Year: 2018

Changing Your Mind

A pet hate of mine is “rational” people who see the point of a rational argument as being to change someone’s mind, to convince someone of something.

A bonkers idea at any time, not to mention a complete waste of time if you think the person you are trying to convince isn’t being rational anyway. It’s a bonkers idea in general because only you can change your mind, and that’s true of anyone else. You can’t change my mind.

The point of dialogue is to learn. And to be “rational”, the dialogue can be any mix of the objectively logical and subjectively rhetorical as long as it is directed in good faith. The point is to understand better what you understand and believe. And that’s true of anyone else. When it’s not, you and/or they are not actually engaging in the dialogue, you’re not even at first-base yet. All bets are off.

Once that dialogue is engaged, minds evolve. That’s how minds change. They’re not changed by someone else.

There are only two situations where point-scoring critical debates that win and lose, making and refuting points, have any place.

Where both parties are already – in good faith – inside a control volume where it is the objective and mathematical logic that is being validated. Even in what look like academic scientific arguments, neither party will  remain confined to that control volume throughout. Everyone has an agenda and interests. Their skin may be in a different games.

Where the belief or opinion makes sense to be treated as a genuinely democratic choice. When the decision is properly going to be some kind of popular vote. Though again democracy is never perfect, and the debate will invariably be a mix of the objective and subjective.

Anywhere else it’s only dialogue that evolves minds. Even the Socratic questioning kind can only go so far in good faith if it expects to involve undermining the other party or reducing a case to absurdity. Any actual mind changing will depend on defensive responses at the time and reflective activity after the event. It is possible to protest too much. It might indicate loss of good faith and skin in different games.

It is the reflection – the internal experience – that might evolve your mind.

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[Post Note: Ha, this very morning from Jon Haidt, tweeted by @PoeBrianL:

Illustrates the other point I often make, that the “reasoning” aspect of the mind-changing – or even simple decision-making – is almost invariably a post-rationalisation (“post-hoc reasoning” here), reducing the outcome to some logical objective relations and causes, which is rarely what has actually happened psychologically.

And as it says, whilst I say it is the private reflection that actually changes the mind, it is a rare event compared to all of the other explicit stages of dialogue.

And of course, having thoroughly read and enjoyed The Righteous Mind some years ago, I’ve clearly absorbed Haidt’s thinking into my own. Nothing is invented by one person in isolation. Knowledge and understanding co-evolve.]

[Post Note: Interesting seeming counter-example from James Willis on how we are all however susceptible to persuasion. In the context of this post, I point out that this is persuasion to act. Nothing in this story changed anything about what James “believed”.]

[Post Note:

Interesting and  believable from a many who knows statistical probabilities.]

Pigliucci vs Kastrup on Panpsychism

I have a lot of time for Massimo (Pigliucci) and have found Bernardo (Kastrup) at least interesting and provocative recently in his speculative output. A fascinating “flame-war” broken out on Twitter since Massimo published a “scathing” criticism of a recent Bernardo paper. A paper with an amazingly click-baity “question” for a headline it has to be said.

Sadly, the latter is playing his objection to the criticism to the gallery, including Deepak Chopra, so hard to sort out content from the flak. Anyway the topic is (or isn’t) pan-psychism, so with my interest in pan-proto-psychism – the same fundamental information underlying both mind-stuff and physical stuff – I thought I’d capture paper, critique & rebuttal for later archaeology.

Paper: The Universe is Consciousness.
(And the SciAm article with the click-baity question headline.)

Critique: Does the Universe Suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder?

Rebuttal: The Remarkable Criticism of Massimo Pigliucci.

Denying that his thesis is panpsychism gets off to a bad start in the executive summary of Bernardo’s original paper:

“there is only cosmic consciousness”

That looks the epitome of pan-psychism to me, even if not “bottom-up” whatever that means (presumably pan-proto-consciousness?)

And, I’m guessing from Massimo’s choice of headline we’re dealing with some analogy too far in multiple universe’s as multiple “conscious personalities”. Certainly “multiple personality disorder” doesn’t appear in Bernardo’s summary but is introduced by the SciAm headline writer.

Oh well, time to read.

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[Post Note: The dialogue continues:]

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[Post Note: And more “attack and defence”:
Susan Schneider disses panpsychism (after Chalmers) in SciAm.
And Bernardo needs to defend it. Beginning to see this whole thing as just another broad vs narrow definitional argument – the same perennial philosophy runs through all sides. People who overclaim universal consciousness are “woo” and those who are “meh, that’s just how it is” are ignored – meantime professional critics stoke differences over “mysteries” and “unproven” arguments as click-bait. Yawn.]

Sweet Reason

Rarely was a program so well named. Exemplary dialogue handled by Evan Davis on BBC R4 Sweet Reason on “Offense”.

