timelets

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 22:28:06 GMT

"We are prone to think that we have here are degrees of certainty, with 2+2=4 enjoying the highest certainty. We don't realize that what we have here are not degrees of certainty, but kinds of certainty. And the kinds of certainty are as various as the kinds of proposition in question. *"

This crucial point is often lost in probability calculations. Nassim Taleb gets it though.

* “Different kinds of certainty have different kinds of grounds. And what it is that is certain is, in each such case, a categorially different kind of proposition. The grounds for mathematical certainty are deductive proofs, and mathematical propositions are rules, not descriptions. The certainty of a perceptual statement such as ‘The curtains are red’ lies in its being evident to the senses – look and see! The certainty of an empirical prediction is determined by its conclusive empirical evidence. And the certainty of a highly theoretical proposition of science, such as e = mc2, is determined by the holistic confirmation of the theory of which it is a part.
...
What applies to certainty applies also to truth.
..
Empirical propositions, mathematical propositions, logical propositions and ethical propositions are categorially different. And that’s why what it is for propositions of categorially different kinds to be true is also so different, even though the term ‘true’ is unequivocal.”

Peter Hacker;. “A Beginner's Guide to the Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein.”

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Нарратив и факты

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:31:57 GMT

Хороший пример того, что "понять" означает не выяснить факты, а придумать себе нарратив, который соответствует какому-то внутреннему пониманию мира.

Человек начинает с намерения найти видео о конфликте. Задача необыкновенно простая, потому что таких видео в нормальных СМИ очень много, включая источники, на которые дается ссылка.

Впрочем нигде не могу найти видео начала конфликта: везде показывают, как он сопротивляется повалившим его полицейским.

Но некоторые СМИ утверждают, что есть какие-то видео, где он якобы подходит к ним не с пистолетом, а телефоном.

https://xaxam.dreamwidth.org/1333814.html?thread=8634422#cmt8634422

Что происходит дальше? Каким-то образом, она приходит к нарративу, в котором все факты неверные (разбор после цитаты):

Я так поняла, что они задерживали нелегала, а этот чудик решил зачем-то вмешаться.
Ну и получил, как пелось в той песне маслину.

А тот, кого они пытались задержать - удрал.
То есть мужик жизнь потерял из-за какого-то нелегального криминала.
Чистая премия Дарвина.
Да.

https://julinona.dreamwidth.org/494833.html?thread=5830385#cmt5830385

1. задерживали нелегала -- ICE не задерживал нелегала. Айсовец толкнул в снег женщину, которая снимала его на телефон.
2. чудик -- Мужчина, который решил помочь женщине был совершенно нормальным человеком. Он работал медбратом в системе VA, медицинских учреждений для помощи ветеранам, и у него была безупречная рабочая репутация.
3. получил ... маслину -- Мужчина получил 10 выстрелов в спину после того, как на него набросилось пять или шесть айсовцев.
4. тот, кого они пытались задержать - удрал. -- Женщина, которой помогал убитый, была американской гражданкой. Она никуда не удрала, а продолжала снимать сцену убийства.
5. жизнь потерял из-за какого-то нелегального криминала. -- В происходящем не было не только нелегалов, но и криминальных нелегалов.

Несмотря на то, что в нарративе нет ни одного верного факта (что проверяется элементарно), он является внутренне непротиворечивым рассказом о событиях. Она не врет, не создает спин, а искренне верит, что разобралась в происшедшем наилучшим способом. Никакие последующие обсуждения, не меняют ее нарратив.

Раньше я такое видел у часовщика, когда он по мотивам обсуждения в ЖЖ создавал себе фальшивый нарратив о том, как присяжные неправильно признали Трампа уголовным преступником. Сейчас не могу найти ссылку.

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Mon, 18 Aug 2025 20:09:28 GMT

“...from the eminent psychologist Jerome Bruner: “A good story and a well-formed argument are different natural kinds. Both can be used as means for convincing another. Yet what they convince of is fundamentally different: arguments convince one of their truth, stories of their lifelikeness. The one verifies by eventual appeal to procedures for establishing formal and empirical proof. The other establishes not truth but verisimilitude.”

