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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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it is the ability to know how to deploy what has been googled that marks out the smartest people.
They will just cherry pick the bits that best fit into their way of viewing things. Whether they are smart or not. |
They would be not-smart if they did this. If you remove the word 'cherry' you would, however, be on the right track.
| There is nothing wrong with that. It makes sense to them. |
How is this different from what everyone does?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Computers are a new technology, teaching people en masse is very old. It is very unlikely that computers would be used 'properly' for that reason alone. Since they may mean teaching en masse is no longer required this reticence is entirely understandable. I have seen no evidence of any transformation, much less further transformation. Provide examples. |
Seems to Wiley that academic Archaeologists are getting there. Not that I have read a lot, but the last one that I read, A View from the West: The Neolithic of the Irish Sea Zone by Vicki Cummings, was pretty impessive in the way that it used data to look at chambered tombs over a wide area (as opposed to, say, the preceding obsession with Stone Henge, Avebury Stone circles). I am starting to think that folks are moving away from single site analysis and concentration on rare finds and high status or high density stuff. I must say I was impressed by Cummings. She seems acutely aware of how data gets biased. Pretty sure the march forwards has started. The problems are where history rules.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I have seen no evidence of any [computer-driven] transformation, much less further transformation. Provide examples.
Seems to Wiley that academic Archaeologists are getting there. Not that I have read a lot, but the last one that I read, A View from the West: The Neolithic of the Irish Sea Zone by Vicki Cummings, was pretty impessive in the way that it used data to look at chambered tombs over a wide area. |
What has this got to do with computers?
| (as opposed to say the preceding obsession with Stone Henge, Avebury Stone circles). I am starting to think that folks are moving away from single site analysis and concentration on rare finds and high status or high density stuff. |
What has this got to do with computers?
| I must say I was impressed by Cummings. She seems acutely aware of how data gets biased. |
She realised this by using computers, did she?
| Pretty sure the march forwards has started. |
Everyone is always pretty sure the march forwards has started. Let me know when it has.
| The problems are where history rules. |
At last, a goodie. It's in RevHist.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The smartest person in the room (Part seventeen)
| Theory is different. Theory is the bugbear. Theory is what draws in the absolutely smartest people. But only if they are stupid enough to do it. |
Data is easy. It is everywhere. It can be acquired from authority figures, from the media, by your own efforts. It can be examined from every angle, it can be shown to others as it was shown to you. It helps with the neural pathways since every bit of new data links up with another, on one side with cause and on the other side with effect. They quickly form neural networks by sideways connection with comparable data. That is the problem.
In order to remember, to apply, to add to this data, the brain demands a theory as to how, why all this happening. A billion neurons holding a billion discrete bits of data is useless for any purpose other than being a computer and theories are not everywhere. They are not findable.
In fact, they do not exist at all other than in the brains of people. You can acquire them easily enough from other people's brains when acquiring the data, which was not presented to you as discrete bits of information. You can even, if it is important enough to you, become the smartest person in rooms where the data is important, though you will find this limits you to one room per lifetime. And not a very interesting room at that.
Anyone with pretensions to smartness can see this is a fool's errand.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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It seems to Wiley that data is not easy at all, very few of us can see the forest for the trees, or we do the opposite and confuse a grove when it's actually a forest. Nothing to be ashamed about. It happens to Wiley everyday. Navigating "wooded areas" is a case of educated guess work (I would say "theory").... or, for those that are lazy, dependence on some person who has previously helpfully mapped these areas and another who has put all this on a sat nav.
Given that man is lazy, or is that just me?, these mapping tasks are important tasks for those few diligent hard-working noble types so the rest of us can navigate a bit better, without having to think. It's all pretty neat, except that historically we have made the dreadful mistake of giving mapping tasks to smart people.
