Different canals could be in frustration, so I suppose it isn’t quite as bad as you say?
From: Friam <[email protected]> on behalf of glen <[email protected]> Date: Monday, March 16, 2026 at 11:45 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A bold meteorological theory I don't see how that could be true. At best, metaphor is a means to keep one in a canal *and* a means of escaping a canal. And that it's both means neither usage is a property of metaphor. I think it's better to state that metaphor is a means of escaping *reality* ... to say things that are not true ... lying, falsehood. Of course, some lies/falsehoods can be good. When a science popularizer lies about, say, entanglement in order to provide *some* type of intuition the laity demands ... maybe that's a good thing. The liar may justify their lies in claiming that lie set A is "better" than lie set B. (Or maybe it's a bad thing.) But metaphor is a liar's tool. Attempts to rehabilitate it are the essence of postmodernism (at least as *that* concept is bastardized by the laity). Of course, those of us who are OK with being called a _liar_ have no problem with this. But there are those amongst us who blanch at being called a liar even as they lie, the epitome of Bad Faith, reflective or not. On 3/16/26 11:04 AM, Prof David West wrote: > Metaphorically stated, unfortunately: a metaphor is just a means for escaping > local minima and channelization. > > davew > > > On Mon, Mar 16, 2026, at 8:55 AM, glen wrote: >> That's some good advice, there. Narratives like the naked Emperor are >> crucial tools for posers and con men. Each and every metaphor you >> identify in a missive is evidence of the authors' (plural possessive - >> no such thing as a sole author) Bad Faith. And the number of metaphors >> is directly correlated with the extent of the Bad Faith. >> >> None of us are innocent. None of us are the child in the narrative. >> It's a venomous fiction, injected by the fangs of the storyteller. Even >> literal babies bring along their own "genetic memory", in utero >> accretion, biases, and expertise. The story, that story and all others, >> is there to persuade, to trick you, to canalize you into thinking in >> some particular set of ways. >> >> Now I'd like you to stop thinking about elephants. >> >> On 3/15/26 10:17 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: >>> Perhaps I should just drop the metaphor and speak to the beliefs the >>> metaphor represents to me. Expertise both sights and blinds us; great >>> expertise sights and blinds us greatly. >> -- -- ¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
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