Aren’t “sky spirits” a good metaphor for the scientifically un-inclined? Why not think in terms of “spirits”? I’m not suggesting to believe “bearded elder” blindly or anything. Consider the difficulty of explaining things in SERIOUS SCIENCE to someone used to more intuitive reasoning. Why shouldn’t things like “condensation” forming on “dust particles” be explained in metaphors like “the water god finds purchase on the earth goddesses’ children” (or something)? It’s important to be aware of the metaphor, I suppose…
We’re not talking about quantum chromodynamics here—“clouds are made of water, and sometimes some of that water falls out” is pretty clear in any language.
Edit: Even if we were, I don’t think supporting incorrect beliefs is wise, as a rule. Also, that wasn’t the point of the post.
That is one disgusting metaphor. And if I was talking to somebody who had a problem undertstanding condensation I would not make up metaphors. I would hold a glass over a small pot of water on the stove. Or perhaps better, ask them to breath on a window if it is a somewhat cold day.
Ha ha, yeah, rain is the result of divine pedophilia. Didn’t think that one through… I dunno, just playing with ideas. My point is that “sky spirits” as an explanation isn’t “incorrect”, just imprecise and prone to misinterpretation. I mean, there are many myths that have turned out to be pretty good intuitions of real phenomenon. for instance, the Hindu belief in “divine vibration” sounds uncannily like string theory- then there is an African tribe known as the Dogon that was aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system hundreds of years ago. “the plants told us”. I’d expect a Curandero in the amazon to know more about the ecology there than any “rational” (quotes to highlight subjectivity) scientist… Even though they would probably use terms like “spirit” to describe it.
Holding a glass over a pot of water doesn’t explain condensation, it just demonstrates it. “why does water gather there?”
It’s very possible to intuit things about nature. Strange but it’s true. [As an aside, I know this isn’t on topic, but I’m multi-attentional, so it’s okay.] I’d recommend Jill Bolte Taylors’ talk on TED for a pretty good explanation of what I’m referring to; you don’t need to have a stroke to get to that state of consciousness. I guess what I’m getting at is, why is it so important to be “right” in the objective sense? If you’re trying to build some kind of precise machine, I can see the value. Otherwise, a pretty story is way more than good enough, especially if it conforms to universal archetype… IMHO
there are many myths that have turned out to be pretty good intuitions of real phenomenon.
That might be true …
for instance, the Hindu belief in “divine vibration” sounds uncannily like string theory- then there is an African tribe known as the Dogon that was aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system hundreds of years ago.
… but all that is not true. There is a long list of distinctively modern concepts and discoveries—DNA, the Big Bang, black holes… - which are constantly being linked in spurious ways to ancient myth and scripture. It is actually a type of modern superstition that shamans already know all this, that God or aliens already told us about it in code, etc—in short, that the pre-scientific world already knew about what science has discovered.
Hinduism has nothing to do with string theory. A hundred years ago, you had spiritualists trying to link divine vibrations with the electromagnetic spectrum. In a few years they’ll be trying to link it with cortical brain rhythms. These connections are completely superficial. As for the Dogon, the match between myth and astronomy is far more equivocal than you might have thought.
It’s incredibly frustrating how all my comments get voted down so much… Anyway, how does that have nothing to do with string theory? I guess maybe I don’t understand anything about either of them. It’s not like I have a degree. That said, I believe string theory relates to the way that at a base level, all form is caused by vibration? (PLEASE correct me if this is wrong) I relate this to cymatics (google it if you’re unfamiliar). You’re saying that the concept of a universal creative vibration (om) doesn’t sound anything like the concept of vibration creating all form? Really? Even if it’s totally coincidence (whatever that means), it still works as an explanation. The concept of archetypes repeating themselves would possibly account for that… I think it’s irrational to rule that out instantly. With the Dogon, admittedly I could’ve done more research. The thing is, we’re all looking at the same whole. It’s amazing how many similarities there are between myths of different cultures- most of them revolving around the worship of “projective” and “receptive” principals (God and Goddess) which obviously exist in the form of sun and earth or man and woman or whatever. Do you see where I’m coming from?
