Gonna try analyzing this again some. I’m gonna analyze the Birner
quote in this post some — in a more gist-y kinda way, not parsing each
word — cuz I found it necessary to do so in order to meaningfully
talk about some of the stuff Lulie says. But most of my attention will
be on Lulie stuff. I’m planning on trying replying repeatedly to
different parts in chunks rather than replying to the whole thing at
once.
> Danny Frederick:
>
>>> INDIVIDUALISTS AND THE MOB: CAN CRITICAL RATIONALISM SURVIVE?
>>>
>>> “By its very nature, critical rationalism attracts philosophers
>>> who believe in the force of critical argument. Let us assume
>>> (realistically, I think) that the type of personality with a firm
>>> belief in the power of criticism is less prone than the average
>>> academic to devote resources to the social networking and academic
>>> politicking that are needed to create an environment in which his or
>>> her intellectual offspring can survive…
Birner thinks there’s some tension or contradiction or something
between believing in the force of critical argument and being a social
networker and academic politicker. He frames this in terms of what he
regards as a realistic assumption that critical argument fans are
“less prone” to devote resources to networking and politicking. He
also thinks that if you don’t do these things, your intellectual
offspring won’t survive (or maybe are less likely to survive, or
something like that).
One thing I found interesting is that he’s avoiding calling
politicking *bad*. He thinks there’s some tension or contradiction
between liking critical argument and trying to win a social competition,
but he doesn’t say *why* that is the case. He doesn’t say anything
like “Debates on issues should be decided according to critical
discussion. Academia has perverse incentives in that it rewards people
according to social networking skills as opposed to the ability of those
people to generate scholarship that can stand up to criticism and move
the field forward. Thus, academia is immoral.” He doesn’t even come
close to this, presumably because he doesn’t agree. He’s identified
a problem but is fuzzy about the cause and the solution.
Another thing is that Birner seems to doubt that arguments can survive
on their own merits. He thinks you *need* to play the social academia
game in order to have your ideas survive. “Intellectual offspring”
is kinda vague as a term but given that he’s talking about needing to
politick etc I read it as meaning your ideas *as embodied in particular
people’s minds*, in particular like graduate students/PhDs who you
have some kind of relationship with. So a book with your ideas which
anyone could read and which could persuade some people doesn’t count
as your intellectual offspring surviving.
(Side comment: I’d guess that Rand’s books have convinced more
people of at least some tiny part of Oism — some idea — way more
than any CR books, including Popper’s own books, have convinced people
of some tiny part of CR. If most CR people largely focus on academic
stuff and basically never try to do stuff that’s more popular,
that’s bad and strange. There is a faulty assumption in focusing on
producing stuff for academic audience — like you’d do that if you
thought academic audiences were especially good or worthy of attention,
even though the man on the street is actually typically better.)
so so far we’ve got that:
1. Birner thinks CR people are less prone to want to do networking and
politicking stuff
2. Birner thinks this harms the survival of CR people’s intellectual
offspring
>>> “Until recently not only philosophers but some (outstanding)
>>> practising scientists (who are more likely to cultivate the social
>>> conditions that are necessary to carry on with their work), too,
>>> supported critical rationalism. This allowed critical rationalism to
>>> become a tradition for at least a couple of generations. In the mean
>>> time, however, the number of scientific disciplines, journals and
>>> scientists has increased. The professionalization of science has
>>> gone hand in hand with a drop in interest in philosophy on the part
>>> of scientists. The academic environment has changed and selection
>>> pressures have increased greatly. In this new environment, the
>>> support of scientists is lacking while the contents of critical
>>> rationalism continue to select against the type of personal
>>> characteristics that make it possible for individuals to adopt or
>>> have access to at least elements of different traditions. The
>>> situation of carriers of the tradition of critical rationalism being
>>> incapable of adopting or having access to alternative traditions is
>>> tantamount to the non-existence of alternative traditions. If
>>> critical rationalists continue to fail to adopt alternative
>>> traditions, or at least elements of them, critical rationalism risks
>>> becoming entrenched – and extinct.”
