Principles of Applied Epistemology (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)

[Mick Harper]

I have absolutely no idea what you are going on about. You might start by saying what the significance of 1608 is.

[Mick Harper]

I am becoming more and fascinated, in an AE sort of way, by Loren Kantor on Medium (who I have written about briefly before). He is the only person I have come across on Medium, apart from myself, who can turn in brilliant pieces regularly and effortlessly. Unlike me he is narrowly focused--on where he lives, works and writes about, the Hollywood margins.

He quickly recognised a soulmate when I started responded to his stories, and responded in kind to them. He started reading my stories with the same back and forth result.

Although naturally unorthodox he has the same weakness many of you have, politics. He is dyed-in-the-wool soft-left. Hence when he perpetrated one too many lefty howlers, I took issue. And was cast into the outer darkness.

Though of a penumbral kind. He no longer read my stories, as far as I know, and no longer responded to my responses to his. Instead he gave them one solitary clap. It never varies. Always a single clap, always a nil response. This got my pip at the time but after not being able to UnFollow him in high dudgeon (for technical reasons I wrote about at the time) I decided to make a virtue of the situation and faithfully read his stories, faithfully made as interesting a comment as I could muster, and waited to see what broke.

Nothing broke. After maybe a hundred stories from him and a hundred brilliancies from me, he continues his wooden policy of careful ignoral. So what's fascinating? Well, look at things from his point of view. It is true his actions are practical insofar as I am a cash cow for him so he wants to encourage me to carry on reading, clapping and responding to his stories but it's a very small cash cow (a cent a day or whatever).

I am the only person that makes interesting comments--I know this by looking at the others, to which he responds, often fulsomely. But he must, every day, decide consciously to invoke his fixed policy towards me so presumably he is reminded every day of what might have been. What still might be. Of course we know here, a hundred times is not a hundred opportunities to change his behaviour but a hundred hammer blows on his confirmatory anvil, but even so I can't help asking

Does he know how trifling is the political gap that has altered his behaviour?
Does he know how yawning is the political gap that has altered his behaviour?
Does he realise he is not required to change his politics, only to tolerate mine?
Does he not know that tolerance is part of his political credo?
Does he ever feel the urge to comment on my comment?
Does he miss me?
Does he find it all irritating?
Does he even notice?
Does he blame me or does he reproach himself?
Is it me that needs his head examining?

[Mick Harper]

Careful Ignoral

1. At 2.30 pm I turned on CNN's 360 Anderson Cooper broadcast at our midnight
2. First up was a plane crashing into a Philadelphia mall
3. By 2.35 pm I concluded it was in descending order of probability (a) terrorism (b) suicide (c) other.
4. It's 2.40 and none of the speaking heads have mentioned (a) or (b)
5. They have all said it's too early to speculate but not
6. Too early to speculate on various types of (c).

Now I may look silly if it turns out to be (c) but that does not obscure the fact that lots of people on 'where more Americans get their news than from any other source' should at least have mentioned (a) and (b) if only in passing, if only to reject them. No wonder the crazies complain about the liberal MSM.

[Mick Harper]

An interesting example of the bogus list was sent to me today.

[Mick Harper]

I am currently having a bit of an argy with family members about me not getting a hearing. 'Twas ever thus and I am quite used to it. I like x, they like y, it can't be helped. But it becomes an AE matter when I can't get a hearing, period.

A few days ago I posted this up on Medium. It's quite interesting and even, in a small way, important. I got one read, no claps, no comments. Now you tell me whether it's interesting and minorly important. In case it's just me.
----------------

Ex-STASI hood gets ten years
Not the medal he should have got

A German court has sentenced a former STASI agent to ten years for murder after a team of historians, journalists and forensic epigraphists painstakingly tracked down the East German security man responsible for killing in cold blood a young man whose only crime was trying to escape to the West.

[Mick Harper]

On the other hand, this is an example of the opposite, over-engagement. Notice the sudden lurch into intemperance when challenged. I have noticed that this always happens at a certain point in proceedings. (The title, strap and publication will tell you all you need to know.)

[Boreades]

Are these tenured university people?

[Grant]

Anyone who writes like this can be safely ignored

[Boreades]

What? I only asked if they are tenured university people.

[Grant]

Not you, Boreades.

