Thanks for the careful distinction of moniker (which I read less as placeholder
and more as nickname or street name) and the tie to the direction of a term's
evolution. Dave's classification has been a bit foggy to me and this helps.
At the pub yesterday, we had an extensive, relatively good faith argument about music and taste,
including whether AI generated "music" is music. There was a LOT of gatekeeping and use
of street names. Is there a coherent intersubjectivity for genres like "punk"? I doubt
it. One of the discussants is a *-core fan (metalcore, hardcore, ...). I have 0 idea what any of
those names refer to. But I can kinda work backwards. Choose an instance (particular band +
particular era of that band) and I can almost predict where Corey - the bartender - would bin it.
But if you get two *-core fans together and let them talk freely, my jaw snaps
shut and my only recourse is to marvel at their use of meaningless names. Last
night, young Corey - a drummer btw - was on his own, surrounded by Boomers and
GenXers who still think AC/DC is/was a good band. [sigh] They mocked him
mercilessly for claiming Slipknot was innovative. I chose not to introduce them
to Switch Angel, though I did encourage them to listen to sunn O)))
https://sunn.bandcamp.com/
On 3/19/26 5:32 AM, Santafe wrote:
There’s a situation here that I don’t know how I want to handle, and it made me
pause during my rant-answer to Nick in the other post, which was a reply to
Kuhn as well.
Where I said I disagree with him (Kuhn, about “puzzle solving”) in some cases
[sic], I tried to argue that the output of the revolution was often a set of
placeholder terms. But I wanted to argue (against Nick) that what they are
doing as placeholders isn’t the same as what “entanglement” is doing as an
evocative moniker.
But what kind of placeholders did I want to argue those things are, if not
metaphorical ones in one or another of Glen’s sub-categories. And here I would
endorse DaveW’s list of the lifecycle of the metaphor branch of terms pretty
much line by line.
It is handy that in my reply to Frank just below here, I have an example. I
was thinking about another post to make it explicit, because I neglected to do
so in the first reply to Frank.
Frank has "if one changes (e.g. spin) then the other one changes.” It is for
that, that I wouldn’t use the formulation.
Yet in my pedantic gloss on the term, I did use the term “measurement”, and
didn’t go back and take it out.
So how did I object to Frank? I wasn’t willing to conflate my use of
measurement with Frank’s formula of “if one changes… the other changes”. Why?
To me, to just conflate “measurement" with “change” suggests recidivism to
“collapse of the wave function” (who came up with that: Bohr? No, AI tells me it
was Heisenberg, speaking for “the Copenhagen Interpretation”.)
What do I mean when I say “measurement” then? Formally, I am using it as a
placeholder. There is a broad set of circumstances that produce the class of
behavior for which the expression “quantum measurement” was adopted as a family
label (family resemblance, sensu Wittgenstein or Vygotsky). _I_ think it will
turn out to be properly formalized (semantically, as a kind of predicate) by
decoherence of various correlations. But there are plenty of writers for the
Stanford Encyclopedia (and others) who think that won’t work, and that there is
“something else”, with the decoherence only being a completely adequate
mathematical construction that gets at everything we observe, but misses the
“measurement” part. (Does anyone else hear echos of Chalmers in such
arguments?)
I would say there is change, but the only thing I would call change in the math
is generated by the time-evolution that we know as unitary evolution of quantum
states. Where there is coupling of the little sub-system (spin system) with a
big system (apparatus), that evolution can move observables that are coherent
at single values, to sets of observables in branches that are only coherent on
various pairs of values (Stern-Gehrlach, with being-to-the-left and spin-up
coexists with being-to-the-right and spin-down, etc.). But in that language,
what the only change process (unitary evolution) is doing, is not altering what
the spin-state-space occupancy is, but rather “revealing” the correlations that
are already in the system, by morphing them into mutually exclusive coherent
sub-branches of values, out of a single coherent trunk of earlier values.
To those who don’t think my preferred decoherence language is enough, or that
it isn’t well-defined, they probably do want “measurement” to, in itself,
commit some real dynamical “change” of the kind that Frank’s usage suggests,
not merely to reveal correlations that were always built into the coupling and
the state of the system.
So I want to stay on the fence, using the term “measurement” (which I can’t
express many ideas without), but not joining Frank in supposing it is safe to
conflate that with the-above-described specific sense of “change”.
What kind of thing is my placeholder, then? I don’t think it is a metaphor, in any of the sub-senses. It clearly is a moniker, adopted by some kind of convention to simply label a bunch of situations. But (unless decoherence is enough and can be shown to be, to everybody who doesn’t die of old age and reject it just out of stubbornness, but not for lack of derivation), “measurement” is nonetheless a label for something that isn’t yet an idea with an adequately developed operational semantics. If there is no one operational semantics, but perhaps several in a typology, then even using a single label could turn out to be incoherent, and it won’t even survive as a moniker. (Maybe only as a Zombie Moniker, like “spooky action at a distance”, at story-time by the old tribe members around the evening fire.) That possibility seems to be on the table too, for now. So some other branch in DaveW’s lifecycle of terms, with many of the same provisions to be overcome, but I think a
different one from the metaphor branch.
I find these things interesting. Maybe later I will decide I was chasing
hallucinations that don’t hold up.
