Merged Arday life and death

[Emily's Cat]

yeah but you guys don’t, that’s the culture war bull crap part.

Why do you believe this to be true?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Are you creating a separate category for press scrutiny?

One publication writing one article, and it's not even published yet, which was where he started trying to silence the press, isn't a whole lot of scrutiny tbh. Especially for someone who previously loved the attention and actually was writing that sensationalist autobiography.

 

[Emily's Cat]

because it's the reason why the article you provided that darat asked about what it has to do with liberals. if it wasn't culture war bullcrap, there'd be no conservatives vs liberals angle to this thing and it would just be a guy that lied on a resume and he never would have gotten all those interviews and he'd have been fired and you wouldn't know anything about it.

you can't both fight the culture wars and be above it at the same time

Okay, but the vast majority of this discussion here on ISF is liberals versus other liberals, so... ?

 

[Emily's Cat]

You can also be unequivocally and unquestionably wrong in history, philosophy, languages and archeology.

Who shot JFK? Ghengis Khan!

Is affirming the consequent a valid argument? No!

Did the Ancient Greeks speak Japanese?

Was Gobleki Tepe built by aliens?

Okay, I grant you half a point. You can be completely wrong if you're also completely bonkers.

In hard sciences, you're either right or you're wrong, it's not open to interpretation.

 

[angrysoba]

Okay, I grant you half a point. You can be completely wrong if you're also completely bonkers.

In hard sciences, you're either right or you're wrong, it's not open to interpretation.

I would say that it is not really worth the slapfight, but if it were then we could say the truth of the "hard" subjects is easier to verify, whereas the truth of the "soft" subjects much less so.

The examples I gave are just obvious examples, but much of history is about uncovering facts which may be heavily disputed or difficult to determine. How many people were killed in Stalin's collectivization programs, or his purges, or in the Ukrainian famine, might not amount to simply demonstrating a proof on a blackboard, but it would also be insane to say it is merely a matter of interpretation. That the truth is hard to get at should not dissolve the truth lest we descend into postmodern gibberish.

So why not a little respect for the so-called soft subjects and less of the haughty derision?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

You can also be unequivocally and unquestionably wrong in history, philosophy, languages and archeology.

Who shot JFK? Ghengis Khan!

Is affirming the consequent a valid argument? No!

Did the Ancient Greeks speak Japanese?

Was Gobleki Tepe built by aliens?

Three of those are more like the exceptions not the rule, but I will disagree about philosophy. The rules of logic are only a tiny subset of it, and you can't even get a degree in just logic. There are whole swathes of it where you can talk as much nonsense as you wish, and the only relation to reality is citing some bearded guy who said so. That's the whole verifiable reality: this is a quote from X.

And even those 3 still have leeway for personal interpretation. For example it's a running joke among actual historians that "ritual use" is what you say when you have no idea what it was actually used for.

Previously I would have added anthropology as reality based instead of philosophy, but then they started publishing autoethnographic papers, which are basically no better than me posting "well, that's how I feel about Y" on some forum. Just a lot more verbose than even my posts

 

[d4m10n]

One publication writing one article, and it's not even published yet, which was where he started trying to silence the press, isn't a whole lot of scrutiny tbh.

I'm not going to try to quantify levels of scrutiny, but when Jack Grove "assembled a 63-page report which detailed how [Arday] had apparently used, without proper citation, huge chunks from a thesis written in 2009 by another student, Paula Zwozdiak-Myers," that was press scrutiny.

Public attention, well, that's something else.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I'm not going to try to quantify levels of scrutiny, but when Jack Grove "assembled a 63-page report which detailed how [Arday] had apparently used, without proper citation, huge chunks from a thesis written in 2009 by another student, Paula Zwozdiak-Myers," that was press scrutiny.

Not a particularly egregious amount of press scrutiny, though, given that covering PHD and research issues is what Jack Grove DOES at THE, and THE itself is all about college education and research opportunities. It's not like some rando from The Guardian suddenly had it in for Arday. It really wasn't any more scrutiny than anyone else gets as a professor.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I would say that it is not really worth the slapfight, but if it were then we could say the truth of the "hard" subjects is easier to verify, whereas the truth of the "soft" subjects much less so.

Falsifiability.

The examples I gave are just obvious examples, but much of history is about uncovering facts which may be heavily disputed or difficult to determine. How many people were killed in Stalin's collectivization programs, or his purges, or in the Ukrainian famine, might not amount to simply demonstrating a proof on a blackboard, but it would also be insane to say it is merely a matter of interpretation. That the truth is hard to get at should not dissolve the truth lest we descend into postmodern gibberish.

So why not a little respect for the so-called soft subjects and less of the haughty derision?

At what point have I demonstrated derision?

I have noted that the hard versus soft is reference to the type of study, and the unforgiving nature of a field that allows only correct or incorrect. I noted that "mickey mouse" doesn't mean worthless, it merely means easy to obtain relative to some other subjects. I have no ill will toward those degrees, and many of them are quite valuable. I myself have a career where I am never, ever, ever actually right - I'm usually just close enough to be useful. Some of my closest colleagues are in marketing and communications, and I find their input and skills to be extremely beneficial when trying to convey a complex idea to executives or customers.

 

[angrysoba]

Three of those are more like the exceptions not the rule, but I will disagree about philosophy. The rules of logic are only a tiny subset of it, and you can't even get a degree in just logic.

No, but that is the most obvious area where interpretation just doesn't come into it.

There are whole swathes of it whereyou can talk as much nonsense as you wish, and the only relation to reality is citing some bearded guy who said so.

That itself is hyperbolic nonsense, which I am sure you know.

