[Bill,
June 25, 2009]
Thought for the day
[Bill,
June 25, 2009]
Abstractions and categories
Abstraction consists of taking one thing out of a complex whole and seeing it as distinct. Categorization consists of grouping things in sets, and then talking about the sets.
Categorization, thanks for Godel, naturally points to something higher than itself. Intellectuals who are "stuck" in atheism simply don't realize they've attempted to create a closed categorical system. It's an intellectual impossibility. You need, at a certain point, to point to something outside the system of sets sooner or later.
Abstraction is a little different. It's problem is one of emphasis. Once you've removed a single part of the whole, you change the emphasis, and in doing so, may do violence to the whole. Or at least create selection bias — you start to see the part because you're looking for it. While abstraction can be a normal process of analysis, excessive abstraction can lead to serious thought distortions.
Example: Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. A Republican. If we note he's a Republican and use his recent adultery as a tool to bash Republicans, we are guilty of both abstraction and category errors. Abstraction because there's no philosophical connection between the GOP political platform and adultery — neither party officially supports adultery. To abstract "Republican" or "Democrat" is not helpful to discuss the situation.
Then, if we condemn Republicanism for Sanford's behavior, we end up with a category error. Sanford is a Republican, but it is not his Republicanism that caused his adultery.
Now, one could say that Republicans are hypocrites, and hypocrisy is the hallmark of Republicanism. This would be a similar category error — hypocrisy, like adultery, is widely distributed.
So what am I getting at? Remember abstractions and categories are mere tools for thinking about things. Categories have fuzzy edges (even Darwin didn't know what to do with the platypus.) Abstractions by nature distort a whole. Try to account for both and you'll avoid lots of errors and reduce the risk of crankdom.
Categorization, thanks for Godel, naturally points to something higher than itself. Intellectuals who are "stuck" in atheism simply don't realize they've attempted to create a closed categorical system. It's an intellectual impossibility. You need, at a certain point, to point to something outside the system of sets sooner or later.
Abstraction is a little different. It's problem is one of emphasis. Once you've removed a single part of the whole, you change the emphasis, and in doing so, may do violence to the whole. Or at least create selection bias — you start to see the part because you're looking for it. While abstraction can be a normal process of analysis, excessive abstraction can lead to serious thought distortions.
Example: Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. A Republican. If we note he's a Republican and use his recent adultery as a tool to bash Republicans, we are guilty of both abstraction and category errors. Abstraction because there's no philosophical connection between the GOP political platform and adultery — neither party officially supports adultery. To abstract "Republican" or "Democrat" is not helpful to discuss the situation.
Then, if we condemn Republicanism for Sanford's behavior, we end up with a category error. Sanford is a Republican, but it is not his Republicanism that caused his adultery.
Now, one could say that Republicans are hypocrites, and hypocrisy is the hallmark of Republicanism. This would be a similar category error — hypocrisy, like adultery, is widely distributed.
So what am I getting at? Remember abstractions and categories are mere tools for thinking about things. Categories have fuzzy edges (even Darwin didn't know what to do with the platypus.) Abstractions by nature distort a whole. Try to account for both and you'll avoid lots of errors and reduce the risk of crankdom.
[Bill,
June 21, 2009]
OK, so I commented on the autodidact's web page
Said I wouldn't, but I'm on deadline, so I did to procrastinate. A quick post here and then it's back to work:
He posted the following:
I wrote:
He wrote:
I wrote:
Why am I doing this? (Besides wasting time.) I admit I find logical madness fascinating, and this is a great example. Why yes, there are folks who want to establish a Christian theocracy in this country. I don't think, given the current state of affairs, that they're a particular threat to anyone. Neither is this guy a threat, with his theory of "demand-style communism" which will somehow avoid the excesses (my term) of Stalin, Lenin and Mao. In his implementing communism posts (no link), he seems to trust himself to carry out a new communist plan in which reasonableness will prevail through massive re-education of the populace.
That is, he's figured things out logically, and now if everyone just agrees with his thinking, they'll give up their false beliefs and superstitions and we'll all have peace and prosperity and walk in the sun.
See liberal emancipation narrative, below.
Elsewhere on his blog, he talks about what will stand in the way of the New and Improved Proletariat Revolution: Paraphrasing, it's the Christians who have all the guns. Oh, so that's what's he's so worried about. Christians might fight back and stand in the way of his plan for mankind's salvation.