Oh dear.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| It seems to Wiley that data is not easy at all, very few of us can see the forest for the trees, or we do the opposite and confuse a grove when it's actually a forest. |
I have never experienced this difficulty. A forest consists of a lot of trees, a grove consists of a few trees. I suppose one might argue about when a grove becomes a forest, is that the sort of thing you had in mind?
| Nothing to be ashamed about. It happens to Wiley everyday. Navigating "wooded areas" is a case of educated guess work, (I would say "theory").... |
What theory would that be? Navigating wooded areas would not seem to need one though, yes, I suppose educated guesswork might be advantageous if it were your first time so it sounds as though you go to a new one every day. You must have to travel a long way. My general advice would be to keep walking until you emerge out the other side or you could use a map or a satnav
| or, for those that are lazy, dependence on some person who has previously helpfully mapped these areas and another who has put all this on a sat nav. |
though not if you were lazy. This would be the act of someone with a keen interest in the wooded area.
| Given that man is lazy, or is that just me?, these mapping tasks are important tasks for those few diligent hard-working noble types so the rest of us can navigate a bit better, without having to think. It's all pretty neat, except that historically we have made the dreadful mistake of giving mapping tasks to smart people. Oh dear. |
I think you'll find mapping is not an especially important task nowadays though it was a long time ago. We have corrected their errors sufficiently not to need smart people to keep maps up to date. Just someone with a bike and a dubry. Though I understand even this has largely been dispensed with in favour of a drone.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The smartest person in the room (Part eighteen)
So we appear to have reached something of an impasse. If you are the smartest person in any room you enter, you won't be needing further assistance here. You were born that way. You won't be reading these words -- I'll be reading yours. You won't even exist since nobody like that has yet been born. Even the greatest of savants were duffers in many rooms. Even in rooms set aside for savants they were outshone by savants from other areas of savantry than their own. There is not, as far as I know, a Room Of All The Savants. Apart from anything else, savants tend to be solitary creatures, not at home in rooms full of people.
Knowledge, the dexterity of handling knowledge, originality in arranging new ways of organising knowledge, does not seem to be at the heart of the matter. Such things are either available to all or available to too many for you to compete, except sporadically. In any case 'smartness', as everyone knows, is not the hallmark of the clever, not even the hallmark of the genius. It is something else. That is what we must turn our hand to next. Or perhaps you are saying, at last.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I see your publishing arm has been busy, Wiley.
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/What+to+Believe+Now%3A+Applying+Epistemology+to+Contemporary+Issues-p-9781405199940
Although the book is ten years old, and the geezer is an academic, the intro looks promising
| What can we know and what should we believe about today's world? What to Believe Now: Applying Epistemology to Contemporary Issues applies the concerns and techniques of epistemology to a wide variety of contemporary issues. |
All branches of philosophy claim this. I haven't seen much evidence of it but I suppose there may be a newly-planted tree in the forest I am unaware of so, please, do go on
| Questions about what we can know -- and what we should believe -- are first addressed through an explicit consideration of the practicalities of working these issues out at the dawn of the twenty-first century. |
The academese doesn't bode well and I dunno what happened c 2000 AD that made all the difference but I suppose the internet might qualify.
| Coady calls for an 'applied turn' in epistemology, a process he likens to the applied turn that transformed the study of ethics in the early 1970s. |
Ah. Did you spot the giveaway? Transformed the study of ethics. Our understanding of ethics wasn't transformed (we'd have noticed), ethics weren't transformed (we'd have noticed), somebody wrote a book about ethics that other people writing books about ethics have to notice. As the author has chosen this arcane comparison as the lead-in to his blurb, we can be confident his book is aimed at other academic-philosophy types. Which is a shame because
Subjects dealt with include:
* Experts-how can we recognize them? And when should we trust them?
* Rumors-should they ever be believed? And can they, in fact, be a source of knowledge?
* Conspiracy theories-when, if ever, should they be believed, and can they be known to be true?
* The blogosphere-how does it compare with traditional media as a source of knowledge and justified belief? |
are all matters that need addressing in an un-academic-philosophy sort of way. How's he going to close it out?
| Timely, thought provoking, and controversial, What to Believe Now offers a wealth of insights into a branch of philosophy of growing importance -- and increasing relevance -- in the twenty-first century. |
His prose style isn't up to much either.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Humpf.
I am in favour of freedom of speech, except for philosophers. I am also against the death penalty except when poisoning a quibbler is actually needed to safeguard our young.
