As always, glen is far more diplomatic and philosophical than I.
My reaction to Nick's innocuous words was entirely visceral: I do not see the
good/evil choice that he does.
If I am being charitable, each major candidate is a medium, channeling—
not so charitable, each is an effluent orifice, spewing—
—ideas, and words, and actions to which neither can claim authorship.
If I examine the torrents, I do find that one contains more of that which I
find personally offensive / personally harmful. But whichever stream I am
forced to swim in, it is not as if I had a choice.
I am enough of a socio/psychopath that I feel no obligation to 'protect' anyone
else from whichever stream they happen to find most distasteful.
davew
On Mon, Jun 3, 2024, at 1:33 PM, glen wrote:
> IDK. Were we to allow that
>
> a) X merely means a singular, mostly atomic, thing, and
> b) "determine" means what most of us think it means,
>
> then you'd be right. A better way to state it would be:
>
> In the US, our collection of mechanisms for selecting the most
> powerful, but not all-powerful, person in our federa[l|ated] and
> hierarchically composed government carries too much structural/systemic
> bias for a reasonable person to describe it as "democratic". Nick's
> gloss was way too vague for one to use that more refined statement to
> contradict his. If we allow democracy to be a spectrum, some more, some
> less, democratic, then Nick's statement stands well enough. But as my
> Gen Z friends are telling me on a daily basis, they're not going to
> vote in November because it doesn't matter. Biden and Trump are the
> same person. Both lie. And even if/when they're not lying, whatever
> they intend to do will be subverted by or enervated with the noxious
> intentions of the oligarchs or self-aggrandizing agendas of the rest of
> the politicians, including SCOTUS.
>
> But even that sentiment (that the whole system is Borked) contradicts
> one of the normal interpretations of the word "determined". Such a
> frothing mess my be deterministic. But if it is, it's chaotic; so much
> so that morons like Trump wouldn't be capable of "determining our
> common reality". And even if we broaden the conception of "determine"
> out to mean something Rawlsian like the veil of ignorance, that which
> of Trump or Biden is elected will (or not) somehow affect the power
> status on the other side of the veil, my Gen Z friends would say it
> does not. The Musks and Thiels will still be the most powerful people
> on the planet come next year, regardless of who is elected. So neither
> Biden nor Trump "determine" our common reality in any meaningful sense,
> though they may well add a tiny little bias in some very large space.
>
>
> On 6/1/24 08:28, Prof David West wrote:
>> Nick said,
>>
>> /"In democracy, we find some way to blend our experiences into a common
>> view."/
>>
>> If the "democracy" of which you speak is that of the New England Town Hall,
>> or that of tribal societies of long ago, you are probably reasonably
>> accurate.
>>
>> However, that sense of "democracy" no longer exists, at least here in the
>> US. Regardless of how one votes, the result is absolutely and completely
>> *assigning X the job of determining our common reality*.
>>
>> davew
>>
>> On Fri, May 31, 2024, at 9:58 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>> This (see below) got served up to me out of the blue this morning. The way
>>> it's put here, Frank and Bruce might actually agree with it. Still, it's
>>> straight Peirce. I have no idea who the author is; do any of you?
>>>
>>> Here's crucial passage.
>>>
>>> /Our understanding of reality needs a complete overhaul. Rather than
>>> viewing it as a fixed, external stage upon which events play out, we should
>>> consider it as a dynamic interplay between observers and their environment
>>> [/experiences/]. Reality, in this view, doesn’t reside out there,
>>> independent of us. Instead, reality is our interactions with the world
>>> [/one another/], shaped and defined by our observations [/experiences/].
>>> Reality is nothing but [/the telos of/] those interactions between
>>> subjects./
>>>
>>> I had to make those little changes because the author, like so many
>>> aspiring monists, after arguing against observer independence for a hundred
>>> words, slips up by implying that the "environment" is anything but
>>> something else that we have to agree upon, if we are ever going to get on
>>> with life.
>>>
>>> By the way, I stipulate that nothing in his argument has ANYTHING to do
>>> with quantum mechanics. The argument would be sound even if the idea of a
>>> quantum had never been thought. However, I like the idea of physics as
>>> some kind of language of convergent belief.
>>>
>>> By the way, In history there seem to have been two ways for people
>>> converge on a common experience, charisma and democracy. In charisma, we
>>> pick some idiot (usually a psychopath) and share his or her experience. In
>>> democracy, we find some way to blend our experiences into a common view.
>>> Sometime in the next few months we will decide which way we want to go.
>>> Do we want to assign Trump the job of determining our common reality, or do
>>> we want to continue to work it out amongst ourselves through experiment and
>>> argument.
>>>
>>> Weather gorgeous here in the mosquito infested swamp. Garden thriving. A
>>> much better year.
>>>
>>> Watch that dry line in TX. It's truly amazing. Can it really be true that
>>> I am the only weather fanatic on a list that is devoted to complexity?
>>> How can that be?
>>>
>>> NIck
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-doesnt-exist-it-is-time-to-accept-it-and-move-on-7524b494d6af
>>>
>>> <https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-doesnt-exist-it-is-time-to-accept-it-and-move-on-7524b494d6af>
>>> <https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-doesnt-exist-it-is-time-to-accept-it-and-move-on-7524b494d6af>
>>>
>>> Objective Reality Doesn’t Exist: It is Time to Embrace it and Move On
>>> <https://medium.com/machine-cognition/objective-reality-doesnt-exist-it-is-time-to-accept-it-and-move-on-7524b494d6af>
>>> The shift towards a unified, observer-dependent reality forces us to let go
>>> — once and for all — of the idea of objective reality
>>> medium.com
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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