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Principles of Applied Epistemology (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)
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Ishmael


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Hatty wrote:
Are you suggesting all the rivers in the catchment area found their way independently as it were to the shore but were made to change course? Why?


The reason this was done was to create a flooding river.

The farming technique used in the Mississippi, the Nile, and Mesopotamia, involved annual floods watering and fertilizing river-banks with the flooded land being farmed after the waters receded. I suggest that the Mississippi was engineered to flood periodically but, to do that, you need a massive amount of water (you also need rivers from the mountains to bring down phosphate for fertilizer).

I have also a further suggestion.

While this job in Mesopotamia and Egypt was manageable for human work crews, the land area in North America was simply too massive for people to be tasked with the work. So an animal was engineered to do the work for them.

The beaver.
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Mick Harper
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This is not suited to this thread and, to some extent, not suited to the public part of the AEL but here goes

Chad should be a salt lake.

Unless it's had its salt removed. Both the local people and animals are in dire need of salt, not just for consumption but for trade. But I don't know enough about replacive hydrology in desert zones (no, really) to say whether this is a possibility. We have in the past speculated about Carthage's relationship to Lake Tunis.

I first developed this hypothesis when I applied Mick's methodology to the Mississippi river---noting all of the cultural and technical similarities between the peoples that lived there and those that lived in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

They couldn't be more different, surely.

My suspicion is that, in so far as the Nile and Euphrates are likely to have been engineered, the Mississippi too is likely to have been.

I can't see any similarities geography-wise. The Mississippi flows into its nearest sea at all times -- leaving aside the Great Lakes.

I suggest that salt lakes are merely marooned remnants of former oceans (I think I stole this notion from Mick).

You did indeed.

The Beaver

Another one of mine but you are welcome to it.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
This is not suited to this thread and, to some extent, not suited to the public part of the AEL but here goes


It's not suited to this thread but I do think this thread is private.

I first developed this hypothesis when...noting all of the cultural and technical similarities between the peoples that lived there and those that lived in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

They couldn't be more different, surely.


Farmed by Africans. Farmed by slaves. Farmed using a flooding technique. I think there were a few more similarities.

The Mississippi flows into its nearest sea at all times -- leaving aside the Great Lakes.


And the Mississippi should leave aside the great lakes because....? The river starts right next door to lake Michigan! It flows exactly the wrong way.

The Beaver

Another one of mine but you are welcome to it.


Yes. I know the domestication of the beaver was your idea.

My innovation was identifying the reason for the beaver's domestication--as well as the reason why it remained native to America. It was instrumental to the engineering and maintenance of the Mississippi river.
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Mick Harper
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It's not suited to this thread but I do think this thread is private.

Dunno what gave you that idea. We're trying to spread the Principles of Applied Epistemology, not keep them under wraps. Only the Reading Room is private.

Farmed by Africans. Farmed by slaves. Farmed using a flooding technique. I think there were a few more similarities.

You may be getting your eras mixed up. Didn't the African slaves arrive in America after the Europeans? And what makes you think the Nile was farmed by slaves anyway? Did native North Americans use 'flooding techniques'? The South American ones used terracing and long distance irrigation canals but that's hardly the same thing.

And the Mississippi should leave aside the great lakes because....? The river starts right next door to lake Michigan! It flows exactly the wrong way.

I was assuming the Great Lakes are a glacial phenomenon but I agree it's up for grabs.

My innovation was identifying the reason for the beaver's domestication--as well as the reason why it remained native to America. It was instrumental to the engineering and maintenance of the Mississippi river.

The original idea was indeed that the beaver was domesticated in North America for local water management purposes but I find it difficult to imagine the locals were capable of -- or would even be interested in -- engineering the Mississippi basin.
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Mick Harper
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Thomas Becket: Alpine ice sheds light on medieval murder
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52095694

One of the best examples of ‘academic chat’ I’ve come across since ... last week. Originally in the august Antiquity but thanks to the BBC no doubt winging its way worldward.

Ancient air pollution, trapped in ice, reveals new details about life and death in 12th Century Britain. In a study, scientists have found traces of lead, transported on the winds from British mines that operated in the late 1100s. The pollution also sheds light on a notorious murder of the medieval era; the killing of Thomas Becket.

So, the battle lines are drawn. The connection that guarantees world publicity has been made.

Analysing the 800 year-old ice from the Colle Gnifetti glacier in the Swiss-Italian Alps using a highly sensitive laser, the scientists were able to see a huge surge in lead in the air and dust captured in the 12th century. Atmospheric modelling showed that the element was carried by winds from the north west, across the UK, where lead mining and smelting in the Peak District and in Cumbria was booming in the late 1100s.

What be cause of that, Jedemiah? It'll be zummat going on in that Lunnun.

But production of the metal was clearly linked to political events according to the authors of this latest research. "In the 1169-70 period, there was a major disagreement between Henry II and Thomas Beckett and that clash manifested itself by the church refusing to work with Henry - and you actually see a fall in that production that year," said Prof Christopher Loveluck, from Nottingham University.

That is impressive. Cause and effect down to the year. And then?

