Re: Is my CS instructor nuts?


Gerry Quinn wrote:
In article <1150898364.779067.6050@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx says...
Gerry Quinn wrote:

Indeed? The very interpretation of data involves its METAPHYSICALLY
grounded interpretation as data. Kant read Kant?

Of course, just as reading your post requires its metaphysically
grounded interpretation as an attempt to communicate in English. Such
metaphysical speedbumps are encountered and passed daily; an attempt to
halt debate by pointing to their possible existence is easily
identified.

It may be conceded that a scientist in any field may be influenced by
his prejudices; for example, he may often be inclined to over- or
under-estimate racial differences. The statistics you so decry are one
of the tools used by imperfectly objective scientists to get less
imperfectly objective results.

Kant wasn't talking about "prejudices".

Nobody cares what Kant was talking about (it is a tenable proposition
that nobody knows).

Nobody? I find that hard to credit even though it is an
anti-intellectual fashion statement and a pose to say this, which is
quite convenient if you Kant understand Kant.


Again: have you ever written the instructions for a bootstrap loader? I
am not claiming to be present "at the creation", only at a university
with a machine which didn't have an OS until I wrote one, but I sense
here an acceptance of what Adorno calls "second nature" BASED on the
fact that your first computer wasn't an IBM 1401 (which doesn't put me
"present at the creation", only close to the Big Bang) but a Speak and
Spell.

If you mean that I am used to the tropes and patterns of modern desktop
computer systems, you are correct. Any relevance to the investigation
of human biology escapes me.

Try sociology.


Adorno feared that the proletariat would learn to take, for granted, a
reified world, which he called a second nature, and I fear he was a
Prophet, for the sado-masochistic precision of digital technology hides
its actual fragility (one bit wrong in an OS ship usually doesn't make
everything gibberish: the problem is it can). It also seems to make
people reason that even if two shills for Exxon LIED about global
warming, most of the residual science oughta be OK.

The word 'reify' and its derivatives have their place; I recall once
arguing that it should be pulled from a list of words characteristic of
theoretical bull***. It is not to be denied, though, that bull*** is
where it is most commonly found embedded.

Actually, it has a simple referent. Concepts precede things. To
recognize things, the infant has to form a concept because there are
different ways of parsing a visual field (the old "15 names for snow"
deal).

To reify is to treat a concept as a thing. Actually, the real bull***
is where you've reified. To use a noun (such as "Islamofascism") is to
make a base existence claim and to not permit discussion of your
assumptions.

I recall an hilarious letter to the New York Times written by some
clown who'd just bought a PC. He was dazzled by the apparent precision
of the referents of the nouns in computer manuals, and he compared
them, unfavorably, to nouns like "reification". The letter was
hilarious because, in fact, words like "operating system" have no fixed
referent: they could mean "resource manager" but at Microsoft they mean
"what we feel like today".

The apparent precision hides imprecision.


Adorno's whinge means, in essence, nothing more than that others
looking at the world do not see the patterns he has constructed. He
concludes that they must be blind. Since he was interested in
philosophy rather than science, there are few objective criteria for
deciding who is right.

Actually, there are "objective" criteria. You see,Adorno, silly man,
felt that the normed adult human personality still existed. He did not
foresee a world of children.

He was in fact always prepared to question the concepts he formed and
named, to discuss them with people he felt to be his intellectual
equals (damned few people as in the case of Dijkstra).

In fact, reification is that which creates the intolerance you so fear.


As for science, people often misrepresent it for political ends -
elsewhere you speak approvingly of the Hong Kong authorities for doing
so. The answer is to study the *facts*; to understand the
*statistics*.

But then you have to legislate after all. You have to sign the goddamn
Kyoto protocol because NOT signing is ALSO legislation. NOT signing did
not suspend the warming trend which increased in intensity after the
date for US signing had passed.

I mean, this is real simple stuff. It's Existentialism 101: to remain
in a default or idling state is just as much a choice as to join the
Resistance. "Libertarianism" is a willful denial of this.


- Gerry Quinn

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