Short answer: Yes, in general I am somewhat confident that I recognize and mostly avoid the pattern of naively rounding or translating another’s ideas or arguments in order to often-quite-uselessly play the part of smug meta-contrarian when really “too-easily-satisfied syncretist” would be a more apt description. It is an obvious failure mode, if relatively harmless.
Related: I was being rather flippant in my original drama/comedy-inducing comment. I am not really familiar enough with Leibniz to know how well I am interpreting his ideas, whether too charitably or too uncharitably.
(I recently read Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol, out of a sort of sardonic curiosity. Despite being unintentionally hilarious it made me somewhat sad, ‘cuz there are deep and interesting connections between what he thinks of as ‘science’ and ‘spirituality’, but he gets much too satisfied with surface-level seemingly vaguely plausible links between the two and misses the real-life good stuff. In that way I may be being too uncharitable with Leibniz, who wrote about computer programs and God using the same language and same depth of intellect, and I’ve yet to find someone who can help me understand his intended meanings. Steve’s busy with his AGI11 demo.)
Short answer: Yes, in general I am somewhat confident that I recognize and mostly avoid the pattern of naively rounding or translating another’s ideas or arguments in order to often-quite-uselessly play the part of smug meta-contrarian when really “too-easily-satisfied syncretist” would be a more apt description. It is an obvious failure mode, if relatively harmless.
Related: I was being rather flippant in my original drama/comedy-inducing comment. I am not really familiar enough with Leibniz to know how well I am interpreting his ideas, whether too charitably or too uncharitably.
(I recently read Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol, out of a sort of sardonic curiosity. Despite being unintentionally hilarious it made me somewhat sad, ‘cuz there are deep and interesting connections between what he thinks of as ‘science’ and ‘spirituality’, but he gets much too satisfied with surface-level seemingly vaguely plausible links between the two and misses the real-life good stuff. In that way I may be being too uncharitable with Leibniz, who wrote about computer programs and God using the same language and same depth of intellect, and I’ve yet to find someone who can help me understand his intended meanings. Steve’s busy with his AGI11 demo.)