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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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Page 28, the conversation between St Augustine and Aethelbert is laugh-out-loud funny. I'm at a bar trying to watch the NBA Finals but I keep chuckling during the commercials. All serious ideas should be written this way
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It's a technique I often use but I have never seen anyone else use. The reason being that, far from being a sugared pill, the average reader would feel insultedly patronised. The human brain cannot mesh high purpose with low humour.
This is a shame because, reading it again, it says it all, it says it concisely and it says it unanswerably. Nor was there any need for (intellectual) creativity, it's all in Wiki. And it destroys a good chunk of 'English' history.
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Aethelberht: Welcome, Augustine, what can I do for you?
Augustine: Would you like to convert to Christianity?
Aethelberht: I'm open to offers. The wife's a Christian, you know. Well, of course you would know, you must have stayed with her father, Charibert King of the Franks, on your way through.
Augustine: Yes indeed, he sends his regards. If you do convert, you'll be saved from eternal damnation in the pits of hell.
Aethelberht: That's always useful but I was thinking of something more here and now.
Augustine: I can bestow the inestimable benefits of literacy upon your court.
Aethelberht: That's very kind of you but to be honest we don't have much call for literacy in the general way of things, being a warrior society and so forth. But insofar as we do – diplomatic correspondence with the Mercians, reminders to Charibert about the dowry and whatnot – I've got a roomful of scribes already doing it.
Augustine: Oh, you have...
Aethelberht: We're not complete barbarians round here. Well, yes, I suppose technically speaking we are, but Kent spent four hundred years in the Roman Empire so we've got a tradition of literacy. Not, I grant, a flourishing tradition but enough to be getting along with. Sorry old chap ... if there's nothing else...
Augustine: What about writing in Anglo-Saxon?
Aethelberht: Blimey, there's a thought. But I can't see the point. Even if we were writing to other Anglo-Saxons their scribes wouldn't be able to read it, would they? They only read Latin. And as for writing to the Franks or your man in Rome, even if they could read it, it would be gibberish seeing as they don't speak Anglo-Saxon.
Augustine: True ... mmm ... what about a law code in Anglo-Saxon?
Aethelberht: Ah now, that could be a runner. I can see the advantages in everybody knowing what crimes they mustn't commit. Preferably before they commit them. Go on then, tell me what it involves.
Augustine: Well, Anglo-Saxon isn't really compatible with the Latin alphabet so I might have to mess around some. Shouldn't be a problem but even so since no alphabet has more than a couple of dozen symbols I will have to re-invent and simplify your incredibly complex natural language into something more phonetic. You'll kind of recognise the new one but basically you'll have to learn it just like I had to learn Latin even though I'm a Tuscan-speaker. Which reminds me, I'll have to learn Anglo-Saxon in order to do any of this. No, wait, I can get a team of your scribes on the job since they already speak Anglo-Saxon and they will be able to understand my Latin instructions. Of course we will all have to learn philological techniques that haven't been employed since my own forefathers did it in central Italy a thousand years ago and unfortunately they didn't leave a blueprint. Never mind, we can learn on the job. Once we've finished we shall have to teach all your other scribes this new modified form of Anglo-Saxon in order for them to learn to write it but since they've already spent several years doing all this in the case of Latin they won't begrudge a few more years. After that it's all downhill.
Aethelberht: I suppose we might have to teach the crims how to read so they can read the law code but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. How long will all this take? We're only a rude military caste when all's said and done. Even the scribes. Especially the scribes if you ask me. A ballpark figure will do.
Augustine: These massive cultural shifts always take longer than you think but what is it now ... 597 ... so we're probably looking at the late 590's ... early seventh century tops.
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I bet I won't get a mention because ol' ChatGPT will also have noted my sales figures and whether my stuff features in Wiki or any other work of reference. |
You win the bet. I asked it for any criticisms of de Hamel, and I got scholarly journal references to people criticizing his unscholarly tone (the one thing it has going for it, according to you).
I then asked if there were any book-length criticisms, and it said no.
I then said, "But didn't MJ Harper write a book-length etc etc and WHY didn't you reference Harper's book?" It answered that it only searched scholarly journals at first.
It then re-reviewed MWRF and said it was a classic of the genre (paraphrase). Which it had to be prompted to even remember.
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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What I Thought AE Was....
