---- > :)
Ok, don't want to shoot myself in the foot.
But with my personal cognitive capacity for rules-based processing rapidly atrophying, I really need to keep the guiding principles for personal and collective survival as simple and universal as possible. If I have to remember every word that creates confusion or arguments, I’m gonna be a basket case.
But you are so right. You want to avoid craziness – 1) understand that every abstraction has alternative interpretations, and 2) please be explicit as possible, and 3) be nice. Somehow find the time to absorb the intended context. Unless you like fights and mud, go out of your way to get it right.
John:
Politics is an example where a huge number of problems are created by the choice of words. All the parties could agree much more quickly if they avoided words such as 'freedom', 'amnesty', 'religion', 'conservative', 'liberal', 'socialist', 'extremist'...
Bruce:
Yes – but reality and human psychology run on a time-budget. These phrases are plugged in for reasons of psychological economy. So, the tension between highly desirable explicit precision and psychological economy is not going to go away – particularly in a high-speed world. So – we’re going to have to learn how to understand one another – even at high speed and high levels of abstraction.
John:
Successful politicians are not stupid. They don't use those words when they're talking one-to-one with no cameras around. But as soon as the cameras are turned on, the discussion turns to mush.
Bruce:
So true. Keep everything as ambiguous as possible. Every interpretation becomes a Rorschach test – people see what they want to see. Kinda like the pharmaceutical ads: show people beautiful happy pictures and let them plug in their fantasies, while reading the legal fine print about how the deadly the product is…
But right now, I’m listening to the MSNBC replay of Donald Trump interview from today. Is that a “breath of fresh air” – or a blast of jet exhaust from a world-class blowhard…
Bernie Sanders versus Donald Trump. That would be a cultural curiosity…
Bottom-up versus top-down, everybody shooting from the hip…
***
Regarding world, here's what I get on Wikipedia:
Bruce Schuman, Santa Barbara CA USA
http://networknation.net/vision.cfm
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 12:36 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology based conversational interfaces
Bruce, Ed, and Rich,
Many years ago, I learned that if some word is a cause of many confused and confusing arguments, it's a good idea to *banish* that word from the discussion.
Bruce
> What is common, what is world? That, too, is a matter of stipulation
> and agreement.
Yes, indeed. For that matter, the *only* precise meaning for the word is "planet earth". Everything else is an extended use or metaphor that varies from one context to another.
Recommendation: In every occurrence of that word in this thread, replace the word 'world' with a word or phrase with a narrower meaning. If you mean planet earth, say so. If you mean world view (or German Weltanschauung) say so.
Ed
> U.S. Republicans and Democrats, like the political parties of other
> major “democracies”, must agree on a “common world”
> (universe of discourse) in order to communicate and legislate.
Politics is an example where a huge number of problems are created by the choice of words. All the parties could agree much more quickly if they avoided words such as 'freedom', 'amnesty', 'religion', 'conservative', 'liberal', 'socialist', 'extremist'...
Successful politicians are not stupid. They don't use those words when they're talking one-to-one with no cameras around. But as soon as the cameras are turned on, the discussion turns to mush.
Rich
> Dan Ariely explains some of the reasons why we see different worlds:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y0w5EJC9o0
That's a good talk. But Dan A. does *not* use the word 'world'.
I took some notes, and he uses narrow, precise terms:
"How would you design an experiment?"
"How do you classify experience?"
"The brain is filtering information in a biased way."
One of the few instances in which he says "the world" could be replaced by the phrase "planet earth" without changing the point:
"Much of our experience of the world comes from inside our brains."
Recommendation to Rich: You have been creating a huge amount of confusion in this thread by using the word 'world' in a hopelessly vague way. If you want to continue discussing the topics in this thread, please *stop* using that word.
If you need help, go back to Dan A's talk and take notes on which words he uses.
John
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