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Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

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thompnickson2

Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

All--

Glen wrote:

I have been dope-slapped for not listening patiently to the arguments of others, but there are moments when I cannot, cannot, FOLLOW what you guys are saying, and, at that point, I behave like my dog used to behave when on a walk together I became too interested in a bird or an anthill: he would go off down the trail a hundred feet, lie in the sun, and wait for me. Meanwhile, as I lie here in the sun, I reflect on Steve’s:

I first encountered the idea of a "strawman" NOT as something that an adversary would create as an easily taken apart effigy for your real argument, but rather as an armature for consensual building of an idea. More like a stick figure with the general proportions of a final sculpture that 2 or more would build together.

I think this is a marvelous demonstration of the intentionality of metaphors. I think it’s quite possible that not only are we working with different definitions of strawman, we are working with different understandings of metaphor. “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? To me, a metaphor is a powerful approximation whose power arises from the fact that it momentarily substitutes for the confusing facts before us a clear and integrated “image” of how things are. If we “get” a metaphor, we INSTANTLY and paradoxically grasp two things about it: first, that it is pentratingly RIGHT; and second, that it is obviously WRONG in some regards. A metaphor becomes a scientific model when (1) we carefully lay out what the “image” is, 2, explicitly lay out which of its entailments we take to be right and which we take to be wrong. There is a third step, which is much harder to describe in which we some how agree that the first two steps have been taken fairly. Some entailments cannot be denied, others are properly expendable. For instance, one could argue that Darwin’s Pigeon-coop selection model can be deployed without the entailment of a “breeder”, picking and choosing individual pidgeons for breeding, but cannot be deployed without the entailment of a “flock in a coop”, i.e., a bunch of birds so isolated from other bunches of birds that the effects of the breeders choices can accumulate.

The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a metaphor at the first state. We did not all get the same “image” when it was first deployed. That failure is instructive for me because it reminds me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete. Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument. For 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X. In other words, we must be humble in our use of metaphors.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2020 12:14 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] privacy games

On 5/27/20 10:36 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

> I think I'm getting more of the gist. It seems to me that you could be talking about iterative or superposive compositing of multiple encoders? Iterative, however, would not allow for decoding by *either* but instead would require decoding by *both* (and in the correct order). Superposive would be more like encoding the signal with two distinct encoders and then combining (shuffling, concatenating, ???) the two resulting signals such that applying either of the decoders would yield a combination of signal and (apparent) noise. If the combining method were simple/obvious like concatenation then the decoded signal would be half signal and half-gibberish, otherwise, the combining method itself might stand in for it's own *encoding*, complicating things further.

Yes, in 2nd order, I'm suggesting parallel/orthogonal/side-by-side composition, not serial/recursive composition. But given the parallelism theorem (anything parallel can be simulated serially), I don't see any reason why the *sequential* [†] application couldn't produce the same result as simultaneous/side-by-side application. The data would have to be [quasi]independent for that to happen, though.

> With this example in hand, I'm trying to sort out my own question/observation above. In the case of Zen++ and Pirsig, I would say that his encoding method was in fact functionally very composable, probably hierarchical. [...] As I reread what I write here, I wonder if this is a particularly bad example. To the extent that this fits what you are talking about, it is an extremely rich/layered/convoluted example.

I don't think it's a bad example, at all. It's definitely a critical example which might be used to tear my whole structure down. So, that means it's a good one. But given Jon's digestion of EricS's contributions as *eidetic* (I suppose in the sense of fully-detailed, concrete, and vivid), it strikes me that Pirsig's presentation is inherently particular. So, I think it's more an example of 1st order privacy. I think 1st order is well-exemplified by R. Rosen's defn of complexity (no largest model), von Neumann's claim about Gödel's incompleteness (|descriptions| > |described|), etc. Pirsig is providing a vivid description of a *thing* and any (presumably finite) thing can yield infinite descriptions.

> Interesting that Pirsig harps on his own definition of "quality" (not unlike Alexander's "Quality Without a Name") throughout. I'm not sure if you mean it in the same sense though?

I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I looked at Pirsig. I was deflated by Lila.

> This brings up a struggle I have that might be worth sharing in this

> venue on the off-chance that others here struggle with the same. When you first started using the term "straw man" or "strawman" I took it to mean something modestly different than you intended. I first encountered the idea of a "strawman" NOT as something that an adversary would create as an easily taken apart effigy for your real argument, but rather as an armature for consensual building of an idea. More like a stick figure with the general proportions of a final sculpture that 2 or more would build together.

> I see your throwdown here of 1,2,3rd order privacies as *that kind of* strawman and the process for the rest of us being to offer adjustments/additions/modifications to it to try to shape it into a more elaborated "figure" that we might all come to share not only an understanding of, but a stake in.

I call those "skeletons" or "scaffolds", not "straw men". but you're right that I surreptitiously switched rhetorical modes. My 1st step was to steelman the EricC/Nick principle by yapping about the information content of a surface as a representation of what goes on beyond the surface. My 2nd step was to provide scaffolding for how we can demonstrate privacy *without* violating the steelmanned principle.

The tack is to (somewhat constructively) show EricC/Nick that they should not argue against (weak forms of) privacy.

> Reading reviews of your book reference (Magus), I am reminded of Jim

> Dodge's book "Stone Junction" which I also read twice (1990 and 2015) with less distance of understanding but definitely *additional* if not significantly *different* decoders.

> [...]

> "A post-psychedelic coming-of-age fable [...]

Now *that* catches my eyeballs.