And even those 3 still have leeway for personal interpretation. For example it's a running joke among actual historians that "ritual use" is what you say when you have no idea what it was actually used for.

Nobody is saying there is no interpretation in arts and humanities fields, but nevertheless much of the debate is a debate over facts which are hard to come by. The fact that they are hard to come by doesn't make them any less facts.

A great example is how many of the ancient monuments of the world were in ruin, in places like Egypt, Persia/Iran, Cambodia (and indeed at some point in the past, Stonehenge in England). But these were painstakingly excavated, restored, their languages, lost even to those who lived among them, decyphered. Some of that work did indeed require interpretation of a sort, but today thanks to that work we now have a much greater understanding of the past. To pretend that this is just "soft" academic work is complete bollocks, which, again, makes you sound like a postmodernist.

Previously I would have added anthropology as reality based instead of philosophy, but then they started publishing autoethnographic papers, which are basically no better than me posting "well, that's how I feel about Y" on some forum. Just a lot more verbose than even my posts

This area too has areas which are more or less rigourous. The fact that some people do all kinds of stupid ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ work in academia does not diminish the areas where good scholarly work is done.

While we're at it, we could similarly dismiss some of the so-called "hard" scientists in theoretical physics who dream up all kinds of undemonstrable nonsense. Does this mean physics is bollocks? Does the fact that Avi Loeb is at Harvard mean we should give up on the subject? Does the fact that cranks like Eric Weinstein turn up at physics conferences mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Perhaps if you had taken a few philosophy courses, you may realize how fallacious your reasoning was.

 

[angrysoba]

Falsifiability.

A concept from philosopher of science, Karl Popper. QED.

At what point have I demonstrated derision?

Errr... let's see...

I have noted that the hard versus soft is reference to the type of study, and the unforgiving nature of a field that allows only correct or incorrect. I noted that "mickey mouse" doesn't mean worthless, it merely means easy to obtain relative to some other subjects. I have no ill will toward those degrees, and many of them are quite valuable. I myself have a career where I am never, ever, ever actually right - I'm usually just close enough to be useful. Some of my closest colleagues are in marketing and communications, and I find their input and skills to be extremely beneficial when trying to convey a complex idea to executives or customers.

Mickey Mouse is a term of derision. There are no ifs and buts about it.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I actually did take philosophy for a year. Trust me, even my general objections to philosophy still hold it in too much regard for how useless that course was. It was literally an exercise in talking as much nonsense as you wish, if you also cite some dead bearded guy or two. That was literally the only falsifiable part: that guy did say that.

 

[Emily's Cat]

A concept from philosopher of science, Karl Popper. QED.

And?

Errr... let's see...

Mickey Mouse is a term of derision. There are no ifs and buts about it.

Do you happen to recall that I didn't use the term myself? That I merely explained what it is meant to imply?

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

A concept from philosopher of science, Karl Popper. QED.

He was probably the most influential at getting it to be the standard, but I'm pretty sure we had the basic concept of trying to disprove something long before he was even born.

Besides, I don't think bringing him up is actually helping your case here. Because non-falsifiable stuff was PSEUDOscience for him.

Mickey Mouse is a term of derision. There are no ifs and buts about it.

For what it's worth, and to get back on topic, I DID use it as a term of derision for how people are going to think about a degree based on learning from Arday for some while. As I was saying, even his students agree that he was just talking vacuous stuff.

 

[angrysoba]

And?

It would be a contradiction to use a concept from a subject that is purely interpretitve as an absolute standard for judging other subjects.

Do you happen to recall that I didn't use the term myself? That I merely explained what it is meant to imply?

If you are going to defend the term and explain what you mean by it, then you have adopted it regardless of whether or not you used it first.

 

[angrysoba]

For what it's worth, and to get back on topic, I DID use it as a term of derision for how people are going to think about a degree based on learning from Arday for some while. As I was saying, even his students agree that he was just talking vacuous stuff.

Glad we have that sorted out then.

See, Emily's Cat? No need to keep using it now and pretending it isn't a term of derision.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Glad we have that sorted out then.

See, Emily's Cat? No need to keep using it now and pretending it isn't a term of derision.

Well, of course, maybe she uses it differently than I do. I'm not the tsar of language or anything.

 

[angrysoba]

Well, of course, maybe she uses it differently than I do. I'm not the tsar of language or anything.

And maybe down means up and up means down. Strange to defend rigourous hard sciences through the means of linguistic nihilism, but these are postmodern times, I guess!

 

[Rolfe]

Aside: I have no idea what "IMNTK" is supposed to mean. I googled it and it gave me stuff that was obviously not relevant. So gemini suggested that I add more context. So I provided the entire quote and asked what IMNTK meant in that context.

Gemini suggested it was a type of IMWTK, which would be "inquiring minds want to know". That sounds plausible. But the explanation for why it was mistyped is an entertaining bit of hallucination:



I'll now allow a brief intermission while you all look at your keyboards and laugh at how being below the H results in someone aiming for W and hitting N by accident.

I'm more inclined to think it was intended as "inquiring minds need to know", which is merely a misquote. Although it should really be EMWTK anyway.

Not to derail, but I've never really understood the difference between inquiry and enquiry, inquiring and enquiring. Would you mind taking a moment to explain?

(Of course, if this is another will/shall thing, I'm Scottish, you're doomed to failure.)

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Not to derail, but I've never really understood the difference between inquiry and enquiry, inquiring and enquiring. Would you mind taking a moment to explain?

(Of course, if this is another will/shall thing, I'm Scottish, you're doomed to failure.)

AFAIK, and after some checking on Google, it seems to be the same difference as between "color" and "colour." One is American, one is English.