You really need to go read the entire Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence before you comment again, because you sound like a flat-earther asking questions at an astronomy conference. :(
Yeah, well. You’re mother wears combat boots. LOL I can’t believe you’re stooping to name calling. I’m just promoting alternate views.. I really don’t give a damn which one is true. We just use the belief we find most useful. Beauty is truth. What does “objective” mean? My brain is clearly wired differently than yours. That’s okay! I hope I haven’t dropped below your “sanity threshold”… Pfft. I personally think I’m NOT mistaken and confused, even though there’s a choir of “rationalists” preaching at me. It’s not “rational” to subdue dialogue like that. The fact that a dogmatic comment like yours gets voted up while an open minded one like mine gets voted below the viewing threshold is part of the reason “rationalism” is still in the minority. You know what? I still love you. You should go outside more, and instead of explaining, just experience. No one has the slightest idea what’s going on, not even you. What explanation will you give me if I ask you “Why”? You’re succumbing to the worst parts of tribalism. I said something you think “rational people” don’t believe, so “we” think I’m “irrational”. Blah… I quickly lost faith (irony) in this website. Good articles, though.
I do give a damn which one is true. I have not been following the whole thread, but that sentence sure jumped out at me.
What is a way I can convince you that I am being open-minded? I am willing to read through the thread and add my thoughts but I want to know where your open-minded threshold begins and ends. If I don’t make the cut I won’t bother.
First define “truth”, and I’ll start to worry about that.
Just don’t start calling people names. It’s not helpful in any sense. I’m not trying to lower the quality of discussion here, quite the opposite (not that it isn’t high quality discussion). If we don’t disagree, it’s not cause I’m stupider than you (which is the implication in comparing me to a flat earther)… It’s cause our experiences lead us to different conclusions. Maybe I am stupider than you. even then is that a reason to exclude someone from a conversation? Maybe I want to talk about the relationship between “mythos” and “logos”. Maybe that makes me irrational? Why jump to the conclusion that I have no idea what I’m talking about? Why assume I’m attached to my ideas to the point where you can’t point out their flaws without ad hominem attacks?
really… You guys take everything so seriously.
Frankly, I’m not entirely sure myself where this “reality” business comes from. I can’t create my own reality in the lab, so I must not understand it yet. But occasionally I believe strongly that something is going to happen, and then something else happens instead. I need a name for whatever-it-is that determines my experimental results, so I call it “reality”. This “reality” is somehow separate from even my very best hypotheses. Even when I have a simple hypothesis, strongly supported by all the evidence I know, sometimes I’m still surprised. So I need different names for the thingies that determine my predictions and the thingy that determines my experimental results. I call the former thingies “belief”, and the latter thingy “reality”.
I’m sorry if I sounded like I was calling you names, but I’m not sure how to convey my meaning more politely. Is “You sound like a first-year student who walked into a fourth-year class by mistake” any better? You’re asking me to explain the difference between a fake explanation and a deep theory, and that’s something that can take an awful lot of words to explain. A whole book’s worth, even. The answer to your original question is short, but the reasoning behind the answer is really complicated if you don’t know it already.
If I said “Take my university course, and by the end of it, you’ll know the difference between a real understanding and a fake understanding and be good at coming up with correct answers to Confusing Questions that had stumped philosophers for centuries,” would you be up for it? Because, as far as I can tell from reading your posts so far, that’s the kind of effort it would take to get you on the same page as many of the other people here. I’m willing to be your tutor if you’re willing to be my student, but if you aren’t willing to start with the basics, neither of us should waste any more time.