“...from the American novelist and critic Ronald Sukenick: “All fiction can be profitably regarded as argument. When you define fiction by representation you end up confining it to realism at some level and arguing that fiction, as a form of make-believe, is a way of lying to get at the truth, which if not palpably stupid is certainly round-about and restrictive. My approach frees fiction from the obligations of mimesis, popularly, and most often critically, assumed to be its defining quality.”

An important qualification to this argument is that there is not necessarily any single privileged way of reading the conflict in a story, or sometimes even defining what or who it involves. This sounds extreme, but it can be especially true in longer and more complex narratives like the story of Oedipus.

--- Abbott, H. Porter. “The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge Introductions to Literature).”

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Quote of the day

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 22:16:22 GMT

Словом, якщо хтось каже, що він підтримує Україну і при цьому вважає нормальним голосувати за республіканців США, то це одне з трьох:
* Або брехня
* Або дурість
* Або підлість
Інших варіантів нема, всі сценарії -- суміш цих трьох.
...
Одному американцю допомогло таке пояснення: ми згодні, що гамбургери з Макдональдса -- гівно, але якщо вже треба щось зʼїсти, то краще той гамбургер, ніж справжній кізяк. Так і з партіями: демократи, багато в чому -- гімно метафоричне, але нинішні республіканці -- гімно справжнє, нерозбавлене і неприкрите.
https://malyj-gorgan.dreamwidth.org/217796.html

Это еще Спиноза доказал (Spinoza, B. The Ethics, Proposition LXV).

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Sun, 24 Nov 2024 04:44:56 GMT

“Fairy tales operate according to several other fundamental principles of magical thinking besides natural magic and animist vitality: animal metamorphosis and changeable bodies on the one hand, and the binding power of promises and curses on the other, govern the logic of the plots—although logic is hardly the mot juste, since magic springs continual surprises that break all the rules of probability. The implied, ever-present possibility of transmogrification means that fairytale protagonists...may be changed, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. A stroke of fate will raise them high or lay them low.

Although magic operates according to fundamental principles, its manifestations differ from culture to culture, and era to era, which adds spice and variety to fairy tales.”

...
The stress falls on the binding power of words: the father must keep his promise to the Beast, the beauty will sleep for a hundred years, according to the letter of the spell.
...

“Prophecies—and curses—march on unstoppably. One message of fairy tales is ‘Beware what you wish for.’ Another would be ‘Beware what you promise.’ Yet another would be ‘Beware what you utter.’ You can’t take back what you say. There’s a profound respect in the genre for what words do in the world, as well as in the stories.”

--Warner, Marina;. “Once upon a Time.”

=====
Promises create a stable structure, while everything else is changeable. This way "what is" and "what ought to be" ultimately are the same.

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Mon, 18 Nov 2024 07:33:50 GMT

when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that
everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

--- Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong. Source: The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 14 No. 1, Fall 1989, pp. 35-44.

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Tue, 29 Oct 2024 04:48:12 GMT

--- Lambek & Scott, Introduction to higher-order categorical logic. 1994.

It looks like the Prince Charming class of narratives can be represented by an algebra category as it relates to the multiplier effect M (example T1).

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Thu, 19 Sep 2024 03:37:49 GMT

Philosophy can exclude nothing.

...before the work of systematization commences, there is a previous task—a very necessary task if we are to avoid the narrownesses inherent in all finite systems... [this] primary stage can be termed 'assemblage'.

...the philosophic process of assemblage should have received some attention from every educated mind, in its escape from its own specialism.

In Western Literature there are four great thinkers, whose services to civilized thought rest largely upon their achievements in philosophical assemblage; though each of them made important contributions to the structure of philosophic system. These men are Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, and William James.
...
William James, essentially a modern man. His mind was adequately based upon the learning of the past. But the essence of his greatness was his marvellous sensitivity to the ideas of the present. He knew the world in which he lived, by travel, by personal relations with its leading men, by the variety of his own studies. He systematized; but above all he assembled. His intellectual life was one protest against the dismissal of experience in the interest of system. He had discovered intuitively the great truth with which modern logic is now wrestling.
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One characteristic of the primary mode of conscious experience is its fusion of a large generality with an insistent particularity.
...
In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it. We must grasp the topic in the rough, before we smooth it out and shape it. For example, the mentality of John Stuart Mill was limited by his peculiar education which gave him system before any enjoyment of the relevant experience. Thus his systems were closed. We must be systematic; but we should keep our systems open. In other words, we should be sensitive to their limitations. There is always a vague 'beyond', waiting for penetration in respect to its detail.