Still from Forgeries:
| For the rest of us, bereft as we are of divine guidance, the Laws of Aethelberht represents a ‘paradigm anomaly’. We all love an anomaly. Life would be dull indeed were it not for those little bits that don't quite fit, the contradictions never entirely resolved, the coincidence too far. |
I came here like most, after reading THOBR -- just decades later than the rest of you. I'd already read Kuhn, already read my way out of many paradigms (the list is long). I knew the anomalies and ad hoc rescuing devices were the Open Sesame for figuring out the paradigm is nonsense. But crucially, I'd always read my way out of them...This was a problem for me, because I worried I was just being persuaded by whatever I read last.
The Purpose of AE, for me, was to figure out how one goes about dealing with the anomalies. Or, to put it more literally, to figure out how Mick had the clarity of mind to see through what he saw through in THOBR. Continuing the quote...
| In the normal course of events they either get explained or they gradually fade from memory. But occasionally these hanging questions are sufficiently important they either have to be explained or our understanding of the world has to change – these are the paradigm anomalies. People will do more or less anything rather than change their world, so they first adopt the strategy of ignoring the problem and trusting it will fade from memory. However, it being such an important problem, this cannot happen and sterner measures are required. Pending its resolution, which surely will be forthcoming eventually, the anomaly has to be studiously and deliberately avoided by all available means. Taken together, these are what those in my line of work call ‘careful ignoral’ but which generally come under the blanket term of ‘cognitive dissonance’. |
Change their world, change their mind, change their habits. What is the end of that list? The answer to me is that the list is superfluous: People will do more or less anything rather than changing.
Despite everyone spouting this cliche: "People never change [shakes head resignedly], no, people never change." How many of those spouting that cliche put real effort into not being the cliche?
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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So, I thought it required a two-step: Having a changeable mind and then directing it to the problems in an intellectual field.
The second part is AE, but the first part is the great mystery. I know why I'm willing to entertain that orthodoxy is wrong, but I think it's purely biographical (i.e., doesn't follow some pattern). But other than having some specific biography that makes some open, some not, I don't see how "changeable mind" can be taught. It seems like an accident, at least in my case.
I'd be curious about why other think they are willing to read about Hyberboreans or Reindeer Herders or Fake Names or Chronology Revision or the rest of it. Presumably, we all have family and friends with extremely similar biographies who never bother with topics like these. Or with questioning much of anything.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Pete Jones wrote: | | I know why I'm willing to entertain that orthodoxy is wrong |
This is the critical question. Or rather the second half of the question is: "Why aren't other people?" But the truth is, they are. Only not necessarily in a useful way.
Ordinary people are. As long as it is fed to to them in a careful way, everyone loves to see experts being shown up as dunces.
Conspiracy theorists are. They seem to think there are no experts and just lunge about from one enormity to another. I suppose they are bound to be right about something eventually.
Applied epistemologists are. But they lack what Marxists call 'a praxis' so they just lunge about from one enormity to another.
Maybe there are other people out there too. But we lack what software engineers call 'a search engine'. Maybe AI can find them. It can do anything else, I'm told.
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Pete Jones
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | It's a technique I often use but I have never seen anyone else use. |
I stole it directly in mine for a few theoretical conversations between the first talkers trying to make up words. This was the only section of the book that didn't go from the minor to the major
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Here is a perfect illustration of AE in action
| Artist Luke Jerram created the concept in 2008 as an art installation. The project was intended to challenge prohibition in public places. |
What was it? Public pianos. Was it successful?
| By 2018, his team had installed over 1900 streetpianos in 70 cities worldwide. |
Was it Jerram's original idea? No.
| In Sheffield, The Street Piano was a piano on the pavement on Sharrow Vale Road in 2003. It was originally left outside temporarily because the owner could not get it up the steps into his new house. As a social experiment the owner and a friend then attached a sign inviting passersby to play the piano for free. |
Did the powers-that-be approve? Are you kidding, this is the Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire:
| The piano became the centre of a local campaign once the council decided it constituted an abandoned item. As of July 2006 a spokesman said in an interview for the National BBC Radio 4 that the piano was no longer under threat of removal. However, it was eventually removed in 2008 because of weather damage. |
Did you spot the applied epistemologist? It was the owner's friend. His name is unrecorded.
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