Dave, et al -
These are fecund times. The time between the lightning and the thunder
- "when all things are possible". Or maybe, if you have a more
apocalyptic bent, the beginning of the "end of times". William
Gibson's "Jackpot" perhaps (to be more ambiguous).
I think Churchill tried on (in oratorial style):
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
In closing your "trip report" a dozen posts back you referenced once
again, the likelihood of a violent clash between Left and Right or Red
and Blue as a next logical/likely step in the path we seem to be
stumbling (shambling?) down right now.
The recent (armed) protests at state capitals, demanding that the
Governors "open up the state" do seem foreboding. An almost
self-abusive desire to trigger a breakdown in social order.
The (""/failing!!!!""/ double-scare-quotes) New York Times opinion piece
The America We Need
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-inequality-america.html>
from 10 days ago (feels much longer in Corona Time) exposes one side of
the challenge (how modern society/America has been failing) and a
hopeful response (how this crisis could help galvanize us to become who
we need to be collectively). I'd love to hear something from the Right
with an equally constructive perspective. Maybe I just have my ear on
the wrong rail but I only hear "boom or bust" talk from the Right.
Living with one foot in each camp (Red and Blue) I believe that the
divide we feel is on one hand very real, but on the other deliberately
aggravated as a way to keep us in dynamic tension (or more simply
pitted-against one another) while those with most power keep stirring us
up and raking off the top. Red/Right sees the threat of
government/wealthy/elite/??? one way while Blue/Left see what I think is
roughly the same threat very differently. But it might very well be
the very same threat, and the pointy end is designed to keep us divided.
And lest we create a strong "other" to reject/resent/hate/fear: "We
have met the enemy, and they is us".
The deficit-hawk, small-government GOP has been building up a State like
none before it, and while they (and the NRA) are encouraging their loyal
followers to arm themselves to the teeth, double down on ammunition, all
the while militarizing the police, loading them up with armored
personnel carriers and fully-automatic weapons (opposite the citizen's
semi-autos), and bullet-proof vests, helmets and shields to maintain
overwhelming force. Meanwhile, the Dems might be trying to nurture us
out of our dysfunction and misery, sometimes disabling us more in the
process, and the wealthy on that side are raking their share off of
that, elbow to elbow at the same trough.
We ship our (two hybrid strains of tomato and two germ-lines of beef)
food halfway across the country (add coffee, avocados and bananas -
world) from agri-industry-chemical soaked feed-lots and (formerly)
fertile valleys and plains, burning fossil fuels (not just in the
machines, but to make the hyper-fertilizer now needed). Whether we shop
at Trader Joes, or Whole Foods, or Bob's Butcher or just order up Trump
Steaks, we HAVE built a house of cards which is bending under the
weight of this pandemic.
Why does it feel like a segment of the population just wants to knock it
down?
Is there a constructive route up and out of this mess? The pandemic has
exposed a LOT more of the weaknesses in our economy/society as this
current administration has exposed the weaknesses in our government.
It seems like an opportunity to try to rebuild thoughtfully rather than
"tear it down" or "patch it back the way it was".
Guardedly Hopeful,
- Steve (574)
> Nick,
>
> There is truth in what you say, but only a bit.
>
> I have certainly spoken as if "Science was a bunch of nasty people with
> vested interests acting in an exclusionary manner."
>
> Hyperbole.
>
> A better metaphor / analogy would be the way we have hybridized our food
> supply; e.g. 90 percent of all dairy cows have one of two bulls in their
> ancestry, there are one or two tomato hybrids, one or two strains of rice,
> wheat, corn, etc.
>
> This creates a huge vulnerability — a novel pest or disease and presto, no
> food supply.
>
> Now imagine that there are multiple species of investigation, thinking,
> knowledge.
>
> Since the Age of Enlightenment, the western world has been hell bent on
> hybridizing but one of them — Formalism (aka, roughly, Science).
>
> Yes, I believe that Formalism has attained such a privileged status that it
> tolerates no criticism and critics are "excommunicated" with prejudice.
