_____________
To Miasto
TSherbs (June 18th, 2022)
@Lloyd - Our Present Dark Age
"A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
"A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
TSherbs (June 18th, 2022)
Wasn’t it him to tried to chastise another by saying when he didn’t have anything more to say, he’d resort to name calling or was it personal attacks? The irony is palpable.
That wasn't being snarky. It seems that man is trying to knock things that he doesn't understand, or that he understands but he wants to knock for illogical reasons. I read a lengthy part of his incorrect assessments on math and that was more than enough for me. He writes well, though.... just either devoid of understanding or intentionally trying to mis-spin ideas.
Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Lloyd (June 18th, 2022)
It's just an essay of his observations and thoughts. Something he's working on.
He's talking about specializations vs generalizations, and that somewhere along the line we've become so specific and detail oriented that we've* lost the ability to see the bigger picture and how each part fits (or if it even does).
Each discipline sequesters itself in its own community and becomes isolated, or insulated from other competing or complimentary disciplines.
History, Anthropology and Archeology are all related in that they study previous iterations of humanity. He's questioning (maybe asserting) that they are stove-piped and ignorant of each other's work. Style guides among disciplines is perhaps an example of how parochial they've become.
Psychology is perhaps another example (although in one discipline), with different "theories of mind" and competing philosophical camps. Freudian psychoanalysts, behavioralists, etc... although that's rectifying itself to some extent.
It resonated with me as I thought of the stove-piped bureaucracies within the DOD (and then seeing how bad the federal bureaucracy is, being exposed to those outside the DOD). It's how PM Abrams manages to build a new version of the M1 tank only to realize it exceeds the load capacity of existing bridging equipment it needs to cross tank ditches and rivers. They never thought to consult with PEO Combat Support.
Among his reasons are competition for funding - another parallel I'm familiar with.
But his piece in conjunction with your cartoon got me to thinking about the role of the 4th estate. It seems they've abandoned the duty of putting the complexity of the world together for the average person to understand or integrate. Instead, we see various types of parochialism (political and ideological) as they compete for resources (advertising dollars). We knew that the National Enquirer was trash about aliens stealing babies. We knew that People was superficial tabloid gossip about celebrities, and we knew that Walter Cronkite would make sense of the world for us. That paradigm is gone, for many of the reasons he lays out.
Perhaps we are in a form of dark age, each human left to scurry around an overwhelming amount of sources of information in an attempt to make sense of it all - with the majority simply picking a "church" and being spoon-fed truths we find the most palatable.
It's all just food for thought. Something to discuss. None of us has all the answers, and certainly not some guy with a blog on the interwebz.
*society, humans interacting on a global scale, etc... for those that take issue with "we"
"A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."
Last edited by dneal; June 18th, 2022 at 03:03 PM.
"A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."
I disagree about the stovepipe in regards to math. Math creates fictional worlds, imbues them with a very few initial unbreakable rules, and then the mathematician sees what other laws must follow. Other fields (statistics, finance, physics, chemistry, CS, etc.) use these math worlds to describe/predict their "real" world. Mathematicians cross fields frequently to see how their work might be applicable to others.
In every specialist's work, there is a unique language that is needed to expedite and simplify. Big breakthroughs happen when two seemingly unrelated specialized fields find an unexpected equivalence.
Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
That author seems to be complaining that the world is far more complicated than we used to think and that we are making strides to understand a bit more.
Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
Fair points. It seems he was referencing the extreme theoretical reaches of math - essentially philosophy at that point with "what is real" (metaphysics) and "what can we know" (epistemology).
He also missed in his complimenting of engineers that they rely primarily on math.
I agree his examples in some cases were weak. Take this paragraph:
The first sentence is pretty ludicrous. One could argue that treatment tends to depend on discipline (the "if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail" metaphor). i.e.: If you have a sore shoulder, physical therapists tend toward physical therapy, GP's tend toward steroid shots, and Surgeons tend toward surgery. But that's being generous to what he wrote. His argument seems more accurate with regard to economists though. They agree on very little, and are parochial in schools of thought. I noticed Chip's article in the inflation thread asserted that the banks jacking up interest rates hastens inflation. Our Federal Reserve asserts raising interest rates slows inflation.The medical establishment has greatly underestimated the complexity of biological systems, and due to this oversimplification, they yank levers that end up causing more harm than good. The same is true for the economists and politicians who believe they can centrally plan economies. They greatly underestimate the complexity of economic systems and end up causing more harm than good. That’s the standard pattern across all disciplines.
At some point though, all that is quibbling over what he said and not necessarily what he meant. The latter needs a bit of leeway on the particulars and consideration to the larger point.
Problems aside, I thought it was a pretty good piece for a young guy who thinks he's got it all figured out.
"A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
TSherbs (June 18th, 2022)
Fair enough, but don't get upset if I offer the same level of candor in the future.Also, I find it a waste of time to evaluate this.
My thoughts on the article from the pediatrician that you shared, for example, were that it was atrocious and didn't even address the thesis in the title - much less support it. It was simply a disjointed word-salad of platitudes in paragraphs.
I assumed you found it of some value, and perhaps empathized with the caring intent in the paragraphs - which is why gave it the benefit of the doubt and didn't comment on it. Simple common courtesy.
p.s.: For the monkeys that will jump on the common courtesy comment - nothing hypocritical about it. I treat individuals, individually.
"A truth does not mind being questioned. A lie does not like being challenged."
Actually, I truly want your honest replies. I want to hear open dialog on these discussions not denigration. No side is 100% right nor wrong, fully smarter/stupider, more moral, etc.
I wasn't posting it out of agreement nor disagreement. Much like many of your posts, it was an offering of a widely spread belief. In this case, it was a pediatician's thoughts that were published in a widely circulated medical journal. It was to give the forum a sense of what pediatricians might be thinking after the school massacre.
Typos courtesy of Samsung Auto-Incorrect™
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
[22.1114-1114.19.6]
response-creator self-labelled dneal states /p.s.: for the monkeys that will jump on the common courtesy comment - nothing hypocritical about it. i treat individuals, individually/
archive and current data analysis shows
one negative comment/association
two untruths
network search suggests following quote attributed to organic unit labelled ben johnson
/very few men are wise by their own counsel or learned by their own teaching for he that was only taught by himself had a fool for a master/
archive search lexicon
hubris
[ˈhjuːbrɪs]
excessive pride or self-confidence
a peculiarity of lighter-skinned gender-male organics
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