Ian, My problem with your post was that you insert a kind of in-house argument about the nature of academic discourse into a thread where Platt is arguing that academics are a bunch of bed wetting liberals crying wolf so they can justify marching people off to Gulags. The utter sarcasm of Poot's post seemed totally to have passed you by.
Further comments on specifics: > [Case] > Newton just about single handedly invented modern science. His reluctance > to publish and his battles with Hook and Royal Society are legendary. But > this is the kind of office politics that is inevitable in any human > institution. [IG] Tell me something I didn't know. And when you've done that tell me something relevant to my point. Inevitable, take note, your word. [Case] The Royal Society printed what may have been the first scientific journal. My point was that from the beginning there were in-house arguments about publications rights, giving credit where it was due etc. etc. But these were in-house office politics not liberal/conservative politics. When scientists have to deal with real politics science suffers. The fact that flaws in human institutions are inevitable does not mean we should abandon the institutions or any attempts to correct such flaws as can be corrected. Nor do the existence of inevitable flaws invalidate the enterprise. [IG] I'm NOT talking about "mistakes" nor am I condemning it. I'm talking about situations where the balance is closer to rhretoric than objective logic. Of course I support peer review. But the further it gets from simple repeatable cases, further from Newtonian mechanics, the more it depends on rhetoric. Inevitable, as you said. [Case] Newtonian mechanics are nothing if not mathematical. Mathematics is persuasive because it is non-rhetorical. You can go way beyond Newton and still employ mathematics unambiguously. Platt is claiming that the current global crisis is being manufactured through statistical lies. My claim is that peer review moderates against this. I do not think statistics in scientific journals can be manipulated in this way. And of such manipulation survives peer review there are plenty of journal readers to correct the problems. [IG] I'm fully aware of that risk and suffer the slings and arrows constantly, lest I forget. Which is good. In a community like this though, I'd expect people to at least see the middle-ground I'm pointing at, praticularly as it was Pirsig that pointed out to most of us that there was something valuable underlying these damn subjects and objects we're all so quick to divide the world up into. (postmodernish-cult-of-professionals ? you'll have to elaborate.) [Case] I listened to a debate between Dennett and Roty not long ago were in Roty seemed to be claiming the lawyers and scientists were on an equal footing because they were both professional communities of experts seeking after truth. There are kinds and degrees of truth and by the time your analysis reaches a point where all of them are on equal footing, all relevance has long since vanished. Sure the universe is one, so what? [IG] I'd be much obliged if you could point out where I said "any". That would be plain wrong. (Stop excluding middles - "forced" to make a choice between two, I'd make the same one as you, I'm an engineer / technologist / scientist through and through, but "given" a free choice, I choose the middle.) [Case] Again my point was made in the context of the discussion at hand. Platt is asking how one picks a valid source. I don't think it is a safe to say that people do know these things. We have people here quoting as authorities bloggers, random forum posts and just about anything else they turn up in a Google search. There is often not discernment at all as to what is credible. Platt would put "some-guy's-blog" on an equal footing with Science and Nature. [IG] You telling me ? Blogger of this parish ? [Case] Yes I am. As a blogger would you claim that the stuff you blog should be treated as authoritative? Traditional news outlets at least in the past lived or died on their reputations. You might not like the way your local paper said things but you had a pretty good idea of how to judge its contents. Those kinds of relationships between reader and writer are not as clear as they once were. [IG] A "seal of approval" is a social phenomenon, reliant on rhetoric and social authority ... good when used appropriately, but not foolproof over intellect, and better understood as a result. That's largely what Booth's paper is about. Jeez Pirsig was a teacher of rhetoric ! [Case] The "seal of approval" conferred by publication in an academic journal still means something. It means what the article in question meets certain high standards. Far higher standards than what is published in almost any other form of discourse. This is true of nearly all professional journals. They are written by people who know what they are talking about for people trained to understand them. Certainly when they have a position, they are seeking to persuade. But this is a far cry from the use of rhetoric in other areas. > [Case] > To abandon this goal to some idealized democratization of intellect is > sheer folly. [IG] Abandon. Jeez where did you dream that. No such words ever cross my lips. [Case] What you said was, "Only the long run, evolved, emergent outcome of patterns in large bodies of free dialogue and narrative get close to "truth"." If my interpretation of your meaning is skewed I apologize but maybe you could elaborate. > [Case] > Society can eventually learn to love its contrarians but by God they > ought to have to work for that love. There should be obstacles in the path > of wackos. [IG] There are penty, thank god. But equally, thank god, they are only obstacles, not exclusions. It's not all or nothing. Repeat after me ... [Case] Once again the point in this thread was Platt's contention that academics are a bunch of bedwetting liberals who throw up obstacles to prevent right thinking good Americans from having their say. We are safe in just ignoring the scientific community because they are no better than lawyers, they are just grinding personal axes and if they were worth a crap they would get real jobs... > [Case] > If society is going to be totally open minded there is not telling what > kind of nonsense will pass as common sense. [IG] Totally !?! you extremist. I never used such a word. I'd like to think no nonsense will ever pass me as common sense, but it might strike me as worth thinking about. [Case] No, you want to take both extremes seriously so you can find a path down the middle. Well look around, the middle has shifted because liberals have tolerated the nonsense issuing from cranks. It has become common sense that government is wasteful, politicians are crooked and academics are bed wetting liberals. I have recently renounced tolerance as a virtue. It is not. And the middle of the road looked a lot better when it was closer to the actual middle of the road. In the mean time all I ever got out of sitting on the fence was aching nuts. [IG] We're talking quality ... some ideas are better than others, but the better ones ain't necessarily "totally" right, nor the inferior ones "totally" wrong for that matter. Is that so hard to accept, or are you a totalitarian at heart ? I'm disappointed case. [Case] No we are talking about how to judge Quality and the MoQ is next to worthless in this respect. Everyone here judges Quality in light of their preexisting prejudices. When an idea is so bad that all you can say for it is that is not "totally" wrong what respect does it deserve? If all that is good about it is its sentence structure that baby belongs out in the yard with the bathwater. Conversely when a good idea is not "totally" right, this does not mean we should toss it because it has faults. Good ideas should not be treated as equal to bad ideas in establishing middle ground. Yes, I am embracing this new intolerance with a vengeance. Having one foot in a bucket of boiling water and the other in a bucket of ice does not average out to being cozy. We are dealing here with people who think that the extinction of a species is no big deal; especially if we can save thirty cents a month on our power bill. It doesn't really matter if the ice caps melt because it could be good for the real estate market. It's ok if we pollute the air and water because our descendants will be clever enough to figure out something else to drink and breathe. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
