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The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Nick Thompson

Re: The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

But Roger, isn’t this a ticket to apathy? Where is the spur to action without outrage? I know that question sounds odd, but I am really asking it. Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Of course the really fun thing about statistics is the ongoing discussion about the "willful ignorance" of scientists submitting papers with technically correct but wholly dubious claims of statistical significance, because -- rather, becorrelate -- their salaries depend on getting published. Funny that the language naturally inserts a causal claim into that observation, where I would rather put the cause on the system than the individuals, and I have to invent a word to back off

I'm tending to see this issue theologically. The technical name for "we're all imperfect and we've always been so" is original sin. Feeling a bit of impostor syndrome? That's how the personal experience of original sin manifests. Disgusted that cops aren't fair, that rich people get privileges, that politicians repay rich people with more privileges, that FIFA is corrupt, that Australia outsources immigrant detention camps to Nauru, that Nauru denies visas to Australian civil rights lawyers seeking to defend immigrant rights, and so on? Yeah, well, be disgusted, but try not to get too righteous about it and spare us the expressions of shocked outrage. If you're shocked at this, then you haven't been paying attention.

So, are there any entirely good or entirely bad persons? Or are they entirely figments of our imaginations?

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:10 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Statistics is one tool. I'm not sure it's the most powerful tool, though. I tend to think the best tool is ... well, it goes by many names. One name is "active listening" ... "empathy" ... etc. The technique is well known to all of us (well unless we're autistic or psychopathic). When you hear someone say something that just sounds wrong, there are 2 basic steps:

1) find out why you think they're wrong (including the statistics that surround any of the facts involved), and
2) try to figure out what the speaker _really_ means by whatever nonsense they're spouting.

Since I don't believe our thoughts are very accurate at all, I have no problems empathizing with someone who spouts (apparent) nonsense. I do it myself on a regular basis. I try not to. But it's difficult. In fact, the reason I find purposeful nonsense (including climate denial or chemtrails, but more like chatbots) so cool is because of the accidental nonsense in which we bathe.

On 06/09/2015 08:36 AM, Grant Holland wrote:
> Righto. So what we do is put a measure on "how much confidence" we have. Statistics gives us some tools for that - namely the "moment functionals" (mean, variance, skewness, etc.); and information theory gives us some more general tools for that - entropy and the other entropic funtionals. So maybe it's a mixture of the relative and the absolute. Maybe we've moved up to the "junior" level?
>
> Grant
>
> On 6/9/15 9:14 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Correct. Nothing is certain. We've known that since Kant. NOW what? That
>> there are no certain facts does not imply that some facts are not more
>> enduring and useful than others. We need to get beyond the sophomoric
>> revelation that "everything is relative."

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Float away from those horizons

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Roger Critchlow-2

Re: The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Nick,

It's the _shocked_ outrage I find tiresome. By all means be outraged at any and all forms of corruption that take your fancy, and forge that outrage into action.

But if someone is shocked and thinks that shock is worth mentioning, then he or she hasn't been paying attention or is exhibiting another kind of "willful ignorance".

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

But Roger, isn’t this a ticket to apathy? Where is the spur to action without outrage? I know that question sounds odd, but I am really asking it. Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Of course the really fun thing about statistics is the ongoing discussion about the "willful ignorance" of scientists submitting papers with technically correct but wholly dubious claims of statistical significance, because -- rather, becorrelate -- their salaries depend on getting published. Funny that the language naturally inserts a causal claim into that observation, where I would rather put the cause on the system than the individuals, and I have to invent a word to back off

I'm tending to see this issue theologically. The technical name for "we're all imperfect and we've always been so" is original sin. Feeling a bit of impostor syndrome? That's how the personal experience of original sin manifests. Disgusted that cops aren't fair, that rich people get privileges, that politicians repay rich people with more privileges, that FIFA is corrupt, that Australia outsources immigrant detention camps to Nauru, that Nauru denies visas to Australian civil rights lawyers seeking to defend immigrant rights, and so on? Yeah, well, be disgusted, but try not to get too righteous about it and spare us the expressions of shocked outrage. If you're shocked at this, then you haven't been paying attention.

So, are there any entirely good or entirely bad persons? Or are they entirely figments of our imaginations?

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:10 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Statistics is one tool. I'm not sure it's the most powerful tool, though. I tend to think the best tool is ... well, it goes by many names. One name is "active listening" ... "empathy" ... etc. The technique is well known to all of us (well unless we're autistic or psychopathic). When you hear someone say something that just sounds wrong, there are 2 basic steps:

1) find out why you think they're wrong (including the statistics that surround any of the facts involved), and
2) try to figure out what the speaker _really_ means by whatever nonsense they're spouting.