The thesis being discussed was implicitly:
Weaponised Offense Taking
as part of
Identity by Victimhood.

Contentious topic on PC-Ness of free expression. With Jordan Peterson (white-male) and Dr Clare Chambers and Shaista Aziz (non-male / non-white) what a recipe.

And yes, couple of points where mutual buttons were pressed. The philosopher valiantly wanting to keep an objective handle on the “but who / in what position of power” aspect of the context for potentially offensive expression. The “White men …” response from Aziz … classic stuff …

Particularly liked the Rod Liddell example – the “I think we can call 40,000 Romanian immigrants a swarm” one-liner – demonstrating that the context (including the social role of the person) matters. In satirical journalism, the Court Jester role is recognised.

And yet … near perfect summary from Davis … JBP (the white man, naturally!) felt the need to insert his dangers of weaponisation point into the summary … but no actual dissent. And, as Davis noted at a couple of points, mostly violent agreement.

Exemplary on several levels.

Explicit – The topic and the content of the discourse leading to progressive agreement.

Context – JBP is probably red rag to many otherwise intelligent bulls in the current climate, so exemplary in not shrinking from any degree of difficulty.

Meta – The handling of proper dialogue. Balance of differing inputs, but with enforced listening, summarising between the parties, ad-hominems and adversarials suppressed.

Well done Evan Davis. Well done BBCR4 – with more of this there would be no need for any intellectual dark web.

‘Cept maybe marketing and book sales 😉

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[Post Note: Also heard the @StephenSackur BBC World / News TV “HardTalk” interview with JBP (h/t @JacobKishere). Sackur clear pushes the critical side on each of 5 or 6 agenda – source as much from critics as his own reading – points, but gives JBP opportunity for clear responses. Good responses, good source of JBP thought in fact? Sackur doing journalist job with no lingering / hidden agenda apparent? Contrast with the (UK) original @CathyNewman i/v where despite the “you got me” ray of light, Cathy still harboured her leftist / feminist agenda, maintained it in the following weeks’ debate in fact.]

Perennialism

I said, when reading Aldous Huxley back in 2007, that I was having trouble seeing the wood for the trees – what specific points Huxley was making – even though it was already a given that some kind of perennial philosophy is what we are dealing with in real life.

Since before then my approach is always to seek parallels and connections – to synthesise my own view of knowledge (meta-knowledge) – rather than to seek difference with a view to tribal attack and defense. It does mean I leave a lot of detail behind, to treat general ideas as givens in the context of ongoing future-directed efforts. I’m an engineer, not the kind of researcher who needs to publish formal academic papers.

One such “given” aspect of perennial philosophy is the idea that Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ) is the framework on which I’m able to hang pretty much any new ideas I come across. Things that don’t appear to fit are either a matter of re-expression, or they are flawed in themselves – a kind of meta-cognitive-dissonance on a grand scale. It works for me.

I mentioned this last when I published “After The Fireworks” a couple of weeks ago on the 50th anniversary of Pirsig setting out on his Zen and the Art motorcycle trip. That 50th anniversary prompted quite a few reflective pieces by others, and David Matos very kindly shared my link on his ZMM Quality facebook page. I got a lot of hits as a result, which prompted renewed correspondence in several media, and one set of comment threads from Bruce Adam on several of my blog posts as well as on the “After The Fireworks” post.

I’ve dubbed myself PoPoMo – that is I don’t particularly want to argue about Post-Modernism any more than I do (say) Logical Positivism. I’ve moved on from any specific philosophy to following the Eternal Golden Braid that runs through them all, a ubiquitous perennialism.

There is an evolutionary framework from the physical to the psychological. Pretty much everything, no, literally everything (*)- from the banes of modern life, populist-politics and fake-news, to the most fundamental new physics – hangs on that framework. The most current professional philosophical take on this biological (gene-meme) philosophy metaphor is probably the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) initiative.

[(*) BTW don’t confuse a truly universal metaphysical framework with the idea of a grand unified theory of physics. One exists, the other doesn’t. It’s possible to be universal in explanatory reach without being either fundamental or absolute.]

The remainder of this holding post is really just a collation of all the links and parallels that show how ubiquitous the perennial philosophy has been, provided in the comments from Bruce Adam.

Starting first with JBS Haldane because despite appreciating him and his work, I’ve never read him in the original or in biography. Particularly interesting now because in my role as a trustee, I’m involved in an on-line archiving project for the Rationalist (Press) Association / New Humanist going back over 100 years, and I’m pretty sure there is a lot of Haldane in there. [More later.]

This may help.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19278107-suffer-survive
(Martin Goodman biog of JS Haldane – father of JBS)

And this .
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/haldanebio.pdf (Ronald Clark biog of JBS Haldane)

“[JBS]  was the cleverest man I ever knew. ” from Peter Medawar’s preface to Ronald Clark’s JBS biog.