--- Whitehead.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_01.html

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Sun, 15 Sep 2024 02:57:16 GMT

There is an insistent presupposition continually sterilizing philosophic thought. It is the belief, the very natural belief, that mankind has consciously entertained all the fundamental ideas which are applicable to its experience. Further it is held that human language, in single words or in phrases, explicitly expresses these ideas. I will term this presupposition, The Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary.

--- Whitehead.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_09.html

We might be committing this fallacy wrt ML.~~, although most people live with the fallacy b/c their world is quite stable.~~ The world is full of inexpressible moments.

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Sat, 14 Sep 2024 02:55:49 GMT

The only intelligible doctrine of causation is founded on the doctrine of immanence. Each occasion presupposes the antecedent world as active in its own nature. This is the reason why events have a determinate status relatively to each other. ( Read more... )

-- AF Whitehead, Modes of Thought, Lecture 8.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_08.html

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Tue, 27 Aug 2024 18:38:42 GMT

Classification is a halfway house between the immediate concreteness of
the individual thing and the complete abstraction of mathematical
notions. The species take account of the specific character, and the
genera of the generic character. But in the procedure of relating
mathematical notions to the facts of nature, by counting, by
measurement, and by geometrical relations, and by types of order, the
rational contemplation is lifted from the incomplete abstractions
involved in definite species and genera, to the complete, abstractions
of mathematics. Classification is necessary. But unless you can progress
from classification to mathematics, your reasoning will not take you
very far.

The practical counsel to be derived from Pythagoras, is to measure, and thus
to express quality in terms of numerically determined quantity. But the
biological sciences, then and till our own time, have been
overwhelmingly classificatory. Accordingly, Aristotle by his Logic
throws the emphasis on classification. The popularity of Aristotelian
Logic retarded the advance of physical science throughout the Middle
Ages.

Whitehead. Science ..., 1925

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Sat, 24 Aug 2024 02:48:39 GMT

...thought can penetrate into every occasion of fact, so that by comprehending its key conditions, the whole complex of its pattern of conditions lies open before it.
...
Pythagoras was the first man who had any grasp of the full sweep of this general principle.
...
He asked, ‘What is the status of mathematical entities, such as numbers for example, in the realm of things?’ The number ‘two,’ for example, is in some sense exempt from the flux of time and the necessity of position in space. Yet it is involved in the real world. The same considerations apply to geometrical notions—to circular shape, for example.
...
unless you can progress from classification to mathematics, your reasoning will not take you very far.

Whitehead. Science in the modern world. 1925. Chapter II.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68611/pg68611.txt

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Mon, 13 Nov 2023 04:31:47 GMT

Ricoeur’s argument regarding selfhood proceeds through a sequence of stages. He begins from the philosophy of language and the question of an identifying reference to persons as selves, not simply things. This leads to consideration of the speaking subject as an agent, passing through the semantics of action Ricoeur had learned from analytic philosophy during his time in North America. Next comes the idea of the self as having a narrative identity which is then is followed by the question of the ethical aim of being such a self. This hermeneutics of selfhood culminates in the conclusion that one is a self as one self among other selves, something that can only be attested to through personal testimony or the testimony of others. Selfhood is thus closely tied to a kind of discourse that says “I believe-in”. Its certainty is a lived conviction rather than a logical or scientific certainty.( Read more... )

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/

The implication would be that when it comes to self neither logic, nor science applies. Instead, [narrative] art, including gossip, fills this self-space.

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Wed, 01 Nov 2023 04:53:30 GMT

Truth is not "relative" and certainly not "subjective" in the popular sense of the word. It is always, or almost always, completely determined within a thought style.
...
Truth is not a convention, but rather (1) in historical perspective, an event in the history of thought, (2) in its contemporary context, stylized thought constraint.

--- Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and development of a scientific fact.

The relationship to thought constraint sounds interesting. Also, we can probably model it as a topos of dynamical systems.

