Good, Glen. --- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918 Santa Fe, NM On Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:50 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'll try again to describe why constant talk of metaphors is distracting > nonsense, at least for me. When I use a word, that word is a variable bound > to some context. We can bind any string of letters to any subset of any > context. So, a string like "xyz" can be bound to "that green thing in the > distance". Even *after* you and Joe or whoever later come to call "that > green thing in the distance" by the string "tank", I can *still* call it an > "xyz". I can do this for decades. "xyz" need have no other binding for > which to "metaphorize". So, regardless of what *you* think when you read > the string "xyz", I'm not using a metaphor when I say "xyz". You may think > it's a metaphor until you're blue in the face. But I didn't use a metaphor. > >8^D > > For me, a "strawman" has always meant that 1 single thing: rhetorical bad > faith rewording. I've never used a straw man as a scare crow. I've never > used it to train in combat. I've never used it to burn in effigy. I've > never used it to mean anything but that one thing. So, therefore, it's not > a metaphor. It's a meaningless string of characters bound to that one thing. > > Sure, *you* can read whatever I write however you *want* to read what I > write. That's the very point of the > privacy-despite-the-"holographic"-principle threads. How you read it CAN BE > entirely unrelated to how I write it. When you *impute* metaphor status > into arbitrary strings you see on your screen, you are *inscribing* your > own understanding of the world *onto* the thing you're looking at. You are > *not* blank-slate, receiving a message. > > Now, if you listened empathetically, you might choose to *ask* the author > "Did you mean that as a metaphor?" You could even be a bit rude and > continue with "Or are you too stupid to know the history of that string of > characters?" This is a common thing. E.g. when someone uses a string of > characters they grew up with to innocently refer to, say, a marginalized > group, without *knowing* the marginalized group thinks that string of > characters is offensive. Like wearing a Washington Red Skins jersey. Or > when a 12 year old white kid sings along with some rap lyrics. > > You have options when you decode a string. It doesn't always need to be > metaphorical. Even if, deep down, you're a complete pedant and you > absolutely must point out that everything's always a metaphor, you CAN > suppress that need for a little while ... sometimes ... just sometimes ... > you have that power. > > So, no. Strawman is not a metaphor. If it helps you, I can stop using the > string "strawman" and use "xyz" for that fallacy from now on. Please avoid > the xyz fallacy. > > On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > > [...] “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? [...] > > > > The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a > metaphor at the first state. We did not all get the same “image” when it > was first deployed. That failure is instructive for me because it reminds > me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete. > Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument. For > 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X. In other words, we must be humble in > our use of metaphors. > > > -- > ☣ uǝlƃ > > -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . > ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC> > http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >
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