I see how “the water god finds purchase on the earth goddesses’ children” is a metaphor for water coming to be on dust particles by way of condensation. What I don’t see is how that metaphor explains shit. Yes the water god found purchase on the children of the earth goddess… but I knew that when I saw the water on the dust. Explaining condensation involves discussing phases of matter and how temperature affects them. Your metaphor hasn’t told me anything other than “the water did something to the dust” (surely erosion or mud could be described with the same sentence). The metaphor only seems like it explains something if the person hearing the explanation reifies ‘water god’ and ‘earth goddess’. Then there is a causal story (“Why is there water here? The water god did it. If you have a problem with it speak to the water god. Etc.”).
Respectfully, you’re missing the point. A solid answer like that is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things- unless you need to use condensation for something, it doesn’t matter exactly how it works; which is why people are content with metaphor. You’ve really got to not be so closed to other ways of seeing reality… I like science as much as the next guy, but my experience of reality is a work of art (creative commons attribution license, tee hee).
Either someone cares how condensation works or they don’t. If they care, then you should explain how it works. If they don’t you should talk about something else. Neither option involves making up bad metaphors for phenomena. Under what circumstances would you share extremely bad explanations?
I like avante garde art, sensory deprivation chambers, and MDMA as much as the next guy but I don’t propagate deceptive non-explanations.
An explanation using myth is only “bad” from a rationalists’ perspective. Devoid of “ism” it’s as good as any… Maybe I only care about how condensation works far enough to make a painting of it, or write a song about it. As stated above, no one has the slightest idea what’s going on… even if you can explain exactly how every phenomenon works and how it happens, tell me “why” it happens and I’ll give you a virtua-lolipop. If I have a reality where I experience “ghosts” “god” “fairies” and “giant pyramid craft hovering over the kremlin” (hold on...) then I have a reality where those things happen to me. maybe evolutionary biology rules out fairies- that doesn’t change the fact that they sometimes happen to people. If that experience can have meaning attached to it, in what sense is it not “real”? I mean, my dreams are “real”. “reality” is very ambiguously defined.
Not joking, but speaking to a specific context, that of discourse whose purpose is to arrive at the truth of things. I can appreciate literary art in its place, but its methods tend to obscure the facts.
“Sky spirits” are not a good metaphor for rain, they are a bad explanation. At some time in the distant past it might have been the only explanation that anyone had come up with, but we know better now. There are no sky spirits and there never were. To teach people falsehoods because they cannot understand the truth does them a disservice. The truth is a rock, and though the rain come down, and the streams rise, and the winds blow and beat against a house builded on that rock, yet it does not fall, because it hath a sound foundation. But to understand things by fictions and myths, is like a foolish man who build his house on sand. The rain shall come down, and the streams rise, and the winds blow and beat against that house, and lo, it falls with a great crash, because it hath no foundation. (Ahem. Metaphor. Shamelessly repurposed from another source.)
On further consideration, I have changed my view of this. Even simplicity can be a rhetorical device, and for its use by the Dark Side, just look at any political advertisement. The thing to be wary of is language that sounds like an argument without actually being one.
Simple speaking is harder to abuse, as Orwell noted in “Politics and the English Language”, but I would prefer not to make a categorical ban on imagery. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, a true metaphor (such as, I don’t know, “the map is not the territory”) is no less true because it is not literal. The problem lies when speech departs from reality, not in the fashion of speaking which does so.
More to the point, I’m not convinced that most people really know the difference between those two things. If you asked the average Neolithic villager, and they explained it in terms of spirits, and then asked the average high school graduate, who could explain it with the right language—does the average high school graduate really understand it more deeply? They’ve both been taught a certain way to talk about it, but I doubt the average high school graduate’s language give him a leg up in the actual manipulation of the phenomenon.
They’ve both been taught a certain way to talk about it, but I doubt the average high school graduate’s language give him a leg up in the actual manipulation of the phenomenon.