Emotionally sensitive. Childish. Grandiose. I suspect an addiction somewhere in there.
He posted the following:
There really is a Dominionist movement (not a conspiracy, it's out in the open) to establish a Christian theocracy.
I wrote:
Larry,
I really wouldn't worry so much about Christian Dominionism. Not likely to happen.
Cheers.
He wrote:
I'm sure George Tiller, those killed on 9/11, those killed in Oklahoma city, Matthew Shepard, the millions of women losing their reproductive rights, the thousands of people tortured by the Bush administration, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan will take much comfort in your charming and quaint optimism.
In other words: You're a fucktard. Piss off.
I wrote:
Larry,
George Tiller was killed in a Christian Church. Makes it a family spat.
9/11's crimes were caused by Muslim extremists, not Christian dominionists.
Timothy McVeigh was not exactly a good Catholic and was not seeking to build a Christian theocracy.
Matthew Shepard was killed by a defendant who used a "gay panic" defense, which makes the murder a family spat.
Afghanistan — hey, don't attack our cities from your country, and we won't invade.
The Iraq War, and as we now see, torture, appear to be bipartisan affairs, uniting a strange coalition for and against that cut across all sorts of demographic lines.
Reproductive rights? You mean men's reproductive rights or the next generation's? Oh, those rights don't exist in your world.
I'll give you this much, though. At least you're wrong. In many cases, you have things exactly wrong, which is encouraging, because it means you're asking the right questions and logically concluding the exact wrong answer most of the time. That's not what I expected when I clicked through here. I thought you'd just be crazy.
Cheers,
FT (apparently) Bill
Why am I doing this? (Besides wasting time.) I admit I find logical madness fascinating, and this is a great example. Why yes, there are folks who want to establish a Christian theocracy in this country. I don't think, given the current state of affairs, that they're a particular threat to anyone. Neither is this guy a threat, with his theory of "demand-style communism" which will somehow avoid the excesses (my term) of Stalin, Lenin and Mao. In his implementing communism posts (no link), he seems to trust himself to carry out a new communist plan in which reasonableness will prevail through massive re-education of the populace.
That is, he's figured things out logically, and now if everyone just agrees with his thinking, they'll give up their false beliefs and superstitions and we'll all have peace and prosperity and walk in the sun.
See liberal emancipation narrative, below.
Elsewhere on his blog, he talks about what will stand in the way of the New and Improved Proletariat Revolution: Paraphrasing, it's the Christians who have all the guns. Oh, so that's what's he's so worried about. Christians might fight back and stand in the way of his plan for mankind's salvation.
Emotionally sensitive. Childish. Grandiose. I suspect an addiction somewhere in there.
[Bill,
June 21, 2009]
Remember what I said about the liberal narrative?
Well, here it is in all its self-congratulatory glory.
"Liberals ended slavery, liberals got woman [sic] the right to vote, liberals created Social Security, Medicaid and a minimum wage, they wrote the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, they have done all of those things in at every moment, for every one of those things in this country, what did conservatives do, they opposed every one of those things, including your right to vote (pointing at Mika)."
See? To a liberal, it's constant emancipation ... A liberal would read the above paragraph, and say, what's wrong with that?
Well, the abolitionists were devout Christians, for starters. The exact sort of people who are cursed today for opposing abortion-on-demand. Liberals fear people like the abolitionists and follow the arguments, unwittingly, of the anti-abolitionists. So, no, liberals don't get this one.
Liberals got women the right to vote, indeed.
Social Security — a multi-generational Ponzi scheme. Privatized, it might've had a chance.
Medicaid and minimum wage ... yep, liberal ideas and good ones, depending where you put the minimum wage.
Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were geographical disputes more than liberal/conservative, and in fact, more Republicans supported these bills than Democrats.
Clean Air Act — first one signed by Eisenhower (R). Second one signed by Nixon (R). Third one signed by George H.W. Bush. So shut the fuck up.
Clean Water Act — first one signed by Nixon (R). Second by Carter (D). Third by Reagan (R).
Note also that today's liberals would be unrecognizable as such in the 1960s, much less today. They are far to the left of Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson and similar folks. And let's not pretend Woodrow Wilson would be recognizable as liberal in today's world. OSHA and EPA, btw, that was Nixon.
But to many liberals, this emancipation narrative is what's in the back of their mind. Anything they like that happened — that was progressive. Anything not — that was conservative.
