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<blockquote data-quote="GlaziusF" data-source="post: 4505566" data-attributes="member: 74166"><p>Well then, I'm sure you've come across Hume and Mill's writings on induction, and Kuhn's on the nature of the scientific process. </p><p></p><p>What is science, but the search for a useful fiction? </p><p></p><p>Both those words are important - 'useful' to have some standard of evaluating new ideas - 'fiction' so that if those new ideas prove more useful than the old ones there's no shame in discarding them. That's why Dalton's atomic theory took off and Democritus's died in its cradle - there weren't any problems that Democritus's was particularly good at addressing, but Dalton put his out at a time when chemists were struggling to come up with equations for chemical reactions. <strong>You </strong>try coming up with some when all you have to work with are mass ratios. Hope you like long, seemingly arbitrary, decimals! But with this new atomic theory, not only do you get to toss out your giant unwieldy fractions and replace them with simple integer ratios, but you can actually imagine what's going on inside the reaction!</p><p></p><p>I don't buy into Heidegger's more animistic theories, but the idea that the human filter on reality, whatever reality is, is story-based is more than just empty theories.</p><p></p><p>Seriously.</p><p></p><p>Okay, let's say you've got some graduate mathematics students and you give them a simple logic problem: "Cards should only have vowels on one side if there's an odd number on the other side. Turn over only as many cards as necessary to ensure that this rule holds."</p><p></p><p>Then you give 'em four cards: one with a C, one with an E, one with an 8, and one with a 9. They should only turn over the E (to make sure there's an odd number) and the 8 (to make sure there's no vowel), but half of them on average tend to honk the problem, either by also turning over the 9 or by flipping it over but not the 8.</p><p></p><p>Replace the logic problem with a story about postal regulations that ends with "envelopes should only have a pink stamp if they're unsealed" and give them envelopes that match the problem conditions (blue stamp, pink stamp, sealed, unsealed) and almost all of them get it exactly right.</p><p></p><p>This is Wason's selection task, performed by graduate math students at Berkeley who should know by now the basics of logic. Why does the story work when the logic problem doesn't? Perhaps because people don't actually think logically, even when they say they do?</p><p></p><p>I'm not going to try and defend any random pomo statement you drop in front of me. Why should I? If you're trying to find examples of a perceived reality that support a story filter and you're the one who came up with the filter in the first place, it's going to be a little too easy for you. Can you say "confirmation bias", kids? I knew you could. Most pomo is just an extension of the principle first articulated by Hume that you can just make up whatever kind of crazy crap you want to inside your head. Rewind time? Sure. Unmelt ice? No problem. Have an angel carry the Earth around the Sun, spinning it like a basketball? Go right ahead. Pomo is just harder for you to sanity check on your own because you're the one who made it up, and it's not exactly easy for outside observers either, unless they discard it all on principle. The guy who spoofed a pomo publication board by railing against the Euclidean tyranny of <em>e </em>is a great example of this.</p><p></p><p>But deconstruction works, too. <em>Reservoir Dogs </em>was a deconstruction of film noir. <em>Watchmen </em>was one of superhero comics, one so powerful that pretty much anything unreadably edgy in the 1990s was based on it. But along with deconstruction there's reconstruction, consciously telling a story based on the things that you want to go into it. <em>Astro City</em> shot for this after <em>Watchmen</em>, and succeeded in award-winning ways.</p><p></p><p>I'm not trying to say that there's no such thing as objective reality. At the very least it's proven a very convenient assumption for thousands of years and there's no compelling reason to give it up. </p><p></p><p>But I am saying that people by default engage the world in terms of stories, and if you're trying to create a fictional world, they'll engage that in the same way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="GlaziusF, post: 4505566, member: 74166"] Well then, I'm sure you've come across Hume and Mill's writings on induction, and Kuhn's on the nature of the scientific process. What is science, but the search for a useful fiction? Both those words are important - 'useful' to have some standard of evaluating new ideas - 'fiction' so that if those new ideas prove more useful than the old ones there's no shame in discarding them. That's why Dalton's atomic theory took off and Democritus's died in its cradle - there weren't any problems that Democritus's was particularly good at addressing, but Dalton put his out at a time when chemists were struggling to come up with equations for chemical reactions. [B]You [/B]try coming up with some when all you have to work with are mass ratios. Hope you like long, seemingly arbitrary, decimals! But with this new atomic theory, not only do you get to toss out your giant unwieldy fractions and replace them with simple integer ratios, but you can actually imagine what's going on inside the reaction! I don't buy into Heidegger's more animistic theories, but the idea that the human filter on reality, whatever reality is, is story-based is more than just empty theories. Seriously. Okay, let's say you've got some graduate mathematics students and you give them a simple logic problem: "Cards should only have vowels on one side if there's an odd number on the other side. Turn over only as many cards as necessary to ensure that this rule holds." Then you give 'em four cards: one with a C, one with an E, one with an 8, and one with a 9. They should only turn over the E (to make sure there's an odd number) and the 8 (to make sure there's no vowel), but half of them on average tend to honk the problem, either by also turning over the 9 or by flipping it over but not the 8. Replace the logic problem with a story about postal regulations that ends with "envelopes should only have a pink stamp if they're unsealed" and give them envelopes that match the problem conditions (blue stamp, pink stamp, sealed, unsealed) and almost all of them get it exactly right. This is Wason's selection task, performed by graduate math students at Berkeley who should know by now the basics of logic. Why does the story work when the logic problem doesn't? Perhaps because people don't actually think logically, even when they say they do? I'm not going to try and defend any random pomo statement you drop in front of me. Why should I? If you're trying to find examples of a perceived reality that support a story filter and you're the one who came up with the filter in the first place, it's going to be a little too easy for you. Can you say "confirmation bias", kids? I knew you could. Most pomo is just an extension of the principle first articulated by Hume that you can just make up whatever kind of crazy crap you want to inside your head. Rewind time? Sure. Unmelt ice? No problem. Have an angel carry the Earth around the Sun, spinning it like a basketball? Go right ahead. Pomo is just harder for you to sanity check on your own because you're the one who made it up, and it's not exactly easy for outside observers either, unless they discard it all on principle. The guy who spoofed a pomo publication board by railing against the Euclidean tyranny of [I]e [/I]is a great example of this. But deconstruction works, too. [I]Reservoir Dogs [/I]was a deconstruction of film noir. [I]Watchmen [/I]was one of superhero comics, one so powerful that pretty much anything unreadably edgy in the 1990s was based on it. But along with deconstruction there's reconstruction, consciously telling a story based on the things that you want to go into it. [I]Astro City[/I] shot for this after [I]Watchmen[/I], and succeeded in award-winning ways. I'm not trying to say that there's no such thing as objective reality. At the very least it's proven a very convenient assumption for thousands of years and there's no compelling reason to give it up. But I am saying that people by default engage the world in terms of stories, and if you're trying to create a fictional world, they'll engage that in the same way. [/QUOTE]
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