In short.
You are mistaken. It wasn't me.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Arthur Penguin doesn't take personal responsibility for all the books published in his name but, speaking of freedom of speech, this popped up this morning
and though not an AE theory matter this may be a convenient place to place my ex cathedra reply on Medium since it deals with one of the topics in the book:
------------------------
I'm not sure this is quite as juridical as you paint it. Going back to the founding legislation. The US constitutional right to freedom of speech is only a mirror of the English Bill of Rights of 1689. They both amount to "Say what you like but..." What the but is gets codified in both countries from time to time (also somewhat mirroring one another) but it always amounts to "Up with this we shall not put" which gets decided informally not by the courts.
Take Fred Phelps. [He's an anti-abortion fruitcake instanced in the story.] Please! everyone says but he's protected in both countries by freedom-of-speech provisions. In practice this means we can stop him coming into the country but -- I'm pretty sure -- we could not have stopped his activities if he had been home-grown. Then -- and this applies in both countries -- we suddenly can!
That's the way it has to go. What was reasoned discourse yesterday is hate speech today and will be forgotten tomorrow. Both countries make these impossible judgements rather well if you want my opinion. You didn't? The Bill of Rights says, "Tough!"
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I often draw the comparison between those people who can make jokes (not tell them or 'josh' in reaction to them) and people who can create new theories. I heard an Isaac Azimov short story yesterday, The Jokester, which explores some of these themes. It's worth a fifteen minute listen in its own right too. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jwnj
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The Most Attractive Person in the Room
The room is a party, the party-goers are your peers. You are young and single, as are they. Are you the most attractive person in the room? That you cannot tell. Know why?
* It is not because attractiveness cannot be ranked. It can and much more accurately than people like to think. It's horribly mechanical.
* It is not because we have difficulty judging our own attractiveness. We start doing it very early on and we continue to do so constantly. While we may err a little on either of truth for psychological reasons, we come up with roughly the right answer unerringly.
It is because half the room consists of people of the opposite sex and we cannot rank between the sexes. I know I am reasonably attractive, I know Mavis is reasonably attractive but I don't know whether I am more or less attractive than Mavis. It is only when I end up leaving the party with Mavis that I can conclude we were about the same because we were both trying to get off with the most attractive person that would have us.
If Mavis was the most attractive woman in the room I can conclude I was the most attractive man in the room. But I already knew that just by looking at the other men. Just as I knew Mavis was the most attractive woman just by looking. It's horribly mechanical.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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As a coda, I should point out that there is one way of telling whether I was more or less attractive than Mavis. It is whether she stays with me or not (and vice versa). It is always a wonder to me why people choose mates that are attractive enough to give them a hard time for fear of losing them when they could choose a mate of a smidgeon less-attractiveness and guarantee a life of permanent harmony (at least from their point of view).
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One principle of Applied Epistemology is that the future is impossible to predict (unless it is a mere projection of the present). This is important because human beings are always fervently praying as to what the future will bring and therefore a whole range of bogus 'sciences' have come into existence to satisfy that demand. A good example from Newsnight yesterday
| In 2011 the investment bank Goldman Saks predicted China would overtake America as the largest economy on earth in 2026. Now it thinks this will not take place until 2035. Another forecasting group, Capital Economics, is now projecting, on account of the country's structural problems, it will never happen. |
Goldman Sachs has already demonstrated its own futility but I'm selling my shares in Capital Economics if it believes a couple of years bad figures is enough to overthrow five thousand years of history.
PS AE does not predict China will overtake the USA.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The smartest person in this room
One thing I've noticed over the years wandering among forums is that everybody thinks they are the smartest person in the forum. I cannot remember anyone saying, to the effect, "You're smarter than me." They may readily concede that somebody or other knows more about a given subject than they do, but always in a way that implies that is all. I am no exception, though I do sometimes use 'you're smarter than me' as a rhetorical device.
This forum is no exception. Everyone here believes they are the smartest person here (apart possibly for one person, here under artificial conditions). You are all smart enough to concede that maybe somebody or other (especially me) may be smarter than they are within strict and temporary parameters but deep down, not in the least.
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