I've always wondered why we obsessively dichotomize. I've tried to express my
confusion in the context of the law of noncontradiction and excluded middle
since my 1st (authentic) analysis course in college. I'd caught a whiff of
intuitionism by that time and asked my prof about it. He wisely feigned
ignorance and suggested I do my homework.
When Dave asks a question like "What is the negation of evolution?", it
absolutely *begs* us to avoid negation ... this silly impulse to think in dichotomies.
Negation is a stupid concept, perhaps the most Evil human invention ... maybe 2nd only to
religion. And juxtaposed with evolution, which relies heavily on high-dimensional
contexts, makes it crystal clear how stupid a concept negation actually is.
Now, "opposition" carries much more ambiguity. One could think of it (and "reaction") in
something like Newton's 3rd law. But the ambiguity also allows us to think in terms of a bushy opposition or
"response", rather than negation or reaction. So kudos to the quotees who used the more ambiguous
term, helping us think a little more broadly. And woe to those who read the ambiguous term and preemptively
register it as the miniscule-minded concept of negation.
That bushy opposition flows nicely into Dave's invocation of "stress". In the
past, I've expressed affinity with the (ole timey) Cynics who flout contemporary norms
and attempt for Flow. But if I'm honest, I'm actually anti-Flow ... or maybe it's a kind
of processor-sliced-multi-Flow. The only time I feel authentic is when I'm surfing a
stressful context ... like some adrenaline junky hopping from one brief high to another.
Comfort, Groove, Flow, Eudaimonia, are most accurately mapped to something like laminar
death. Turbulence is the new groovy. Flow is for squares, man.
On 5/10/22 21:06, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Wokeness or antifa are two reactions to bad faith. At some point communication
is no longer occurring and it is delusional to expect a civil dialog. When
that happens it is just a matter of whether to keep taking a beating in the
name of a principle that the other party does not care about (who IS the
audience for this demonstration of futility?) or to use other means that they
cannot ignore.
Another way to deal with Trump-like people on social media would be to scale
the the fact checking with the lying, so that liars have an unblockable
paragraph of injected correction surrounding each false claim. Unfortunately
then the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that the narcissist gets the
attention they seek. In that sense cancellation is better.
On May 10, 2022, at 7:42 PM, Prof David West <[email protected]> wrote:
Quotes:
/"A thing without oppositions ipso facto does not exist ... existence lies in
opposition."/ C.S. Peirce.
/"It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth."
/Neils Bohr.
Questions:
What is the negation of evolution? Natural Selection? Survival of the 'Fittest'?
What is the negation of 'bleeding heart liberalism'? Of Trumpism? Of "wokeness?"
Quote:
/"Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask
yourselves whether a tree which is supposed to grow to a proud height could do so without
bad weather and storms; /*[1]* /whether misfortune and external resistance, whether any
kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, greed, and violence to not
belong to the *_favorable_* conditions without which any great grown even of virtue is
scarecely possible." F. Nietzsche (emphasis his)/
*[1] *The Biosphere 2 project encountered a problem with trees falling over far
before they reached their maturity. It was from lack of wind. Wind and
mechanical stress was required to grow the hard tissues that allowed the tree
to stand.
Questions:
To what extent do we (denizens of FRIAM and their local cultures) require the
kinds of stress being encountered in the world?
I suspect that there needs to be a balance between realizable civilization and
stresses, but how is that balance defoined and, more importantly, found and
maintained?
Concrete example of last question: Will the Twitterites end up being a better
or worse 'culture' post-Musk?
davew
--
Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙
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