Both fascinating biographies quite apart from any philosophical content.

[J S Haldane’s “Philosophy of a Biologist” is central to this.]

John Maynard Smith talking about Haldane:
https://www.webofstories.com/play/john.maynard.smith/23

And reading him at Eton:
https://www.webofstories.com/play/john.maynard.smith/6

(Many other good pieces in that Web of Stories btw.) And the Wikipedia page on JBS Haldane (not to be confused with his father JS Haldane) includes reference to Peter Medawar’s biography. (Already now on order.)

The opening remark in JBS Haldane’s “Possible Worlds”.

“It is not clear that professionalism is any more desirable in philosophy than in football or religion.”

Is indeed up there with Pirsig’s own disparaging “philosophology” take on professional philosophy. That recurring irony in my original “After The Fireworks” post.

The Huxley / Haldane relationship I’d never spotted before.

WK Clifford is largely new to me but also fascinating.

Here in his essays you’ll find his “Tribal Self” morality , his famous “Ethics of Belief” (which gives takes such a hard-pragmatic stance that William James was inspired to write his defence of Fideism “The Will to Believe”)

I recommend “On the Nature of Things in Themselves” Page 52.

The “tribal” nature of so much (low quality) discourse is indeed a core issue for us all. (The so-called “intellectual dark web” is one response to this.)

Parallels between Maslow and Pirsig in hierarchical evolutionary views of humanity I have previously noted. (Update here.)

And Doug Hofstadter on how so much mental evolution depends on slipping by analogy.

Schroedinger’s “What is Life” has already been influential to me.

And the Heisenberg / Northrop / Pirsig connections.

[Lots more to follow-up here and links to add.
For now let’s just end with this:]

Fundamental (sub-quantum) physics / metaphysics interface is a recurring interest here – especially those physicists that see the philosophical and epistemological difficulties they’re dealing with. (eg Rovelli and Verlinde much referenced here recently. I hold a particular information flow view of fundamental physics.)

QBism

https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-bayesianism-explained-by-its-founder-20150604/

“QBism would say, it’s not that the world is built up from stuff on “the outside” as the Greeks would have had it. Nor is it built up from stuff on “the inside” as the idealists, like George Berkeley and Eddington, would have it. Rather, the stuff of the world is in the character of what each of us encounters every living moment — stuff that is neither inside nor outside, but prior to the very notion of a cut between the two at all.”

This is a misreading of Eddington who actually champions WK Clifford’s “Mind-Stuff” in his Gifford Lecture.

Here’s an overview and defence.

Mind-stuff, in my book is the fundamental information I speak of. QBism is however new to me. I have some issues with interpretations of Bayesian ideas, same as any uses of statistical probabilities in complex situations where underlying models are presumed too simply. (eg Taleb’s work)

And a good deal more. Thanks Bruce!

A Devout Sceptic

Saw David Boulton speak on Thursday last, at a meeting of North-East Humanists in the Newcastle Irish Centre nestled incongruously between St James’s Park and Chinatown.

In the history of UK secularism and TV broadcasting, Boulton’s fame precedes him. Editor of many journals in this space over the decades and particularly known for his “World in Action” documentaries for Granada TV, his books including “The Trouble with God” and his involvement in the Don Cupitt inspired “Sea of Faith” network.

Fascinating to hear the story of his own evolution from an ultra- doctrinaire and insular Plymouth Brethren upbringing via socialism and CND to a firmly committed Non-theist Quaker Humanist. (A “Quaker” – being simply the ironically self-adopted pejorative epithet from 17th C critics of members of The Society of Friends. A branding that has stuck.)

When he started uncertainly with a self-effacing introduction to his “Confessions of a Devout Sceptic” title (a title which he has of course used before in talks over the years) and a list of 12 reasons why Beer is better than God, I thought for a brief moment he was going to give us a born-again anti-God polemic. I needn’t have worried. (He didn’t and the audience wasn’t entirely 21st C  New-Atheist types, notably 2 or 3 Christian Apologetics types including Jonathan McLatchie – PhD in Evolutionary Biology at NCL.)

He knew his history of UK secularism almost first hand – recounting Holyoake and others and touching on the whole christian-cultural, Quaker-industrial socialism crossover, Cadbury, Rowntree, Unilever and the New Lanark Mills, (though he didn’t mention the latter two by name). Fascinating story in its own right.

Particularly wonderful the whole creed-free “fellowship” angle to every human interaction whatever the context, religious or otherwise – a feature of the Society of Friends. I’ve already mentioned that as well as self-identifying as a Christian Humanist, he calls himself a Non-Theist on the God vs Atheism scale – exactly as I do. Whatever our creeds or lack of them, we’re all human, even theists and theologians, as I often point out.

