard the same thing said about the biologists who accompanied Captain Cook on his visit to Australia in the 18th century. They apparently had great conceptual trouble with seeing the thoroughly alien wildlife abundant here, resulting in some very odd illustrations. I'm inclined to think they just couldn't draw that well.
All the same, this whole discussion about the philosophy of science, semiotics, perception, etc, is fascinating stuff. Am really enjoying it.
#97 ::: Marilee ::-- "Anybody need a typing-powered USB hamster wheel?"
Not I. (Thanks for the delightful link, however.) But I've often wondered about the practicality or possibility of a hamster (or other pet rodent) -powered wheel to generate enough electricity (into a storage-battery) to power, say, a lap-top computer. Perhaps several fut-ball runners would be required, though I'm reasonably certain Tom Digby or Jon Singer could do a fine LED cage-ornament for a single hamster.
I have a reading-recommendations request.
What books should I look at it for current perspectives on the history of insane asylums? And if I want (pro or anti) screeds that aren't by Foucault or Szasz, who should I look at? Thanks.
Kip Manley #99: Truth is that which, regardless how hard we try, we cannot deny.
For example, remember that the terms "date rape" and "sexual harrasment" are relatively new*, and before they existed it was difficult to describe certain kinds of suffering inflicted on a person in a way that did not suggest that it was their fault.
But "difficult" is not the same as "impossible", and circumlocutions can always be made.
Understand, I think S-W is interesting and that the weak form is even likely to be true. But the idea that someone can't see something just through lacking a word for it? Nope. That's right out.
46: the map is not the thing mapped.
I liked Koestler's version of this.
A telephone number doesn't look like the person you're calling (yeah, I know, his original comparison was more graceful than this poorly reworked extracted bit, but still).
And it was a mind opener when I read it as a kid.
53: I wish I had learned in high school that poetry is the highest form of word play, instead of learning it as the dullest form of pedantry.
One of my motto in high-school was :"There's nothing better than literature classes to kill-off literature", even with a motivated, competent teacher and an at least mildly willing class.
I used to believe it was a defect of the schooling system, until I much later started understanding that when a defect survives every reforms you can throw at it, it's not a "defect" but a wanted/structurally necessary effect.
I'd love to think it was the later in the case of school.
But then I guess it can be both, depending on which level you're looking at things.
62 :That sounds like Orwell's newspeak idea that people wouldn't experience love if the word was removed from their vocabulary.
Love as always been one big, unsolvable problem for me, since I've never believed in it, never seen it, never felt it, yet I have to acknowledge it does hold an influence on my world.
I've come to the conclusion that it works somehow like some online adds sites, where they charge you a supplement for highlighting. On a purely basic level, it may looks like theft, as there's absolutely no additional cost involved for the site, but just the very fact of charging the service, of presenting what really is nothing as a service, makes it actually become a service. It changes the value of other adds in the market.
I think love works the same way. It doesn't exist, but just posing its existence changes everything.
In that way, suppressing the word "love" (and all words and expression associated), if it can be done, is in effect suppressing the experience of it.
Well, that's the point of view of a bordering sociopath. Make of it what you will.
67: So, theoretically, if someone didn't understand the concept of "insurgency", they wouldn't be able to see it?
Well,I can see two main cases with "someone" not understanding the concept of insurgency (which means there are at the very least a dozen more the brilliant people around here will point out later, if they're interested):
1)"Someone" has no understanding of any form of central authority. An "insurgency", then, can be perceived as one group of gathered people attacking others, or claiming territorial ownership over lands/buildings not belonging to them.
2)"Someone" lives in a society (I tend to picture it religious, in the broader sense, say, like french IIIeme Republique was a religious experiment, but I guess it's not a necessity) where rebellion against central authority is taboo. An "insurgency" would probably then mostly be perceived as the sacrilege act of revolt against authority (damn I hope sacrilege can be used as an adjective in english).
In both cases, "someone" doesn't see exactly the same thing as one who owns the exact concept of "insurgency".
I love to think the tool offered by buddhism of thinking of conscience as just another sense addresses the point nicely.
70:Were I to nominate one pole of our mysterious third axis as Sexuality, what would its opposite be?
I'm almost tempted to answer humor, but then my world would become a bit sadder.
in #86 ::: Jon H asked:
Any Mac users have an application they wish existed, which doesn't?
The vast majority of mac applications that I wish existed probably already do, particularly as open source projects that really really need a gui wrapped around them. (Open Office, I'm looking at you!)
An equivalent to windirstat (or sequoia view) would be nice. There's a number of file management 'enhancements' that may even exist in osx that I'm not aware of that I would love to have integrated. (Mass move and rename according to specific rules, export-as-csv/text for directory listings, etc.)
I could really use an itunes for html files. I've got snippets of research saved from all kinds of sites as html, and organizing thousands of tiny little files is not my thing. Something that would help me do that as well as itunes manages the thousands of tiny little music files I have would be awesome. I know spotlight can do tagging, but I'd like something that actually moves files around instead of tagging them. Eight desktop migrations and countless partially overlapping backups in ten years has led to a lot of "I know I used to have that..." stuff, and a lot of files that no longer are meaningfully associated with programs. Tracking, searching, versioning, and archiving - without user intervention - is my biggest need by far.
I realize that with automator, or with nifty command line batch files, or with grep and cat and pipe I could probably learn to do these things, but frankly, I'm hoping for something designed by someone smarter than me.
A lot of this is inspired by this from kitenet
I'm a fan of the unix tools philosophy, but I sometimes wonder if there's much room for new tools to be added to that toolbox. I've always wanted to come up with my own general-purpose new unix tool.
Well, after lots of feedback documented in the many followups (1 2 3) in my blog, I've concluded: Maybe the problem isn't that no-one is writing them, or that the unix toolspace is
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