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Tue, 24 Oct 2023 22:53:28 GMT

There is no absolutely pure rational knowledge except the four principles to which I have attributed metalogical truth; the principles of identity, contradiction, excluded middle, and sufficient reason of knowledge. For even the rest of logic is not absolutely pure rational knowledge.
...
§ 11. In this regard the direct opposite of rational knowledge is feeling, and therefore we must insert the explanation of feeling here. The concept which the word feeling denotes has merely a negative content, which is this, that something which is present in consciousness, is not a concept, is not abstract rational knowledge. Except this, whatever it may be, it comes under the concept of feeling. Thus the immeasurably wide sphere of the concept of feeling includes the most different kinds of objects, and no one can ever understand how they come together until he has recognised that they all agree in this negative respect, that they are not abstract concepts. For the most diverse and even antagonistic elements lie quietly side by side in this concept; for example, religious feeling, feeling of sensual pleasure, moral feeling, bodily feeling, as touch, pain, sense of colour, of sounds and their harmonies and discords, feeling of hate, of disgust, of self-satisfaction, of honour, of disgrace, of right, of wrong, sense of truth, æsthetic feeling, feeling of power, weakness, health, friendship, love, &c. &c. There is absolutely nothing in common among them except the negative quality that they are not abstract rational knowledge.

--- Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will And Idea.

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Tue, 24 Oct 2023 00:18:22 GMT

Logic is, therefore, without practical utility; but it must nevertheless be retained, because it has philosophical interest as the special knowledge of the organisation and action of reason.

But it has its real value, in relation to philosophy as a whole, in the inquiry into the nature of knowledge, and indeed of rational and abstract knowledge. Therefore the exposition of logic should not have so much the form of a practical science, should not contain merely naked arbitrary rules for the correct formation of the judgment, the syllogism, &c., but should rather be directed to the knowledge of the nature of reason and the concept, and to the detailed investigation of the principle of sufficient reason of knowing.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will And Idea.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38427/pg38427-images.html

For centuries, if not millennia, logic was mostly useless until computer software came along and took advantage of it.

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Sun, 03 Sep 2023 18:47:42 GMT

In the Sirens adventure, Odysseus with some help from the gods solves the diagonal argument.

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Fri, 30 Jun 2023 01:00:12 GMT

There should be a law against bad examples:

“However, artificial wheels are made separately and then added onto a vehicle, whereas biological wheels would have to grow in situ. How could a freely rotating body part either be linked to the rest of the body through nerves and blood vessels or else function without being so linked?”

Dan Sperber. “The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding.”

The shoulder joint can rotate 360 degrees. Somehow, biological evolution worked out a solution to the linkage problem.

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Thu, 08 Jun 2023 08:00:13 GMT

1. [perception] Data (causal efficacy).
2. Possibilities.
3. Decision

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Wed, 07 Jun 2023 07:14:29 GMT

The distinction between verbal phrases and complete propositions is one of the reasons why the logicians' rigid alternative, 'true or false,' is so largely irrelevant for the pursuit of knowledge.

- whitehead

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Mon, 23 Jan 2023 04:31:31 GMT

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The invention of maximizing utility

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 05:40:05 GMT

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Frege

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 19:16:21 GMT

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Wed, 12 Oct 2022 18:43:16 GMT

This is an important insight: comma categories always have a terminal object. Now, I can relate it to Lawvere's interpretation of Hegel's logic.

"If X is any application of the graphic G , then the "comma" category G/X (whose objects are the elements of X and whose morphisms determine the action via the discrete fibration property of the labelling functor G/X -> G ) is again a graphic. Thus each particular application X of G provides one way G'-> G of expanding the graphic G into a more detailed graphic G' " -- Lawvere, Hegelian Taco.

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Post-truth ca 19 century CE.

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 04:44:07 GMT

Turned against reason, this understanding behaves in the manner of ordinary common sense, giving credence to the latter’s view that truth rests on sensuous reality, that thoughts are only thoughts, that is, that only sense perception gives filling and reality to them; that reason, in so far as it abides in and for itself, generates only mental figments.

In this self-renunciation
of reason,
the concept of truth is lost,
is restricted
to the knowledge of mere
subjective truth,
of mere appearances,
of only something to which the nature of the fact
does not correspond;
knowledge has lapsed into opinion.

GWH Hegel, The Science of Logic.

Hegel was extremely successful in his project to rediscover truth and put on a solid foundation of new logic. I wonder whether something like that would be even possible in today's world. What would it take to overcome the post-truth attitude in our society?

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