The highlight was his honest response to a question – from the apologetics – that there was no rational explanation, nor even any post-rationalisation – of how he’d arrived at any intellectual description of his current Non-theist, Quaker, Humanist position at all. It was simply an evolutionary process of changing perspectives from real life experience. Long tradition being as important as the fellowship itself. Perfect.

[Post Note – interesting given my other ongoing dialogues with Libertarians, his Quaker position on near-absolute pacifism is probably the only point at which we’d maybe part company. Worth some dialogue.]

[Post Note – also, as in so many topics of discussion here on Psybertron, there is the “meta” angle. The only creed is no-creed. So hard for the one-dimensional strictly objective scientistic types to get a grip on such logical Catch-22’s.]

[Post Note – give his many secular editorial duties along the way, and the Jonathan Miller connection, presumably some Boulton tie up along the line with the Rationalist Press Association now Rationalist Association / New Humanist, of which I am a trustee and Miller was president.]

The Dichotomous World.

My densest statement of “the problem”, with minimum technical language, is as follows:

We CLASSIFY all that exists in the world in binary chops. That is, things are repeatedly subdivided [this] <> [not-this]. This is necessary for efficient organisation of sets of things in our world. (In properly scientific contexts, the analytic clarity is fundamental to defining and testing objective knowledge both logically and empirically.)

This is a good thing.

However if we also IDENTIFY individuals and things in the world according to these convenient classes, our language and discourse emphasises these “cuts” and crowds out the common aspects. (Current received wisdom in serious matters of everyday life is that we should attempt to be as scientifically objective as possible. Identifying individuals in natural language according to distinct classes. It’s a recipe for polarisation.)

This is a bad thing.

Slightly more elaborated with some technical terms and examples:

All taxonomic classifications of what exists in the world (ie ontology) are binary. That is, things are classified [this] <> [not-this] as many cuts as your Aristotelian knife permits. This “classical” objective model is what Wordsworth (and the romantic movement generally) feared when he wrote “we murder to dissect”.

This “cladistic taxonomy” is good, useful, efficient and necessary for organising clades (types, sets of things) in the world, the arrangements of our world.

BUT it is very dangerous for identifying individuals of those sets. It focusses on their differences, tends to dichotomise and polarise, crowd out the common ground. Now this too can be useful and effective if it’s a campaign, a battle, you’re fighting – temporarily, hopefully. But if all we do is identify people and things by their interest group – even self-identified ones like LGBTI / green / flat-earthers, you name it – we are setting ourselves up for one long series of wars rather than actually living life.

We need to find language that untangles the classification / identification confusion in common parlance. BUT “scientific” objective language has become the norm, the expectation of all walks of life, not just science itself. (Think WMD Dossier!)

People object to science not because they are anti-science “fruit loops” (another clade) but because this dichotomous scientific language has infected the whole of life. (See poets). Many people whose life’s work has grappled with finding alternative models and languages have been so frustrated they’ve gone on to become fruit loops.

Who knows, I may be one 😉

[Hat tip to Myles Power and his tweets dissecting an undoubted fruit-loop for inspiring this post.]

[Post Note: WMD?

Most successful …. until trust was destroyed by “fake” attempt to objectify reasons for military action. Just sayin’]

A Useful Idiot Isn’t All Bad But He Ain’t Good

A Russian Take on Political Leadership

In the heat of Trump’s Putin-Helsinki summit fall-out, I posted this cartoon from Twitter to Facebook:

(Hat tip @NickBryantNY for tweeting it. A Brit journalist living in US.)

I posted it bare, without comment, letting the cartoon speak for itself. A picture paints a thousand words, but ~998 of them are in the eye of the beholder I find and that leaves a mid-sized infinity of meaningful sentences any one person might read into it.

It’s a cartoon, caricaturing lots of the essences of the “whole” picture, but obviously it’s not a comprehensive source of political information on Trump (or Putin, or America). Notwithstanding all of that, for me the two or three points it captures are:

  • the “sycophantic” relationship Trump visibly evidenced in speech and action towards Putin, and
  • the fact that this visibly evidenced behaviour is “destructive” to the America whose interests he’s meant to represent, and to any number of “western” institutions (like EU and NATO for example) targetted in the same trip.
  • (Implicitly- Putin is pleased with the Russian benefit of this state of affairs)

I scarcely need point out a further day’s evidence would suggest a lot of other people in the west saw those same messages, compounded by Trump’s own follow-up retractions and tweets. So, when the smartest person I’ve ever known, Victor (V) – a Russian – responded “Are you serious?” to my posting it, I was naturally curious what (implied) message he was disagreeing with (see infinities, above).

