Nick writes:
< Ok, Marcus, I am standing my ground as a realist here: ():-[)>
There you go trying to claim semantics for terms in a public
dictionary again. (That’s an example of taking ground, like in my Go
example.) Doing so constrains what can even be *said*. It puts
the skeptic in the position of having to deconstruct every single
term, and thus be a called terms like smartass
<https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kellyanne-conway-embarrasses-cnns-jim-acosta-during-heated-exchange>
when they force the terms to be used in other contexts where the
definition doesn’t work. A culture itself is laden with thousands of
de-facto definitions that steer meaning back to conventional (e.g.
racist and sexist) expectations. To even to begin to question these
expectations requires having some power base, or safe space, to work
from.
I think this is the "genius" of Trump's campaign and tenure... he
operates from his own (and often ad-hoc) Lexicon and that reported 39%
stable base of his seems happy to just rewrite their own dictionary to
match his. That seems to be roughly Kellyanne's and Sarah's only role
(and skill?), helping those who want to keep their dictionaries up to
date with his shifting use of terms and concepts up to date.
It has been noted that Trump's presidency has been most significant for
helping us understand how much of our government operates on norms and a
shared vocabulary. He de(re?)constructs those with virtually every
tweet. While I find it quite disturbing on many levels, I also find it
fascinating. I've never been one to take the media or politicians very
seriously, but he has demonstrated quite thoroughly why one not only
shouldn't but ultimately *can't*.
In this case, you assert that some discussants are software engineers
and that distinguishes them from your category. A discussant of that
(accused / implied) type says he is not a member of that set and that
it is not even a credible set. Another discussant says the activity of
such a group is a skill and if someone lacks it, they could just as
well gain it while having other co-equal skills too. So there is
already reason to doubt the categorization you are suggesting.
I took Nick's point to be that the Metaphors that those among us who
spend a significant amount of time writing (or desiging) computer
systems is alien to him, and that despite making an attempt when he
first came here to develop the skills (and therefore the culture), he
feels he has failed and the lingua franca of computer (types, geeks,
???) is foreign to him. Here on FriAM, I feel we speak a very rough
Pidgen (not quite developed enough to be a proper Creole?) admixture of
computer-geek, physics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, philosophy,
mathematics, hard-science-other-than physics, etc.
I sense frustration in many of us when we try to talk about our various
topics of specialty (as amatuers or professionals) with our
significantly educated (but in other (sub)disciplines) lay-colleagues.
It seems that in the attempt to be more precise or to make evident our
own lexicons for a particular subject that we end up tangling our webs
in this tower of Complexity Babel (Babble?) we roam, colliding
occasionally here and there.
- Sieve
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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