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"That, to me, is obviously rubbish and rightly attacked." Let me get this straight -- faced with the proposition that "we have no absolute metrics to judge [ou

by Qz 16y ago

"That, to me, is obviously rubbish and rightly attacked." Let me get this straight -- faced with the proposition that "we have no absolute metrics to judge [our findings] by", you made up your own metric and used it to denounce the statement in question? ...Which is of course precisely what the statement is addressing. Rather than acknowledge that we're all standing in quicksand, we prefer to gather up our quicksand into a small lump, stand on it, and announce that we are on a mountain. All the mountains are quicksand, buddy.

Locke1689 16y ago
That would be a valid argument, but only from a solipsistic perspective.
ugh 16y ago
Watch out, I might only be playing games with words like "true" and "obvious" ;-) Since we can make many useful statements about this universe the quicksand we are all standing in (if we indeed are) must be very slow indeed. So what if there are no absolute metrics. That doesn’t seem to matter all that much. If I count my sheep on their way out of the pen and if I count them again on their way back into the pen I can be reasonably sure that if those numbers match, there are no more sheep on the pasture. I don’t have to look for missing sheep. This seems like a useful statement. I would call it true. Sure, sometimes it doesn’t work. Tests with other people have shown that I sometimes tend to overlook a sheep. Further tests have shown that I sometimes misremember the number by the time the sheep are coming back. But other than that it seems very robust. Why not call that statement true? Do postmodernists expect that this would only work here but not in other cultures? And if that were the case couldn’t you just test that, no need to throw your hands up in the air and give up? Do they expect that it might work on Earth but maybe not on Mars or Alpha Centauri? Testing that would also be no problem. It’s at least not impossible, no reason to give up. Where’s the beef? (The sheep story is blatantly stolen from this essay: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth)
- Qz 16y ago
  I'm not sure post-modernism advocates any kind of 'giving up' -- otherwise no one would bother with all that effort of writing laboriously long and dauntingly opaque essays on why we should all just give up. Why not call the statement true? Go ahead. The issue is whether we (can) classify truth as an essential quality of a statement, or as a description of a statement from a particular perspective. To make an analogy that dawkins would surely crucify me for, it's like the difference between the notion of absolute time, and time as described by Einstein's relativity. From a post-modernist view, time/truth is relative, but being relative doesn't mean it doesn't matter, and just as with physical time, there are narrow frames of reference (day to day life on Earth) where the relativity of time/text/truth is... irrelevant. God, it really is impossible to advocate for post-modernism without writing in that multiple meaning style.
  - ugh 16y ago
    How could perspective even begin to change whether or not counting sheep works? I have no trouble imagining universes in which, for various reasons, counting sheep doesn’t work. But that’s not what you seem to allude to. In my imagined universes counting sheep wouldn’t work because of properties of those universes (different arithmetic, different physics, different results of natural selection). Postmodernism seems to suggest that a mere change in brain state (i.e. change in perspective) can have an impact as to whether counting sheep works or not. That seems … unlikely to me.
    - Qz 16y ago
      Consider the similar task of counting humans. The American constitution originally considered Native Americans as equivalent to 3/5 of a person. We now count them as a full person. What changed other than perspective/brain state? Even with sheep, consider the possibility that out of say 10 of the sheep you counted, one or all of those sheep are pregnant. Not only that, but you don't know which are or may be pregnant, or how many sheep they may be pregnant with. Does an unborn sheep even count as a full sheep? And yet you counted 10 sheep, and if counting sheep works without changing perspective, then there are 10 sheep regardless. I'm not sure I would agree with that.

by Qz 16y ago

Locke1689 16y ago

That would be a valid argument, but only from a solipsistic perspective.

ugh 16y ago

Watch out, I might only be playing games with words like "true" and "obvious" ;-) Since we can make many useful statements about this universe the quicksand we are all standing in (if we indeed are) must be very slow indeed. So what if there are no absolute metrics. That doesn’t seem to matter all that much. If I count my sheep on their way out of the pen and if I count them again on their way back into the pen I can be reasonably sure that if those numbers match, there are no more sheep on the pasture. I don’t have to look for missing sheep. This seems like a useful statement. I would call it true. Sure, sometimes it doesn’t work. Tests with other people have shown that I sometimes tend to overlook a sheep. Further tests have shown that I sometimes misremember the number by the time the sheep are coming back. But other than that it seems very robust. Why not call that statement true? Do postmodernists expect that this would only work here but not in other cultures? And if that were the case couldn’t you just test that, no need to throw your hands up in the air and give up? Do they expect that it might work on Earth but maybe not on Mars or Alpha Centauri? Testing that would also be no problem. It’s at least not impossible, no reason to give up. Where’s the beef? (The sheep story is blatantly stolen from this essay: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth)

Qz 16y ago
I'm not sure post-modernism advocates any kind of 'giving up' -- otherwise no one would bother with all that effort of writing laboriously long and dauntingly opaque essays on why we should all just give up. Why not call the statement true? Go ahead. The issue is whether we (can) classify truth as an essential quality of a statement, or as a description of a statement from a particular perspective. To make an analogy that dawkins would surely crucify me for, it's like the difference between the notion of absolute time, and time as described by Einstein's relativity. From a post-modernist view, time/truth is relative, but being relative doesn't mean it doesn't matter, and just as with physical time, there are narrow frames of reference (day to day life on Earth) where the relativity of time/text/truth is... irrelevant. God, it really is impossible to advocate for post-modernism without writing in that multiple meaning style.
- ugh 16y ago
  How could perspective even begin to change whether or not counting sheep works? I have no trouble imagining universes in which, for various reasons, counting sheep doesn’t work. But that’s not what you seem to allude to. In my imagined universes counting sheep wouldn’t work because of properties of those universes (different arithmetic, different physics, different results of natural selection). Postmodernism seems to suggest that a mere change in brain state (i.e. change in perspective) can have an impact as to whether counting sheep works or not. That seems … unlikely to me.
  - Qz 16y ago
    Consider the similar task of counting humans. The American constitution originally considered Native Americans as equivalent to 3/5 of a person. We now count them as a full person. What changed other than perspective/brain state? Even with sheep, consider the possibility that out of say 10 of the sheep you counted, one or all of those sheep are pregnant. Not only that, but you don't know which are or may be pregnant, or how many sheep they may be pregnant with. Does an unborn sheep even count as a full sheep? And yet you counted 10 sheep, and if counting sheep works without changing perspective, then there are 10 sheep regardless. I'm not sure I would agree with that.