[Post Note: This is a long post, with long embedded – Google translated – references and an attempt at statement by statement analysis as well as my own concluding section. Furthermore, since the intervening content is really only the first exchange between “strangers” – Me and Boris – without any prior dialogue, it is necessarily in need of greater clarification and elaboration at some point. So, what follows is the updated / consolidated conclusion from my side, with the rest of the original full post ======== “below the line”.]

Updated Conclusion: So before we can get to the practical difficulties of the best forms of imperfect / pragmatic / freely-democratic governance in a real world with vastly different cultural experiences in the history of different states, leaders, populations, cultures and global relationships between these …. we do indeed have a fundamental moral question at the root. (So fundamental it’s at the root of this 2 decade blogging project – and the reason it’s called “psybertron” – hence the reason I’ve made such a big deal out of the tiny exchange.)

Ironically Victor’s first response to my “let’s have a chat” direct message follow-up to his “Are you serious?” comment was:

“Hi, I don’t think there is much to discuss …”

Priceless! I suspected there was. He he. And as I said, Victor is a really smart guy.  I say that to emphasise how deep and difficult it is to untangle this, even with the best of intelligent intentions. And we have Trump – an immoral moronic imbecile – as the would-be (or is that wouldn’t-be) “leader of the free world” – can there be any greater irony? (Again it’s why I’ve latched on to Trump as a vehicle for the dialogue here – zero to do with fashionable memes and caricatures, except in the sense that that is what he has become.)

(And when I say fundamentally moral I really do mean fundamental. Values underlying even fundamental physics(!) – metaphysics – but we can make progress without diving so deep for now. I’m using moral / virtue / ethical / good / value / quality as more or less synonymous until we have some “good” technical reason to tease them apart.)

(And that’s just preamble to the long conclusion to what was already a very long post. My apologies.)

It’s about freedom, rights and responsibilities.

Victor and Boris are “(Skeptical) Libertarian”
I’m “(Skeptical Humanist) Liberal” I guess.

Now “libertarianism” has a spectrum of how free from institutional controls the a society of individuals and their culture need to be.

“[Wikipedia] Libertarians share a skepticism of authority and state power, but they diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing political and economic systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions.”

You can understand why anyone from a culture where coercive institutions (with ruthless leaders) are real world experience would be close to the total freedom / zero institutional control end of that spectrum. It’s no coincidence there is an east-west / left-right totalitarian frenzy going on around the current “breakdown of order” even, especially, in the dirty realities of the so-called “free-world”. Reliving the mistakes of 20th C “Europe” et al. All of it.

But tending to one end of the spectrum is one thing, and no doubt we all prefer the free end, the real point is about how meaningful is the idea of being at the absolutely free end and if not, what are the imperfect practicalities of being on the spectrum. (What was it Churchill said about democracy again?)

The totally free end implies absolutely no moral right for any institution or individual to be coercive of others, potentially lethally violent. That’s the Gandhi end of pacifism. Turn the other cheek. Absolutely zero circumstance where any “good” human would consider using potentially violent force.

You can make a case for contexts – less than the whole world – where that is indeed the best line to take, but I’ve never found a way of describing a whole world based on that other than anarchic chaos from which “society” must re-evolve – which only ever brings you back eventually to the same question of “so what is the best form of governance” for us.

Governance – the original cybernetics – is the root of Psybertron in our increasingly human-connected world. How else could I have “met” Boris?

No-one is ever going to argue against the idea that institutional arrangements – and the checks and balances that protect them from bad actors – could do with reforming, even extinction. They always will – see evolution of society.

No-one is ever going to argue against the idea that reform is sometimes best achieved through a shake-up and shake-down – a little creative-destruction.

No-one is ever going to argue against the idea that a useful idiot can – by definition -be  useful to us when it comes to creative destruction.

No-one is ever going to argue against the idea that creative destruction needs to be followed by creative evolution and imaginative synthesis, and that the useful idiot can therefore outlive their usefulness to us.

No-one that is except a Libertarian Extremist who rejects the idea that we might need to be able to coerce the useful idiot (and the useful idiot arrangements they’ve accidentally created along the way) out of power when no longer useful to us. Even if ultimately by force of impeachment rather than violent revolution.

We need more than faith in the power of our cultural will. We’ll need some institutional support for the idea. Giving up entirely – accepting that all institutions and politicians are inherently corrupt seems completely untenable – see anarchy and chaos. It’s why we recognise corruptibility of even the virtuous and have checks and balances in layers of accountability.

Useful idiots are OK, even immoral ones – Trump isn’t all bad – provided we maintain the power to dispense with his leadership when no longer useful and maintain the morality of the rest of society during the phase where his behaviour is influential. Good morals have intrinsic value to us all even if an immoral imbecile is sometimes useful – temporarily / locally valuable in a controllable context.