Since I don't believe our thoughts are very accurate at all, I have no problems empathizing with someone who spouts (apparent) nonsense. I do it myself on a regular basis. I try not to. But it's difficult. In fact, the reason I find purposeful nonsense (including climate denial or chemtrails, but more like chatbots) so cool is because of the accidental nonsense in which we bathe.

On 06/09/2015 08:36 AM, Grant Holland wrote:
> Righto. So what we do is put a measure on "how much confidence" we have. Statistics gives us some tools for that - namely the "moment functionals" (mean, variance, skewness, etc.); and information theory gives us some more general tools for that - entropy and the other entropic funtionals. So maybe it's a mixture of the relative and the absolute. Maybe we've moved up to the "junior" level?
>
> Grant
>
> On 6/9/15 9:14 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Correct. Nothing is certain. We've known that since Kant. NOW what? That
>> there are no certain facts does not imply that some facts are not more
>> enduring and useful than others. We need to get beyond the sophomoric
>> revelation that "everything is relative."

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Float away from those horizons

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Steve Smith

Re: The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Nick,

It's the _shocked_ outrage I find tiresome. By all means be outraged at any and all forms of corruption that take your fancy, and forge that outrage into action.

But if someone is shocked and thinks that shock is worth mentioning, then he or she hasn't been paying attention or is exhibiting another kind of "willful ignorance".

-- rec --

Roger (et alii) -

And what of "shocked but not surprised"?

The longer I live, the more I experience this dichotomy... my intellectual self has catalogued a wide enough range of behaviour and experience in the world, that when confronted with a specific new point fact in the universe, I can usually find a place to hang it in my world-view tree, but that doesn't mean it doesn't disturb my soul when I first apprehend the "factoid" in question.

I wonder how this is affected by our wide-ranging apprehension mediated (mostly, or formerly) by journalism (nod to Tom) and now (more recently) crowd-sourcing of information from around the world (including in the (willfully hidden from self?) corners of our own back yards). On one hand we get desensitized (thus losing "shock value") and on the other hand we are given much more context in which to help us properly understand whatever "shocked but not surprised" factoid just got bounced off our apprehension.

Every time I feel "shocked" (if not surprised) I am thankful that my soul remains tender enough to experience that. While I do have plenty of callouses of cynicism, it is nice to be reminded that I am still alive inside these multiple layers of insulation (economic and other forms of security, cynicism, etc.).

- Steve

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

But Roger, isn’t this a ticket to apathy? Where is the spur to action without outrage? I know that question sounds odd, but I am really asking it. Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Of course the really fun thing about statistics is the ongoing discussion about the "willful ignorance" of scientists submitting papers with technically correct but wholly dubious claims of statistical significance, because -- rather, becorrelate -- their salaries depend on getting published. Funny that the language naturally inserts a causal claim into that observation, where I would rather put the cause on the system than the individuals, and I have to invent a word to back off

I'm tending to see this issue theologically. The technical name for "we're all imperfect and we've always been so" is original sin. Feeling a bit of impostor syndrome? That's how the personal experience of original sin manifests. Disgusted that cops aren't fair, that rich people get privileges, that politicians repay rich people with more privileges, that FIFA is corrupt, that Australia outsources immigrant detention camps to Nauru, that Nauru denies visas to Australian civil rights lawyers seeking to defend immigrant rights, and so on? Yeah, well, be disgusted, but try not to get too righteous about it and spare us the expressions of shocked outrage. If you're shocked at this, then you haven't been paying attention.

So, are there any entirely good or entirely bad persons? Or are they entirely figments of our imaginations?

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:10 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Statistics is one tool. I'm not sure it's the most powerful tool, though. I tend to think the best tool is ... well, it goes by many names. One name is "active listening" ... "empathy" ... etc. The technique is well known to all of us (well unless we're autistic or psychopathic). When you hear someone say something that just sounds wrong, there are 2 basic steps:

1) find out why you think they're wrong (including the statistics that surround any of the facts involved), and
2) try to figure out what the speaker _really_ means by whatever nonsense they're spouting.

Since I don't believe our thoughts are very accurate at all, I have no problems empathizing with someone who spouts (apparent) nonsense. I do it myself on a regular basis. I try not to. But it's difficult. In fact, the reason I find purposeful nonsense (including climate denial or chemtrails, but more like chatbots) so cool is because of the accidental nonsense in which we bathe.