[†] I've never been entirely clear on sequential vs. serial. But I tend to think of serial as implying some kind of closure property ... things that went before are somehow similar to the things that come after. Sequential seems to me to be more about iterative application with fewer restrictions on what's produced. So, e.g. if the process is *open* (or the domain is the entire universe) the result of f() need not be similar the result of g(f()). So, serial would be more like recursion and sequential would be more like iteration (in general). But I'm happy to be corrected.

☣ uǝlƃ

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gepr

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

To be clear, I did NOT write that.

On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Glen wrote:
>
> I have been dope-slapped for not listening patiently to the arguments of others, but there are moments when I cannot, cannot, FOLLOW what you guys are saying, and, at that point, I behave like my dog used to behave when on a walk together I became too interested in a bird or an anthill: he would go off down the trail a hundred feet, lie in the sun, and wait for me. Meanwhile, as I lie here in the sun, I reflect on Steve’s:

--
☣ uǝlƃ

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

All--

I apologize for the misattribution.

Not only can't I follow the text, I can't even follow whose writing it.

Sorry glen,

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2020 1:06 PM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

To be clear, I did NOT write that.

On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Glen wrote:
>
> I have been dope-slapped for not listening patiently to the arguments of others, but there are moments when I cannot, cannot, FOLLOW what you guys are saying, and, at that point, I behave like my dog used to behave when on a walk together I became too interested in a bird or an anthill: he would go off down the trail a hundred feet, lie in the sun, and wait for me. Meanwhile, as I lie here in the sun, I reflect on Steve’s:

--
☣ uǝlƃ

-- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-. . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
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gepr

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

I'll try again to describe why constant talk of metaphors is distracting nonsense, at least for me. When I use a word, that word is a variable bound to some context. We can bind any string of letters to any subset of any context. So, a string like "xyz" can be bound to "that green thing in the distance". Even *after* you and Joe or whoever later come to call "that green thing in the distance" by the string "tank", I can *still* call it an "xyz". I can do this for decades. "xyz" need have no other binding for which to "metaphorize". So, regardless of what *you* think when you read the string "xyz", I'm not using a metaphor when I say "xyz". You may think it's a metaphor until you're blue in the face. But I didn't use a metaphor. >8^D

For me, a "strawman" has always meant that 1 single thing: rhetorical bad faith rewording. I've never used a straw man as a scare crow. I've never used it to train in combat. I've never used it to burn in effigy. I've never used it to mean anything but that one thing. So, therefore, it's not a metaphor. It's a meaningless string of characters bound to that one thing.

Sure, *you* can read whatever I write however you *want* to read what I write. That's the very point of the privacy-despite-the-"holographic"-principle threads. How you read it CAN BE entirely unrelated to how I write it. When you *impute* metaphor status into arbitrary strings you see on your screen, you are *inscribing* your own understanding of the world *onto* the thing you're looking at. You are *not* blank-slate, receiving a message.

Now, if you listened empathetically, you might choose to *ask* the author "Did you mean that as a metaphor?" You could even be a bit rude and continue with "Or are you too stupid to know the history of that string of characters?" This is a common thing. E.g. when someone uses a string of characters they grew up with to innocently refer to, say, a marginalized group, without *knowing* the marginalized group thinks that string of characters is offensive. Like wearing a Washington Red Skins jersey. Or when a 12 year old white kid sings along with some rap lyrics.

You have options when you decode a string. It doesn't always need to be metaphorical. Even if, deep down, you're a complete pedant and you absolutely must point out that everything's always a metaphor, you CAN suppress that need for a little while ... sometimes ... just sometimes ... you have that power.

So, no. Strawman is not a metaphor. If it helps you, I can stop using the string "strawman" and use "xyz" for that fallacy from now on. Please avoid the xyz fallacy.

On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> [...] “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? [...]
>
> The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a metaphor at the first state. We did not all get the same “image” when it was first deployed. That failure is instructive for me because it reminds me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete. Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument. For 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X. In other words, we must be humble in our use of metaphors.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

Good, Glen.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:50 AM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'll try again to describe why constant talk of metaphors is distracting nonsense, at least for me. When I use a word, that word is a variable bound to some context. We can bind any string of letters to any subset of any context. So, a string like "xyz" can be bound to "that green thing in the distance". Even *after* you and Joe or whoever later come to call "that green thing in the distance" by the string "tank", I can *still* call it an "xyz". I can do this for decades. "xyz" need have no other binding for which to "metaphorize". So, regardless of what *you* think when you read the string "xyz", I'm not using a metaphor when I say "xyz". You may think it's a metaphor until you're blue in the face. But I didn't use a metaphor. >8^D

For me, a "strawman" has always meant that 1 single thing: rhetorical bad faith rewording. I've never used a straw man as a scare crow. I've never used it to train in combat. I've never used it to burn in effigy. I've never used it to mean anything but that one thing. So, therefore, it's not a metaphor. It's a meaningless string of characters bound to that one thing.

Sure, *you* can read whatever I write however you *want* to read what I write. That's the very point of the privacy-despite-the-"holographic"-principle threads. How you read it CAN BE entirely unrelated to how I write it. When you *impute* metaphor status into arbitrary strings you see on your screen, you are *inscribing* your own understanding of the world *onto* the thing you're looking at. You are *not* blank-slate, receiving a message.