Personally I believe we’ve already got the message and he’s long past being useful, if he ever was. More trouble than he is worth. (Given all the other related crises as a consequence.) The practicalities of individual leadership and of controls in coercive institutional power matter enough not to leave the field clear for the morons or the immoral – wherever you see Trump and/or Putin on that matrix.

A useful idiot isn’t all bad but he ain’t good.

[I’m done. Discourse leading up to that below.]

[So, Victor – if we agree that Trump is NOT a useful idiot, how do we accept that it is inevitable that all politicians in power (idiots or Machiavellian) are necessarily corrupt?]

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I’m a Brit whose lived and worked in US and Russia (and Norway, and Germany and Australia and China, and …)
V is a well-travelled Russian living in Moscow.
In the ABC that follows:
B is a Russian living and working in US.

Google Translated from Russian:

A says:

[A]
So it is. A respectable user found a chiseled formula that touches me. They say that those who did not like Trump, consist of cynical crooks and fools. The rogues built a caricature on Trump, and the fools took her by accepting the ugly doll they had slipped for the true president. In the crooks, I’m not good at the reason of natural naivety, I simply do not have time to get rid of it. So there’s a place for me among the fools. Well, from the outside you know better. One only worries. I, actually, looked and listened to no caricature. Had for quite a long time the opportunity to directly contemplate, listen and read Mr. Trump himself and personally. Without, so to speak, malicious, cynical intermediaries. And on the basis of his considerable life experience, while still in a solid mind and sound memory, I am ready to state firmly, that he showed me his image of goon, boor and ignoramus. I express myself in a distinct Russian language, although he showed me his image in a different language, which I understand well. Reading sometimes the reports of those whom the respectable user calls cynical swindlers, I find that the “caricature” presented by them surprisingly closely matches my personal, unmediated perception. Maybe in the classification of a venerable user fools like me and there are those most malicious rogues, but to myself I know for sure that, as indicated, I can not be a crook by definition. So, with the proposed chased formula, something is not quite right. Or not at all. I find that the “caricature” presented by them surprisingly closely matches my personal, unmediated perception. Maybe in the classification of a venerable user fools like me and there are those most malicious rogues, but to myself I know for sure that, as indicated, I can not be a crook by definition. So, with the proposed chased formula, something is not quite right. Or not at all. I find that the “caricature” presented by them surprisingly closely matches my personal, unmediated perception. Maybe in the classification of a venerable user fools like me and there are those most malicious rogues, but to myself I know for sure that, as indicated, I can not be a crook by definition. So, with the proposed chased formula, something is not quite right. Or not at all.
[/A]

B responds:

[B]
Thank you very much for honoring me with the title of “respectable user”.

You seem to think that my formula applies to you. But from what you wrote, it does not follow.

You write that from the observations of Trump you got the idea that he was a bitch, a boor and an ignoramus. Maybe it will surprise you, but my idea is about the same. I would just add that he is still monstrously narcissistic and very superficial. In particular, it does not prepare for press conferences, it does not know how to parry the simplest traps, etc.

And I would also prefer that, other things being equal, the White House would house a delicate, precarious, erudite, diligent and modest man. The problem, however, is precisely this “with other things being equal”. Because the practical results of the president’s work on his personal pleasure depend to the smallest extent, but primarily depend, first, on his ideology and, secondly, on his willingness to follow his principles.

And from this angle I will always prefer a hamovaty and maloerudirovannogo president or prime minister, adhering to the correct principles and their conduct – polished, elegant, well-read, pleasant-in all respects to his colleague, adhering to wrong principles or declaring one thing and doing another.

The most superficial acquaintance with the history shows that it was full of terrible dictators who differed in correct speech, good manners, the art of charming the interlocutors, the ability to insert in time the mention of something sublime, and also the ability to memorize many different figures, names and facts, at least and not true. In the same way, there were (and is) full-fledged unscrupulous careerists demonstrating the same set of characteristics at the top positions. Finally, these same virtues can easily be found in characters, conducting a very destructive policy, be it Obama, Trudeau, or any of dozens of European figures of the same series.

Simply put, it all goes under the heading “you checkouts or go.”

That’s it for those who were actually quite satisfied with the ridiculous tramp’s checkers right up to the moment when he announced joining the presidential race – but who gets furious with the course he is going to – that’s exactly what he is an enemy, they are exactly who generate one after another silly inventions about the “Russian trace”, etc. Not manners, he is their enemy, but an ideology.

Plus, as I have explained many times before, those who still can not recover from shameful self-immolation in a mud puddle, when they haughtily explained for a whole year that Trump could not win under any circumstances – and eventually put themselves in their own eyes full of fools. What, as you know, is bitter and insulting.

