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Lying for Columbine
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Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Re: Lying for Columbine
Oct 08, 2003, 21:12
"Agreed. As I was saying, relating this to the guys article, his map is as flawed as any other. I also dont believe applying many maps gets you closer to anything. But thats just me."

Back to the article again, I think his problem is he seems to be mixing his argument for HOW TO BUILD A BETTER MAP with arguments about his own personal map as it relates to politics. You kind of have to use examples when making an argument about "how to build a better map", but he could have chosen ones that would be more convincing.

And I certainly do think the map makes a difference -- some maps will get you through the forest, others will get you lost and running in circles. You judge the map by what it can do for you.

"It FLOWS FROM OBSERVATION, not the other way around. -- Same with magical models I'm afraid, they're based on experiences. They didn't come out of a vaccum."

Yes but magical models don't have a buil-in self-correcting mechanism. The Judeo-Xtian explanation for where humans come from hasn't changed a bit in 3000 years. It never will change (unless Christ comes back and writes new chapters to the bible.)


I said:
"Understanding" . . . that's very philosophical. The point is "rationality" makes the Internet work and airplanes fly. All magic ever does is make you "feel better about things you don't understand."

You said:
"This makes no sense in regard to anything I said. I dont care about defining a difference between magical or rational in terms of thought. Or in terms of anything else for that matter. I was saying it's irrelevant, and a futile way of looking at thought, for the reasons I detailed earlier."

I thought we were talking about "heuristics -- analysis -- methods for building models." Seems obvious to me there are different ways to do these things, and that they produce different outcomes. What makes the Internet run? Is it God or Magick? Or is it Rationality and Science?

I think it still goes back to the basic idea of "drawing conclusions from data" aka "rationality" vs. "explaining data using pre-determined assumptions" aka "magic."

"I fail to see the difference between model and mechanism personally. I've built plenty of models in my career, could be my own personal perceptually problem here. God is a model too u know ? not one that can be quantised, but heck there are shitloads of things that can't be quantised, which is my point."

By "mechanism" I meant the idea that "God made something happen." You would never say "probability made something happen." Probability is a human model to predict the odds of a certain outcome, it says WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? and nothing about WHO, WHY or HOW.

I sort of agree with you about God being a model -- the point being, it's not a very good model. We've passed beyond the stage where magical models are useful.

And finally the fact that there are lots of things that can't be quantified is beside the point. It's not a question of perfection, it's a question of "which works best?"

"Look. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong working with approximations. What I am saying is it is wrong to say 'its right, it's the truth' simply because its self fulfilling. No sensible scientist or philosopher would talk that way."

Now who's getting all semantic? ;-)

If you want to be technical, it's that something is rationaly 'true' to the extent that the rational explanation is the one that best fits observed data and best predicts things (such as "this airplane I have designed will actually fly.") It's not "absolutely true" because what is "absolutely" anything?

On the other hand, something is "magically true" if you believe in the underlying magical assumptions. But chances are that broomstick won't actually fly.
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