Now, if you listened empathetically, you might choose to *ask* the author "Did you mean that as a metaphor?" You could even be a bit rude and continue with "Or are you too stupid to know the history of that string of characters?" This is a common thing. E.g. when someone uses a string of characters they grew up with to innocently refer to, say, a marginalized group, without *knowing* the marginalized group thinks that string of characters is offensive. Like wearing a Washington Red Skins jersey. Or when a 12 year old white kid sings along with some rap lyrics.

You have options when you decode a string. It doesn't always need to be metaphorical. Even if, deep down, you're a complete pedant and you absolutely must point out that everything's always a metaphor, you CAN suppress that need for a little while ... sometimes ... just sometimes ... you have that power.

So, no. Strawman is not a metaphor. If it helps you, I can stop using the string "strawman" and use "xyz" for that fallacy from now on. Please avoid the xyz fallacy.

On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> [...] “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? [...]
>
> The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a metaphor at the first state. We did not all get the same “image” when it was first deployed. That failure is instructive for me because it reminds me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete. Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument. For 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X. In other words, we must be humble in our use of metaphors.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Prof David West

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by gepr

I agree with you, and I am Nick's ally in the "everything is metaphor" camp. But the apparent contradiction is resolved by recognizing the role and life cycle of metaphor.

Metaphor is useful only in the circumstance of encountering an "unknown thing" or attempting to express a "new" idea/concept. X is like Y — X being an unknown and Y a known — offers a tool/technique for coming to understand X.

If the application of that technique fails to generate meaningful results, the metaphor becomes 'dead' and is abandoned.

If application is completely successful the metaphor becomes a lexical term, just another word.

Once upon a time "strawman" was a metaphor. Actually, since the lexical term evidently has two meanings, it was two metaphors to two different people in two different contexts.

But that was then and this is now and "strawman" is no longer a metaphor, it is exactly what you state: a string bound to a thing, in this case, a concept.

We metaphorists need to be much more careful about casting our aspersions.

davew

On Thu, May 28, 2020, at 7:50 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> I'll try again to describe why constant talk of metaphors is
> distracting nonsense, at least for me. When I use a word, that word is
> a variable bound to some context. We can bind any string of letters to
> any subset of any context. So, a string like "xyz" can be bound to
> "that green thing in the distance". Even *after* you and Joe or whoever
> later come to call "that green thing in the distance" by the string
> "tank", I can *still* call it an "xyz". I can do this for decades.
> "xyz" need have no other binding for which to "metaphorize". So,
> regardless of what *you* think when you read the string "xyz", I'm not
> using a metaphor when I say "xyz". You may think it's a metaphor until
> you're blue in the face. But I didn't use a metaphor. >8^D
>
> For me, a "strawman" has always meant that 1 single thing: rhetorical
> bad faith rewording. I've never used a straw man as a scare crow. I've
> never used it to train in combat. I've never used it to burn in effigy.
> I've never used it to mean anything but that one thing. So, therefore,
> it's not a metaphor. It's a meaningless string of characters bound to
> that one thing.
>
> Sure, *you* can read whatever I write however you *want* to read what I
> write. That's the very point of the
> privacy-despite-the-"holographic"-principle threads. How you read it
> CAN BE entirely unrelated to how I write it. When you *impute* metaphor
> status into arbitrary strings you see on your screen, you are
> *inscribing* your own understanding of the world *onto* the thing
> you're looking at. You are *not* blank-slate, receiving a message.
>
> Now, if you listened empathetically, you might choose to *ask* the
> author "Did you mean that as a metaphor?" You could even be a bit rude
> and continue with "Or are you too stupid to know the history of that
> string of characters?" This is a common thing. E.g. when someone uses a
> string of characters they grew up with to innocently refer to, say, a
> marginalized group, without *knowing* the marginalized group thinks
> that string of characters is offensive. Like wearing a Washington Red
> Skins jersey. Or when a 12 year old white kid sings along with some rap
> lyrics.
>
> You have options when you decode a string. It doesn't always need to be
> metaphorical. Even if, deep down, you're a complete pedant and you
> absolutely must point out that everything's always a metaphor, you CAN
> suppress that need for a little while ... sometimes ... just sometimes
> ... you have that power.
>
> So, no. Strawman is not a metaphor. If it helps you, I can stop using
> the string "strawman" and use "xyz" for that fallacy from now on.
> Please avoid the xyz fallacy.
>
> On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> > [...] “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? [...]
> >
> > The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a metaphor at the first state. We did not all get the same “image” when it was first deployed. That failure is instructive for me because it reminds me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete. Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument. For 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X. In other words, we must be humble in our use of metaphors.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-.
> . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. -..-. .-- --- .-. -.- . .-. ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

I have *never* heard or read "strawman" to mean anything other than a specious argument meant to show the absurdity of a position. A kind of reductio ad absurdum.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 28, 2020, 8:16 AM Prof David West <[hidden email]> wrote:

I agree with you, and I am Nick's ally in the "everything is metaphor" camp. But the apparent contradiction is resolved by recognizing the role and life cycle of metaphor.

Metaphor is useful only in the circumstance of encountering an "unknown thing" or attempting to express a "new" idea/concept. X is like Y — X being an unknown and Y a known — offers a tool/technique for coming to understand X.

If the application of that technique fails to generate meaningful results, the metaphor becomes 'dead' and is abandoned.

If application is completely successful the metaphor becomes a lexical term, just another word.

Once upon a time "strawman" was a metaphor. Actually, since the lexical term evidently has two meanings, it was two metaphors to two different people in two different contexts.

But that was then and this is now and "strawman" is no longer a metaphor, it is exactly what you state: a string bound to a thing, in this case, a concept.

