Glen -
On 10/27/2013 06:59 PM, Arlo Barnes wrote:
On 10/27/2013 03:12 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Colloquially, one might simply say "one person's mess is another's
order"...
This is a good example. It seems pretty straightforward and obvious that
this is the case, but I think it has more to do with the schema for
organisation: if the schema is not open, it is hard to discern.
Or, perhaps, that schema are illusory ... they don't actually exist
and are an epiphenomenon of the constraint sieve that is our (common)
anatomy and physiology?
I definitely agree that by one measure, schema are illusory, or more as
you suggest epiphenomenal.
(aside: nod to Carl for possibly coining the longest Subject in FRIAMic
history... it's systems all the way down!)
In my specific work, what we are roughly trying to do is characterize
the constraint sieves that you suggest. In our case, we take for
granted that of our "shared anatomy and physiology" and try to capture
what is our "shared cultural experience within specific cultures and
subcultures"... the subcultures in question are those of various
specialists. For example, the specialty POV of a Coast Guard Captain
trying to interdict smugglers vs an Al-Quaeda analysts in the CIA trying
to understand motive, intent and capability of the group and it's members.
This subdivision of specialty can go right down to the individual...
For example, trying to recreate the perspective of Edward Snowden or
Glen Greenwald... given those examples, the utility of our work
suddenly seems to take on a nefarious air, but in fact, I would claim
that Snowden and Greenwald are examples of people who, by the nature of
the lives they have chosen *want* people to share their perspectives.
What we are seeking might be considered an alternative to rhetoric. We
are not seeking to establish a strong rhetorical arguement that would
lead someone from one point of view (or more likely a fuzzy point of
view) to a specific point of view, but more aptly to allow one person to
*find* their way from their own point of view to that of another's...
In the Intelligence examples our sponsor cared about, naturally the goal
was for the Blue Team to understand the Red Team's point of view for
many reasons... but there are also many potentially non-adversarial
uses for such techniques all roughly in the category of "walk a mile in
my shoes" or "if you could just understand my point of view"...
If that's the case, then every person's mess is just the
variance/uncertainty allowed by the (dynamic) sieve that is their
body/mind. Hence, the more sieves you can chain/network together, the
more orderly the mess.
Well, this is part of my point... while one can impose more complex
order (superpose many modes of order?), the question is how to tease the
individual orders back out of that and then to use that understanding of
structure to provide contrast and comparison between individual (or
collective?) perspectives.
Some of us, of course, resist being chained together.
And others seem to seek to be coupled (if not chained) into a larger
structure/dynamic. I find this a wonderful tension in humanity,
between our lone-wolf and our pack instincts, our bachelor-stallion and
our herd-leader modes.
For example, I usually refrain from sieving someone else's mess, when
I can.
And I seem inclined to try to sieve other's and re-present it contorted
through my own expresser (what is the opposite of a sieve... a pug-mill
or a meat-grinder? I think one of the things I do here in this forum
that is surely maddening to anyone who tries to follow my missives is
precisely what I'm talking about doing automagically... to ingest one
point of view and regurgitate it from a slightly different one (with
added ingredients from earlier meals, of course, just to push the
metaphor hard)...
But because my sieve is ... uh ... coarse-grained and irregular ...
when I do sieve a mess, I usually just make a bigger mess. Somehow,
the input must be leaky.
But it is your very re-combobulation of the conversations others have
here that I find entertaining/useful/fascinating. I have *enough* of a
sense of your background/understanding of the world to appreciate some
of the odder things you regurgitate here... and they almost *always*
inform me in some useful way. The meta-dialogs between you and Marcus
are often even richer in that sense, each of your POVs being similar yet
distinct enough to seem to add some coherence.
- Steve
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