Here they are those who together create the caricature picture of “the enemy of America and humanity”, and so successfully that Boris Efimov and Kukryniksy in coffins are turned over. [/B]

Elsewhere, C asks B to elaborate on one point:

[C] 17 Jul 2018
“because the practical results of the President’s work from his personal nice depend on the smallest measure, and in the first place depend, first, from his ideology and second, from his willingness to follow his principles”.

Could you describe the principles of trump (as you understand them): 1., 2., 3.,

And in addition to tell for what you love and don’t love trump.
[/C]

B responds:

[B] 17 Jul 2018
I don’t like him at all, and just for a few reasons.

First of all, I don’t like politicians, Generals, prosecutors, judges, and such personalities willing to make decisions about the life and death of other people, force them to go to death, etc. D., well and for other similar reasons. This work nowadays is inevitable, but nothing cute I find it.

Second, trump is extra unpleasant in a personal way. I won’t repeat myself, I’ve been mentioned his personality flaws many times.

But if still someone has to be president, it will inevitably be a man with a shitty moral guide. In particular, one that considers it possible to send others to war, to put them in jail and dispose of other people’s money.

In this case, it is possible to confine yourself to democratic politicians. That is, take out the brackets of dictators, Kings, usurpers, electoral forgers, conquerors and other skank.

Democratic same politicians personally i apportion on the scale of their aspirations to expand (or not to expand, and sometimes even and cut) the volumes of diverse forced regulation of their fellow citizens. The more a politician wants something forcibly to select or force – that, I think, is worse. And if a politician is ready for some previously existing regulatory coercion to review towards the reduction is better.

Aesthetic I’m considering something very secondary. Good when the good is still and beautiful, but if the bad is prettier, I’ll still prefer the good one.

So here’s to regulation – in the broadest sense – that trump is firmly and certainly showing himself the most deregulâtivnym president of our era. Here and direct deregulation (its scale is strongly limited by Congress and other factors), here and a much more cautious approach to new regulation, here and devolution regulation from the federal to the lower levels (which, as you and I understand, at all the optimal thing).

And he was originally promised to be like this – and so became, that is, it is for him not an undoubted opportunism, type as a kogdatoÅ¡nââ Clinton’s willingness to go to a sharp (and very correct) reduction of federal benefits just because he was afraid to block the Republican Bill for the third time – see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act#Passage_in_104th_Congress).

In that kind of aksepte
[/B]

In a private message conversation V shared those social media links because he says B represents his position, and I said:

Too cynical!

To which V suggested:

Cynical critique of politicans,
the most cynical class of all people
🙂

So, my analysis of B’s position:

[B] “You seem to think that my [caricature] formula applies to you.”

I think intelligent people can appreciate the value and risks in caricatures and the vested interests of people using them, whilst at the same time forming their own opinions (even their own caricatures) based on empirical impressions gained as an individual following politics directly through multiple journalistic channels, relying on first-hand readings wherever possible. I know I do. I share a cartoon when I see humour and a message that fits (with some level of absurdity) with my own mental picture, not the other way around. I am of course as fallible and prone to errors of interpreration as the next person – but that’s why I ask people (like V) to point them out to me.

[B] “[He’s a] bitch, boor / ignoramus /  monstrously narcissistic / very superficial,  as well as [unprepared / ignorant of briefs / unskilled in rhetorical traps] etc …”

I think we’re all in violent agreement, that whilst Trump cannot be completely without intelligence, he’s an intellectual pigmy and an ignorant moron. And since we agree, it’s safe to say the impression has been gleaned from plenty of evidence of our own eyes as well as a whole range of interested caricatures. We don’t think we hold this opinion because we are brainwashed members of the alt-left libtards, I’m guessing?

[B] [Paraphrase] – “All other things being equal” … [prefer a leader who is] …  delicate, precarious, erudite, diligent, modest, polished, elegant, well-read, pleasant-in all respects, with ideology of “correct” principles with willingness to speak and act consitently with these – as opposed to the many opposite combinations.

I say, don’t we all? So we are in violent agreement again. These are personal character qualities and intentions for which we can use the good old Greek shorthand of “virtue”. [See also “after virtue” and “philosophy of action” take on virtues.]

[B] The problem, however, is precisely this “with other things being equal”. Because the practical results of the president’s work on his personal pleasure depend to the smallest extent, but primarily depend, first, on his ideology and, secondly, on his willingness to follow his principles. And from this angle I will always prefer a [-] president or prime minister, adhering to the correct principles and their conduct –  to his colleague, adhering to wrong principles or declaring one thing and doing another.

This is precisley the philosophy of action point: The Intent may seem the dominant view, but only in the context of the Character, and only with honest evaluation of action and likely Outcomes. [Naomi Goulder – Last session towards the bottom of this post.] I think it is wrong to say only one aspect dominates, it’s always about all three and their relationships in practice. So for example: Focussing instrumentally on outcomes is tanatamount to “all ends justify any means”. Focussing on intent (ideologies, principles and aims, explicit and implicit) ignores particular the honesty of execution and evaluation of outcomes. Honesty is one of the personal character virtues. And so on.