On 06/09/2015 08:36 AM, Grant Holland wrote:
> Righto. So what we do is put a measure on "how much confidence" we have. Statistics gives us some tools for that - namely the "moment functionals" (mean, variance, skewness, etc.); and information theory gives us some more general tools for that - entropy and the other entropic funtionals. So maybe it's a mixture of the relative and the absolute. Maybe we've moved up to the "junior" level?
>
> Grant
>
> On 6/9/15 9:14 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Correct. Nothing is certain. We've known that since Kant. NOW what? That
>> there are no certain facts does not imply that some facts are not more
>> enduring and useful than others. We need to get beyond the sophomoric
>> revelation that "everything is relative."

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Float away from those horizons

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Roger Critchlow-2

Re: The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME

-- rec --

On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 2:25 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

It's the _shocked_ outrage I find tiresome. By all means be outraged at any and all forms of corruption that take your fancy, and forge that outrage into action.

But if someone is shocked and thinks that shock is worth mentioning, then he or she hasn't been paying attention or is exhibiting another kind of "willful ignorance".

-- rec --

Roger (et alii) -

And what of "shocked but not surprised"?

The longer I live, the more I experience this dichotomy... my intellectual self has catalogued a wide enough range of behaviour and experience in the world, that when confronted with a specific new point fact in the universe, I can usually find a place to hang it in my world-view tree, but that doesn't mean it doesn't disturb my soul when I first apprehend the "factoid" in question.

I wonder how this is affected by our wide-ranging apprehension mediated (mostly, or formerly) by journalism (nod to Tom) and now (more recently) crowd-sourcing of information from around the world (including in the (willfully hidden from self?) corners of our own back yards). On one hand we get desensitized (thus losing "shock value") and on the other hand we are given much more context in which to help us properly understand whatever "shocked but not surprised" factoid just got bounced off our apprehension.

Every time I feel "shocked" (if not surprised) I am thankful that my soul remains tender enough to experience that. While I do have plenty of callouses of cynicism, it is nice to be reminded that I am still alive inside these multiple layers of insulation (economic and other forms of security, cynicism, etc.).

- Steve
On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

But Roger, isn’t this a ticket to apathy? Where is the spur to action without outrage? I know that question sounds odd, but I am really asking it. Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Of course the really fun thing about statistics is the ongoing discussion about the "willful ignorance" of scientists submitting papers with technically correct but wholly dubious claims of statistical significance, because -- rather, becorrelate -- their salaries depend on getting published. Funny that the language naturally inserts a causal claim into that observation, where I would rather put the cause on the system than the individuals, and I have to invent a word to back off

I'm tending to see this issue theologically. The technical name for "we're all imperfect and we've always been so" is original sin. Feeling a bit of impostor syndrome? That's how the personal experience of original sin manifests. Disgusted that cops aren't fair, that rich people get privileges, that politicians repay rich people with more privileges, that FIFA is corrupt, that Australia outsources immigrant detention camps to Nauru, that Nauru denies visas to Australian civil rights lawyers seeking to defend immigrant rights, and so on? Yeah, well, be disgusted, but try not to get too righteous about it and spare us the expressions of shocked outrage. If you're shocked at this, then you haven't been paying attention.

So, are there any entirely good or entirely bad persons? Or are they entirely figments of our imaginations?

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:10 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Statistics is one tool. I'm not sure it's the most powerful tool, though. I tend to think the best tool is ... well, it goes by many names. One name is "active listening" ... "empathy" ... etc. The technique is well known to all of us (well unless we're autistic or psychopathic). When you hear someone say something that just sounds wrong, there are 2 basic steps:

1) find out why you think they're wrong (including the statistics that surround any of the facts involved), and
2) try to figure out what the speaker _really_ means by whatever nonsense they're spouting.

Since I don't believe our thoughts are very accurate at all, I have no problems empathizing with someone who spouts (apparent) nonsense. I do it myself on a regular basis. I try not to. But it's difficult. In fact, the reason I find purposeful nonsense (including climate denial or chemtrails, but more like chatbots) so cool is because of the accidental nonsense in which we bathe.

On 06/09/2015 08:36 AM, Grant Holland wrote:
> Righto. So what we do is put a measure on "how much confidence" we have. Statistics gives us some tools for that - namely the "moment functionals" (mean, variance, skewness, etc.); and information theory gives us some more general tools for that - entropy and the other entropic funtionals. So maybe it's a mixture of the relative and the absolute. Maybe we've moved up to the "junior" level?
>
> Grant
>
> On 6/9/15 9:14 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Correct. Nothing is certain. We've known that since Kant. NOW what? That
>> there are no certain facts does not imply that some facts are not more
>> enduring and useful than others. We need to get beyond the sophomoric
>> revelation that "everything is relative."

