1. The premier model favored by Western governments, and maybe not-so-much in developing countries, starts with the wishful assumption that "experts know best" and include further assumptions that "experts don't express opinions, they declare facts" and "contradicting any expert's declared fact is to declare oneself a fool." This model is drummed into the heads of the unsuspecting in government schools where only the impertinent and insouciant escape. You do not mention but would agree that all models are built upon and include some parts or all of some other models. "Graduates" of government schools begin creating their personal models of "adult reality" based on the models proposed to them which "do not contain" the proposition that competing models exist.
2. Your treatise, after some thoughtful editing, should be mandatory reading for every student everywhere. I knew nothing of models until some time early in my college engineering education where I learned that "you cannot get a 'correct' answer [one which correctly predicts reality] if one of your assumptions is patently wrong [not based in reality]." A shorter form of your treatise should be committed to memory and be the subject of daily recitation (I was going to say 'by the students,' but 'in reality' by all of us, the long and the short and the tall.).
I did think about alluding to the fact that models are often built on models. I was originally going to write about group theory and stray into fields and how all the beautiful results that you can prove (and they're not just beautiful but have many practical implications, for example in cryptography) are already contained within the axiomatic structures one sets up. So a field is a math 'model' that requires the 'sub-model' of groups (at least in one useful formulation). But I decided not to go for the math approach because I'm probably the only one who finds it entertaining.
I've written a fair bit about this topic before - it worries me with things like the gender woo and critical theory being dominant in schools what kind of 'model' or framing of the world our kids are growing up with, and how it's impacting them.
In pol-sci and sociology/anthropology and sociology (usually lumped together under the moniker "cultural studies" nowadays, which is code for "middle-school level of content and challenge") we talk about this as "understanding the other as the other understands himself".
Or itself, or herself, as appropriate.
Let's say you're a sociologist investigating subcultures (we'll skip defining and delineating the term itself and just go with the vulgar meaning) and you feel you keep missing something, despite all your observations, interviews, looking at icons and totems and so on. What to do?
Enter the Octagon, so to speak. Live the experience. This is today an exceedingly rare approach, not because it is very obviously dangerous or equally obviously apt at creating biases (either way): no, it is rare because it comes with a real and permanent cost to the researcher.
How can a middle-class bourgeois white American-Jewish woman understand the mind-set of an East End skinhead in 1975? She can't. But she could go there, and she could try to be accepted enough to live and move amongst the bovver boys going romper-stomper and chucking bricks at bobbies after soccer. And risk being brutalised, arrested, ostracised by her peers, and also failing - both in getting on the inside and actually understanding anything.
Instead, she will sit on the balcony of her Ivory Tower, sipping Orange Whip and wishing smoking hadn't been deemed haram, and look through her telescope at what the grotty little grubbers are doing. Guaranteeing three things: a failed model of understanding, a von Oben-perspective cementing prejudice rather than real knowledge, and a successful career repeating already agreed-upon prejudice among her class of peers and superiors.
And there's the situation. The above model I'd argue holds true for all aspects of academia, teaching, politics and finance/economics: no skin in the game equals following theoretical ideals equals not knowing what you're actually doing equals all actions taken become in effect random equals any and all consequences of your actions regressing towards the statistical mean (or in other words: reverting to type/reinforcing prejudice and stereotypes/archetypes) equals you no longer know or can find out what is happening, why it is happening or what it will lead to equals ?
I think we can apply this to the recent attempts to 'explain' the results of the US election. The "weirdos" will posit a variety of factors including the economy, government bloat and corruption, the fact that many people have just about had enough of all of this 'woke' shite, and so on.
The very normal, not at all weird, blue-haired wearers of umpteen nose rings, scream misogyny, racism, nazism, fascism, or whatever with absolutely no attempt whatsoever to "understand the other as the other understands himself".
It has been fascinating watching the aftermath and the very different attempts to explain what happened.
I suspect there's an asymmetry, too, in the ability to empathize with the "other". I think those of us on the 'anti-woke' side of things can see why woke holds such a sway - it has, after all, been heavily propagandized as being the 'compassionate' and 'kind' and 'loving' position to take. So we don't necessarily see the average supporter of Harris/woke as being evil, but very misguided, and we can see that their *good* nature is being manipulated in ways that will produce very bad outcomes (the bleeding-heart lib approach of having too much sympathy for violent criminals leads to consequences if you don't actually end up protecting the rest of society from them, for example).
On the 'other' side there is nothing like this degree of charity. Those who voted 'wrongly' are seen as evil, twisted, fascist, racist, sexist, etc.