We metaphorists need to be much more careful about casting our aspersions.

davew

On Thu, May 28, 2020, at 7:50 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> I'll try again to describe why constant talk of metaphors is
> distracting nonsense, at least for me. When I use a word, that word is
> a variable bound to some context. We can bind any string of letters to
> any subset of any context. So, a string like "xyz" can be bound to
> "that green thing in the distance". Even *after* you and Joe or whoever
> later come to call "that green thing in the distance" by the string
> "tank", I can *still* call it an "xyz". I can do this for decades.
> "xyz" need have no other binding for which to "metaphorize". So,
> regardless of what *you* think when you read the string "xyz", I'm not
> using a metaphor when I say "xyz". You may think it's a metaphor until
> you're blue in the face. But I didn't use a metaphor. >8^D
>
> For me, a "strawman" has always meant that 1 single thing: rhetorical
> bad faith rewording. I've never used a straw man as a scare crow. I've
> never used it to train in combat. I've never used it to burn in effigy.
> I've never used it to mean anything but that one thing. So, therefore,
> it's not a metaphor. It's a meaningless string of characters bound to
> that one thing.
>
> Sure, *you* can read whatever I write however you *want* to read what I
> write. That's the very point of the
> privacy-despite-the-"holographic"-principle threads. How you read it
> CAN BE entirely unrelated to how I write it. When you *impute* metaphor
> status into arbitrary strings you see on your screen, you are
> *inscribing* your own understanding of the world *onto* the thing
> you're looking at. You are *not* blank-slate, receiving a message.
>
> Now, if you listened empathetically, you might choose to *ask* the
> author "Did you mean that as a metaphor?" You could even be a bit rude
> and continue with "Or are you too stupid to know the history of that
> string of characters?" This is a common thing. E.g. when someone uses a
> string of characters they grew up with to innocently refer to, say, a
> marginalized group, without *knowing* the marginalized group thinks
> that string of characters is offensive. Like wearing a Washington Red
> Skins jersey. Or when a 12 year old white kid sings along with some rap
> lyrics.
>
> You have options when you decode a string. It doesn't always need to be
> metaphorical. Even if, deep down, you're a complete pedant and you
> absolutely must point out that everything's always a metaphor, you CAN
> suppress that need for a little while ... sometimes ... just sometimes
> ... you have that power.
>
> So, no. Strawman is not a metaphor. If it helps you, I can stop using
> the string "strawman" and use "xyz" for that fallacy from now on.
> Please avoid the xyz fallacy.
>
> On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> > [...] “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? [...]
> >
> > The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a metaphor at the first state. We did not all get the same “image” when it was first deployed. That failure is instructive for me because it reminds me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete. Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument. For 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X. In other words, we must be humble in our use of metaphors.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> -- --- .-. . .-.. --- -.-. -.- ... -..-. .- .-. . -..-. - .... . -..-.
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Steve Smith

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

Frank (et al.) -

I have *never* heard or read "strawman" to mean anything other than a specious argument meant to show the absurdity of a position. A kind of reductio ad absurdum.

It is very likely that my experience was with an ideosyncratic adoption within a small circle (LANL High Performance Computing Community circa 1985-1995) and/or perhaps the DOE peers/program-managers we interacted with daily. It was just part of the air we breathed as we negotiated various projects and programs. I thought it was both apt, and truly universal. Maybe explains many misunderstandings I held after I left that domain/era!

I would claim (and maybe this was your intent) that your (Frank) apprehension contradicts Glen's partially... as I think HE puts "Strawman" up as something contrived to be weak so as to be easy to knock down and used as a proxy for your adversary's *real* position. I think my apprehension has your element of reductio ad absurdum in it, in that said "Strawman Argument" is contrived to be so absurd that nobody in the conversation would take as anything *but* a placeholder to form a real construction to replace it with. Or as I said, having only the barest hint of the shape of the evolving argument to be a bit of an armature for a more proper construction.

In either case, I claim it is no coincidence that the use of "straw" vs "steel" appeals to the metaphorical source domain of "robustness of materials and construction", if we switched the two terms, we could possibly learn to do the crossover decoding as well as Glen apparently can/does, but whyever would we choose that mapping? And with that I will suggest to this crowd that many of my propositions here are neither "straw" nor "steel", but rather "silly putty". Glen may insist that my invoking explicitly a "character of materials and construction" as a source domain is wrong at best and empty at worst, but I think many here can take away a *rich* if not precise apprehension of what we might all mean when we compare, for example arguments "variously of straw, steel, and silly putty".

I am a blatant metaphorist as I've declared many times here, but I agree with the less extreme parts of Glen's observations which is that metaphors get misused/misapplied all the time. In my absurdist but not empty (IMO) example above, the smell of silly putty (most of us over 50 probably know it well, the way it can be used to lift and transfer newsprint, the way it "snaps" when pulled apart quickly, etc. may well be *excess meaning*, but the way it can be formed into just about anything, can be done very informally with just the tools at hand (your hands) and if left unbothered will eventually "slump" back into a rough puddle with only the barest memory of the shape imposed on it by the blind puttysmith.