And where the conservatives right about anything. After all, we conservatives have apparently lost every battle.
Cold War — liberals wanted unilateral disarmament. Ronnie Reagan was going to kill us all, liberals solemnly opined. And then the wall came down.
The cities — decades of liberal rule and welfare statism made them hell holes. Then voters elected folks like social liberal/economic conservative Rudy Giuliani, who turned the NYC around despite constant vilification from liberals.
Supply-side tax cuts and Friedmanesque economics. They worked, until both parties got cute and decided to create a credit bubble that inflated the price of housing to unrealistic levels. But let's be fair — the idea to force banks to lend to folks they didn't want to lend to — that was a liberal idea. And conservatives tried to reign it in, and were called chicken littles by Barney Frank. Then conservatives tried to exploit the bubble, and it blew up in their face.
Abortion-on-demand? Ultra-sound proved them wrong, but they blithely ignored it.
Global warming? Changed it to "climate change" when the earth began cooling.
Currying up to dictators? Liberals backed Stalin.
What else worldwide did liberals bring? Oh, socialism throughout Europe. The enervation of the British. Cowardice before communism.
And by the way, since the Democrats returned to Congress in 2007, the economy has kinda tanked, hasn't it?
Every battle — no. Some battles. But conservatism isn't about avoiding change altogether. It's about prudent change. It's about sticking with core conservative values that make sense and are time tested.
"Liberals ended slavery, liberals got woman [sic] the right to vote, liberals created Social Security, Medicaid and a minimum wage, they wrote the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, they have done all of those things in at every moment, for every one of those things in this country, what did conservatives do, they opposed every one of those things, including your right to vote (pointing at Mika)."
See? To a liberal, it's constant emancipation ... A liberal would read the above paragraph, and say, what's wrong with that?
Well, the abolitionists were devout Christians, for starters. The exact sort of people who are cursed today for opposing abortion-on-demand. Liberals fear people like the abolitionists and follow the arguments, unwittingly, of the anti-abolitionists. So, no, liberals don't get this one.
Liberals got women the right to vote, indeed.
Social Security — a multi-generational Ponzi scheme. Privatized, it might've had a chance.
Medicaid and minimum wage ... yep, liberal ideas and good ones, depending where you put the minimum wage.
Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were geographical disputes more than liberal/conservative, and in fact, more Republicans supported these bills than Democrats.
Clean Air Act — first one signed by Eisenhower (R). Second one signed by Nixon (R). Third one signed by George H.W. Bush. So shut the fuck up.
Clean Water Act — first one signed by Nixon (R). Second by Carter (D). Third by Reagan (R).
Note also that today's liberals would be unrecognizable as such in the 1960s, much less today. They are far to the left of Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson and similar folks. And let's not pretend Woodrow Wilson would be recognizable as liberal in today's world. OSHA and EPA, btw, that was Nixon.
But to many liberals, this emancipation narrative is what's in the back of their mind. Anything they like that happened — that was progressive. Anything not — that was conservative.
And where the conservatives right about anything. After all, we conservatives have apparently lost every battle.
Cold War — liberals wanted unilateral disarmament. Ronnie Reagan was going to kill us all, liberals solemnly opined. And then the wall came down.
The cities — decades of liberal rule and welfare statism made them hell holes. Then voters elected folks like social liberal/economic conservative Rudy Giuliani, who turned the NYC around despite constant vilification from liberals.
Supply-side tax cuts and Friedmanesque economics. They worked, until both parties got cute and decided to create a credit bubble that inflated the price of housing to unrealistic levels. But let's be fair — the idea to force banks to lend to folks they didn't want to lend to — that was a liberal idea. And conservatives tried to reign it in, and were called chicken littles by Barney Frank. Then conservatives tried to exploit the bubble, and it blew up in their face.
Abortion-on-demand? Ultra-sound proved them wrong, but they blithely ignored it.
Global warming? Changed it to "climate change" when the earth began cooling.
Currying up to dictators? Liberals backed Stalin.
What else worldwide did liberals bring? Oh, socialism throughout Europe. The enervation of the British. Cowardice before communism.
And by the way, since the Democrats returned to Congress in 2007, the economy has kinda tanked, hasn't it?
Every battle — no. Some battles. But conservatism isn't about avoiding change altogether. It's about prudent change. It's about sticking with core conservative values that make sense and are time tested.