You’re not the first to suggest s/Dragon/Hydra/g here, and I’d be tempted to agree, if not for the fact that dragon-slaying is significantly more poetic than hydra-slaying. OTOH, “Hydra” serves as a mnemonic that attacking symptoms is a Known Bad Strategy.
(Do note that the existence of a dragon can cause a series of not-obviously-related symptoms—this stuff is on fire, and this stuff is smashed up, and these people got eaten...)
If I’m not the first, was this posted before? I don’t see the same suggestion elsewhere in the comments, at least…
And the part I’m worried about above is that the poetic view will lead to conflationary thinking about the categories along the way, rendering the model a lot less useful; sure, a dragon can cause multiple symptoms, but that’s not the central image that comes to mind (at least to me), and trying to get a grip on something like this as an intuition pump gets fragile if you lean into what sounds compelling.
No, I’m referencing an in-person conversation. (Incidentally, the fact that ialdabaoth fielded that suggestion and still wrote this post with ‘dragon’ makes me worry that they’ve got at least an instinct that it’s the right word in some way I’m missing.)
And I think I see the worry that you’re pointing at here. I think it’s a valid one, though not one that I expect can be resolved entirely through theory; I’d like to see some people work with the ontology for a bit to see which words work in useful ways.
You’re not the first to suggest s/Dragon/Hydra/g here, and I’d be tempted to agree, if not for the fact that dragon-slaying is significantly more poetic than hydra-slaying. OTOH, “Hydra” serves as a mnemonic that attacking symptoms is a Known Bad Strategy.
(Do note that the existence of a dragon can cause a series of not-obviously-related symptoms—this stuff is on fire, and this stuff is smashed up, and these people got eaten...)
If I’m not the first, was this posted before? I don’t see the same suggestion elsewhere in the comments, at least…
And the part I’m worried about above is that the poetic view will lead to conflationary thinking about the categories along the way, rendering the model a lot less useful; sure, a dragon can cause multiple symptoms, but that’s not the central image that comes to mind (at least to me), and trying to get a grip on something like this as an intuition pump gets fragile if you lean into what sounds compelling.
No, I’m referencing an in-person conversation. (Incidentally, the fact that ialdabaoth fielded that suggestion and still wrote this post with ‘dragon’ makes me worry that they’ve got at least an instinct that it’s the right word in some way I’m missing.)
And I think I see the worry that you’re pointing at here. I think it’s a valid one, though not one that I expect can be resolved entirely through theory; I’d like to see some people work with the ontology for a bit to see which words work in useful ways.