>
> I would like to think of myself as someone interested in growing heritage
> tomatoes in my garden and marveling at the differences in taste and texture
> and finding very deep value from the use of them in culinary creations.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 18, 2020, at 8:58 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Dave,
>>
>> No, wait a minute! Thou slenderest me! For you, Science is a bunch
>> of nasty people with vested interests. Science, on that understanding,
>> has the power to exclude. For me, Science is a set of practices that
>> lead to understandings of experience that endure the test of time. It
>> is not the sort of thing that can exclude. If pot smoking in bubble
>> baths leads to understandings that endure the test of time, then it is
>> a scientific method. Something like that seemed to have worked for
>> Archimedes.
>>
>> 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 Prof David West
>> Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 6:31 PM
>> To: friam@redfish.com
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] basis for prediction — forked from the tail end of
>> anthropological observtions
>>
>> Nick,
>>
>> I won't lose the argument, because I pre-believe that, IF alternative
>> means with some kind of criteria for falsifiability and repeatability
>> THEN they should be incorporated into that which is deemed "Science" —
>> ergo there is no argument to lose.
>>
>> If there is an argument — and there is clearly a difference of opinion
>> — it centers on the the issue of why Hermetic Alchemy, Acid
>> Epistemology, Anthropological Thick Description, Ayurvedic Medicine,
>> Adams' "rhetorical analysis" et. al. are, at the moment and for the
>> most part, excluded from Science.
>>
>> davew
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2020, at 5:28 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Dave,
>>>
>>> You're going to lose this argument with me eventually, because any
>>> investigatory practice that works in the long run I am going to
>>> declare to be part of "the scientific method." So if you declare that
>>> discovery is enhanced by lying in a warm suds bath smoking pot, and
>>> you can describe a repeatable practice which includes that as a
>>> method, and that method produces enduring intellectual and practical
>>> structures such as the periodic table, then I will simply say, "That's
>>> science."
>>>
>>> I am not sure this works with my falsifiability schtik, but that must
>>> have been at least 4 hours ago. So "before lunch".
>>>
>>> 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 Prof David West
>>> Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 5:07 PM
>>> To: friam@redfish.com
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] basis for prediction — forked from the tail end of
>>> anthropological observtions
>>>
>>> Consider three entities making 2016 political predictions and their
>>> predictions.
>>>
>>> 1- "cognoscenti" those citing poll data, Nate Silver (albeit as
>>> everyone notes, the citation was more interpretation than citation),
>>> pundits, et. al. — Trump, at various times, has 1/1000 to 1/3 chance of
>>> winning the election.
>>>
>>> 2- Scott Adams - Trump "very likely" will win to "almost certain" he will
>>> win.
>>>
>>> 3- davew - Trump will win.
>>>
>>> # 3 is a fool because he made no effort whatsoever to hedge his prediction.
>>>
>>> The first group used traditional polling, statistical modelling, etc.
>>> to come to their conclusions.
>>>
>>> Scott Adams used none of those methods/tools but, as described in his
>>> book — Win Bigly — the language and rhetoric analysis tools/techniques
>>> he did use.
>>>
>>> davew remains coy about how he came to his certainty.
>>>
>>> QUESTIONS: Are there different approaches, different avenues,
>>> different means, for acquiring "knowledge?" I am being vague here
>>> because I do not know how to make the question precise. But it would
>>> have something to do with different definitions of what is considered
>>> data and different techniques/tools for digesting that data to form
>>> conclusions — in this instance predictions.
>>>
>>> If there are different approaches, is a comparative analysis of them
>>> possible? desirable?
>>>
>>> Different approaches — useful in different contexts? How to determine
>>> appropriate contexts.
>>>
>>> Or, is there but one avenue to knowledge — Science — and all else is
>>> idiosyncratic opinion?
>>>
>>> Personally, I think there is use in pursuing this type of question and
>>> then using the answers / insights to makes sense of the multiple
>>> conversations concerning COVID and the response thereto.
>>>
>>> davew
>>>
>>>
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