Glen, Is there an example of a pomo discussion that actually got anywhere? Or by using the terms "getting anywhere" have I already imposed values hostile to the enterprise.
Nick -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella Sent: Friday, October 22, 2010 1:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Chomsky Supports Thompson Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-10-22 12:14 PM: > So how do we "convince" in pomo scholarship. Bribery? Threats? If > not logic, what legitimate inducements to agreement are available? "PoMo" seems, to me, to rely heavily on parallax, the approach to the truth without actually knowing anything about what's being approached. The point is to fill all the inputs and state variables with as much data (dirty data, not info, not knowledge, certainly not wisdom) as possible and see what falls out. _If_ there is a mesh or structure in there somewhere, then some of the junk you threw at it will stick and other junk will fall away. The real trick is that the structure is at least dynamic and probably pathological. So even if you discover a structure with junk set J in time T and space S, you'll have to do it again when any part of {J,T,S} changes. But that doesn't mean we can't develop methods that continually revise {J,T,S} and continually toss it out in space so that even if there is no absolute truth, there is a piecewise truth we can operate on within some reasonably small extrapolation of the most recent {J,T,S}. Anyway, that's the way it seems to me. I've often been accused of being PoMo because of my verbal support of critical rationalism and the "open society". The gods know I'm often accused of speaking nonsense. Since all ideas are initially welcome, wackos tend to dominate the upstream. It's fun swimming around in all the nonsense to try to determine which parts might survive the downstream. I've even been known to actually _read_ the output of Eddiington typewriters like the Chomskybot looking for interesting statements... kinda the same as reading individuals evolved with genetic programming. ;-) -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.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 ============================================================ 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
