I've watched people leave red to port on their returns, and some even get
away with it.
-- rec --
On Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 12:09 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi, Dave n all,
>
> "Outlook" has collapsed leaving me in gmail, which I don't understand..
> So forgive me if... etc.
>
> The thunder lightening thing is both apt and strange, because of course
> nothing is possible between lightning and thunder EXCEPT that it is going
> to thunder. CF living in SFO or Seattle. You've seen the lightening,
> folks! "One banana,.... two bananas.....three bananas ….." Yet I still
> like the aphorism.
>
> By the way, how many people on this list have heard the expression, "Red,
> Right, Returning" and know to what it refers.
>
> Ach! I don't know how you all tolerate this interface.
>
> Nick
>
> On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 9:31 AM Steven A Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote:
>
>> Dave -
>>
>> I do remember your reference to the Bellamyists and probably wrote a
>> long-winded (well-over 300) commentary which I then deleted.
>>
>> What I remember of that (my aborted response) was somewhat reactionary to
>> Utopianism and Nationalism. In the spirit of productive optimism, I
>> realize(d) my reactionaryisms was maybe not very productive. I don't want
>> to devolve into the splitting of hairs we are so fond of here in this forum.
>>
>> With that caveat... I am struggling against those two things I impute to
>> what little I know of "the Bellamyists". "One (hu)man's Utopia is
>> another's Dystopia". And. "Nationalism is (dangerously) out-of-scale
>> Tribalism".
>>
>> I guess I would ask why such a grandiose scale structure would need to be
>> put in place? Would not an emergence from discussions among small groups
>> (such as the threads on FriAM) not be a more practical and perhaps "safer"
>> route? Is such a structure/container required, or perhaps it might be
>> inevitable? But then it would not be Bellamyists, but rather DaveWestist?
>>
>> With that in mind... perhaps it is worth discussing the Bellamyites
>> primary focus (as claimed in the Wikipedia Article that is my only source)
>> of "nationalizing industry". That seems to be what the Left is leaning
>> toward... or at least regulating/taxing industry at the federal level to
>> the point that it IS effectively nationalized? What is the Right's
>> version of that? In the spirit of NeoLiberalism and free-markets of
>> which the Right is most fond, nationalization is anathema.
>>
>> And yet, it seems that the "free market" is best at innovation... and
>> once an industry has been commodified, perhaps the next step IS to
>> nationalization. There might have been a time when gasoline stations had
>> something significantly different to offer, one from the other, but even
>> the detergents and oxygenators seem to have become pretty standard(?lame
>> assertion?) and the only difference is how big is the big-gulp soda in the
>> convenience store, is it filled from the Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola pantheon
>> and are more triggered by a giant yellow clam-shell logo or a green baby
>> brontosaurus?
>>
>> I'm entirely with you on the diversity of foodstuffs referenced
>> earlier... but IF/When I'm going to feed from the same trough of the same
>> hybrids as my fellow piggies, why put so many different (or any?) labels on
>> them? And then why not plant your own garden with seeds exchanged with
>> friends and neighbors, localized to your conditions, and buy/trade what you
>> can't grow from small (tiny) farms within a short drive (walk)?
>>
>> And I agree on the liminal, though I see liminality everywhere at all
>> scales, like the fractality of an estuary and this moment is more acute and
>> offering/demanding more focused/proaction? If we did live in our everyday
>> liminality more-better, then this would just be an extrema(ish) of scale...
>> but since we (mostly) don't, it feels like a change in quality in it's
>> quantity. There I go, splitting hairs?
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>>
>> Steve,
>>
>> This *should* be a time between lightning and thunder, liminal, a time
>> "when all things are possible."
>>
>> I would love to be optimistic, even guardedly,
>>
>> Prerequisite, perhaps, is for everyone to accept Hywel's dictum, "Ah, but
>> it is more complicated than that" coupled with a heady dose of agonizing
>> reappraisal of one's unexamined positions. Healthy doses, of "you have a
>> point," "errors were made," "our ontology should incorporate those
>> distinctions," etc.
>>
>> A while back I spoke of the Bellamy Clubs as a social / civic/ phenomenon
>> focused on a "constructive way forward." Something of that sort would be
>> required to instantiate your optimism.
>>
>> davew
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 19, 2020, at 7:14 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>
>> 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
>> UniversityThompNickSon2@gmail.comhttps://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> <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> <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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