#294

To continue on a bit from yesterday: a wholly disproportionate percentage of our lives are made up of and/or reliant on pure anecdote. The human being has been raised that way, yes, for lack of many better options. We are memetic animals and that's just how it is. However, there is a difference between a demonstrative meme (which can be concrete or metaphorical) and the other kinds, which can be divided roughly into three groups: theoretical (like hypotheses), recreational (tall tales, jokes, and the like), and bullshit. 

Bullshit's alright in sane measure. Fertilizer, y'know. Problem is, as I said, in the proportion. The huge difference between a demonstrative meme--for example: the sun rises in a direction which is one of four cardinal directions and sets in a second, from which the remaining pair can be derived--and bullshit--for example: masturbating will make you go blind.

Well, see, the sun rises in the east. It might not always do so forever into an infinite future, but it's demonstrable for the present, day in and day out. And while you might masturbate, and go blind, no one can prove that there exists a correlation there, meaning that, for the present, to assert causation is to propagate bullshit. 

Because bullshit can sound so much like a theoretical meme, and theoretical memes can sometimes become demonstrated, or seem to be demonstrated, and therefore concrete enough for honest use, bullshit often passes for the truth. Individuals can build whole worldviews based on anecdotal bullshit and believe they are operating on rational grounds, when they are really being manipulated by tricksters, officers of a nation-state, or sacerdotal entities.

There's nothing wrong with that--as I say, governments bank on this to form order from chaos, and it seems tolerable within certain limits--but it can be frustrating, and get out of control fast, because once you believe a little too much bullshit, it's hard to determine where bullshit-eating has to stop. What is persuasive becomes more real than what is true. The truth has no real sales pitch; bullshit has infinity of them and they almost always sound better. Sophistry.

Anyway. All this is to say that we would do well to instill in ourselves a rigorous metric of verification before incorporating any new information into our thinking, and be engaged in a dispassionate vetting process of what we think we believe. Thus, our Socratic thinking, praise God. 

*

Don't know why I feel compelled to try to squeeze these things out on such a crunch time--after waking up, exercising, and making coffee, before breakfast and getting ready to leave for work. But the hours are quite busy after work these days, what with moving books and painting walls/ceilings and whatnot, so I guess they wouldn't get typed otherwise.

Truth is, while I detest working on a deadline, and won't really do it even if I set it myself for some inane reason, I enjoy the challenge of a time trial. Even if I fail, or generate totally idiotic drivel, it's more of a fun time.

Ok, peace the fuck out

--JL

#121

Just purchased a copy of John K. Fairbank's China: A New History, among other things (more books*, couple toothbrushes, a sandwich and a couple pints of cold antipasti from the deli) and looked the dude up after I got home.

First, I ate a sandwich.

Then I found out this dude finished the manuscript for his book in the summer, delivered the final copy to his published on September 14 and when he got home his heart flexed goodbye and the dude died right there. Also he took a microphone away from Howard Zinn once which is hilarious. I liked Zinn's People's History of The United States and that Zinn's Comic History of American Empire, but I got my differences with the dude for sure and would totally have wrestled the mic out his hand at the drop of a hat. Now I am halfway through the wikipedia article on the American Historical Association.

Bearing in mind that it is impossible to fully disentangle the two, I don't like the academy influencing politics and I don't like politicians going anywhere near the academy, and that includes communists and the humanities.

It may be that individual academics are correct in believing that their specialized knowledge confers upon them a special clarity in perceiving and judging government policy at every level, and that their political views justify sophistry; that every agenda in the academy is abhorrent except for the one whose ideology they happen to espouse. I think sophistry is sophistry no matter how virtuous you think your opinions are or who agrees with you.

Of course it bears remembering that what the fuck do I know. At the end of every workday, I wipe a disinfected rag over a bunch of stainless steel and I throw a garbage bag from one garbage can into a bigger garbage can. Then I walk home. I don't have nearly the sufficient confidence in how much I know to act like I deserve for it to earn me anything.

Anyway if a dude gets accused of being a communist and of being an imperialist, I'm probably going to at least find his book interesting. I read on both sides of every aisle; that's how libraries are designed.

*

One hundred and twenty-one is a pretty good number. Not one of the coolest, but pretty cool.


--JL

*from the library I got this book on Murakami Takashi and this book on Picasso and Surrealism. From the used bookstore I got a book on the war between the Zulu Nation and Victorian Britain, a book on European culture from 1500 to the present that is thicker than this complete history of Europe I'm reading right now, a Star Wars book by Karen Traviss, a couple of Philip K. Dick books, and the omnibus print edition of the unbelievably good and important webcomic Digger, by Ursula Vernon, which I started reading online as it was starting out, when I was just thirteen years old.