deperplex explanation, understanding, cognition, 'theory' theory

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 20, 2022 After posting on the Fool’s Errand Attachment, it occurred to me that the Fool’s Errand Attachment might not be a cognitive bias after all, but is a policy failure, or is not just a cognitive bias but also a policy failure. Executive office holders no doubt feel compelled to show their constituencies that they are solving social problems. A virus emerges, the elected officer can’t just sit by and watch the dead pile up. Something must be done! So mask, get a vaccine, stay home, effectively end education for children, effectively ruin the economy. CO2 levels have gone through the roof, so let’s undermine global improvements of quality of life by curtailing the energy that drives that progress, disregarding entirely that the current atmospheric CO2 is not reduced thereby (CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, as most of us by now know, unless it is removed) so if CO2 will warm the planet, even zero emissi...

Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 14, 2022 How about this for a new cognitive bias to add to the 38,407 so far identified cognitive biases: Fool’s Errand Attachment, grasping onto a “solution” where there is no solution; attaching oneself to a policy to the degree of need for a solution, not to the degree of its effectiveness, clinging to a program because there is some perceived desperate problem to solve, not because the program will work. Examples:  The fears about inflation from the Russian invasion of Ukraine — and the selective sanctions — tell us that we’re incapable of getting off fossil fuels now nor for the foreseeable future, and we all know it. And even if we did give up on the fossil fuel addiction, we’d still be stuck with the current excessive atmospheric CO2 levels for hundreds of years. So if atmospheric CO2 will warm the climate, then it’s already too late to fend off climate change, yet the solution so many have invested in, emotionally, polit...

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022 A few essentials about the language game: language is cooperation; cooperation, far from being occasional among us, is the underlying condition of humanity as water is to a fish. Cooperation is so basic to our nature that we scarcely notice it. We share a code and share it among us constantly. We are the conversing species. The seven points below are an expansion of H. Paul Grice’s insights into conversational logic.  It is obvious that language evolved and survived for the purpose of conversation — sharing information. As powerful as symbolism is for an individual alone — to have a symbol “yesterday” or “tomorrow” or “will” or “may” or “could” or “not” let alone “could not have” or “couldn’t not have” allows us to think about imaginaries beyond the real, possibilities, counterfactuals and even impossibilities, that non symbolic minds cannot think about — as powerful as that individual possession is, it is vastly...

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022 Here in Istanbul, you cannot but admire the Turkish carpet and the mosques of Sinan, the carpet a wonder of intricacy, the more complex and detailed the more wondrous, and Sinan’s grand mosques a wonder of simplicity, purity and restraint even when scaled to the most expansive heights. If you are an idle wonderer with time to think about questions almost too obvious to ask, you might puzzle over why are there no simple carpets when the simplicity of the mosques is so overwhelmingly effective. Why can’t carpet makers avail themselves of modest simplicity in their craft, when purity and humility can reach so deeply into the human heart and mind? The goals of craft are not the goals of art, no doubt. But what’s the difference? Or better, why such a difference? A good libertarian, and a good Darwinian — and they might as well be the same — would ask first where the market incentives lie. The answer will go a long way to e...