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Float away from those horizons

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Robert J. Cordingley

Re: The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

It has been suggested that stifling of independent reasoning (aka willful ignorance) contributed to the end of the Islamic Golden Age. I've seen other references calling it a rise in anti-rationalism. Western civilization may be heading the same way.

Robert C
PS sorry to enter the thread a little late. R

On 6/10/15 7:05 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME

-- rec --
On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 2:25 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nick,

It's the _shocked_ outrage I find tiresome. By all means be outraged at any and all forms of corruption that take your fancy, and forge that outrage into action.

But if someone is shocked and thinks that shock is worth mentioning, then he or she hasn't been paying attention or is exhibiting another kind of "willful ignorance".

-- rec --

Roger (et alii) -

And what of "shocked but not surprised"?

The longer I live, the more I experience this dichotomy... my intellectual self has catalogued a wide enough range of behaviour and experience in the world, that when confronted with a specific new point fact in the universe, I can usually find a place to hang it in my world-view tree, but that doesn't mean it doesn't disturb my soul when I first apprehend the "factoid" in question.

I wonder how this is affected by our wide-ranging apprehension mediated (mostly, or formerly) by journalism (nod to Tom) and now (more recently) crowd-sourcing of information from around the world (including in the (willfully hidden from self?) corners of our own back yards). On one hand we get desensitized (thus losing "shock value") and on the other hand we are given much more context in which to help us properly understand whatever "shocked but not surprised" factoid just got bounced off our apprehension.

Every time I feel "shocked" (if not surprised) I am thankful that my soul remains tender enough to experience that. While I do have plenty of callouses of cynicism, it is nice to be reminded that I am still alive inside these multiple layers of insulation (economic and other forms of security, cynicism, etc.).

- Steve
On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

But Roger, isn’t this a ticket to apathy? Where is the spur to action without outrage? I know that question sounds odd, but I am really asking it. Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Of course the really fun thing about statistics is the ongoing discussion about the "willful ignorance" of scientists submitting papers with technically correct but wholly dubious claims of statistical significance, because -- rather, becorrelate -- their salaries depend on getting published. Funny that the language naturally inserts a causal claim into that observation, where I would rather put the cause on the system than the individuals, and I have to invent a word to back off

I'm tending to see this issue theologically. The technical name for "we're all imperfect and we've always been so" is original sin. Feeling a bit of impostor syndrome? That's how the personal experience of original sin manifests. Disgusted that cops aren't fair, that rich people get privileges, that politicians repay rich people with more privileges, that FIFA is corrupt, that Australia outsources immigrant detention camps to Nauru, that Nauru denies visas to Australian civil rights lawyers seeking to defend immigrant rights, and so on? Yeah, well, be disgusted, but try not to get too righteous about it and spare us the expressions of shocked outrage. If you're shocked at this, then you haven't been paying attention.

So, are there any entirely good or entirely bad persons? Or are they entirely figments of our imaginations?

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:10 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Statistics is one tool. I'm not sure it's the most powerful tool, though. I tend to think the best tool is ... well, it goes by many names. One name is "active listening" ... "empathy" ... etc. The technique is well known to all of us (well unless we're autistic or psychopathic). When you hear someone say something that just sounds wrong, there are 2 basic steps:

1) find out why you think they're wrong (including the statistics that surround any of the facts involved), and
2) try to figure out what the speaker _really_ means by whatever nonsense they're spouting.

Since I don't believe our thoughts are very accurate at all, I have no problems empathizing with someone who spouts (apparent) nonsense. I do it myself on a regular basis. I try not to. But it's difficult. In fact, the reason I find purposeful nonsense (including climate denial or chemtrails, but more like chatbots) so cool is because of the accidental nonsense in which we bathe.

On 06/09/2015 08:36 AM, Grant Holland wrote:
> Righto. So what we do is put a measure on "how much confidence" we have. Statistics gives us some tools for that - namely the "moment functionals" (mean, variance, skewness, etc.); and information theory gives us some more general tools for that - entropy and the other entropic funtionals. So maybe it's a mixture of the relative and the absolute. Maybe we've moved up to the "junior" level?
>
> Grant
>
> On 6/9/15 9:14 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Correct. Nothing is certain. We've known that since Kant. NOW what? That
>> there are no certain facts does not imply that some facts are not more
>> enduring and useful than others. We need to get beyond the sophomoric
>> revelation that "everything is relative."