[B] First of all, I don’t like politicians …

That is at least honest. Not liking politicians is a prejudice. Politicians are fellow humans. “We” are the politicians.

[B] [I don’t like] … personalities willing to make decisions about the life and death of other people … in particular, one that considers it possible to send others to war.

In fact cause and effect are the other way around – not trusting politicians is what causes the problem:

Politicians in leadership positions will always have to be prepared to make lethal decisions in conflict, even if (obviously) those with the preferred virtues (character qualities and intentional principles) would always prefer and work hard to avoid it. Any stronger position is pacifism – zero right to deprive any human any of their rights and freedoms or to kill a human individual under any circumstance? We have UN rights and responsibilities to help guide such decisions and actions. Politicians do things wrong, even do immoral things many would say in Blair’s case, even when they are on-the-whole of good character, but we need to be careful not to “throw baby out with the bathwater”.

[B] But if still someone has to be [leader] it will inevitably be a man with a shitty moral guide.

Absolutely not true.
[Unless your only moral standard is absolute pacifism above]

[B] Democracy …

… isn’t perfect.
[Which is just as well, because we humans aren’t perfect either.]

[B] Regulation … Trump  is showing himself to be the most deregulationist president of our era.

Sure, but regulation is a balance.
Part of the imperfection in a democracy.

In conclusion, I don’t actually find any arguments there to suggest Trump “is a good thing” even ones I might disagree with?

What have I missed??????

There are two points I would make:

Firstly, I had expected to find the idea that someone prepared to act to “shake up” existing order and imperfect institutions has some value even if they were an imbecilic moron with immoral aims and lousy character. This is true – it’s been called creative destruction for a couple of centuries, and tactically “useful idiots” can be quite, er … useful. But it leaves the question of useful to whom?

Secondly though, is it just a preference that a leader be otherwise “good” as well as being a “useful idiot” or does being “good” have some value over and above immediate instrumental outcomes? It has at least two values. One is that surely we need “good” leaders to help create the better outcomes in the ruins (opportunities) created by the destruction and also that surely we want good leaders to reflect and set the moral tone of all our actions.

If we are saying we can have separate leaders (and institutional arrangements) to do the immoral destructive stuff, and separate leaders (and institutions) to do the moral and creative stuff, then these latter “moral” institutions would need to be able to control and override the immoral ones – be able to treat tactically them as “useful (but immoral) idiots”. Sounds like theocracy. If not those with the immoral aims and objectives would be controlling or competing for the creative activities too.

You cannot be serious V?

[END]

Medium and Gaming the Message

I seem to have been following Ev Williams around the web for years.

After a few months handcrafting my own HTML and PHP pages during 1998-2000 I started with Blogger in 2001. I migrated to WordPress in 2005. Switched back and forth to Blogger (briefly) and various Google offerings but stuck with WordPress to this day across several personal, charitable, not-for-profit and commercial projects – with parallel publication of my main “hobby” (life’s-work) project to Medium since 2016 without registering as either subscriber or partner. Twitter I’ve had for over 10 years and for the past 4 or 5 is my social-media “channel” of choice. Facebook I barely tolerate as a channel for those genuinely social friends and family for whom FB is their only active web presence.

Blogger, WordPress, Twitter and Medium are all or have been Ev Williams projects.

WordPress is a wonderful eco-system – so much “free” open-source stuff in themes, widgets, plug-ins and integrations. You get what you pay for, I find, and I have ended up with quite a stack of hosts, licenses, accounts and services. Eggs in many baskets, so reasonably survivable redundancy, if now a little over complex and unsustainable in terms of cost and management effort. Ironically, the biggest unsustainable – and valuable – basketful of eggs is probably my Google / Gmail account. I’m looking at a serious rationalisation and consolidation task.

I’m thinking about Medium as my main platform. $50 a year seems a good deal. This Fast Company interview with Ev Williams from last year shows how he is thinking about the sustainability model for Medium.

Especially intrigued by this:

“figuring out signals of value that can’t be gamed”

Beyond “claps” (ie likes) and shares / comments, how is the quality of given content judged, and then rewarded by promotion and (potential) income. The current subscriber upgrade interface says:

“We’ll distribute your membership fee directly to writers based on how much you read, engage with, and applaud for their work.”

Read, engage and applaud. Ultimately it’s all algorithms, like FB and TW, the key question will be how “meta” they are to the variables being logged explicitly and how non-gameable they will be to individuals, bots and campaigns.

I wonder? Signals of value that can’t be gamed is pretty much the focus of my life’s work.