>>>
>>> Jack Birner, ‘From Group Selection to Ecological Niches,’ in
>>> ‘Rethinking Popper,’ ed. Zuzana Parusnikova.
So initially he’s saying that there was a tradition of critical
rationalism for a couple of generations, but stuff changed, science
became more “professional” and scientists became less interested in
philosophy.
where he says
> while the contents of rationalism continue to select against the type
> of characteristics that make it possible for individuals adopt or have
> access to at least elements of different traditions.
I am not sure exactly what this means. I think it’s related to this
idea that there’s something about CR having some tension with social
and politicking stuff, cuz he’s framing it as CR “continu[ing] to
select”, but bringing up “different traditions” seems like a new
point.
some guesses as to what “different traditions” might refer to:
1. the academic/politicking stuff itself
2. the new culture of professionalized science
3. various new ideas that are popular in the academic environment today
4. some combination of the above
regardless of that ambiguity, overall the point of this part seems to be
that CR people aren’t fitting in to the new situation and CR might die
out if it doesn’t adapt.
and zooming out, we’ve got something like
1. Birner thinks CR people are less prone to want to do networking and
politicking stuff
2. Birner thinks this harms the survival of CR people’s intellectual
offspring
3. Birner thinks there’s been changes in the scientific field which CR
people haven’t adapted to
4. Birner thinks CR might die out as a result
Ok so now to the beginning of L’s stuff:
> While I sympathise with the spirit of this post, I am far more
> optimistic.
>
> There’s a premise here that critical rationalism is incompatible
> with social networking and politicking.
>
> But you can have all sorts of interests as a critical rationalist. Why
> would social networking and politicking be special?
I’m just gonna do this part for this post.
> While I sympathise with the spirit of this post
So, what’s the “spirit” of the Birner post?
“Spirit” is worse than useless as a term here. It seems kind of like
an anti-concept:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/anti-concepts.html
> An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term
> designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of
> anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate
> understanding. But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the
> approximate
here are variations on the sentence that I think would have involved LT
sticking her neck out more than “spirit”:
While I sympathise with the main point of this post
While I sympathise with the main thrust of this post
While I sympathise with the thought behind this post
While I sympathise with the main argument in this post
While I sympathise with the general idea of this post
There are many such wordings!
And even these aren’t great btw — LT should have said more about
what she actually supposedly agreed with. But they’re less evasive
than “spirit.”
So I think “spirit” was chosen deliberately to obfuscate, confuse,
muddle up the discussion, muddy the waters.
Using that word is a way to avoid getting pinned down on what you are
agreeing to, cuz it’s vague enough that if somebody offers a criticism
you can say “oh I didn’t mean I liked X, I meant Y” and just play
that game ad hoc as criticisms are offered.
LT isn’t offering a BOLD CONJECTURE here for criticism but is instead
minimizing her exposure to criticism by minimizing how much she’s
explicitly claiming.
She is making claims, as we’ll see — she does have a position on
what Birner is saying — but she’s doing it in such a way as to make
it very hard to pin down what she’s claiming.
I think if you’re going to use it all, “spirit” should refer to
the gist, or the author’s main point, or something like that. So one
of the things I gave as like a numbered point earlier. Or all of them.
But as we’ll see, LT totally disagrees with the basic idea of
Birner’s post. Not only does LT disagree with the author’s analysis
of the potential implications of a tension between CR and social stuff,
she disagrees with his very identification of there being some kinda
tension between CR and doing social stuff.
> While I sympathise
What does LT sympathize with?
She immediately says
> There’s a premise here that critical rationalism is incompatible
> with social networking and politicking.
>
> But you can have all sorts of interests as a critical rationalist. Why
> would social networking and politicking be special?
