Comments for anomalogue blog

Comment on Rudeness of thinkers by Neil

Neil — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:11:09 +0000

Sometimes the thinker is just busy or lazy.

Comment on Booj Party by anomalogue

anomalogue — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:59:31 +0000

Nope. Can’t be communist. It’s “bourgeois” on principle.

Comment on Booj Party by Zellyn

Zellyn — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:03:47 +0000

Communist!

Comment on Implications of Pragmatism by Paula Thornton (@rotkapchen)

Paula Thornton (@rotkapchen) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:42:57 +0000

Armed with an economic way of thinking, I’ve never been able to see any value in (or a need for) ANT — perhaps you can enlighten me as to what it adds.

I’m also a huge Anti-fan of the term User Experience, as a ‘user’ is by definition the subject of an object, when the perspective needed is the reverse. As well, experiences are bigger than the entities involved in them, so to single out one entity is not relevant. A more relevant terminology is “Experience Design”.

For me, the relevant answers are not in ‘chaos theory’ — which is only half of the paradox, but in ‘complexity theory’ — which embraces the paradox of chaos and order. Not to say that there aren’t some brilliant thinkers in that realm who laid the groundwork for ‘complexity theory’ to emerge.

All problems are wicked — we just tend to (as would be necessary) simplify them enough to solve a portion of the problem. I, on the other hand, am often blinded by the obvious larger considerations and have trouble focusing on the ‘good enough for now’ solutions (particularly when they cost a lot and will take a lot of time to create).

Comment on True? by Neil

Neil — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:45:57 +0000

Funny thing is, I almost posted, “You made this for me to review, right?”

Comment on True? by anomalogue

anomalogue — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:32:43 +0000

I almost titled this one “Neil bait”.

Comment on True? by Neil

Neil — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:14:57 +0000

Interesting. I’ll have to ponder on this a bit.

Comment on Confabulation by Confabulated norms at anomalogue blog

Confabulated norms at anomalogue blog — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:36:57 +0000

[...] excellent and very accessible Happiness Hypothesis describes a fascinating phenomenon called confabulation which, to put it simply means that we often do not really understand the processes that drive our [...]

Comment on Unknowns by anomalogue

anomalogue — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:38:51 +0000

Conversely, if you want to be absolutely certain you learn only what you are ready to learn and prepared for — structure your interactions with others as much as possible as interrogations. If you do this aggressively enough, and if you are able somehow to force the person you are interrogating to cooperate — or even better subject them to stress and fear — they will not only fail to teach you what they know, they will despair at their inability to do justice to their own way of seeing as they answer the questions as they are posed. They will be unable to enact their own truth, and they will lose faith.

It is no accident that aggressive ideologues frequently argue the practical value of subjecting prisoners to physical duress as a means to more effective interrogation. The way the debate is framed — interrogation is a means to get truthful answers to questions; torture is primarily about physical violence; do the physical means justify the end — misrepresents the purpose of torture.

The real purpose of torture is to annihilate a reality that exists as an unknown unknown in the mind and potential actions of the prisoner. Maybe some realities do deserve to be annihilated by whatever means are available and expedient… but this is a different debate, and not one most torture advocates are intellectually prepared to have. In fact, this way of framing the torture question could even be one they would prefer to annihilate than to entertain.

Comment on “To keep you is no benefit.” by Doing what we are supposed to at anomalogue blog

Doing what we are supposed to at anomalogue blog — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:54:54 +0000

[...] of their senses, to the ramifications of reason, and to the objections and appeals of their neighbor — and in effect, they make the mind a place of its own, a heaven-fortress of faith which [...]

Comment on Truth and cooperation by anomalogue

anomalogue — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:33:07 +0000

Yes. And this is exactly why “intelligent design” is not scientific and has no place in a science curriculum, except as an example of an idea that MIGHT be true but is nevertheless not a scientific theory.

Comment on Truth and cooperation by Pamela

Pamela — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:30:51 +0000

Today in a class we discussed this concept from Karl Popper: A theory’s validity/truth is not determined by proving the theory true empirically. More specifically, theories have to be falsifiable in order to be scientific in nature and possibly true.

Comment on Choices by Clarity

Clarity — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 05:54:38 +0000

I’m clear that what you say is true. I negotiate with this truth every day and wonder what will cause me to “choose not to.”

Comment on HWI by anomalogue

anomalogue — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 14:05:51 +0000

It all depends on what HWI we are using to distinguish human and world. Do we frame it all up as spiritual mind intersecting physical world by means of the strange hybrid of brain and body? Do we see it through a Buddhist lens that takes world to be reducible to our own experience of it — mind as its precursor, and its constitution (to paraphrase the Dhammapada)? Do we take a materialist approach and understand consciousness as an emergent property of biological processes, which means it’s one mechanism by which an organism maintains itself in and against the world to which it fully belongs? By frameworks of this kind experience can be conceptualized into livable truths, with different notions of I, you, world, etc. and different forms of life.

Despite all appearances, the HWI can be swapped out. Of course, system crashes are possible, but that’s the price of switching platforms.

Comment on HWI by Neil

Neil — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:30:37 +0000

Isn’t your body your HWI? What you’re describing seems more like an intermediary between you and the world.

I’m not saying there’s the mind>body>world distinction, but more mind/body>world.

Your description seems like you’re thinking about mind/body>HWI>world.

Comment on Actor-network theory is practical pragmatism by Crediting James at anomalogue blog

Crediting James at anomalogue blog — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:51:50 +0000

[...] say it again: as far as I can tell Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is nothing more than the most radical form of [...]

Comment on ANT = Practical pragmatism by Crediting James at anomalogue blog

Crediting James at anomalogue blog — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:18:28 +0000

[...] say it again: as far as I can tell Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is nothing more than the most radical form [...]

Comment on Christian cred by Crediting James at anomalogue blog

Crediting James at anomalogue blog — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:10:58 +0000

[...] — not negatively, but positively as something with force of some kind. When Latour uses much accounting language — paying for our explanations, accounting for things — it seems to me that it is [...]

Comment on Theory-choice by anomalogue

anomalogue — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 15:44:23 +0000

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Comment on Theory-choice by anomalogue

anomalogue — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 15:43:28 +0000

“Words are vocal symbols for ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental symbols for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same words in order to understand one another: we must also employ the same words for the same kind of internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences in common. On this account the people of one nation understand one another better than those belonging to different nations, even when they use the same language; or rather, when people have lived long together under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there originates therefrom an entity that “understands itself — namely, a people. In all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely: about these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more rapidly — the history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation; on the basis of this quick comprehension people always unite closer and closer. The greater the danger, the greater is the need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary; not to misunderstand one another in danger — that is what cannot at all be dispensed with in intercourse. Also in all loves and friendships one has the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery has been made that in using the same words, one of the two parties has feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes, or fears different from those of the other. (The fear of the “eternal misunderstanding”: that is the good genius which so often keeps persons of different sexes from too hasty attachments, to which sense and heart prompt them — and not some Schopenhauerian “genius of the species”!) Whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of command — these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable things. A man’s estimates of value betray something of the structure of his soul, and wherein it sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposing now that necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols, it results on the whole that the easy communicability of need, which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and common experiences, must have been the most potent of all the forces which have hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the more ordinary people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more select, more refined, more unique, and difficult to comprehend, are liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces, in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile {continuation of the same thing}, the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the gregarious — to the common!”