Many of us try to overcome near-sightedness with far-sightedness.
Antitheses are rarely antidotes.
All posts by anomalogue
Myopia
An atom is more myopic than an amoeba, and an amoeba is more myopic than a bird. An employee is (generally) more myopic than a CEO. A whole human being is less myopic than his brain alone, and a human being in society is less myopic than an isolated individual. It is possible to conceive of a god as the least myopic being.
Pascal’s sphere
The too-human gods attacked by Xenophanes were reduced to poetic fictions or to demons, but it was said that one god, Hermes Trismegistus, had dictated a variously estimited number of books (42, according to Clement of Alexandria; 20,000, according to Iamblichus; 36,525, according to the priests of Thoth, who is also Hermes), on whose pages all things were written. Fragments of that illusory library, compiled or forged since the third century, form the so-called Hermetica. In one part of the Asclepius, which was also attributed to Trismegistus, the twelfth-century French theologian, Alain de Lille — Alanus de Insulis — discovered this formula which future generations would not forget: “God is an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” The Pre-Socratics spoke of an endless sphere; Albertelli (like Aristotle before him) thinks that such a statement is a contradictio in adjecto, because the subject and predicate negate each other. Possibly so, but the formula of the Hermetic books almost entitles us to envisage that sphere. In the thirteenth century the image it reappeared in the symbolic Roman de la Rose, which attributed it to Plato, and in the Speculum Triplex encyclopedia. In the sixteenth century the last chapter of the last book of Pantagruel referred to “that intellectual sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere, which we call God.” For the medieval mind, the meaning was clear: God is in each one of his creatures, but is not limited by any one of them.
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The first person perspective is concave.
The third person perspective is convex.
The second person perspective is not so easy to characterize.
OPP
Obligatory Passage Point (OPP) is going to be a useful concept. From Wikipedia:
Obligatory passage points are a feature of actor-networks, usually associated with the initial (problematization) phase of a translation process. An OPP can be thought of as the narrow end of a funnel, that forces the actors to converge on a certain topic, purpose or question. The OPP thereby becomes a necessary element for the formation of a network and an action program. The OPP thereby mediates all interactions between actors in a network and defines the action program. Obligatory passage points allow for local networks to set up negotiation spaces that allow them a degree of autonomy from the global network of involved actors.
To put it in Jamesian language, the “cash value” of all ideas involved in a social situation transacts at the OPP — for a social scientist, at least, who is interested in accounting for the transpiring of events. Is there any perspective deeper than that? (I’ll leave that question open.)
The principle of principles
As the breadth of usefulness of an observed pattern increases, and the pattern becomes detached from any one specific situation (or to put it differently, attachable to a large number of otherwise dissimilar situations), the pattern will more and more be conceptualized as a principle.
Because the best means of increasing breadth of applicability of a pattern is abstraction, it can appear that principles are purely abstract, which is true in a sense, but not in the commonsense sense.
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It’s funny that the etymology of the word “principle” comes from the Latin word principium ‘source,’ from princeps, princip– ‘first, chief.’ This suggests that a principle comes first, and this is certainly how we tend to interpret principles. However, in truth what appears to come first actually comes last, and what seems to command the behavior of phenomena actually follows.
From, for and within
Just as science is not really a body of knowledge on what is true about things, but rather the record of disciplined interactions human beings have with things, with a focus on the patterns that predictably occur when certain conditions are in place… philosophy is not really the truth of how human beings necessarily relate to existence (“the human condition”), but rather the record of individuals (who belong to societies) trying to make coherent and comprehensive sense of their own experience, as defined by what they take to be relevant, which is intimately connected with what that individual wishes to do in the world. Existence might be conceptualized in thingly objective terms, or psychological, intellectual, logical, political, experiential, moral, etc. terms.
And because what people take to be relevant varies from person to person — (and perhaps varies most dramatically between the type who decides to conceptualize his experience versus a type who simply interacts with whatever he encounters) — different people will have different philosophies, which will enable them to interact with the world in some very particular way, perhaps as a scientist or a philosopher, but maybe as a salesperson or a respiratory therapist or a concierge or a politician.
So, both science and philosophy attempt to relate to the whole of reality, but always from, for and within some purpose, outside of which there is nothing but the mystery of the possibility of learning and changing. In any intellectual activity an actor is always someone relating something, whether the emphasis is on the someone or on the something and even if that something is taken to be fellow someone/something actors.
I think my use of this approach to relating myself to existence, which includes as a consideration other people approaching existence differently from myself makes me a pragmatist. Never forget: American Pragmatism was a response to the experience of the Civil War.
Forgetting tacit knowledge
It is hard to recognize the forgetting of tacit knowledge, especially when the tacit knowledge is knowing how to think certain thoughts. When we are able to recall all the facts but don’t know what to make of it anymore, that’s a strange feeling we don’t know how to talk about.
Whatless
Some people are born knowing “what” they are. Some have no such “what” — and consequently must resort to thinking in terms of “who”.
Making ideas real
When I was younger I had a set of friends to whom I “brought home” new ideas. Until I shared it with each of them, a new idea was not fully real to me.
Being the student
You can’t know another person’s outer edges or inner content unless you assume that they know things you do not know — not only in matters of fact, but also in matters of insight. You have to put the other in the role of teacher, and assume the role of student.
