From: kharin (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Wed May 22 2002 - 08:28:14 MDT
Talking about references, this is becoming a more and more subtle matter, especially in the age of the Internet. Too much memetic noise.
I suspect it's less a matter of noise per se, and more a matter of memetic replication. The very structure of the Internet tends to be recursive, which makes verification of sources more difficult, but which increases the need to do so (since every iteration of replication may well entail revision, which means that arguments may become increasingly divided from the original controls, methodologies, evidence, examples etc.
I concur that arguments are more important than authors, but I fear that the author function will be with us for sometime.
Recently, I stumbled upon a Web page presenting the results of an experiment of "cloud busting" using Wilhelm Reich's "orgone energy". Some people allegedly willed the clouds to dissipate.
I recall the late Ken Kesey trying something similar during a solar eclipse. His efforts were less than effective :-)
Everything looks perfectly scientific, except that "I don't like" the results.
Which remains a feeble argument even in cases like this. I don't think the Catholic church 'liked' much of what Galileo or Darwin had to say.
Being skeptical about such things, what am I supposed to do with that? Should I spend some days to investigate the author.
Ad hominem concepts are less applicable than the need for transparency in presenting arguments so that one may note methodologies. As the webpage you linked to provided some detail on that there would be no need to investiaget the author. In this case, I'm reminded of how people can find specific messages in deliberately vague horoscopes, since the experiment observes effects, not causes. Since it admits that it controls were poor I'd suggest that a stiff breeze is a better candidate for cause than orgone energy.
That said, had you not posted the reference, comment on the issue would have been possible.
I can tell you about the one I was talking about. It is just what I described, plus a more generalized theory of conflicts to provide the dialectic antithesis, plus transgression (hyperbasis) instead of synthesis for the third Hegelian dialectic step, minus the final triumph of a class or another which would end history and make this scheme inelegant.
Elegance is rather less of a consideration then predictability (since that is probably the only accurate way to determine the accuracy of social models), since Fukuyama's end of history is, by definition, unproveable. The same might be said of Desai's revsion of Marx to the point where communism will triumph after global capitalism has permeated each and even society (which is about as verifiable as the prospect of the messiah returning). That said, it does raise the issue of how you would establish predictability for this system?
There is still a degree of causality from a higher point of view (I reserve the term determinism for concepts like Laplace's Demon). Where does it come from? The people act freely, but whatever they do, they are always within the constraints of their desires and the available means.
I believe Joe Dees was fond of quoting Maurice Merleau-Ponty on this, to the effect that our freedom gears itself to our environment, and chooses, from among the possibilities it detects within it, which ones to will and strive into actualization. In which case, I am unsure as to how helpful that division really is. As for Laplace, I was rather under the impression that Godel and Heisenberg had undermined the demon concept, though I could easily be mistaken on that point.
I was not talking about anything like brownian motion, but... Huh? A reference!
The Fodor article is at:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n21/fodo2021.htm
---- This message was posted by kharin to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25497>
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