Eric
On Mar 18, 2026, at 20:39, Nicholas Thompson <[email protected]> wrote:
Ok, guys. I have been thoroughly BSD'ed. Metaphorical thought plays no role
in science. Bad metaphors have played no role in our current terrible
misunderstandings concerning the role of science. Successive experiences are
not understood in terms of previous ones. No good can come of examining
perception as a series of abductive inferences. I submit to your authority. I
am so glad to have been purged of all my sins.
Boy, I am glad that's over.
Nick
On Wed, Mar 18, 2026 at 6:53 PM Santafe <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Mar 17, 2026, at 17:36, Frank Wimberly <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong. "Entanglement" is a relationship between two
electrons such that if one changes (e.g. spin) then the other one changes.
I hear it rendered that way, so I would say you are faithful to how people
talk.
On the other hand, I would never say that, and I never actually liked the
term (Entanglement) (will answer Nick maybe in a bit on that, as he provides a
good invitation to a rant).
I would say that we know some things about many-electron states, and one of
those things is that lots of them are not products of single-electron states.
If you take a many-electron state, and do various projections of it (the
particle I will measure in a box over here on the left, or the particle I will
measure in a box over here on the right), then there are outcomes for those
pairs of projections that one could name in English, but that in fact never
occur for projections from actual multi-electron states, because of the
configurations that are ever, or are not ever, found in those state spaces.
Probably excessively pedantic. But like garlic for Vampires, it can be
helpful when the metaphor monists come out at night.
Eric
---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
On Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 5:18 PM glen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Were you to write something like: "... scientists, when they use such rich catachreses
as 'entanglement', fail to take responsibility for consequences of such use", I would not
object. That word, unlike metaphor, has a fairly concrete meaning, something like "fills
lexical gaps in scientific terminology, providing names and concepts where none previously
existed".
Or, were you to write something like: "... scientists, when they use such
rich didactic metaphors as 'entanglement', fail to take responsibility for consequences
of such use", that would be OK too. The 'didactic' qualifier helps the reader
*understand* whatever the hell you might mean.
I don't actually care that much what the first person who used a word
meant by that word. Etymology and usage history are interesting and can
sometimes hint at the word's normative meaning. But what matters much much more
is what the current author(s) mean when they use the word.
And, again, if everything's a metaphor, then the word 'metaphor' is useless... like saying
everything is a thing. It feels like the Bad kind of "sophistry" to use a phrase like "the
metaphor (metaphor)". It not only wastes everyone's time; it also gives me The Ick:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=the%20ick
<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=the%20ick> It's difficult to steel man something
when that thing grosses you out.
On 3/17/26 12:31 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Cmon, Glen, where is the Steelman of Yore?
>
> To apply the metaphor (metaphor) to every utterance is no more "corrupt" than to
mathematize every proposition. It becomes corrupt only when it is not pursued honesty.
"Entanglement" is a metaphor. It directs the mind. "Natural selection" is a metaphor. It
also directs the mind.
>
> My worry is that scientists, when they use such rich metaphors as entanglement
fail to take responsibility for the consequences of such use. Let's assume that the person
who first used the metaphor, entanglement, meant something by it. We can formalize the
analysis of metaphors just as we can mathematicize any proposition. And in that
formalization, we can sort out the direction, and misdirection in the metaphor. What did
they intend when they used the metaphor entanglement? What did they NOT intend? And when
the disclaimers have been completed, is there anything left of the metaphor. If not, then,
perhaps,*/scientists should stop using the metaphor/*. In the same way that we have stopped
calling porpoises "fish".
>
> I don't know enough to even speculate what role "entanglement" as a
metaphor has played in the development of quantum physics. But I claim to know enough about
human behavior to assert that it has played some role, and that physicists run some risks if
they altogether disclaim it.
>
> What might we gain, SteelMan, from exploring human thought as
movement from metaphor to metaphor, each new experience being understood as a
version of some previous one? My love is like a red,red rose, delicate,
delighting, fragrant. But OH! the thorns. Did I mean the thorns. Was there ever
a rose that did not have thorns? Metaphors are like that.
>
> When you say that we metaphorists are liars, what are the experiences
of being lied to that you bring to bear. When we analyze metaphors (I assert),
it's always best to be as particular as possible. Describe to me a particular
jarring instance of being lied to. Now project that experience onto the
experience of being metaphored to. What are the surplus meanings of applying the
metaphor; which of those surplus meanings are disclaimed; once these disclaimers
have been noted, does the metaphor retain any heuristic value.
>
> I have to say, I don't like being called a liar. But -- as the saying goes --
"if the foo shits", I guess I have to wear it. So, what experience do you imagine
when you imagine being lied to? What aspects of that experience do you intend when you call
metaphorists liars? What aspect do you disclaim? What is the heuristic value of the
metaphor, once the disclaimers have been made.
>
> By the way, just as an interpersonal matter, if you call me a sinner,
it doesn't help that you immediately call yourself a sinner. Any contempt you
feel for yourself, does nothing to salve the contempt you feel for me. In fact it
makes it worse. I have to bear the contempt of an admitted /sinner!/
>
> But I love you anyway. I wouldn't engage you if I didnt.
>
> Nick
--
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