This is the single most powerful method I know for learning from people, for learning about people, and also for losing their respect.
With respect to…
The expression “with respect to…” connects problems, questions and other perspectival entities with other perspectival entities.
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You cannot paint a perspective without painting objects in perspective.
Relationships are impossible without concrete situations.
Fundamentalist disease
First 9/11, now Oslo. When is the world going to understand that all denominations of Fundamentalism — “Christian” or “Islamic” or whatever — are dangerous sociopathic perversions of the religions they claim to epitomize? Fundamentalism is a single religion of universal conflict over infinitely proliferating points of irreconcilability which split groups into ever-tinier, ever-angrier warring denominations.
Experience planning
The primary task of experience planning is to provide designers with precision inspiration for making long and efficacious intuitive leaps. The secondary task is to provide criteria of efficacy for this particular project, by which intuitive leaps can be evaluated. This efficacy will always involve one or more user segments, a brand, and a relationship between user and brand in a complex use context.
Fragility of obligation
Any obligation you feel toward another person can be dissolved with thought if you desire to be free of it. It requires only a little intelligence and an absence of love. The presence of such desires signify lovelessness.
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At some point I realized a simple principle: the very need to figure out why something really matters is a symptom that it no longer really matters.
HWI
I want to design human-world interfaces: Ways human beings can relate to the world to make whatever of it that’s relevant to them useful, usable and, above all, desirable.
My own personal human-world interface, which I designed for myself, employs a metaphor of interface. And of course, interfaces are built on metaphors.
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The relevant question in research is less “Is x true?” than “If this group of people accepts x facts as true and interrelates these facts by y perspective, and interprets z situation according to this truth, will this group be able to respond to z situation more effectively?”
Usable philosophies
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS A COMPUTER ANALOGY APPLIED TO MIND
[Apologies in advance]
Crediting James
Graham Harman, from Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics:
We are now amused to think that there used to be two kinds of physics, one for the earth and one for the sky. But it is equally absurd that we still recognize two different kinds of reality: one for hard scientific fact and another for arbitrary social power. What exists is only actants: cars, subways, canoe-varnish, quarreling spouses, celestial bodies, and scientists, all on the same metaphysical footing.
I’ll say it again: as far as I can tell Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is nothing more than the most radical form of Pragmatism, which has advanced from its humble clean, abstract, conceptual infancy to a truly radical maturity, which for Pragmatism means a dirty, concrete mess of real life observations and real life applications of the understandings so derived. The most radical form of Pragmatism is practical Pragmatism.
The concept of “actant” is an ontology of Jamesian “cash value”, with all (other?) metaphysics (as such) bracketed — not negatively, but positively as something with force of some kind. When Latour uses accounting language — “I am perfectly happy with the resonance of the word [accounting] not only with Garfinkel’s accountability but also with ‘accounting books’, since the weak but essential link of accounting with economics has been one of the most productive, and unlikely, domains of science studies.” — it seems to me that it is precisely this pragmatic cash value inhabits the cells of the ANT spreadsheet. And really, money is a very human thing, and is embedded in the etymology of some of our most exalted words. It seems that extreme love or hatred of wealth seems symptomatic of of an individual’s rejection of being human.
Some advice from the past
Worth some reflection:
A [crazy person’s] feelings are nearly always essentially right, but her
interpretations of her feelings are nearly always substantially wrong.
She knows what she feels, but not why she feels.The single worst thing a [sane person] can do is to dismiss an intelligent
[crazy person’s] feelings because her theories on her feelings are ludicrous.
When an intelligent [crazy person] seems stupid or crazy, desperation is the
cause — the magnitude of the need to do something about her feelings is
overwhelming her intellectual integrity.The more fantastic the explanation, the more serious the situation.
This means that a [sane person] ought to respect a [crazy person’s] feelings as
legitimate, and as something for which he is responsible — but he must
reserve the right to reject the [crazy person’s] explanation of her feelings.
(To openly reject her explanations, however, is rarely a good idea. It
is best to quietly take them with a grain of salt.)Correlatively, the [crazy person] is far better off not demanding that the [sane person]
accept her explanations of herself. Rather, she should veto his
interpretations — with punishments proportionate to his apparent
wrongness.If the [crazy person] does continue to demand acceptance of her explanations
and suffers painful consequences for doing so, the [sane person] should expect
even crueler punishments for not putting a stop to her demands. And if
the [sane person] believes her explanations… it’s over.I’m laughing, but I am not joking.
Placebo
The active ingredient of a placebo is delusion.
To catch site of the delusion is to destroy the placebo’s efficacy in reality.
The disease, however, remains real and continues to demand treatment.
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Some placebos take this form: your disease is a figment of your imagination.
Right all along
People tend to think that if you admit you were wrong about something it means you were 1) wrong about everything, and 2) that if you disagreed with them on what you admit you were wrong about, this means that they were right all along.
This though made me recall a passage I read years ago:
If one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the same time a noble self-control, to praise only where one does not agree… To be able to allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement — or one will have to pay dearly for it! — “He praises me, therefore he acknowledges me to be right” — this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighborhood and friendship.
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We can — and invariably do — use our own errors as leverage against other errors.
To recognize that we were erroneous only means we need to discover new fulcra if we are to continue our work.