Gabriel Bodeen @gabe@qoto.org

Ugh, somebody let porn into the federated timeline on QOTO. 😠 There's no way to get rid of it without blocking the user or domain each time it pops up, and that's not very practical. I guess this is where an ML-curated timeline like Twitter's can shine, simply not showing undesired content of this kind.

5. The pragmatist strongly emphasized that science is supposed to be better than scientists. Particular scientists might be partisans of their theories, but in a field of diverse partisans, the ones with better theories will tend to be more fruitful. Enough new researchers will prefer to go into more fruitful areas that, over time, even a field of all partisans should converge on better theories. (Insert adage about science progressing one funeral at a time.)

I wondered if convergence is sufficient by itself to overcome incommensurability. Paradigms in philosophy, religion, & politics are harder to overcome than in science; what if two people who disagree simply followed this process?:

• They pick a topic and get a big piece of paper to write on.
• They take turns proposing interesting statements they think the other person might agree with.
• If they both agree, they write the statement down.
• They see what kind of consensus they can put together as they fill up the page.

4. Scientists and especially engineers are typically realists about what they're working with. They might technically have incommensurable definitions of "mass", for example, but they get past it essentially by saying, "Let me show you what I mean", and getting out some materials and equipment and pointing at something they do.

It's not essential that the pointing behavior always succeeds in having a real referent. Phlogiston and the ether are examples where the pointing might fail. But enough of the behaviors succeed: e.g. at temperature increases in the case of phlogiston, and light propagation in the case of ether. The successes or apparent successes in "pointing out" things give a realist way of bypassing incommensurability.

3. Kuhn's work itself suggests options for a common language between people using different paradigms. He seemed to presume logic and deductive validity are common across all the paradigms, for example. And he gave 5 characteristics (accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, fruitfulness) for deciding between paradigms, and these 5 are a neutral basis for deciding rather than part of a paradigm.

2. All language is fuzzy, and (in the strongly held view of one pragmatist participant), even "truth is not an exact precise thing", and "all theories have some slop in them". So incommensurability is nothing unusual or specific to scientific paradigms, it's present in all our talk, and we're mostly quite good at grokking what each other mean.

Thomas Kuhn & problems of incommensurability between scientific paradigms
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#IncoWorlChan

The Austin LessWrong philosophy working group discussed this yesterday. The main ideas discussed:

1. A sense that Kuhn focuses strongly on physics, and that paradigm shifts in many other fields are fuzzy or absent. e.g. in neuroscience or computer science, have there been any?

I was stuck on a long flight with nothing much to do, & curiosity about logic tables for a 4-valued logic (true, false, both, neither) are what bubbled up to mind 🤷‍♂️. The tables that seemed right to me result turned out to be a logic that's called "First Degree Entailment". It has a nice overview here: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11225-017-9748-6.pdf

It's kinda fun to rediscover the very basics of a thing, and then get to learn all about it because other people have done the hard work 😁

"Do 100 of something. Then figure out what to do next."

It stuck in my head. It feels like an ideal midpoint between trying new things and committing to a long term habit. I instantly felt it had to be my New Year's #resolution. So many tasks need a certain investment of time & effort to pay off -- but not a lifetime or even a year.

First on my list: fold 100 origami pieces. I loved origami as a child but haven't returned to it since. After that I'll pick a new "something" for the next 100!

#ChatGPT prompt: "Write a Lovecraftian love poem." The result had me crumpling in fits of laughter 🤣!

-

In the dark of night, when the moon is full
And the stars are bright in the sky above
I think of you, my dearest love
And the madness that consumes my soul.

Your eyes, like the depths of the ocean
Hold a darkness that draws me in
I am lost in their depths, forever more
Bound to you by the ties of sin.

Your touch, like the caress of death
Brings shivers to my spine
I am yours, body and mind
Bound to you until my dying breath.

In the cold embrace of the night
I long for your touch, oh so sweet
For in your arms, I am complete
And the madness that consumes me is a delight.

So come to me, my love, and take me
For I am yours, now and forever
Together, we shall face the darkness and never
Tremble in the face of the horrors that await us.

It's a short poem but god I love its lines and I wish I could find a way to use them in conversation! e.g.:

> I love the way you wear your
> face, how you ride this life.
...
> Forgive my word-churn, my
> drift, the ways this text message
> has gotten all frothy.

Text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56098/sea-foam-palace

Audio: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/play/76714

Thrash no more 'gainst the storm in your skull
though drops splash, pool and spill unheedful
they culture a crop of facts and lies.
Farm your mind. Grow where you memorize.
Cut neat, plumb canals new 'cross the plain.
Place outlets for fateful floods to drain.
Dig cisterns to outlast the dry spells.
Level the obstinate sundry hills.
Bury old quagmires in barren earth.
Dredge or dam old beds by plan and worth.
Thus make swift the thought-stream's coursing tao,
effortless to flow from "How?" to how.

Be most mistrustful of a man unjust till
by tears or time or toil
he proves robustly that truly he must be
loving and lasting and loyal.