An alternative approach to the discussion:
“You seem to be saying that there’s some contradiction between CR
and doing effective social networking and politicking. Can you explain
more? What do you think causes the contradiction?
Is there something bad about social networking and politicking? Is there
some conflict between ‘a firm belief in the power of criticism’ and
social networking and politicking? If so, do you believe this conflict
can be resolved by means that don’t involve compromising CR?
And are there risks? Like, is there a way to resolve the conflict which
does compromise CR, and one which doesn’t? And if so what are the
differences? Can you give an example? Might people easily get confused
between the two?”
That’s what taking the project of understanding someone else’s
position seriously looks like. That’s not what LT is doing. She
doesn’t seem very sympathetic in a CR sense if she’s not trying to
get more details.
> There’s a premise here that critical rationalism is incompatible
> with social networking and politicking.
That’s not just a premise — that’s more like a big part of the
spirit.
It’s tricky cuz I think Birner was maybe himself not super clear on
what his position was, as I talked about earlier — like he had some
ideas along the right lines but hadn’t really carried his analysis all
the way to a conclusion. Talking about CR people being “less prone”
to do something naturally brings up the question “why would that be
the case?” which Birner didn’t answer in his analysis. He just takes
it as a given and then analyzes the potential implications for the
future of a living tradition of CR.
So calling that a “premise” isn’t bad IMHO, cuz he is sort of
taking it as a given and then analyzing conclusions from that. But
what’s bad is this…
> But you can have all sorts of interests as a critical rationalist. Why
> would social networking and politicking be special?
…in light of this…
> While I sympathise with the spirit of this post
What does LT sympathize with, exactly?
The whole Birner post is basically about this incompatibility between CR
and social networking stuff and the problems it might cause for the
survival of CR.
If LT disagrees with *that*, what does she sympathize with?
This is where “spirit” comes in btw. Cuz if you call LT out on this,
she can say ...
“Oh I actually sympathized with the spirit of caring about CR not
dying out” or
“Oh I actually sympathized with the spirit of discussing high-level
problems one sees in the CR community” or
“Oh I actually sympathized with the spirit of thinking about potential
problems that CR people could encounter due to the professionalization
of science that Popper referred to as ‘Big Science’”
…or a million other potential avenues for escape from criticism.
“Spirit” doesn’t rule out any of these avenues for escape, but was
in fact selected for its ability to leave open the maximum number of
such avenues. This helps indicate its anti-conceptual use by LT. A term
ruling stuff out is essential for the term to serve a communicating
function. If a term is chosen not to clarify *but because it is unclear*
— because it leaves one a lot of wiggle room, because it’s open to
many interpretations — that’s perverse. It’s making a mockery of
language, discussion, truth-seeking.
> But you can have all sorts of interests as a critical rationalist.
LT is treating social networking and politicking as a normal, perfectly
fine, unobjectionable interest, like physics or economics. She just
asserts this here.
She knows Birner apparently disagrees with her assertion, since she
ascribed thinking there was an incompatibility to him as a premise. But
she doesn’t feel the need to figure out why he thinks that, to try to
analyze the issue objectively, to get a variety of perspectives on the
issue (including Oism, which she hates and viciously slanders on Twitter
without discussion).
She is not approaching this discussion remotely in the spirit of “I
may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer
to the truth.” That is not her perspective; those are not her values.
Instead, she seems confident speaking authoritatively regarding CR,
based on her apparent CR expertise?!
Note she does frame something as a question:
> Why would social networking and politicking be special?
But this is not an actual question. It’s a rhetorical question that is
designed to let LT expound on her ideas about why her position is
correct. LT doesn’t have any doubts about the issue.
THE QUESTION MARK IS A LIE!
The pseudoq-question is also designed to intimidate.
Consider an alternate wording:
“I think a CR person can be interested in and pursue social networking
and politicking stuff. I don’t see anything about those fields that
inherently contradicts CR. Can you explain why you think otherwise?”