A good example that I *think* spans Glen's position and my own is that of "standard" hue ramps used to encode scientific data... in the colloquial "heatmap" of popular Viz... the practice is to treat *red* as hot and *blue* as cold. It maps onto our everyday experience of the color of flame and the color of ice, or the quality of light in the equatorial regions vs the quality of light in the (ant)arctic regions. red hot, blue cold. yet, my synaesthesia example followed the model of blackbody radiation. Red is lower energy than Blue and most physicists have no problem "seeing" blue as hot and red as cool... in my *strawman* of Glen's position, any palette would do... "just give me the legend and I'll decode it"... which (IMO) is why many infographics (for example those found in USAToday) are almost unreadable, albeit "easy on the eyes"... a nice pastel palette running from a toffee-pink through an adobe brown to a seafoam green might be very pleasant and non-confrontational the eyes, but be *very* hard to make sense of.

The Asian inversion of our Western convention of Red==Stop/Danger/Death and Green==Go/Good/Life is another example of two conflicting but equally internally consistent source domains for a metaphor.

- Steve

gepr

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

Argh! You people! >8^D

On 5/28/20 8:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I would claim (and maybe this was your intent) that your (Frank) apprehension contradicts Glen's partially... as I think HE puts "Strawman" up as something contrived to be weak so as to be easy to knock down and used as a proxy for your adversary's *real* position. I think my apprehension has your element of /reductio ad absurdum/ in it, in that said "Strawman Argument" is contrived to be so absurd that nobody in the conversation would take as anything *but* a placeholder to form a real construction to replace it with. Or as I said, having only the barest hint of the shape of the evolving argument to be a bit of an armature for a more proper construction.

That the class defined defined here has multiple members, that can be mapped one to the other -- i.e. metaphors for each other, does not imply that "metaphor" is a good way to talk about the relationships between those members of that class. Of course! Of course you, SteveS, can define a class that contains both my referent of "strawman" and Frank's referent of "strawman" into the same class. And of course you can then distinguish between the 2 referents. (cf the discussion Jon started re: intensional vs. extensional)

But none of this ability to re-comprehend, rebundle referents *requires* the use of the word "metaphor". That you guys loooovvvvveeeee that string of characters, m e t a p h o r, is just plain weird. Nowhere else do people use that string so often, to mean so much.

I feel like I'm talking to fundamentalist Christians where every other sentence is punctuated with Praise Jesus! Hey Steve! Praise Jesus! Where do you want to eat lunch? That's a metaphor! You're right! And that's a metaphor! Praise Jesus!

We need to create a website, with some mysterious sounding voice actor and some really inspirational (or creepy) images and video clips ... videos that you can't pause or get by until you've watched the whole thing. Then Bam! We sell you a Secrets to the Universe book ... or some magic itch cream. Everything's a metaphor!

Please choose a different word once in awhile... "mapping", "analogy", ... something, anything. Then maybe once in awhile distinguish why you used "mapping" in this case and "metaphor" in that case, "analogy" in this case and "mapping" in that case. Then and only then, will I begin to understand whatever religious concept it is you guys worship.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by Prof David West

DAVE,

Thou dost concede too much!

Glen may think his metaphor is dead, but by demonstrating all this ambiguity surrounding it, haven't we revived it? Or shown it to have never been dead in the first place?

Remember, tho, that the original argument with Glen was about the utility of calling anything a metaphor given that everything is a metaphor. I was arguing that calling something a metaphor suggests a particular procedure for understanding it and formalizing it You could argue that such a procedure amounts to vivisection until dead.

Notice how facilely we deploy the metaphor of living and dead.
Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 8:16 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

I agree with you, and I am Nick's ally in the "everything is metaphor" camp. But the apparent contradiction is resolved by recognizing the role and life cycle of metaphor.

Metaphor is useful only in the circumstance of encountering an "unknown thing" or attempting to express a "new" idea/concept. X is like Y — X being an unknown and Y a known — offers a tool/technique for coming to understand X.

If the application of that technique fails to generate meaningful results, the metaphor becomes 'dead' and is abandoned.

If application is completely successful the metaphor becomes a lexical term, just another word.

Once upon a time "strawman" was a metaphor. Actually, since the lexical term evidently has two meanings, it was two metaphors to two different people in two different contexts.

But that was then and this is now and "strawman" is no longer a metaphor, it is exactly what you state: a string bound to a thing, in this case, a concept.

We metaphorists need to be much more careful about casting our aspersions.

