83,769
edits
Bitcoin is Venice: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit Advanced mobile edit |
||
| Line 41: | Line 41: | ||
All that matters thereafter is [[Form|''form'']]. This is a circularity, but not a vicious one. | All that matters thereafter is [[Form|''form'']]. This is a circularity, but not a vicious one. | ||
==== On paradigms in crisis ==== | ==== On paradigms in crisis and being punched in the mouth==== | ||
{{Drop|T|his is not}} to say contrarians cannot be popular or correct — [[Gerd Gigerenzer|Gigerenzer]], [[Nassim Nicholas Taleb|Taleb]], [[Benoit Mandelbrot|Mandelbrot]], [[Kathleen Stock|Stock]], [[David Graeber|Graeber]], [[James C. Scott|Scott]], [[Jane Jacobs|Jacobs]], [[Rory Sutherland|Sutherland]] and others ply a healthy trade damning the absurdities of our institutions — but our institutions blithely carry on, regardless. | {{Quote|Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. | ||
:—Mike Tyson}} | |||
{{Drop|T|his is not}} to say contrarians cannot be popular or correct — [[Gerd Gigerenzer|Gigerenzer]], [[Nassim Nicholas Taleb|Taleb]], [[Benoit Mandelbrot|Mandelbrot]], [[Kathleen Stock|Stock]], [[David Graeber|Graeber]], [[James C. Scott|Scott]], [[Jane Jacobs|Jacobs]], [[Rory Sutherland|Sutherland]] and others ply a healthy trade damning the manifest absurdities of our institutions — but our institutions blithely carry on, regardless. | |||
Well, at least until real-world facts intrude: only when it becomes clear a paradigm not only ''should'' not work [[Paradigm failure|but, in practice, ''does'' not]], does it go into | Well, at least until real-world facts intrude, they do: only when it becomes clear a paradigm not only ''should'' not work [[Paradigm failure|but, in practice, ''does'' not]], does it go into “crisis”. In the worst case, it cannot recover and a wholesale redrawing of the intellectual landscape is on the cards: a new paradigm must be born, that accounts for the changed practical facts, with new rules, new elders and a new mandate. This is not a simple matter of changing theories but a deep social disruption: the extant education system must be rebuilt, its undermined credentialising institutions may collapse — what counts as a valid question worthy of answer changes. This is a dangerous period: the new structure is supple and new but not strong, and untested against the range of vicissitudes the old regime had evolved to withstand . This is the lesson of ''Animal Farm'': the best laid plans of — well, pigs and sheep— gang aft agley — and, upon first contact with the enemy, fail the new boss devolves into the old one. | ||
But before that, [[paradigm|paradigms]] have a habit of shapeshifting, reframing anomalies around their fringes and boxing on. You cannot defeat a paradigm with a purely theoretical argument: you must ''punch it in the mouth''. In this way [[Karl Popper]]’s idea of [[falsification]] doesn’t really describe the way science progresses in practice. But — ironically — the [[falsification]] [[paradigm]] hangs on, not yet having been punched hard enough in the mouth. | But before that, [[paradigm|paradigms]] have a habit of shapeshifting, reframing anomalies around their fringes and boxing on. You cannot defeat a paradigm with a purely theoretical argument: you must ''punch it in the mouth''. In this way [[Karl Popper]]’s idea of [[falsification]] doesn’t really describe the way science progresses in practice. But — ironically — the [[falsification]] [[paradigm]] hangs on, not yet having been punched hard enough in the mouth. | ||