The real enemies of the poor

[Jim Choate]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Faustine wrote:

> >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.

See a comment #1 below...
 
> 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.

You're very description argues against your own assertion.

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

Comment #1:

I don't. I'm simply stating that you're trying to seperate out concepts
that are not seperable. You are treating 'components' of a characteristic 
as seperable and individual from the characteristic itself. This is a
false distinction when talking about human psychology (which is what we're
talking about when you get right down to it).

> 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.

Bravo!!!!! I salute you. That I can respect.

> head unnoticed. You sure can learn a lot about yourself by stepping back 
> and noticing how you react when interacting with other people...

Agreed. It's also worth noting that at some point you have to ignore what
other people think or want as well. At some point you have to say "I don't
care". A good example is that many people will critize actions because
they hurt other peoples feelings. Not realizing that by complying your own
feelings get hurt. It's a conflict of viewpoint, the belief of an absolute
when no such exists.

> >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. 

I put this a different way,

It's good to have an open mind, just not so open your brains slosh out on
the floor.

> 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. 

Ah, he wants a date...;)

> >>If you say so. I've found them to be rather confused myself. 
> 
> Not orthagonal enough..?

No, confused. It's not the dataset and their manipulation but rather their
axioms I find distasteful, the goal they are looking to reach and the
base assumptions they leave unsaid (eg almost w/o exception we have
mind/body duality as well as human beings somehow 'above' or 'seperate'
from the cosmos - raging, rampant, anthropocentracism). This harks back to
the comment I made about Newton and pebbles on a beach. Newton once made a
comment that when he went in to solve a problem he had no pre-concieved
notion of the end result. He simply played (that's a very strong
paraphrase). It's a rare view that just looks at what is there and doesn't
try to prove/resolve some aspect of themselves in the process.

> >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. 

In many ways I agree. However even he has a fundamental problem with
respect to his base philosophy. He was an atheist yet was understanding of
Christianity and other relgions (eg his exploration into Vedic
philosophy). This represents a mind/body duality problem though, which
seriously undermines the applicability of his views. Why? He fails to
recognize that being an atheist, christian, whatever is nothing more than
anthropocentricism. His fundamental assumption isn't that humanity somehow
stands on a divide but is that divide. He took a stand to resolve
conflicts as a result of his world view, not recognizing that the world
view WAS the problem. He didn't step out of his humanity (in fact this is 
the failure of all Utopian sojourns). The ONLY exception to this failing
in philosophy that I've found is Pantheism, which is very rare. Only a
handful of non-antropocentric philosophers have written (and no I don't
even agree with all of them, Spinoza for example was of the belief that
'rights' were an extension of society and that irrespective of social harm
one should submit - then compare this to his life ling running from
persecution, he was excommunicated from the Jewish religion as a result).

Both Schopenhauer and Spinoza almost got there.

> That's a pretty heavy dose of Platonism, no?

No. Socrates.

> ...whole lotta reification goin' on...

Not really, there is no concept of 'universality'. We're not making a
statement about that which we are answering question, only how we answer
questions. The Socratic Method isn't about finding 'reality' or
'fundamental essence' (ie crap) but rather about finding conflicts in the
thought process. In the Socratic method the discussion is more on how you
got to the conclusion, not how you carried it out.

> Just because an event is nonlinear and non-determined doesn't mean it  
> negated the laws of causality.

No, but they obfuscate any hope of actually determining what that
causality is. The distinction between 'there is no causality' and 'there
is no way to determine causality' isn't that great a void from a
pragmatic perspective. Either way, it's a dead end road.

> The building blocks are much smaller and 
> less obvious, but they're still present in some form, even when they're not 
> readily ascertainable.

That's as good a definition of 'faith' as I've ever run across...;)

> 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! 

Now we're into that 'free will' discussion I don't want to have...our
answering the question iwth a flat 'of course' isn't good reasoning. You
are in effect presenting an axiomatic assumption as a derivative
conclusion. Arguing in circles.

{and yes, I fully recognize that the basic tenets of 'science' are nothing
more than the basic tenets of 'religion' - faith. The distinction being
the acceptance, and management thereof, of the concept of
'transcendence'. Which is another aspect of the 'human condition' that I
think every philosopher to date has skipped merrily around.)

> 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. 

You are confusing 'understanding' with 'holding'. The killer word in your
assertion is 'ambivalent' you are admitting you hold no opinion (and that
'no opinion' is itself singular).

[About contradicting yourself, see 'Para-consistent Logic'. Note that at
no time have I asserted that paradoxes are not real. In my mind the
question is whether one sees this conflict as a 'universal' or something
that is unique to the 'human perspective'.]

> No, but then there's the issue of whether you really can, or just think you 
> can.

If you can use the 'understanding' to make accurate predictions then you
have some sort of handle that others who can't don't have.

> 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

Empathy and consideration are great tools, provided they don't become
singularly important (eg politicaly correct). Given the choice of hurting
your feelings by saying something that is real and concrete and not saying
it and hurting myself in the process, you're feelings are toast.

People have a right to 'pursue happiness', the unsaid assertion is that
peoples natural state is 'unhappy'. A person has no right to interfere
with anothers pursuite of that happiness, but they don't have a
responsiblity to help nor do they have a responsiblity to hurt themselves
to minimize the others discomfiture.


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                Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
                God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light.

                                          B.A. Behrend

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
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