The real enemies of the poor

[Jim Choate]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote:
> Jim wrote:
> > In this context I meant "personality" as in demeanor and attitude, not 
> > scholarship and competence.
> 
> >Opposite sides of the same coin...
> 
> I suppose "attitude" can be ambiguous, but it's hardly relevant!

Then why bring it up???

The point I"m making is that demeanor and attitude (for example) are
inextricably linked. If one is insecure (attitude) then it can't help but
effect other aspects such as demeanor (ie presentation to others). If one
isn't confident in their skills then they can hardly be competent. And
that confidence has 'personality' based characteristics.

You're trying to seperate out components which are not orthogonal.

> Being obnoxious, unpleasant, etc. has absolutely nothing to do with whether 
> or not you know enough about a subject to be worth listening to.

One persons 'obnoxious' is another persons 'strained consideration'.
Taking the attitude it's the 'other guys' problem is problematic itself.

As to 'know enough to be worth listening to', out of the mouths of babes.
Sometimes the last person who needs to be talking about a problem is
somebody that 'knows all about it'. There are other shades of tinted
glasses besides rose.

Fundamental Rules of Science:

- There are no sacred truths, all assumptions must be critically examined.
  Arguments from authority are useless

- Whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be revised or discarded.

See Feynman's concluding commentary in the Challenger report.

> Thoroughly looking forward to hearing what a person has to say 
> and actively, intensely disliking them is not contradictory in the 
> slightest... 

Provided you have the opportunity to leave at your own behest...at some
point homicide is likely to occur.

> Good point. I'm an atheist, but I think Aquinas can worth reading. Marcel 
> (the Mystery of Being), Bataille (Inner Experience), Unamuno(Tragic Sense 
> of Life), Kierkegaard (Either/Or), Heidegger (Sein und Zeit) Schopenhauer 
> (complete works!) also come instantly to mind. I usually have no patience 
> for anything mystical, but these authors have been very valuable to me. 
> Several orders of magnitude above the usual religious mush.

If you say so. I've found them to be rather confused myself. To be honest
I've never read a philosopher who I agreed with. They all seem to be
trying to get around basic fundamental facts they don't want to face.

> >I disagree, see Newtons comments about hypothesis and playing with stones
> on a beach.
> 
> More on this in future posts.

:) Newton is such a nutcase, he's fun to use in arguments. What can you
say about a religious fundamentalist who pursued alchemy wholeheartedly,
developed fundamental mathematical and physical descriptions while he
dabbled, and then turns around and hangs people for stealing the King's
money. And all the while hating people in general...

I think, at least for me, he beats out Gauss as being a general sour puss.

> True. But an overwhelmingly large percentage of concepts floating around 
> your head and populating your mental landscape (so to speak) came from 
> somewhere else: 

In a real sense, all of them did. In another sense they were always there
just waiting for any sentience to recognize them, and then from another
perspective they are each new and revelatory. It harkens back to the
Socratic Method (I'm a fond user thereof); everybody knows everything
there is to know by knowing nothing in particular outside of being able to
ask questions. (Note that a big criticism of the Socratic Method is one of
misunderstanding - Socrates claimed he knew nothing, but at the same time
knew how to ask questions. Many readers, some quite lettered, seem to miss
that there are two different things being discussed here; knowing
something about the subject under discussion, and how to organize
questions and thoughts).

> if you're creative and original, you make new ones out of 
> the building blocks of the old. But they didn't just pop out of thin air.

Maybe, then again there are leaps of insite which for all intents and
purposes do just that. It's only after you reach the goal that you even
see the path. It might be more accurate to say that they pop out of the
throw of (mental) dice. A good example is Huffman Coding. Up until the
problem was given to student Huffman it had remained unsolved. He spent
the first part of his approach doing exactly what everyone else had done,
and got nowhere. Then he decided to try it backwards and the problem
resolved itself. Today we have compression algorithms out the yin-yang.
The 'discovery' of the Benzen Ring came out of a dream of snakes eating
their tails.

Discovery is highly non-linear and non-deterministic. (My personal
prescription/favorite is free association)

> Singular viewpoint?? How so! Talk about different mental contexts... 

How many viewpoints do you hold on a given subject? And I'm not asking
"How may do you understand, describe, recite"...

Consider 'abortion' (and no I don't want to know how you feel), how many
viewpoints do you hold (as opposed to know of, understand, ...)? Law? Etc.
People are singular in their internal mental views. Opposition and
conflict create confusion. See the popularity of religion for a prime
example.

This will get into 'free will' pretty quickly so I'm not going to pursue
it deeply; each person has only so many viewpoints that they can relate
to. Some of these limits are biological in nature, some social, and then
some are simply the way each individual brain is wired. Have you ever met
somebody who had a viewpoint you just couldn't wrap your noggin around?

> And then, there's always the even less noble-minded egocentric motivation 
> for recommending books: "read as I read, so you may come to think as I do". 
> Discourse as narcissistic propaganda: probably a more common motivation 
> that anyone would like to admit.

This speaks to my 'singular viewpoint' above as well as the 'xenophobia'
that human psychology expresses to 'others'...

> >It's not uncommon in our society to hear people say 'He said ...' but they 
> >themselves can't explain it in their own terms and context. They can 
> >regurgitate, they can't cogitate. Dogma and pedantry. It's why 'arguments 
> >from authority are useless' is such a strong tool with respect to 
> >deductive/synthetic analysis.
> 
> I'm not disagreeing with that at all; I think the real sticking point here 
> gets back to the assumptions which led you to bring up the idea 
> of "singular viewpoint" and the relative meaning(s) of subjective value 
> judgements. I bet a lot would be made clearer to me if you could just back 
> up a little and go into that.

I tried to expand it some above. Feel free to inquire further.


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