Today, watching a thread about the topic unrelated to my post, I realized what is the second point of failure in (majority of) online and offline discussion.
The first one, which I identified quite a while ago, is obviously the lack of common paradigm base (and even worse – lack of awareness thereof).
The second one, which I was almost aware of for many months already, only today crystallized into a simple analytical form: metaphors are not homomorphic. Worse, most analogies aren't either.
Cutting the story really short, homomorphism allows us to map entity A onto entity B (that will be said metaphor or analogy) and then perform some intellectual operation on entity B, which result will be valid for entity A as well.
The most obvious example will be preparing to rearrange my room by drawing it in scale, putting scaled models of furniture there and play with the layout until I get it right. Then the result (new interior layout) is valid for the real (entity A) room as well. Unless...
Unless the room drawing is in a different scale than furniture cutouts. Or I forgot about the slanted ceiling, so the wardrobe will not fit in that corner. Let alone details like power sockets or light fixtures' layout.
And that is the issue with most of the discussions I can see online and offline. Usually, it is the Scylla and Charibdis situation: as we cannot find a common frame of reference for the literal issue we discuss, we use an analogy to move someplace safe (that is: some other process we can agree on). Say, we can agree that the wine spoiled by adding sewage is non-drinkable (and to all practical purposes becomes a sewage itself). Now, we carry on: so, if you agree with me about the wine (topic B), you must agree on topic A as well. If not – you MUST disagree about the wine as well, go and drink the bucket of wine with sewage to prove me wrong.
The trick (and point of failure) is, that we try to make a point of issue A (which we cannot, as there is no common paradigm frame to start with) by making a point about "analogical" issue B. Why? Because we either can practically prove our B-related point, or we can challenge the other person to prove us wrong. But the rift within the lute is that it cannot be transferred back to the issue A, as the proof still needs the common frame of reference, which is stubbornly absent there.
I believe now I have a better picture why most discussions (except most technical ones, perhaps) degenerate rather quickly into flaming and trolling. And I hope you may find these musings useful as well.
Have a wonderful day.
Funny picture below.
The first one, which I identified quite a while ago, is obviously the lack of common paradigm base (and even worse – lack of awareness thereof).
The second one, which I was almost aware of for many months already, only today crystallized into a simple analytical form: metaphors are not homomorphic. Worse, most analogies aren't either.
Cutting the story really short, homomorphism allows us to map entity A onto entity B (that will be said metaphor or analogy) and then perform some intellectual operation on entity B, which result will be valid for entity A as well.
The most obvious example will be preparing to rearrange my room by drawing it in scale, putting scaled models of furniture there and play with the layout until I get it right. Then the result (new interior layout) is valid for the real (entity A) room as well. Unless...
Unless the room drawing is in a different scale than furniture cutouts. Or I forgot about the slanted ceiling, so the wardrobe will not fit in that corner. Let alone details like power sockets or light fixtures' layout.
And that is the issue with most of the discussions I can see online and offline. Usually, it is the Scylla and Charibdis situation: as we cannot find a common frame of reference for the literal issue we discuss, we use an analogy to move someplace safe (that is: some other process we can agree on). Say, we can agree that the wine spoiled by adding sewage is non-drinkable (and to all practical purposes becomes a sewage itself). Now, we carry on: so, if you agree with me about the wine (topic B), you must agree on topic A as well. If not – you MUST disagree about the wine as well, go and drink the bucket of wine with sewage to prove me wrong.
The trick (and point of failure) is, that we try to make a point of issue A (which we cannot, as there is no common paradigm frame to start with) by making a point about "analogical" issue B. Why? Because we either can practically prove our B-related point, or we can challenge the other person to prove us wrong. But the rift within the lute is that it cannot be transferred back to the issue A, as the proof still needs the common frame of reference, which is stubbornly absent there.
I believe now I have a better picture why most discussions (except most technical ones, perhaps) degenerate rather quickly into flaming and trolling. And I hope you may find these musings useful as well.
Have a wonderful day.
Funny picture below.
@petros Ironically the mathematical analogy itself doesn't quite work, because depending on the property you are talking about you might need a homomorphism in either direction or even something approximating an isomorphism, but the point is so important that I can overlook that ;>
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. ;-)