To the specific example you give, woke Harris voters, we can see that they are hurting, and were hurting before the election. Something inside hurts, and it comes out as their typical behaviour.
And us catering to their demands - since they claim the hurt will stop if they get what they demand - only makes it hurt all the more, since the hurt isn't caused by anything without, but by something missing within.
You could compare it to anorexia f.e. A condition unknown among any ethnicity or class where scarcity of food is a real risk, but very common among pre-pubescent and older girls of western upper class bourgeoisie - originally, unique to upper class urban families even.
By threatening self-harm, the girl gets to exert control.
By threatening harm, the woke gets to exert control.
Threaten; control.
However, what happens when the threat is challenged and the one threatening finds him/her-self unable to act? They collapse, project and rail against the Heavens and injustice and basically have a toddler-tantrum. Why not? It's almost always worked before, hasn't it?
For the woke mind-virus* to go away, the pendulum must shift back to before 1960s in many ways, while not losing sight of the very simple ideals of "everyone gets to try and punt" and "same rules for everyone".
*First time I came across and used the term 'mind-virus' for all this was around 2002 or so; we were debating the meaning of "queer" in the humanities and arts, and concluded that what it really meant in practice was turning paranoid schizophrenia into an ontological model for analysis. How I wish we a) could of stopped it back then and/or b) had been wrong about it.
Any sane person would know that the farting cows crisis is one of those "Do you hear yourself Martha" moments. The idea that we need to reduce cow flatulence in the UK to save the world from boiling is fundamentally absurd.
Look at a map of the world. See how big the UK s compared to everything else. Imagine the cow farts rising from the UK, compared to all the cow farts in the rest of the world.
It just doesn't fucking matter. It's pointless activity to signal virtue while achieving sweet fanny Adams.
How have such fundamentally stupid and unserious people got into such influential positions? They should be cleaning public toilets, not running the country.
Let’s not forget the NGO model. There are about 1.8 million registered non-profit organizations in the U.S. Many receive some government funding. I’ve yet to read any in-depth reporting on the growth of NGOs. Maybe DOGE.
1. The premier model favored by Western governments, and maybe not-so-much in developing countries, starts with the wishful assumption that "experts know best" and include further assumptions that "experts don't express opinions, they declare facts" and "contradicting any expert's declared fact is to declare oneself a fool." This model is drummed into the heads of the unsuspecting in government schools where only the impertinent and insouciant escape. You do not mention but would agree that all models are built upon and include some parts or all of some other models. "Graduates" of government schools begin creating their personal models of "adult reality" based on the models proposed to them which "do not contain" the proposition that competing models exist.
2. Your treatise, after some thoughtful editing, should be mandatory reading for every student everywhere. I knew nothing of models until some time early in my college engineering education where I learned that "you cannot get a 'correct' answer [one which correctly predicts reality] if one of your assumptions is patently wrong [not based in reality]." A shorter form of your treatise should be committed to memory and be the subject of daily recitation (I was going to say 'by the students,' but 'in reality' by all of us, the long and the short and the tall.).
Thanks David
I did think about alluding to the fact that models are often built on models. I was originally going to write about group theory and stray into fields and how all the beautiful results that you can prove (and they're not just beautiful but have many practical implications, for example in cryptography) are already contained within the axiomatic structures one sets up. So a field is a math 'model' that requires the 'sub-model' of groups (at least in one useful formulation). But I decided not to go for the math approach because I'm probably the only one who finds it entertaining.
I've written a fair bit about this topic before - it worries me with things like the gender woo and critical theory being dominant in schools what kind of 'model' or framing of the world our kids are growing up with, and how it's impacting them.
In pol-sci and sociology/anthropology and sociology (usually lumped together under the moniker "cultural studies" nowadays, which is code for "middle-school level of content and challenge") we talk about this as "understanding the other as the other understands himself".
Or itself, or herself, as appropriate.
Let's say you're a sociologist investigating subcultures (we'll skip defining and delineating the term itself and just go with the vulgar meaning) and you feel you keep missing something, despite all your observations, interviews, looking at icons and totems and so on. What to do?
Enter the Octagon, so to speak. Live the experience. This is today an exceedingly rare approach, not because it is very obviously dangerous or equally obviously apt at creating biases (either way): no, it is rare because it comes with a real and permanent cost to the researcher.
How can a middle-class bourgeois white American-Jewish woman understand the mind-set of an East End skinhead in 1975? She can't. But she could go there, and she could try to be accepted enough to live and move amongst the bovver boys going romper-stomper and chucking bricks at bobbies after soccer. And risk being brutalised, arrested, ostracised by her peers, and also failing - both in getting on the inside and actually understanding anything.
