I'm just saying I'm not familiar with the LANL usage. "Wrong" has nothing to do with it.
--- Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505 505 670-9918 Santa Fe, NM On Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:27 AM <[email protected]> wrote: > Frank, Steve, > > > > Aren’t we arguing about whether “Steve Was Wrong” when he understood > “strawman” to refer to a “stick figure” or other constructive schema, > rather than a guilefully conceived version of an argument designed to show > its weaknesses. Is there any way to show a metaphor is “wrong” other than > the exercise of power? > > > > OK, friammers. All those who think Steve Was Wrong raise your hands. > > > > n > > > > Nicholas Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology > > Clark University > > [email protected] > > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > > > > > > *From:* Friam <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith > *Sent:* Thursday, May 28, 2020 9:32 AM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games > > > > Frank (et al.) - > > > > I have *never* heard or read "strawman" to mean anything other than a > specious argument meant to show the absurdity of a position. A kind of > reductio ad absurdum. > > > > It is very likely that my experience was with an ideosyncratic adoption > within a small circle (LANL High Performance Computing Community circa > 1985-1995) and/or perhaps the DOE peers/program-managers we interacted with > daily. It was just part of the air we breathed as we negotiated various > projects and programs. I thought it was both apt, and truly universal. > Maybe explains many misunderstandings I held after I left that domain/era! > > I would claim (and maybe this was your intent) that your (Frank) > apprehension contradicts Glen's partially... as I think HE puts "Strawman" > up as something contrived to be weak so as to be easy to knock down and > used as a proxy for your adversary's *real* position. I think my > apprehension has your element of *reductio ad absurdum* in it, in that > said "Strawman Argument" is contrived to be so absurd that nobody in the > conversation would take as anything *but* a placeholder to form a real > construction to replace it with. Or as I said, having only the barest hint > of the shape of the evolving argument to be a bit of an armature for a more > proper construction. > > In either case, I claim it is no coincidence that the use of "straw" vs > "steel" appeals to the metaphorical source domain of "robustness of > materials and construction", if we switched the two terms, we could > possibly learn to do the crossover decoding as well as Glen apparently > can/does, but whyever would we choose that mapping? And with that I will > suggest to this crowd that many of my propositions here are neither "straw" > nor "steel", but rather "silly putty". Glen may insist that my invoking > explicitly a "character of materials and construction" as a source domain > is wrong at best and empty at worst, but I think many here can take away a > *rich* if not precise apprehension of what we might all mean when we > compare, for example arguments "variously of straw, steel, and silly putty". > > I am a blatant metaphorist as I've declared many times here, but I agree > with the less extreme parts of Glen's observations which is that metaphors > get misused/misapplied all the time. In my absurdist but not empty (IMO) > example above, the smell of silly putty (most of us over 50 probably know > it well, the way it can be used to lift and transfer newsprint, the way it > "snaps" when pulled apart quickly, etc. may well be *excess meaning*, but > the way it can be formed into just about anything, can be done very > informally with just the tools at hand (your hands) and if left unbothered > will eventually "slump" back into a rough puddle with only the barest > memory of the shape imposed on it by the blind puttysmith. > > A good example that I *think* spans Glen's position and my own is that of > "standard" hue ramps used to encode scientific data... in the colloquial > "heatmap" of popular Viz... the practice is to treat *red* as hot and > *blue* as cold. It maps onto our everyday experience of the color of > flame and the color of ice, or the quality of light in the equatorial > regions vs the quality of light in the (ant)arctic regions. red hot, blue > cold. yet, my synaesthesia example followed the model of blackbody > radiation. Red is lower energy than Blue and most physicists have no > problem "seeing" blue as hot and red as cool... in my *strawman* of Glen's > position, any palette would do... "just give me the legend and I'll decode > it"... which (IMO) is why many infographics (for example those found in > USAToday) are almost unreadable, albeit "easy on the eyes"... a nice > pastel palette running from a toffee-pink through an adobe brown to a > seafoam green might be very pleasant and non-confrontational the eyes, but > be *very* hard to make sense of. > > The Asian inversion of our Western convention of Red==Stop/Danger/Death > and Green==Go/Good/Life is another example of two conflicting but equally > internally consistent source domains for a metaphor. > > - Steve > > > -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . > ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ... > 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-comic.blogspot.com/ >
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