"What if I get outed for who I am: an intellectual empty shell?"
Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity
The discussion goes on about opinion, certainty and doubt. This is apparently how literature majors approach evolution and network theory - i.e., top-down vs bottom-up.
The 2 groups eventually converge to similar concepts, yet cannot understand one another when they eventually arrive at the same thought! (Like Walter Shewhart said, data is meaningless without context. Turns out semantics is too!)
The top-down group doesn't understand abstract modeling and the bottom-up crowd doesn't appreciate the variance inherent in semantics (they both live in isolation from one another's context). Does that sound like the 1%-economists vs the 99%, or what?
1% to 99% - "To grow, you must slim down enough to work harder (for us)."
99% to 1% - "To grow, we must first eat adequately. Quit hoarding all the food!"
Yes, it can help to hear opinions from the 1%. Yet it helps even more if everyone's opinions are informed of actual, ongoing operations - i.e.,. bottom-up details. Long term, only the 99% can survive, so always stick with the bottom-up side. That's the real meaning of supply-side economics, consumption drives supply. Opinion, like data and semantics, is meaningless without FULL context, which means all data, operations, opinions, inter-dependencies, and ongoing outcomes - all mixed together. There are a very FEW opinions (about 1%?) saying that we're running out of fiat. Fine. However there's far more variance in capitalism than anyone appreciates. Sample all the opinions before firming any of them.
Yes, it can help to hear opinions from the 1%. Yet it helps even more if everyone's opinions are informed of actual, ongoing operations - i.e.,. bottom-up details. Long term, only the 99% can survive, so always stick with the bottom-up side. That's the real meaning of supply-side economics, consumption drives supply. Opinion, like data and semantics, is meaningless without FULL context, which means all data, operations, opinions, inter-dependencies, and ongoing outcomes - all mixed together. There are a very FEW opinions (about 1%?) saying that we're running out of fiat. Fine. However there's far more variance in capitalism than anyone appreciates. Sample all the opinions before firming any of them.
Here's the abstract approach to all the literature semantics. No component in any system is physically capable of mirroring all the data that defines that system, or that system's options. System options can only be explored, never exhausted, since multiple new options are spawned for every option explored! That's the Traveling Entrepreneur's Task. The only solution is endless practice - aka, we need EVERYONE'S opinion, and selection of novel patterns from that feedback, ASAP!
In literature terms, to help shape a culture of hundreds of millions of nitwits, it takes every form of storytelling imaginable, all at break-neck speed. Consider Chekov checked off. Now, given we have fiat, can we just get on with exploring all those group options that are piling up?
In literature terms, to help shape a culture of hundreds of millions of nitwits, it takes every form of storytelling imaginable, all at break-neck speed. Consider Chekov checked off. Now, given we have fiat, can we just get on with exploring all those group options that are piling up?
3 comments:
“Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity..”. Or as Adam Smith put it,“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public…”
In system terms, Ralph, local discourse lacks full group context. Hence, uninformed opinion descends to random utility.
Interestingly, an engineer commented:
"I dunno about every profession being a hollow shell of conspiracy. Engineering in particular comes to mind. Mechanical, electrical, material, chemical etc. are basically responsible for the world we live in and rarely, if ever, ask for any recognition, or pretend to be superior."
Good point, yet they're not alone. That's not the way the majority of non-"engineers" view what they define as engineers. It's not the way any "specialist" sees ANY other specialist. In fact, we all feel our our opinions, and slowly learn to appreciate the importance and value of other's perspectives.
In the public's eye, the typical engineer will see a situation, and immediately map the superficial "places to intervene in a system." Which turns out to be clumsy, causing more harm than good, which upsets them as well as everyone else. Ergo Dilbert.
Only after the engineers work with the "artists" do they re-prioritize their list to reflect "ways to GRACEFULLY intervene" in a system.
In effect, every variant component in a recombinant system is an engineer, with a unique, limited perspective. Adaptive success in any system comes ONLY when the "moment" of engineering is shaped by all the feedback from all interdependencies.
Once said that way, every recombinant culture is balanced on a knife edge, with the body of adaptive adults struggling mightily to pass on adaptive practices to the new crop who start out totally unaware of all the old interdependencies, let alone the spiraling number of new ones.
It's actually miraculous that evolution occurs. Statistically, the deck is stacked heavily against any system actually evolving. Everyone starts out paying so much attention to technology, but the slow growth of fundamental interdependencies is the ONLY thing that eventually makes any system grow.
No matter the technology, some totally unpredictable permutation of inter-dependencies has to be discovered ... one that allows net auto-catalysis. That's statistically improbable unless it's programmed in as very deep axioms shaping the adoption of any and all technologies.
How those deep axioms get preserved and extended as a system grows ... is simply amazing. All we know is that it's a function of energy throughput. (Call it reverse-entropy?)
As long as we have additional energy throughput from some source, that extra energy will reverse the statistics of entropy, and [eventually] allow even more interdependencies capable of parking even more energy.
That statistical process is what we call Exploring our Options.
Then there are, of course, orthodox economists. :( Their main - deadend - function seems to be to suck up to parasites by "explaining" parasitic behavior.
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