Young Master Smeet
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Well, it's a different communications branch, butt here is something called "Costly signalling theory" (it's related to the article I posted at the beginning), which basically says that talk is cheap, so human groups have come up with energy expensive ways of demonstrating loyalty and communicative truthfulness. For example, people who attend church every week: they may be screaming hypocrits deep down, but if after may years of attending, they have invested so much in their church that it would be difficult for them to act in a way that would invalidate what that attendenace signals about them.Thuswise, for party members, we suddenly ask people to actively state, through writing or speech, their agreement with the party case. This is more costly than siomply filling in a membership form and ticking a box. We attach a value to membership (and to being able to at least explain the party case). Many years ago Armando Iannucci on one of his satirical shows managed to get Darth Vader and a Man in HIs Pants to join the Conservative Party: opportunism sets the bar very low.As a party, we forge intensive and strong links btween ourselves, because we're small and likely to be drowned out in the noise of other less rigorous parties.
Well, the point of mentioning the model, was how it shows, in part, how ideas diffuse through a society, and how part of that diffusion isn't always abstract ratiocination, but sometimes pro-social behaviours. the trick is to get the pro-social behaviours to swing in our direction, so that people will begin to caolesce behind socialist ideas.For example, if Noam Chomsky suddenly joined the WSPUS we'd suddenly have a flood of applicants. this would be no bad thing, if we assume Chomsky were an honest applicant. We'd screen further applicants to check that they were honest, and probably exclude a lot, but we'd still grow the mass of our fringe fairly rapidly, especially those who would want to pose as cool and radical. This isn't, though, a model of party growth, but of processing and reacting to news, I just think it helps us think about how our ideas impact on community groups and spread through them.
Indeed, the movement into the party, I'm sure as we become more hegemonic various Christian, Jewish and Islamic Socialist societies will spring up around us, and fair play to them, but not this party. We do ask people to vote for us, but we jkust want to warn them to be sure they know what they are voting for. Building a few strong links is better at the moment than many weak links.
SocialistPunk wrote:Could this relate to socialists with spiritual beliefs?No, cause we don't want people with spiritual beliefs to have a vote in the party.The interesting question is how an opinion spreads along a population. Stating 'we don't want your vote' foregrounds the issue of ideas, separates us from reformist groups and vote grubbers, and helps us as a tiny minority mark out a clear space: after all, the various pro-capitalist social networks already exist and need dismantling. I'll just add, this isn't a numbers game, we're discussing building links, and powerful links, which is different from mere nose counting.
Could have sworn I replied to this with two points:1) Party members are the blue sky thinkers, it's imjportant to have clarity and cohesion of message.2) Even if a joiner is broadly in agreement but has some quibbles over some parts of party policy, asking them to indicate agreement is encouraging a "pro-social(ist)" lie, that, again helps the network to grow.
LBird wrote:Can't you and YMS address some of Rovelli's concerns?Well, I don't see anything that exciting in Rovelli. If we have to redefine truth as 'to the best of our knowledge' we're not really changing much in the way we approach or deal with that knowledge. It is knowledge we can treat as if true.Back to the Law analogy. In court, juries are asked to be certain whether a person is guilty or not. They are not asked to pronounce upon the truth of the charge, and what happened, just guilty or not guilty (or proven & not proven in Scotland (lets ignore the not guilty abberation)). They are asked to be sure.I am sure that information cannot travel at a speed faster than light. I am sure that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I am sure that energy cannot be created or destroyed. I could be disabused of this certainty, but as a being that must exist within the world — and, more importantly, act within it — I must continue with my certainty until given good reason to change my mind. I am perfectly satisfied with 'To the best of our knowledge', that is still a high bar.Lets not forget that Real just means 'Royal' and true just means "loyal". So, I am happy that reality will be defined by collective democratic and free authority as long as they remain loyal.
5,000 hours on architecture, on physics, on chemistry, on art, literature, music: if, of course, I so choose to do so. Not everyone will put in the time, and not everyone needs to put in the time. Of course, those that care will make up their own minds (that will happen whether or not there is a vote). Irrespective of the numbers, you'll need to make available material for the 1,000 hourers as well as the 5,000, 10,000 and 50,000 hourers.Frankly, I'd prefer juries over voting, as a more sensible course, backed up by open debate. Between us, together, we'll be able to manage society collectively, that doesn't mean I personally will need to know how many nuts there are in a widget thrashing machine.
Oh, and yes, I agree, specialists must explain themselves, that is vitally important, but some things can't be understood without specialist training, that takes time, too. So some people will have 5,000 hours of practice in science, some people will have less than a 1,000, each needs to have material available to their understanding, and say, local libraries will stock material for the 1,000 hour folk, while university libraries will have texts for the 10,000 hour folk (the print runs for them will be less).