This framing is inviting the person one is discussing with to offer some
reasons, some arguments.
LT’s wording is basically saying “No, you’re wrong” and acting
as if there’s no criticisms of CR people caring about that kind of
stuff.
But LT knows about Objectivism so she presumably knows about
second-handedness. So this pretending that there’s no reasonable
arguments on the issue is BS. She doesn’t discuss Objectivism at all
in her reply. She wants to pretend it doesn’t exist, its position
doesn’t exist, its arguments don’t exist. So this is a lie.
> be special?
the “be special” wording is framing positions contrary to Lulie’s
as wanting to make unprincipled exceptions to obviously applicable
general rules. she’s taking her position as self-evidently true and
flaming dissenters.
Imagine if one asked: “You can eat tons of substances fine. Why would
arsenic be special?”
In that case you can see clearly that someone just *assuming* a toxic
substance is fine to eat cuz it is a *substance* is ridiculous.
Likewise, it is ridiculous to assume that because something is an
*interest* that it is compatible with CR.
> While I sympathise with the spirit of this post, I am far more
> optimistic.
“far” isn’t reflecting some measurement or judgment of relative
optimism. So that’s a lie.
LT doesn’t think there’s any contradiction between CR and social
stuff. Birner does. LT thinks CR people can fit in and be social bros
and do fine. Birner thinks CR people need to adapt in some way (kinda
unclear to me how).
Birner seems to think there’s some solution to the problem of CR
people dealing with things like professionalized science etc. He’s
light on details but his attitude isn’t “we’re totally fucked.”
He *does* think there is a serious risk that needs to be addressed.
LT fundamentally disagrees that a problem of CR incompatibility with
social stuff even exists. She frames this fundamental disagreement as
being far more optimistic.
It’s kinda like, if some guy thinks a giant asteroid is gonna hit NY
*unless we take certain steps*, and you’re like “nah don’t worry
it won’t hit us”, it’s deceptive to call that greater optimism.
If two people evaluate the likelihood of success of some action
differently, I think it makes more sense to call that an issue of
optimism. Like if two doctors have different guesses as to whether a
particular cancer treatment will work, calling that optimism makes sense
to me. But if two doctors disagree about whether a patient *has* cancer
or just a cold, saying the doctor who thinks it is a cold is
“optimistic” would seem strange to me. Cuz there’s just like a
more fundamental disagreement there about what the basics of the
situation are. I think optimism is about different valuations of the
likelihood of success given some specified context. But the bigger the
gap between people in terms of the context they’ll both concede, the
less the issue is one of optimism and the more it is one of
fundamentally clashing worldviews.
So let’s review:
> While I sympathise
lie. she doesn’t sympathize, she fundamentally disagrees.
> with the spirit
“spirit” is a word chosen to muddle discussion.
> of this post, I am far
“far” is a lie. She didn’t assess something like relative optimism
levels.
> more optimistic.
“optimistic” is a lie. She disagrees fundamentally and frames that
as optimism.
> There’s a premise here that critical rationalism is incompatible
> with social networking and politicking.
Not sure what the lie is here.
> But you can have all sorts of interests as a critical rationalist.
Implicit lie about LT’s level of CR expertise.
> Why would social networking and politicking be special
Lying by omission about what sorts of criticism of the incompatibility
of CR and social stuff exist.
> ?
The question mark is a lie. LT isn’t actually asking a question or
participating in a back-and-forth truth seeking discussion. She’s
clearing her throat before expounding on her views on CR.
So summing up: LT lies about sympathizing with the post. She doesn’t
sympathize but actually fundamentally disagrees. She wants to pretend
otherwise so she can non-confrontational impose her own views on the
discussion in ways that are difficult to challenge. She frames the
discussion in a biased way, asks fake questions, and pretends criticism
of her position doesn’t exist.
-JM