davew

On Thu, May 28, 2020, at 7:50 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> I'll try again to describe why constant talk of metaphors is
> distracting nonsense, at least for me. When I use a word, that word is
> a variable bound to some context. We can bind any string of letters to
> any subset of any context. So, a string like "xyz" can be bound to
> "that green thing in the distance". Even *after* you and Joe or
> whoever later come to call "that green thing in the distance" by the
> string "tank", I can *still* call it an "xyz". I can do this for decades.
> "xyz" need have no other binding for which to "metaphorize". So,
> regardless of what *you* think when you read the string "xyz", I'm not
> using a metaphor when I say "xyz". You may think it's a metaphor until
> you're blue in the face. But I didn't use a metaphor. >8^D
>
> For me, a "strawman" has always meant that 1 single thing: rhetorical
> bad faith rewording. I've never used a straw man as a scare crow. I've
> never used it to train in combat. I've never used it to burn in effigy.
> I've never used it to mean anything but that one thing. So, therefore,
> it's not a metaphor. It's a meaningless string of characters bound to
> that one thing.
>
> Sure, *you* can read whatever I write however you *want* to read what
> I write. That's the very point of the
> privacy-despite-the-"holographic"-principle threads. How you read it
> CAN BE entirely unrelated to how I write it. When you *impute*
> metaphor status into arbitrary strings you see on your screen, you are
> *inscribing* your own understanding of the world *onto* the thing
> you're looking at. You are *not* blank-slate, receiving a message.
>
> Now, if you listened empathetically, you might choose to *ask* the
> author "Did you mean that as a metaphor?" You could even be a bit rude
> and continue with "Or are you too stupid to know the history of that
> string of characters?" This is a common thing. E.g. when someone uses
> a string of characters they grew up with to innocently refer to, say,
> a marginalized group, without *knowing* the marginalized group thinks
> that string of characters is offensive. Like wearing a Washington Red
> Skins jersey. Or when a 12 year old white kid sings along with some
> rap lyrics.
>
> You have options when you decode a string. It doesn't always need to
> be metaphorical. Even if, deep down, you're a complete pedant and you
> absolutely must point out that everything's always a metaphor, you CAN
> suppress that need for a little while ... sometimes ... just sometimes
> ... you have that power.
>
> So, no. Strawman is not a metaphor. If it helps you, I can stop using
> the string "strawman" and use "xyz" for that fallacy from now on.
> Please avoid the xyz fallacy.
>
> On 5/27/20 12:03 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> > [...] “Strawman” is a metaphor, right? [...]
> >
> > The example of “strawman” is a wonderful example of a failure of a
> > metaphor at the first state. We did not all get the same “image” when it was first deployed. That failure is instructive for me because it reminds me that the familiar assertion that M is a metaphor for X is incomplete. Explictly, or implicitly, there must always be a third argument. For 0bservor O, M is a metaphor for X. In other words, we must be humble in our use of metaphors.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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thompnickson2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Frank, Steve,

Aren’t we arguing about whether “Steve Was Wrong” when he understood “strawman” to refer to a “stick figure” or other constructive schema, rather than a guilefully conceived version of an argument designed to show its weaknesses. Is there any way to show a metaphor is “wrong” other than the exercise of power?

OK, friammers. All those who think Steve Was Wrong raise your hands.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 9:32 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

Frank (et al.) -

I have *never* heard or read "strawman" to mean anything other than a specious argument meant to show the absurdity of a position. A kind of reductio ad absurdum.

The Asian inversion of our Western convention of Red==Stop/Danger/Death and Green==Go/Good/Life is another example of two conflicting but equally internally consistent source domains for a metaphor.

- Steve

gepr

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

No. Steve was exactly right in *asking* what I meant by the string "strawman". Any behaviorist would care more about Steve's actions than his thoughts, right?

On 5/28/20 9:26 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Aren’t we arguing about whether “Steve Was Wrong” when he understood “strawman” to refer to a “stick figure” or other constructive schema, rather than a guilefully conceived version of an argument designed to show its weaknesses. Is there any way to show a metaphor is “wrong” other than the exercise of power?
>
>
>
> OK, friammers. All those who think Steve Was Wrong raise your hands.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

I'm just saying I'm not familiar with the LANL usage. "Wrong" has nothing to do with it.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:27 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank, Steve,

Aren’t we arguing about whether “Steve Was Wrong” when he understood “strawman” to refer to a “stick figure” or other constructive schema, rather than a guilefully conceived version of an argument designed to show its weaknesses.   Is there any way to show a metaphor is “wrong” other than the exercise of power?

OK, friammers. All those who think Steve Was Wrong raise your hands.

n

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 9:32 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

Frank (et al.) -

I have *never* heard or read "strawman" to mean anything other than a specious argument meant to show the absurdity of a position. A kind of reductio ad absurdum.

It is very likely that my experience was with an ideosyncratic adoption within a small circle (LANL High Performance Computing Community circa 1985-1995) and/or perhaps the DOE peers/program-managers we interacted with daily. It was just part of the air we breathed as we negotiated various projects and programs. I thought it was both apt, and truly universal. Maybe explains many misunderstandings I held after I left that domain/era!
I would claim (and maybe this was your intent) that your (Frank) apprehension contradicts Glen's partially... as I think HE puts "Strawman" up as something contrived to be weak so as to be easy to knock down and used as a proxy for your adversary's *real* position.   I think my apprehension has your element of reductio ad absurdum in it, in that said "Strawman Argument" is contrived to be so absurd that nobody in the conversation would take as anything *but* a placeholder to form a real construction to replace it with. Or as I said, having only the barest hint of the shape of the evolving argument to be a bit of an armature for a more proper construction.
In either case, I claim it is no coincidence that the use of "straw" vs "steel" appeals to the metaphorical source domain of "robustness of materials and construction", if we switched the two terms, we could possibly learn to do the crossover decoding as well as Glen apparently can/does, but whyever would we choose that mapping?   And with that I will suggest to this crowd that many of my propositions here are neither "straw" nor "steel", but rather "silly putty".   Glen may insist that my invoking explicitly a "character of materials and construction" as a source domain is wrong at best and empty at worst, but I think many here can take away a *rich* if not precise apprehension of what we might all mean when we compare, for example arguments "variously of straw, steel, and silly putty".
I am a blatant metaphorist as I've declared many times here, but I agree with the less extreme parts of Glen's observations which is that metaphors get misused/misapplied all the time.   In my absurdist but not empty (IMO) example above, the smell of silly putty (most of us over 50 probably know it well, the way it can be used to lift and transfer newsprint, the way it "snaps" when pulled apart quickly, etc.   may well be *excess meaning*, but the way it can be formed into just about anything, can be done very informally with just the tools at hand (your hands) and if left unbothered will eventually "slump" back into a rough puddle with only the barest memory of the shape imposed on it by the blind puttysmith.
A good example that I *think* spans Glen's position and my own is that of "standard" hue ramps used to encode scientific data...    in the colloquial "heatmap" of popular Viz... the practice is to treat *red* as hot and *blue* as cold.   It maps onto our everyday experience of the color of flame and the color of ice, or the quality of light in the equatorial regions vs the quality of light in the (ant)arctic regions.   red hot, blue cold.   yet, my synaesthesia example followed the model of blackbody radiation.   Red is lower energy than Blue and most physicists have no problem "seeing" blue as hot and red as cool... in my *strawman* of Glen's position, any palette would do... "just give me the legend and I'll decode it"...   which (IMO) is why many infographics (for example those found in USAToday) are almost unreadable, albeit "easy on the eyes"...   a nice pastel palette running from a toffee-pink through an adobe brown to a seafoam green might be very pleasant and non-confrontational the eyes, but be *very* hard to make sense of.
The Asian inversion of our Western convention of Red==Stop/Danger/Death and Green==Go/Good/Life is another example of two conflicting but equally internally consistent source domains for a metaphor.
- Steve

