Glen,
I admittedly way out of my depth here and so deserve to be picked on. You guys are kind to let me play in your sandbox. Ok, to be completely honest, I listen to a LOT of Nate Silver and he says a LOT of different things. So, at the very minimum, I am probably guilty of cherry-picking. BUT ...wait or it! … I think there is a case to be made, in the variety of the things he has said, for his ambivalence about what it success at prediction means. He wants to live in two worlds at once, the world in which he miraculously predicted Obama’s election in 08 (was it?) and the world in which he miraculously predicted Clinton’s election in 16. He has a claim on both, but they aren’t the same sort of success. At core, I am an old-fashioned falsificationist. The one thing that is absolutely essential in a prediction is that you should, when the data are in, be able to know when you’ve been wrong. That’s what got me so riled up about Epstein’s bit of flatulence in JASSS <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/1/9.html> . So, if Silver says (or anybody says of him) that he got the 2016 election RIGHT, what WOULD HAVE BEEN the conditions where he, or his advocate, would have admitted that he got it wrong? If he has clearly stated those, and held to them, then I deserve to be picked on. By the way: I was the youngest in my family. Truth was when you didn’t get your ears boxed. Nick Nick Nicholas Thompson Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University thompnicks...@gmail.com https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ? Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 10:17 AM To: FriAM <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] anthropological observations I think it's interesting that you seemed to have *flipped* your thinking within the same post. You restate my point about conceptual metaphors by saying models/computation merely *justifies* decisions/rhetoric. Then a few paragraphs later, you suggest that's conflating language with thought. My diatribe to Nick was that he *uses* metaphors/models simply to impute his conceptual structure onto Nate. Nick's decision is already made and he wants Nate's work to justify it. And the way he *imputes* his conceptual structure into Nate's work is through the sloppy use of metaphor. Then when Nate tells Nick (indirectly) that Nick's wrong about what Nate's done, Nick rejects Nate's objection. I'm picking on Nick, of course. We all do it. I wish we all did it much less. On 4/18/20 6:14 AM, Steven A Smith wrote: > But frankly as often as not, I saw > them use our work to *justify* the decision they had already made or > were leaning heavily toward, *apparently* based on larger strategic > biases. > > [...] > > As for your gut-level (and often well articulated) mistrust of > "metaphorical thinking", you may conflate a belief (such as mine) > that language is metaphorical at it's base with being a "metaphorical > thinker". Metaphor gets a bad rap/rep perhaps because of the > "metaphorical license" often taken in creative arts (albeit for a > different and possibly higher purpose). -- ☣ uǝlƃ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
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