All a vote can tell us is what the majority agree is the case, not what is the case. So a motion "The socialist party believes" is true because the socialist party, as a body corporate would have a majority that agrees a particular case. Voting on whther thre is gravity or not is fairly pointless. It wouldn't change the minds of the anti-gravity crowd. I'd be against universities taking positions, rather than letting rsearchers just get on with saying what they want.he democratic input would come in at the publication stage, in publishing and dissemination and in what gets prominance in the attention economy (attention being a still scarce product, due to the finitude of human life).I agree, there must be debate, dissent and criticism, and I don't think those should be closed down by an artificial vote. Reality will be created by our common efforts, but our common efforts as freely associating individuals in discourse.
It's alleged it takes 10,000 hours of work to become an exprt in any field (this also applies to music, sport and art). Now, 10,000 hours is a lot of life, and we all have finite lives. At some point, we have to surrender to expertise.Now, obviously, there are spaces for democratci control. Will we build a sucessor to CERN? That's a democratic question. All scholarly communications should be available freely, everyone should have access to acadmic libraries. Publishing houses should have juries or elected boards to decide what to put into mass runs (and there needs to be a variety of publishers).Obviously, only one eye can go to a telescope at a time (or put another way, time with a massive radio telescope will need to be booked), and a demonstrated capacity to use it should be at least one critirion. Any (shudder) individual should be free to follow whatever object of study they choose, but when serious resources are required, and collaborative effort is needed, then that is a matter for democratic control.Is someone who has spent 10,000 hours studying physics an elite? no, because they haven't spent 10,000 hours studying biology, or working a lathe, or farming. People will do different work, and each specialism is equally useful to society; and that is what social production of knowledge looks like.
LBird wrote:This approach is very different from YMS's (and DJP's?) constant harping on about 'individuals', rather than 'classes'.Where do I harp on about individuals, my whole thrust has been about ideology being matter of class not individual. When there are no more classes there is no more ideology and we will be individuals, fully realised, in an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Partly because you aren't saying anything that a professed empircist couldn't sign up to; partly because I too am saying that knowledge is socially produced, another way of saying that is that science is organised reliable knowledged produced with an other in mind.Or, as the story goes:
Quote:Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men. Where there exists a relationship, it exists for me: the animal does not enter into “relations” with anything, it does not enter into any relation at all. For the animal, its relation to others does not exist as a relation. Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all.I'd have thought the important thing about science is that we know we don't know, but that, according to our best efforts, this is the way things stand. It's just one of those things you have to live with, much like the inevitability of death.Likewise, all language is inherently metaphorical, and any word can only refer to what it was iterpreteted to mean the last time it was used. This has radical implications, but not on a day to day basis: I mean, I can never fully know what you mean; but I can take a workable stab most of the time.If everyone is biased, no-one is biased. What matters is when classes introduce systematic bias. The bias of individuals is what we fight against through dialogue and dialectic. We will never eradticate bias.It's like the old saw about how maybe when I see red, I'm seeing the colour you see when you say green. I can never know. It's impossible. But what we can know is that when we point to something and say it's red, we both agree that it is red, and the sam boundaries apply to green.As the story goes:
Quote:Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence.LBird wrote:ALL knowledge suffers from 'distortion' and 'suppression'.Yes, as I have been saying, and thus that is a banal observation. Absent a social impact of class struggle, such distortion/suppression loses its ideological edge, and just becomes background radiation that we try through various methods to correct. It is the removal of power from science.I really have no idea why you think my other post beneath contempt?
I have never implied that atrsonomy is "The Truth", you seem to attribute views to me I don't hold. I stated simply that today astronomy (simple measurement of stellar locations, has no social ideological aspect. tehre are ideological debates around the big bang theory, and obviously creationism has specific local political aspects. That everyone is biased is banal, as relevant as saying everyone has skin.So, lets debate communist skin's application to science.Apparently in court, they have given up (in England) on 'Beyond a reasonable doubt' — that confuses people. They now ask: are you sure? Now, I'm sure what my name is, but that isn't truth, abstract and eternal. I'm sure India is there. I'm sure geostationery sattelites can track my position to within ten square metres. Reliable organised knowledge tells me this. Knowledge produced not as arbitrary personal belief, but for others, according to agreed methods.I am not sure of the predictions of greenhouse models, but I find them convincing. I am sure that the green house effect is true and adding carbon dioxide to an atmosphere will lead to temperature changes.I'm convinced that Elephants are long and smooth with a point at the end.