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thompnickson2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by gepr

I, Nick, am using the word, "metaphor", (or the dimension, "Metaphor-Model") because it implies to me, Nick, a procedure for ultimately disambiguating and confirming/disconfiming the commitments that our words imply. I am trying to entice (seduce?) you, other friam members, into helping me develop such a procedure because I am too stupid to figure it out all by myself. I would love to participate in disambiguating other related words, such as map, representation, etc. I think ANY conversation that helps reveal the practicial consequences of our word choices, helps us move forward together.

It is not clear to me that "moving forward together" is a widely shared goal.

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 9:48 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

Argh! You people! >8^D

On 5/28/20 8:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I would claim (and maybe this was your intent) that your (Frank) apprehension contradicts Glen's partially... as I think HE puts "Strawman" up as something contrived to be weak so as to be easy to knock down and used as a proxy for your adversary's *real* position. I think my apprehension has your element of /reductio ad absurdum/ in it, in that said "Strawman Argument" is contrived to be so absurd that nobody in the conversation would take as anything *but* a placeholder to form a real construction to replace it with. Or as I said, having only the barest hint of the shape of the evolving argument to be a bit of an armature for a more proper construction.

That the class defined defined here has multiple members, that can be mapped one to the other -- i.e. metaphors for each other, does not imply that "metaphor" is a good way to talk about the relationships between those members of that class. Of course! Of course you, SteveS, can define a class that contains both my referent of "strawman" and Frank's referent of "strawman" into the same class. And of course you can then distinguish between the 2 referents. (cf the discussion Jon started re: intensional vs. extensional)

But none of this ability to re-comprehend, rebundle referents *requires* the use of the word "metaphor". That you guys loooovvvvveeeee that string of characters, m e t a p h o r, is just plain weird. Nowhere else do people use that string so often, to mean so much.

I feel like I'm talking to fundamentalist Christians where every other sentence is punctuated with Praise Jesus! Hey Steve! Praise Jesus! Where do you want to eat lunch? That's a metaphor! You're right! And that's a metaphor! Praise Jesus!

We need to create a website, with some mysterious sounding voice actor and some really inspirational (or creepy) images and video clips ... videos that you can't pause or get by until you've watched the whole thing. Then Bam! We sell you a Secrets to the Universe book ... or some magic itch cream. Everything's a metaphor!

Please choose a different word once in awhile... "mapping", "analogy", ... something, anything. Then maybe once in awhile distinguish why you used "mapping" in this case and "metaphor" in that case, "analogy" in this case and "mapping" in that case. Then and only then, will I begin to understand whatever religious concept it is you guys worship.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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thompnickson2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by gepr

I agree, Glen. Anytime you see more than one set of scare quotes in a message from me, look for irony.

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 10:29 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

No. Steve was exactly right in *asking* what I meant by the string "strawman". Any behaviorist would care more about Steve's actions than his thoughts, right?

On 5/28/20 9:26 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Aren’t we arguing about whether “Steve Was Wrong” when he understood
> “strawman” to refer to a “stick figure” or other constructive schema, rather than a guilefully conceived version of an argument designed to show its weaknesses. Is there any way to show a metaphor is “wrong” other than the exercise of power?
>
>
>
> OK, friammers. All those who think Steve Was Wrong raise your hands.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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gepr

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

But, again, I don't believe you. I believe you are NOT interested in the practical consequences of using the string "strawman" when discussing my rendition of the EricC/Nick principle. The reason I don't believe you is because you do NOT talk about the topic in which the string "strawman" was used. You *only* talk about the ambiguity in the string "strawman".

If you did as Steve did and spent a tiny amount of pixels on the ambiguity around the string "strawman", but the majority of your pixels around the actual topic at hand, then I'd believe you were interested in the practical consequences of using "strawman" in that context.

Hell, I'd even be happy if you outright accused me of creating a strawman and then explained (kinda like Steve did) why the ambiguity of "strawman" demonstrates that I've created a strawman.

On 5/28/20 9:38 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I think ANY conversation that helps reveal the practicial consequences of our word choices, helps us move forward together.
>
> It is not clear to me that "moving forward together" is a widely shared goal.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

Glen,

I will be the first to admit that constantly in danger of drowning in this flood, and may, therefore, be grasping at anything I see floating near me. I regret that the discussion's between you, Jon, and EricS are often -- usually -- utterly lost on me -- I experience that as a lost opportunity.

