Posted by
Steve Smith on
Sep 14, 2016; 4:28am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Wisdom-of-Crowds-vs-Kenneth-Arrow-tp7587842p7587897.html
Glen -
>> I understand that... though it IS my habit to acknowledge the things I agree on to more starkly expose the ones I don't (or at least I try to do that).
> With a happy side-effect that more people will like you as a result. One day, I'll wish I had spent more effort with the soft styles. I know they're more effective.
This is an interesting discursion. I am not sure that soft-styles lead
more people to like you, but I do think it raises the threshold to
knee-jerk *dislike*. A lot of my friends in this world do NOT have
soft-styles and they have plenty of friends/admirers/sycophants... self
included, BUT they *RARELY* can stand one another... harsh meets harsh
and one or both kneejerk response triggers the other kneejerk and well,
you know the rest!
>>> Enough With This Basic Income Bullshit
>>>
https://salon.thefamily.co/enough-with-this-basic-income-bullshit-a6bc92e8286b#.1xcadg3vf>> I'm reading it now, though the rich hyperlinking to interesting side topics and references is causing some intellectual ablation! I've come to recognize something like a "0th world problem" which are issues that are even more abstract and relatively empty than "1st world problems"... That is what I'd call my experience with this rich offering you made. thefamily.co is all new to me BTW... thanks for that too!
> I agree. But what is the oligarchist supposed to do? We can't leave all that abstract sophistry to the peasants. They'd thoroughly mess it up. >8^) Seriously, though, whoever sees the problem is responsible for solving the problem. So, 0th world problems must be solved by those who see them.
I don't need to solve 0th world problems, just recognize them like an
impressive wave and catch it just right to surf it all the way in to the
beach...
>
>>> But it's also dangerous to argue that some event/process would have happened regardless. That's a typical flaw of my libertarian friends who'll claim that advances like artificial hearts or whatnot, despite being government funded, would have emerged even without government funding. Criticalities (like "great people") probably do play some/much role in some/many cases. I'm simply skeptical that we can tease out which cases.
>> I think this is an acute example of the things dual/hybrid models which include both discrete (particle, agent, etc) and continuous (field, patch, etc.). I am hypothesizing that the individual (great person) does less in their direct role, exercising their personal/professional agency than they do by setting a tone, representing an ideal... and that doesn't just include their sycophantic followers, it includes their vitriolic opponents as well... those who "rise up against". I think a good deal of our gridlock in the government was a reaction to Obama both as a black man and as a (presumed) liberal, more than anything he specifically did or did not do.
> Damnit, I agree again. [sigh] But I can disagree obliquely by carrying it further. The individual is merely a phenomenon (well, set of phenomena), an effect of the underlying cause(s). In that sense, we can toss out free will entirely and say that the individual (great or not) does no tone setting (or anything else) in any generative sense. They are simply 1 observable feature of the great machine. And the only reason we perceive that feature as somehow distinguishable from the rest is because of our limited powers of perception.
Well, that is one perspective...
>
> Hence, Obama did nothing, at least nothing whose sole cause resides within him ... just as neither you nor I ever do anything. It's (we're) all just patterns in the ambience.
Well... yes... on a good (or bad) day I can imagine this, right up with
six-impossible-things before breakfast with a double helping of solopsism...
>> What is more puzzling to me is why/how "we the people" can continue to *pretend* we are unhappy with the status quo while all but *citing* the status quo as the motivation for our behaviour? "I HATE our polarized two party system but I won't even LOOK at the third parties because THEY are not viable in our current context!" What? How will they ever BECOME viable if you won't give them any consideration? For me, this moment of clear and extreme disaffection with the party in the first part and the party in the second part, is the perfect opportunity to make some inroads into the very change we *claim* we want. Oh well.
> But this is the same feature that allows us to think up new ideas, invent new machines, tell stories of unicorns and fairies with a straight face. This is why everyone knows too much sugar is bad, but insists on its presence in every food anyway. Our drive to have our cake and eat it, too, is what propels us to greater and greater heights. When/if we admit the game is zero-sum, we either give up or become ruthless sociopaths. I like Walt Whitman's aphorism the best: "I am large. I contain multitudes."
I *hate* to admit that you are right... at least that this is the stuff
of transcending our own context... but sometimes I think it also is what
freezes us in that context. We tie a heavy chain around our ankle and
then whine that we can hardly keep our head above water treading... If
this kind of self-handicapping makes us into olympic swimmers, then I
suppose I'm all for it... but it reminds me a bit too much of Vonnegut's
"breakfast of champions" theme!
- steve
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