Don Mikulecky wrote:
>
> Norm,
> In the spirit of what we seem to agree about, there *should* be more than one way to
> present the case. Many of us are extremely comfortable with this way. others clearly
> are not. The reasons for that are many and we are clearly not dealing with absolutes
> here. See below for the rest.
>
> > > You are right about the nested circularity of using the modeling relation to
> > > capture itself. That's a start. When we see our new approaches tackling
> > > self-reference head on we can know we have broken free from old restrictions and
> > > are beginning to see *more* of what reality is all about.
> >
> > I agree again. I'll only add once more that for me, the use of simple
> > and complex as modifiers to the models and those phenomena we are
> > attempting to model, causes unnecessary confusion and misunderstanding.
>
> I question what the cause of the confusion and misunderstanding is here. Many of us can
> communicate in a clearer way with better understanding as a result of this. It probably
> revolves around where your real interests lie.
> Don
Don:
I think that your point about where our interests lie is the key to our
differences here. In the area of your and Rosen's expertise, I am a
quintessential outsider. In fact, even though I have a number of
friends that are part of the academic and scientific communities, I have
no ties to academia as such and I am certainly outside the scientific
community.
Perhaps you know that vocationally I'm a public finance investment
banker. Nevertheless, I have a deep and burning interest in a very
broad range of subjects. I consider myself a generalist. I've also been
fortunate to have the luxury to have spent a lifetime exploring all
these interests.
As you'd expect, most people that know me usually aren't able to find a
neat way to classify my all diverse interests. A few conclude that
since they can't pigeon hole me, I must be a philosopher. I find that
"a jack of all trades and master of none" has a nice ring and a fair
amount of truth in it.
As you noted, we do have much in common when it comes to the ideas we've
been talking about. But from what you said, you seem to be focused on
the academic and scientific community. On the other hand, I'm primarily
interested in finding ways of communicating these ideas to the broadest
possible audience.
As perhaps you know, I spent over five years writing a 33 part treatment
for a documentary television series I call "The Dawn of Human
Understanding." The purpose of this TV series was simply to provide the
general public with a cohesive blend of the emerging understanding we
humans are gaining with respect to our selves, each other and the
universe we are a part of. I think you also know that since I failed
raise the $30 million to produce the series, I did the next best thing
and simply put it on the web: http://204.94.86.93
I suppose that this is a long way of saying that I'm trying to tell this
story to anyone who has an interest in learning more about the human
condition. In this endeavor, I have worked very hard to include as many
views or models as possible. I've also paid particular attention to the
difficulty of integrating these multiple views into a better human
understanding.
In this effort to integrate multiple views, I found that most of the
academic and scientific specialists actually make an effort, whether
conscious or otherwise, to isolate their field of expertise. I also
discovered that they have a strong tendency to interpret other areas of
inquiry using the thought modes and criteria from their own field of
expertise. The net result is that the average person finds it almost
impossible to make much sense out of all these apparently conflicting
and confusing views.
But taken as a whole, our human understanding is expanding at an almost
incomprehensible pace. What's more, as we survey the components and
then work through all the apparent conflicts, we find some truly
profound implications coming out of the fog.
I am of the opinion that self governing peoples need to be able to sift
through the ever increasing deluge of information that is inundating
us. We need to understand for ourselves what the benefits and risks of
our individual and collective democratic choices are. My goal is to
improve this understanding and hopefully improve our individual and
collective choices.
This is where I'm coming from. And this is the context within which I
recently posted my thoughts and comments on some of the ideas we
enthusiastically share.
Norm
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Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from "Norman K. McPhail" <norm@socal.wanet.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Nov 21 2000 - 18:12:33 GMT