I thought, however, that I did understand, endorse, and even adopt to some degree your meaning of "inside" and even think up my own example of it -- the case where the numerals in a colorblindness chart are different for different observers but "in" the chart for both of them. I do believe that that is NOT what Frank, and Bruce, and others mean by inside, so, while it may me to communicate with you, it does not help me to communicate with them.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 11:05 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

But, again, I don't believe you. I believe you are NOT interested in the practical consequences of using the string "strawman" when discussing my rendition of the EricC/Nick principle. The reason I don't believe you is because you do NOT talk about the topic in which the string "strawman" was used. You *only* talk about the ambiguity in the string "strawman".

If you did as Steve did and spent a tiny amount of pixels on the ambiguity around the string "strawman", but the majority of your pixels around the actual topic at hand, then I'd believe you were interested in the practical consequences of using "strawman" in that context.

Hell, I'd even be happy if you outright accused me of creating a strawman and then explained (kinda like Steve did) why the ambiguity of "strawman" demonstrates that I've created a strawman.

On 5/28/20 9:38 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I think ANY conversation that helps reveal the practicial consequences of our word choices, helps us move forward together.
>
> It is not clear to me that "moving forward together" is a widely shared goal.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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gepr

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

Yes, we did come to an agreement about the steelman. Sorry for not being clear. When you identified "strawman" as a metaphor in response to Steve's post, I did not detect an application of that identification to the *context* of Steve's post. How does identifying "strawman" as a metaphor help us understand Steve's criticism of what I'm calling 3rd order privacy? Or, if you're not really following the ordering, then how does identifying "strawman" as a metaphor contribute to the analysis of what the EricC/Nick principle implies?

What I need is some *application* of the technique. In order to discuss the practical implications of some string being a metaphor, it has to be tied to a particular context. Here, the context is "how to build privacy from the EricC/Nick principle".

But by saying I don't believe you, what I mean is that I *think* you want to build a *theoretical* (not practical, as yet anyway) construct of metaphorical analyses ... some sort of generally applicable (maybe even universal) method by which to parse a text (or any exposition like a video) by the metaphors it contains. And such a theoretical thing is fantastic! I'd love it. But don't pretend to be deducing consequences when you're actually inducing theories ... well, actually, it's fine if you do that. 8^) Just expect that if I spot it, I'll call you out on it.

As for *how* you might use the steelman to communicate with someone like Frank, I hid in a previous post that my point is to demonstrate that *privacy* might be built from the steelman principle you agreed to. And if you eventually agree to this accretion of privacy strength, then you will be able to grant Frank *privacy* without granting an unobservable interiority. The 1,2,3,...,n orders are intended to provide a fine-grained point where you and someone like Frank can say "There! Right there is where we disagree."

If my construction fails to provide that, then I've failed in the project. (Which is fine by me. It may seem like I'm invested. But I'm not. I don't believe the principle at all, as I've already stated. But it's a fun game to play while I babysit my simulations and watch metaphor-laden youtube videos by parasocial friends like ContraPoints.)

On 5/28/20 10:34 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> I will be the first to admit that constantly in danger of drowning in this flood, and may, therefore, be grasping at anything I see floating near me. I regret that the discussion's between you, Jon, and EricS are often -- usually -- utterly lost on me -- I experience that as a lost opportunity.
>
> I thought, however, that I did understand, endorse, and even adopt to some degree your meaning of "inside" and even think up my own example of it -- the case where the numerals in a colorblindness chart are different for different observers but "in" the chart for both of them. I do believe that that is NOT what Frank, and Bruce, and others mean by inside, so, while it may me to communicate with you, it does not help me to communicate with them.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Steve Smith

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by gepr

Steve was *wrong* to assume that the way he was "raised" to understand/use the word "strawman" still held, even though some of Glen's early usage in conversations seemed to be a *little* off.

Steve *might* have been wrong for all those years he *thought* his peers (and betters) were using it in the sense he described when in fact they were using it more in the sense Glen (and apparently many people?) use it today. Or alternatively the reductio ad absurdum variation Frank offered?

Steve *likes* Glen's use of "Strawman", especially when used in opposition/apposition to "Steelman" as Glen uses it adeptly.

Steve raises his hand proudly!

No. Steve was exactly right in *asking* what I meant by the string "strawman". Any behaviorist would care more about Steve's actions than his thoughts, right?

On 5/28/20 9:26 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

Aren’t we arguing about whether “Steve Was Wrong” when he understood “strawman” to refer to a “stick figure” or other constructive schema, rather than a guilefully conceived version of an argument designed to show its weaknesses.   Is there any way to show a metaphor is “wrong” other than the exercise of power? 

 

OK, friammers.  All those who think Steve Was Wrong raise your hands.

Steve Smith

Re: Metaphor [POSSIBLE DISTRACTON FROM]: privacy games

In reply to this post by gepr

> But, again, I don't believe you. I believe you are NOT interested in the practical consequences of using the string "strawman" when discussing my rendition of the EricC/Nick principle. The reason I don't believe you is because you do NOT talk about the topic in which the string "strawman" was used. You *only* talk about the ambiguity in the string "strawman".
>
> If you did as Steve did and spent a tiny amount of pixels on the ambiguity around the string "strawman", but the majority of your pixels around the actual topic at hand, then I'd believe you were interested in the practical consequences of using "strawman" in that context.
>
> Hell, I'd even be happy if you outright accused me of creating a strawman and then explained (kinda like Steve did) why the ambiguity of "strawman" demonstrates that I've created a strawman.
I'm pretty sure it is "strawmen all the way down" <grin>

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