Excommunicated by the Pope in the wake of the murder, Henry's attempt at reconciliation is detailed in the ice core."To get himself out of jail with the Pope, Henry promised to endow and build a lot of major monastic institutions very, very quickly," said Prof Loveluck. "And of course, massive amounts of lead were used for roofing of these major monastic complexes. Lead production rapidly expanded as Henry tried to atone for his misdemeanours against the Church."

I’m no expert – no, really, it’s the one lacuna in my erudité universale – but I’ve never heard of these monasteries Henry had to build. But maybe he did. What I do know though is that hundreds of monasteries (etc) were being built elsewhere in Europe at the time all, as it were, pumping out lead pollution. Another thing I know about is atmospheric modelling. Actually I don’t, nobody does really, but it comes down to prevailing winds. And nor-westerlies, from the Lake District to the Italian Alps are really quite rare. Could be an eddy in the jetstream though. The one they're already calling Beckett's Eddy.
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Ishmael


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Becket's Eddy. These posts are gold!
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Mick Harper
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You're a real pal, Ishmael.
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Mick Harper
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I am currently preparing a book/film/whatever about Applied Epistemology (I call it wisdom so as not to put people off) and came across this in my brain today

It turns out that when learning things, the most important aspect is not whether it’s true or not, it's whether it is the same as what other people have learnt. The reason for this is that human beings like other human beings on the basis of similarity and since we already select one another on the basis of what we look like, what better way to choose among them than on the basis of what we sound like. If they have learnt the same things as us they will sound like us, they will like us and we will like them. Now isn't that more useful than it being true?
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Mick Harper
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Yes, I know, the word 'wisdom' puts everybody off. It would not do to have too wide a Circle of the Wise. Just me probably. But you will be told to register your 'views' when the time comes. Our latest YouTube, on Deserts, is nearing the two hundred mark, so thank you one and all.
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Mick Harper
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Any Canadian interested in beavers' effect on North American geography will wish to check this out https://www.stolenhistory.org/threads/beavers-built-stone-dams-at-niagara.2703/

I was at Niagara once (though not myself a beaver) and couldn't understand why anyone would want to honeymoon there which seemed to be the largest local industry. But then I've never married so I don't know what I might have been missing.
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Ishmael


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Funny
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Mick Harper
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I coined the term 'applied epistemology' long before the internet revealed that there actually was a branch of philosophy called Applied Epistemology though for all I know it didn't exist at that time, if you see what I mean. Anyway I occasionally wonder whether the academic version bears any relation to our own. My Amazonian sweep served up this undergraduate course which maybe answered this question. It begins

Syllabus, Introduction to Social and Applied Epistemology Daniel Drucker

1 Overview
In this course we will study knowledge and belief as social phenomena and in relation to important social, political, or cultural issues—contemporary and perennial.
Because so much of the tradition in epistemology has focused on the individual and on abstract issues, we will begin with what may seem like a simple question: how much can rational cognition be an individual matter?

Blimey, if they think that is even seemingly a simple question, the kids are in for a tough time

When are we required to rely on other people, and how ought we to do that? And when we rely on others, how ought we to do that?

Philosophers divide this issue into at least two categories, testimony and disagreement, and we’ll look at both. We will end the more theoretical part of the course with a look into what group knowledge and belief might be, and how they might work. In the more applied section, we will look at the epistemology of democracy and of journalism, including: how may we reason in a democracy with one another? And how can we wrong one another, epistemically speaking
.

I don't think we've got much to worry about from the competition. More non-jewels later.
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Mick Harper
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2 Prerequisites
This course is meant to serve as an introduction to epistemology, but not to philosophy itself. So a prior introduction to philosophy course is highly recommended, but not required, as is a logic class.

I have always meant to enroll in these myself. I am confused though about whether Applied Epistemology is an introduction to Epistemology or the other way round. Such imprecision does not bode well. It smacks of careful ignoral being present somewhere along the line.

3 Aims
• Introduce students to epistemology.

This doesn't exactly clear the matter up.

• Give students a theoretical grasp on important issues around depending on others and on group belief and knowledge.

The heart of the matter for us, I guess

• Show students how to apply philosophical tools and skills to practical and socially relevant issues.

Unlike academic philosopy generally.

• Get students to respectfully discuss difficult issues.

Why does this fill me with dread? More tomorrow.
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Mick Harper
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Reading this through with Hatty we both realised there is a sure sign of 'nothing to see here' present. It is in the constant use of two different things used together in a kind of sweeps-up-everything, all things to all men, kind of way

Social and Applied Epistemology
knowledge and belief
contemporary and perennial
on the individual and the abstract
testimony and disagreement (though this is valid)
knowledge and belief (again)
democracy and journalism (not in a wider list)
on others and on group belief and knowledge
tools and skills
practical and socially relevant issues
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Mick Harper
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4 Schedule
1 The class can be subdivided into practical and applied issues in social epistemology

So we can add practical and applied issues to our list (though I think impractical should be in there somewhere, this being a philosophy course) but now social epistemology stands alone, whatever that is. I mainly practise unsocial epistemology.

but as I said, we will begin with a look at individualistic epistemology.

Sounds interesting.

4.1 A Very Brief Introduction to Individualistic Epistemology This section of the course will introduce some of the most classic discussions in individual, abstract epistemology: external world skepticism and how we might reason our way out of it, and the Gettier problem.

Sounds uninteresting. Who can follow Gettier...
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