I meant Buen Ravov, or whatever his name is

[Mick Harper]

I have received my first paper from Truth and Balance written by my old sparring partner at Medium, Harold De Gauche (aka Shane Fitzgerald), who fancies himself my superior and who I am trying to tempt into the ways of AE. I haven't read it but I'll deal with it before your very eyes (and mine) to see what we can see

The Curse of Short-term Thinking: Europe is Not Strong Enough to Be Stupid If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

Now this is a typical challenge made by people who think they are (a) radical and (b) original. You can tell immediately it is neither. How? Not just its sheer familiarity, not just the vagueness of the targets, but the relentless confidence that the writer knows better.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Or maybe not. I have had a lengthy response to just the bit I put up. You'll have to forgive me if I'm disappearing up my own arse but it's something we have to get clear in our minds

[Mick Harper]

The rest of Shane's piece
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From February 2022 onwards, the Western World has largely stuck to a single course of action and coalesced around a single narrative. Russia’s invasion of and war against its neighbour was both wholly unprovoked and wholly unjustified, and that arming Ukraine with ever more powerful weapons, and not getting to the negotiation table, was both in Ukraine’s interests and the best possible path to bring the conflict to a close.

There are a number of serious weaknesses in the reasoning behind such thinking.

The war is not justified. Nothing can or should justify it. But it was hugely provoked, by a collective admixture of wilful acts and failures that have been building over the last three decades. It was politically advantageous to pretend nothing other than the malevolence of Putin and his government were to blame for it all, but European leaders have bought into the binary casting so much so that an all-or-nothing either-or mentality has set in where Ukraine is seen to be on a messianic crusade to beat back the Russian bear for the salvation of the continent, and everything must be done to aid in its fight. This has prevented the UK, France and Germany from standing back and understanding what is in the long-term interests of Ukraine, Europe, and the world.

Russia’s actions, the great loss of life and devastation it has wrought, are unconscionable and indefensible. They were, however, hugely predictable, so much so that many predicted them even before Putin came to power. When one does not know why or does not accept why something happened, it is far harder to understand how it will progress and how it can be solved. Once again, the inability of Europe’s leading politicians to look left and right across the long highway of history has pushed them into policies and positions that have made things far worse, not better.

The notion that Ukraine, with western support, could somehow eke out a victory of sorts against Russia reveals serious defects of thought and reason. Vietnam and Afghanistan were able to repel superpowers, but only when those superpowers were thousands of miles away and/or not driven by an existential imperative. Russia is fighting right on its borders in a land it knows well against a people it knows well for interests of the first order. Under such conditions, it was all but inevitable that Russia’s armies would grind Ukraine down, as was predicted beforehand and has been proven in practice.

Wholly failing to think big, to reason logically and to look down the line has meant that Europe has put all its eggs in one basket and all its efforts into pursuing one path for resolution. The story rammed down our throats painted the war and the reasons for it in black-and-white terms. When you cast one side as a devil, it tends to make sitting down with said devil rather difficult. Thus, the one thing that may have brought peace, and saved Ukraine from losing more people and more land, was rendered all but an impossibility. And the very thing that has only made the war worse, and caused Ukraine to lose more land and more people – arming it with a steadily increasing flow of weapons of ever greater scale and sophistication – has been Europe’s be-all end-all for solving the crisis.

This sort of binary moral absolutism sits at the heart of the American Political Establishment, best represented by the Democratic Party in our time. Biden and the Democrats made the war worse by absolving themselves of everything, by arming Ukraine with everything and by blaming everything on Russia. But Biden had the power to back up his bad ideas and bad policies; Europe does not.

The UK has long bought into the idea of the indispensable nation and its special relationship with it. France and Germany have traditionally been far more cautious and far more reticent. Regardless, they have all demonstrated a massive failure of foresight by allowing Biden to back them into a corner. It should have been obvious that without the power of the U.S. to propel their Ukrainian policy, it would fall to pieces for it could not be sustained by reason and good sense. The very real possibility of Donald Trump again becoming president should have given them large cause to channel a more measured course.

These failures really are a tour de force in losing oneself to the narrow, the blinkered, and the short-term, and of allowing a narrative created for others to end up becoming your own. As the adage goes: if you’re going to be dumb, you better be tough. Europe is nowhere near strong enough to suffer such stupidity, and its leaders need to start looking both ways before deciding what’s best for the continent in the long term.

[Mick Harper]

On the subject of 'bogus lists', there was an interesting piece on a BBC World Service science strand about cancers among the under-fifties having gone up by 80% in recent years when the overall trend is down.

When asked whether the cause was obesity--apparently a leading cause of cancer generally--the talking head remarked that oncologists are reporting the new young cancer patients are exceptionally un-obese and in fact fit as a fiddle. I pricked up my AE ears at this.

The discussion ambled on covering all the usual suspects but left out the glaring common factor: the fit as a fiddleness. This happens when one desideratum clashes with another--they get left off the list. They cannot actually deny it but it gives them a legitimate way of not mentioning it.

Bogus list meets careful ignoral.