Fascinating how difficult it is to distinguish pomo from porno in my sanserif mailbox,
-- rec -- On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 2:11 PM, Nicholas Thompson < nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > Glen, > > Is there an example of a pomo discussion that actually got anywhere? Or by > using the terms "getting anywhere" have I already imposed values hostile to > the enterprise. > > Nick > > -----Original Message----- > From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On > Behalf > Of glen e. p. ropella > Sent: Friday, October 22, 2010 1:49 PM > To: friam@redfish.com > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Chomsky Supports Thompson > > Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-10-22 12:14 PM: > > So how do we "convince" in pomo scholarship. Bribery? Threats? If > > not logic, what legitimate inducements to agreement are available? > > "PoMo" seems, to me, to rely heavily on parallax, the approach to the truth > without actually knowing anything about what's being approached. > The point is to fill all the inputs and state variables with as much data > (dirty data, not info, not knowledge, certainly not wisdom) as possible and > see what falls out. > > _If_ there is a mesh or structure in there somewhere, then some of the junk > you threw at it will stick and other junk will fall away. > > The real trick is that the structure is at least dynamic and probably > pathological. So even if you discover a structure with junk set J in time > T > and space S, you'll have to do it again when any part of {J,T,S} changes. > But that doesn't mean we can't develop methods that continually revise > {J,T,S} and continually toss it out in space so that even if there is no > absolute truth, there is a piecewise truth we can operate on within some > reasonably small extrapolation of the most recent {J,T,S}. > > Anyway, that's the way it seems to me. > > I've often been accused of being PoMo because of my verbal support of > critical rationalism and the "open society". The gods know I'm often > accused of speaking nonsense. Since all ideas are initially welcome, > wackos > tend to dominate the upstream. It's fun swimming around in all the > nonsense > to try to determine which parts might survive the downstream. I've even > been known to actually _read_ the output of Eddiington typewriters like the > Chomskybot looking for interesting statements... kinda the same as reading > individuals evolved with genetic programming. ;-) > > -- > glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
