Glen, I think there is confusion over the thing to be explained. The question of celebrity in this case is not "why should you trust someone who loves Garth Brooks?" but "why should you trust Garth Brooks?" Why do we treat these people as if they are part of our extended family? What do you really know about Garth Brooks that makes you think you should buy a car he recommends? Why would you care who he is married to? Surely this type of interest and trust used to be limited to village members. Surely then, that type of interest and trust is being extended to a group other than the one it evolved to extend to.
I'm not really sure how the argument goes from there, but that part seemed relatively straightforward. Eric On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 08:52 AM, "glen e. p. ropella" <[email protected]> wrote: > Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 11/24/2009 09:10 PM: >> I am not at all sure what it means to have my rhetoric rejected. My facts, >> yes; my logic, sure. But my RHETORIC? > >Rhetoric is the language we build up around and/or to explain facts. >Logic is merely a formal type of rhetoric. The implicit persuasive >attempts in what you said earlier about a confusion of trust, is >rhetoric, not fact (or logic). > >I reject rhetoric when i can imagine other, different rhetoric built up >around the same facts. I think it would be trivially easy to build up a >different structure of language around the facts you (and >MacLuhan(?) >are building yours around. > >My rhetoric is that we need not extend, ham-handedly, the coarse trust >relationships wielded by our ancestors. Trust relationships can become >articulated and more fine grained (and can also become thicker and more >coarse grained) if the need arises. So, my rhetoric is that we haven't >been _forced_ into more associations. We've actually _grown_ more >associative power in the form of an extended physiology. Prior to >technologies like sophisticated language, the telegraph, air travel, >cell phones, and facebook, our "dunbar number" may well have been >limited to the size of our neocortex. Nowadays, though, we've >outsourced part of our neocortex to the tools around us and, hence, have >a much larger "dunbar number". After society collapses again, trust >will coarsen. But for now, it's very fine-grained and includes a bushy >extension into Facebook "[un]friending". Those of us who know how to >use the technology have more associative power than those of us who don't. > >Celebrity is NOT, then a confusion between "village" trust and >"world" >trust. It's a mechanism for categorizing the larger population of >people with which we associate. E.g. Do you like Country & Western >music? No? You don't LUUUV Garth Brooks!?!? OK then, that helps me >determine where you lie in my (complex) trust matrix. > >Of course, by saying it this way, I make it very clear that you are >equally capable and justified in rejecting my rhetoric, because there >are no facts in the rhetoric itself. The rhetoric is built up around >the facts. And you don't have to reject the facts in order to reject >the rhetoric. > >-- >glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com > > >============================================================ >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
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