Matt,
Okay, in addition to the Speedo/Goslo story, we'll go after President
Clinton. As far as reality/truth need be concerned in our everyday models,
President Clinton is of course the President. To think about it any other
way would be nonsense and/or needlessly nitpicky right? But watch your
intellectual defense mechanism put its shields up when you actually get
needlessly nitpicky. Define President. Define Clinton. What does it mean
to be President? Does that mean he is the chief executor of the country? Do
you think he really does that, or is it 50 people in the wings that do that?
If so, what else does it mean to be president. You can keep going on and on,
until you have translated the sentence "Bill Clinton is the President" into
several chapters of clarification, and if I read those several chapters, I
could probably find several more chapters worth of amendments. And so on.
Remember when Pirsig got turned off to the supposed validity of the
scientific method because it relies on hypotheses, and he found that there
was essentially an infinite amount of hypotheses to a given problem? Same
kind of deal, I think. But saying simply that he is the president has a
higher degree of quality to it. The statement's value patterns are the most
functional, and hence, the best. But it is only an infinitesimal piece of
the reality pie.
-Jamie
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