The real enemies of the poor

[Faustine]

> On Thu, 3 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???

"it" being "opposite sides of the same coin".


>The point I'm making is that demeanor and attitude (for example) are
>inextricably linked. 

Sure, but for me both are almost entirely separable from my personal 
evaluation of someone's scholarship and competence.


>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.

Okay, I'll apply this to my example of dear old Doctor X, a man I 
simultaneously respect and can't stand. 

You can infer certain aspects of his attitude towards his colleagues from 
the mocking and contemptuous way he addresses them in meetings--which he 
never fails to hijack with an endless barrage of commentary, transforming 
any occasion into a platform for self-aggrandizement. If you've ever seen a 
nature special and observed the alpha chimp's posturing before the younger 
males who inadvertently pose a challenge by attracting the attention of one 
of the females, you'll understand this dynamic quite well. The unwritten 
rule is that no one is "allowed" express a theory before the group without 
getting it ripped apart by Dr. Alphachimp, he just can't seem to stand it.  
His demeanor--presentation to others--alternates between what can best be 
described as "genteel patronizing condescension" and "being a full-bore 
asshole". 

None of this has the slightest bearing on the fact that he's one of the 
most brilliant, knowledgeable and incisive people I've ever met: his social 
skills deficit is just an unfortunate by-product. Is he a "nice person"? 
No. Would I ever want to spend time with him in a social setting? Hell no. 
Do I enjoy arguing with him? Definitely. Would I want him to review my 
research before I published it? You bet your life I would! 

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

Why do you think concepts need to be orthagonal to be useful?


> 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.

No, I realize that I'm probably a little more sensitized to (and upset by) 
the way Dr. Alphachimp treats the people around him because I have a 
tendency to the same sort of failings myself. If I had an easygoing sort of 
temper, the things that irk me most about him would probably sail over my 
head unnoticed. You sure can learn a lot about yourself by stepping back 
and noticing how you react when interacting with other people...


>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.

It's important not to shut yourself off from new ideas, but you have to 
have a way to decide at what point you're wasting your effort. 


>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.

No quarrel here.


> 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.

Oh not really, it's fine as long as at least one person is able to maintain 
the veneer of civility. As long as Dr. Alphachimp never figures out what I 
really think of him, it'll be an awesome opportunity to keep learning from 
him. I see more of the "genteel patronizing condescension" side anyway, 
which helps a lot. Or at least that's the way it feels, ha. 


> 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. 

Not orthagonal enough..?


>To be honest I've never read a philosopher who I agreed with. 

I can't say I agree with anyone in sum either; it's what you can take away 
from it with you that counts.  


>They all seem to be trying to get around basic fundamental facts they 
>don't want to face.

Oh yeah? Schopenhauer is about as honest and real as they come. 


> >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.

But that's part of what makes him so interesting! :)


> 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,

That's a pretty heavy dose of Platonism, no?
...whole lotta reification goin' on...


> 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).

Well it's certainly worth keeping in mind. 


> 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)

Just because an event is nonlinear and non-determined doesn't mean it  
negated the laws of causality. The building blocks are much smaller and 
less obvious, but they're still present in some form, even when they're not 
readily ascertainable. No one ever invented anything unless the conditions 
preceeding it were in place. Is there a great degree of freedom in 
discovery? Of course, but you have to have some mental dice to throw before 
you can throw them! 


> 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.

That issue is fairly clear-cut for me. But if you were to ask me about 
something I'm more ambivalent about--say, "globalization"--it's easy to 
imagine having simultaneous viewpoints that are seemingly contradictory on 
a superficial level. 


>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.

Maybe some people are just wired or socially conditioned to relate to more 
viewpoints. "Do I contradict myself? Very well then...I contradict myself."


>Have you ever met somebody who had a viewpoint you just couldn't wrap your 
>noggin around?

No, but then there's the issue of whether you really can, or just think you 
can. If you're sensitive enough to be able to pick up on how and why 
someone formed a certain view, it helps. Great page on empathy, analogy and 
cognitive processes: 

http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Empathy.html

~Faustine.