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The Purpose of AE (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)
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Pete Jones


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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
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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


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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


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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


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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
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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


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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
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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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Mick Harper
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But back to AE allegedly in action. The idea of documents being forged for their content, not for their value as artefacts, is very well known to historians. They are always reminding us that, say, The Donation of Constantine is a papal fake. It's just they never do so when they are relying on the document for the writing of history.
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Page Eight of Forgeries (fourth page of text)

If I were one of Enid’s relatives (not Jimmy) I would be inclined to give that manuscript – for that is what hand-written documents are called – a thorough, not to say forensic, examination. The Gospels of St Augustine raises red flags under both the rule and the exception.

It is certainly one of the world’s most remarkable manuscripts. Not just remarkable, it is remarkably remarkable. Actually it is remarkably remarkably remarkable because, if genuine, the Gospels of St Augustine has no less than three completely different claims to fame:

1. It was the personal possession of the individual who introduced Christianity into England
2. It is the oldest non-archaeological artefact in England
3. It is the earliest manuscript anywhere in the world containing a written form of what would eventually become the world language, English.

And yet, amidst all the fanfare, it has its Enid moments. Nestled between the Prologue and St Mark's Gospel there is just enough space for some future scribe to come along and copy in some distinctly unBiblical material. It is a will bequeathing a substantial property to the then current owners of the Gospels, St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury.

Another tip: if Enid’s will had been lodged with her local solicitor and the will said she'd left a substantial property to that solicitor, the relatives (including Jimmy) might wish to have a word with the Law Society.

This is what the scribe wrote on that blank page in the Gospels of St Augustine

Here it is declared in this document how Abbot Wulfric and Ealdred, son of the thegn Lyfing, came to an agreement about the estate at Cliffe. Through the fear of God and St Augustine and on the advice of his friends he commended himself and the estate to St Augustine’s, and every year on St Augustine’s day he shall give a pound in token, and after his death the estate shall pass to St Augustine’s, furnished as it is at that time. The witnesses of this are the community at St Augustine’s and that at Christchurch, and Lyfing, his father, and Siweard and his brother Sired and Wulfstan of Saltwood and the other Wulfstan. And this is done forever without end on behalf of the souls of Siferth and his children. Amen.

Love that ‘other Wulfstan’. It would seem the Gospels of St Augustine might be worth a thorough, not to say forensic, examination. Though I don't suppose the Law Society would take the case.

* * *

We begin, as is standard procedure when the authenticity of documents is in question, with provenance – the official history of the item under inspection from its origin to the present day. To be perfectly honest, the first four hundred years of the Gospels of St Augustine are decidedly murky, there being no record
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Mick Harper
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Academic history has one very strict rule: you are not allowed to claim something happened without being able to produce a contemporaneous record of it. This transformed traditional histories which were based on... well, wishful thinking mostly.

It is a rule observed with great punctiliousness when there is a full historical record. Some leeway is allowed when the historical record is patchy. And it's back to wishful thinking when there is no record at all. Though the academics don't tip the punters the wink. Or each other a lot of the time, as we shall see...
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Page Nine of Forgeries

of its existence for those four hundred years. This is usually a big no-no when authenticating rare objects. Dr de Hamel was himself for many years a Sotheby’s appraiser but he probably wasn't on duty when this memorable encounter occurred

Bloke with parcel: I’ve got this Rembrandt here. What do you reckon it's worth?
Sotheby expert: What is its provenance?
Bloke: The first four hundred years are decidedly murky but it has been securely in my possession ever since I found it in a skip.
Sotheby expert: Well, it could be extremely valuable, Sir, we're going to have to take very good care of it. Gwendoline, would you ask security to come to the front desk.

Why then does Dr de Hamel – and the entirety of scholarly opinion – believe in the authenticity of the Gospels of St Augustine? They advance three lines of evidence.

The first is the Venerable Bede who mentions that Pope Gregory sent a parcel of books to Canterbury in 601 to assist in the proselytising mission Augustine was heading up. Bede does not mention a gospel book but in any event this appears to contradict the notion of it being brought here by St Augustine. This is finessed in orthodox accounts

The manuscript is traditionally, and plausibly, considered to be either a volume brought by St Augustine to England with the Gregorian mission in 597, or one of a number of books recorded as being sent to him in 601 by Pope Gregory the Great – like other scholars, Kurt Weitzmann sees "no reason to doubt" the tradition.

The casual reader would be forgiven for not noticing they are admitting there is no historical evidence for the Gospels of St Augustine. The historians have used here the effective, if dangerous, ‘either-or technique’, one of the many 'finesses' that the use of academese allows.

Everybody thinks of academese as a meta-language conveying complex ideas in a neutral and objective way. A pain to read perhaps but necessary if emotional and other imprecisions of ordinary language are to avoided. It is nothing of the kind. It is a swindle perpetrated by academics on themselves, on their peer-reviewers and on their readers -- though not directly on the general public who have to take their word for it, it being so painful to read. They just pay for it all.

Perhaps they wouldn't if they knew that academese is obscuring the fact that the great majority of all academic writing is worthless (almost literally since these monographs, essays, papers, dissertations, theses and so forth are read on average by between one and two persons). So the general public does not know they consist overwhelmingly of un-evidenced commentary ('learned chat'), based either on disguised truisms or undisguised but unexamined assumptions.

By rule, it is true, they must contain 'original material' but this is almost
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