Hi Glen, I am deep in meteorology right now so I hope you won’t be offended if I give you an iPhone-Ish quick response. Why not a dialectic between a love of convergence and a fascination with the, a dialectic that never settles? I believe you computer folk have a name for that?
Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University [email protected] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson https://substack.com/@monist On Tue, Sep 1, 2026 at 7:57 AM glen <[email protected]> wrote: > > > https://www.aaup.org/academe/issues/fall-2025/seven-theses-against-viewpoint-diversity > > OK. I admit I've been a bit guilty in my emphasis on diversity. But I am > aware of Goodhart's Law. And given thesis 2, here, I think I'm going to > stop calling myself a "methodological pluralist" and use "instrumental > pluralist" instead. > > But 1) what Siraganian says here is simply wrong: > > "To promote viewpoint diversity is to be thrilled to have my views in the > mix, even if you think they are wrong, because either (a) they contribute > to more viewpoint diversity (the more views you have, the more viewpoint > diversity there is), or (b) they provide more views to choose from to > figure out which view is the most true. In the first position, you end up > not caring about whether a particular view is true or good, because you > care about viewpoint diversity intrinsically: What matters is having the > greatest possible variety of views. In the second position, you > instrumentally value a diversity of views; having viewpoint diversity only > matters until you can figure out which view is the best or most true, at > which point all the other views can be rejected." > > If the "best" or "most true" is relatively smooth from the 1st best to the > 2nd best, 3rd best, etc., then NO, you do not reject "all the others". Such > smooth grading has to remain contingent, defeasible. And my guess is the > gradation isn't smooth everywhere. It may be smooth for the first 2 or 3 > distinguishable ideas, but #4 might be batsh¡t. (cf. SynthID< > https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09263>) > > 2) Diversity remains a useful measure of the crosstrophic nature of > complex systems, circularity, industrial symbiosis, etc. So even in light > of Goodhart's Law, diversity is a reasonable *outcome*, even if it's > dangerous to optimize to that sole outcome. > > There are issues with all the theses she lays out. But persnickety nits > aside, her gist seems right. And you can't overlook the blatant hypocrisy > of objecting to DEI initiatives, but then arguing for "intellectual > pluralism", pointed out in thesis 7. > > This post is too long already. But I know many, here, have succumbed to > Haidt glazing. So I offer this as further demonstration of Bad Faith > rhetoric: > https://assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/jonathan-haidt-social-contagion-rogd-pbs/, > only peripherally about instrumental pluralism. > > -- > 8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ > ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα > σώσω. > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / > ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
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