I think Roger Penrose and Robert Rosen are fairly good examples of how to go about making
the objection. Gerald Edelman comes close, too, with "reentrant" networks
(which lead to Tononi's IIT). There are lots of others in various domains.
The idea being that you best formulate your objection to the status quo by the
painstaking work of constructing your counter example. The relatively blank
accusation of inadequacy isn't good enough because your objection is too easily
written off with a parade of whataboutist other things. What about gpt3? What about
paraconsistent logics? What about <fill in your own obscure thing>? Both
Penrose's and Rosen's formulations have fallen out of favor. But that's a good thing.
They did the work that promoted serious criticism. Penrose's and Rosen's good
criticism begat good criticism. (Sure, both were ridiculed by the peanut gallery. But
even sneers from the peanut gallery demonstrate engagement.)
It's not clear to me how to formulate a good criticism without first pretending
[⛧] you believe what you intend to criticize. Part of the problem with
requiring scrutiny into the objector is that the necessary pretension invites
accusations of hypocrisy and ad hominem. E.g. it's irrelevant whether Rosen was
actually facile with metamath or category theory. So, scrutiny into the
objector isn't the issue. But it's close. We do need to see enough to help the
objector decide her case. What was Rosen *trying* to do? Why did he think
category theory would help? Etc. Robert resisted his cult following to some
extent. His daughter, unfortunately, didn't resist it very well, despite her
good intentions. Like Peirce, though, Rosen got too hung up on arguing about
words, facilitating that cultish air.
[⛧] "Pretending" isn't the best word, here. I mean something more like "suspending disbelief" or "steelmanning". But
I'm using "pretend" because it evokes the *play* we do, especially as children. When Renee's granddaughter pretends her Barbie dolls are
real people, she's not "faking it", "posturing", "suspending disbelief", or anything of the sort. She's actually inside
the domain, living inside the pretension.
On 5/17/22 09:18, Marcus Daniels wrote:
A problem I have with accepting Dave’s view is that it allows the person making
a claim to not be subject to scrutiny, Because, well, they feel that way so it
must be true. That there is some point at which precision impedes accuracy.
It is a recipe for the proliferation of cult leaders.
On May 17, 2022, at 7:55 AM, glen <[email protected]> wrote:
Right. This is why the wet monkey theory (along with many other false but useful for manipulation heuristics) fails to
capture anything important about "groupthink". We can re-orient Dave's no-largest-model objection toward any
just-so manipulative rhetoric. Of course the choice of language biases the description written in it! Sheesh. And, yes,
it's important to make that clear to any novice entering whatever domain. Pluralism (or parallax) of languages is one
mitigation tactic. But another common one is basic error-checking, the social process of saying out loud your
construction and listening as others criticize, deconstruct, or outright ridicule it. Spend too much time stewing in
your own juices and your constructs become private. Spend too much time socializing with those who agree and your
constructs become groupthink. Nick likes to say he's grateful for anyone who reads his writing. But the actual good
faith action is to criticize it. Reading it is like nodding politely with the occasional "ah",
"yes", "uh-huh" while someone tells you their boring story. Engagement is the real objective.
Reading is a mere means to that end. And disagreement is demonstrative engagement.
But [dis]agreement isn't well-covered by "contrarian", "oppositional", or "adversarial". Dualism is
just one form of foundationalism. Monism < dualism < trialism < quadrialism < ?. 4 forces? 17 objects? 3 types of
object? Who cares? Those particular numbers are schematic in the larger discipline of disagreement. The foundation is important.
But getting hung up on the particular number/value misses the forest for the trees. Arguing over the number of things in the
foundation is akin to arguing about the meanings of words. In the spirit of "not even wrong", it's not even sophistry.
On 5/16/22 14:41, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Glen writes:
< Of course, we *could* be working our way into a fictitious corner. (E.g. the just-so
story of the wet monkey thing
<https://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2009/08/wet-monkey-theory/>, where
all the kids who believe in the ability of formalism(s) to capture the world are simply
thinking inside the box.) But what's the likelihood of that? I claim vanishingly small. >
Using the Standard Model, applied physicists and engineers build careers and do
useful work. Are they thinking in a box? Perhaps. But there are also
physicists who are obsessed with poking holes in it and generalizing it.
--
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