Instead, she will sit on the balcony of her Ivory Tower, sipping Orange Whip and wishing smoking hadn't been deemed haram, and look through her telescope at what the grotty little grubbers are doing. Guaranteeing three things: a failed model of understanding, a von Oben-perspective cementing prejudice rather than real knowledge, and a successful career repeating already agreed-upon prejudice among her class of peers and superiors.
And there's the situation. The above model I'd argue holds true for all aspects of academia, teaching, politics and finance/economics: no skin in the game equals following theoretical ideals equals not knowing what you're actually doing equals all actions taken become in effect random equals any and all consequences of your actions regressing towards the statistical mean (or in other words: reverting to type/reinforcing prejudice and stereotypes/archetypes) equals you no longer know or can find out what is happening, why it is happening or what it will lead to equals ?
yup
I think we can apply this to the recent attempts to 'explain' the results of the US election. The "weirdos" will posit a variety of factors including the economy, government bloat and corruption, the fact that many people have just about had enough of all of this 'woke' shite, and so on.
The very normal, not at all weird, blue-haired wearers of umpteen nose rings, scream misogyny, racism, nazism, fascism, or whatever with absolutely no attempt whatsoever to "understand the other as the other understands himself".
It has been fascinating watching the aftermath and the very different attempts to explain what happened.
I suspect there's an asymmetry, too, in the ability to empathize with the "other". I think those of us on the 'anti-woke' side of things can see why woke holds such a sway - it has, after all, been heavily propagandized as being the 'compassionate' and 'kind' and 'loving' position to take. So we don't necessarily see the average supporter of Harris/woke as being evil, but very misguided, and we can see that their *good* nature is being manipulated in ways that will produce very bad outcomes (the bleeding-heart lib approach of having too much sympathy for violent criminals leads to consequences if you don't actually end up protecting the rest of society from them, for example).
On the 'other' side there is nothing like this degree of charity. Those who voted 'wrongly' are seen as evil, twisted, fascist, racist, sexist, etc.
Yes.
To the specific example you give, woke Harris voters, we can see that they are hurting, and were hurting before the election. Something inside hurts, and it comes out as their typical behaviour.
And us catering to their demands - since they claim the hurt will stop if they get what they demand - only makes it hurt all the more, since the hurt isn't caused by anything without, but by something missing within.
You could compare it to anorexia f.e. A condition unknown among any ethnicity or class where scarcity of food is a real risk, but very common among pre-pubescent and older girls of western upper class bourgeoisie - originally, unique to upper class urban families even.
By threatening self-harm, the girl gets to exert control.
By threatening harm, the woke gets to exert control.
Threaten; control.
However, what happens when the threat is challenged and the one threatening finds him/her-self unable to act? They collapse, project and rail against the Heavens and injustice and basically have a toddler-tantrum. Why not? It's almost always worked before, hasn't it?
For the woke mind-virus* to go away, the pendulum must shift back to before 1960s in many ways, while not losing sight of the very simple ideals of "everyone gets to try and punt" and "same rules for everyone".
*First time I came across and used the term 'mind-virus' for all this was around 2002 or so; we were debating the meaning of "queer" in the humanities and arts, and concluded that what it really meant in practice was turning paranoid schizophrenia into an ontological model for analysis. How I wish we a) could of stopped it back then and/or b) had been wrong about it.
Yeah, the "suitable model" construction business is, figuratively speaking, everywhere pretty much stuck in neutral these days.
or even reverse
Any sane person would know that the farting cows crisis is one of those "Do you hear yourself Martha" moments. The idea that we need to reduce cow flatulence in the UK to save the world from boiling is fundamentally absurd.
Look at a map of the world. See how big the UK s compared to everything else. Imagine the cow farts rising from the UK, compared to all the cow farts in the rest of the world.
It just doesn't fucking matter. It's pointless activity to signal virtue while achieving sweet fanny Adams.
How have such fundamentally stupid and unserious people got into such influential positions? They should be cleaning public toilets, not running the country.
There is no other word to describe it but insane.
It's off-the-scale doolally.
Bats in the belfry levels of madness
Let’s not forget the NGO model. There are about 1.8 million registered non-profit organizations in the U.S. Many receive some government funding. I’ve yet to read any in-depth reporting on the growth of NGOs. Maybe DOGE.
Whoa!!!!!!
1.8 MILLION?????
You what???
That's nuts
Yes it is.