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Float away from those horizons

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Is the failure to perform and encourage independent reasoning the same thing as stifling it?

Are not those that presume that role also imposing a potentially stifling control system just like religious codes of conduct?

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert J. Cordingley
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2015 9:51 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

On 6/10/15 7:05 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME

-- rec --
On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 2:25 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nick,

It's the _shocked_ outrage I find tiresome. By all means be outraged at any and all forms of corruption that take your fancy, and forge that outrage into action.

But if someone is shocked and thinks that shock is worth mentioning, then he or she hasn't been paying attention or is exhibiting another kind of "willful ignorance".

-- rec --

Roger (et alii) -

And what of "shocked but not surprised"?

The longer I live, the more I experience this dichotomy... my intellectual self has catalogued a wide enough range of behaviour and experience in the world, that when confronted with a specific new point fact in the universe, I can usually find a place to hang it in my world-view tree, but that doesn't mean it doesn't disturb my soul when I first apprehend the "factoid" in question.

I wonder how this is affected by our wide-ranging apprehension mediated (mostly, or formerly) by journalism (nod to Tom) and now (more recently) crowd-sourcing of information from around the world (including in the (willfully hidden from self?) corners of our own back yards). On one hand we get desensitized (thus losing "shock value") and on the other hand we are given much more context in which to help us properly understand whatever "shocked but not surprised" factoid just got bounced off our apprehension.

Every time I feel "shocked" (if not surprised) I am thankful that my soul remains tender enough to experience that. While I do have plenty of callouses of cynicism, it is nice to be reminded that I am still alive inside these multiple layers of insulation (economic and other forms of security, cynicism, etc.).

- Steve
On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

But Roger, isn’t this a ticket to apathy? Where is the spur to action without outrage? I know that question sounds odd, but I am really asking it. Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 1:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Of course the really fun thing about statistics is the ongoing discussion about the "willful ignorance" of scientists submitting papers with technically correct but wholly dubious claims of statistical significance, because -- rather, becorrelate -- their salaries depend on getting published. Funny that the language naturally inserts a causal claim into that observation, where I would rather put the cause on the system than the individuals, and I have to invent a word to back off

I'm tending to see this issue theologically. The technical name for "we're all imperfect and we've always been so" is original sin. Feeling a bit of impostor syndrome? That's how the personal experience of original sin manifests. Disgusted that cops aren't fair, that rich people get privileges, that politicians repay rich people with more privileges, that FIFA is corrupt, that Australia outsources immigrant detention camps to Nauru, that Nauru denies visas to Australian civil rights lawyers seeking to defend immigrant rights, and so on? Yeah, well, be disgusted, but try not to get too righteous about it and spare us the expressions of shocked outrage. If you're shocked at this, then you haven't been paying attention.

So, are there any entirely good or entirely bad persons? Or are they entirely figments of our imaginations?

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:10 AM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Statistics is one tool. I'm not sure it's the most powerful tool, though. I tend to think the best tool is ... well, it goes by many names. One name is "active listening" ... "empathy" ... etc. The technique is well known to all of us (well unless we're autistic or psychopathic). When you hear someone say something that just sounds wrong, there are 2 basic steps:

1) find out why you think they're wrong (including the statistics that surround any of the facts involved), and
2) try to figure out what the speaker _really_ means by whatever nonsense they're spouting.

Since I don't believe our thoughts are very accurate at all, I have no problems empathizing with someone who spouts (apparent) nonsense. I do it myself on a regular basis. I try not to. But it's difficult. In fact, the reason I find purposeful nonsense (including climate denial or chemtrails, but more like chatbots) so cool is because of the accidental nonsense in which we bathe.

On 06/09/2015 08:36 AM, Grant Holland wrote:
> Righto. So what we do is put a measure on "how much confidence" we have. Statistics gives us some tools for that - namely the "moment functionals" (mean, variance, skewness, etc.); and information theory gives us some more general tools for that - entropy and the other entropic funtionals. So maybe it's a mixture of the relative and the absolute. Maybe we've moved up to the "junior" level?
>
> Grant
>
> On 6/9/15 9:14 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Correct. Nothing is certain. We've known that since Kant. NOW what? That
>> there are no certain facts does not imply that some facts are not more
>> enduring and useful than others. We need to get beyond the sophomoric
>> revelation that "everything is relative."

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Float away from those horizons

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Arlo Barnes

Re: The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Well, if we are using physiological shock as an analogy for the life of the mind, then avoiding it would be imperative since it would cause a stiffening, ceasing effect on activity (and hence, activism).

-Arlo James Barnes