That surprises me. I would have come to the exact opposite conclusion. I suppose the follow up question is in what way can you explain it so that the explanation gives him a leg up in manipulation? Why wouldn’t that be a better explanation?
Agreed. Let’s turn this into an operational test. If you can come up with a way to make it rain in your kitchen, you understand the phenomenon. (Compare Hacking’s “If you can spray them, they are real.”)
It doesn’t really matter then what language you use. Some people might use “condensation” as a fake explanation, and that’s no better than “sky spirits”, which I guess was bgrah449′s point.
Catching yourself in a fake explanation is trickier than it might seem. As my kids reach a certain age I find myself dealing with questions like “Dad, what’s causing the rainbow?” You learn to cue on a certain tone of voice. “Well son, it’s because of refraction.” Ouch, too late, failed to catch that one in time.
“Well, it’s....”, and trailing off… “Buggered if I know right now, actually. It’s something about angles and the shape of water droplets, and if you ask me again once I’ve stopped the car we’ll draw a diagram together and see if we can work it out; the basic principle isn’t too hard but there’s a twist or two, like that second rainbow.”
Better now. And I know that I don’t really understand refraction; the geometric part of the optics here I know I can derive from scratch with what high school math I have left, but I don’t have a good enough grasp of electromagnetism to explain why the refractive index varies. Even to a dedicated reductionist, all explanations are ultimately “fake”, at least until we have a Theory of Everything and a mind capable of grasping the entire chain of its implications up to the rainbow; don’t hold your breath.
An explanation stops being fake as soon as it tells you to predict something (or better yet, do something) you couldn’t do before. For example, if you sketch out the refractive reflection on paper, your son will—hopefully! - know to look away from the Sun, and at what angle to expect to see the rainbow, and just a little about why. And just knowing that it’s water droplets, at all, tells you that you might be able to use a garden hose.
I’m embarrassed to be caught using “fake explanation” as a fake explanation. Thanks for straightening that out. I’ll use my own words more.
Yes, optics are enough that I can predict something. Even this late in the game for me, I occasionally find some things I hadn’t really, really known before; it took experimental evidence (a rainbow caused by one of the wonderful waterfalls of Iceland) to realize that a rainbow appears centered about a point—my eyes—that moves as I move. That has a particularly wonderful effect when the rainbow is close to a full circle, as was the case that day at Skogafoss.
For some reason, I experienced that moment of playing with my personal rainbow as a minor epiphany; it had all the hallmarks of the religious experience I hear people talking about, up to “feeling at one with nature”. Except that this was a reductionist epiphany, where I realized that even though I was momentarily unable to recall all the details of why this rainbow danced with me, that knowledge was mine to reconstruct if I wanted to, down to almost the rock-bottom level of explanation. I felt as if the Universe belonged to me in that instant.
Previous to that I was something of a rationalist’s mysterian, if the phrase makes any sense; I had (truth be told, likely still have) traces of the “science doesn’t know everything so there might be magic” attitude.
I don’t know (yet) how to pass on that kind of feeling to my kids, but I hope I figure it out, for their sakes. It’s a great feeling, one I’d love to share with people I love, and knowing it has a neurological basis doesn’t spoil it one bit.
This was last summer, about three months before I chanced upon LW and ultimately the sequence that includes “Joy in the merely real”.
ETA: folks are sending karma here and to the grand-parent, I notice; I’d appreciate, if any of those upvotes mean “might like to see that worked into a post”, your replying that explicity.
I’ve been thinking about writing up the rainbow epiphany for a while now, but didn’t know how or for whom, and though I’m writing this at 2am and probably in for more revising than I care to admit, I feel better for having gotten it out.
It occurs to me that there is at least one advantage of fake explanations based on science over fake explanations based on mythology: if someone tries to find out more based on a teacher’s password, they might actually find a real explanation. “rainbows refraction” (no quotes) is a sufficient search term, for example.
Aren’t “sky spirits” a good metaphor for the scientifically un-inclined? Why not think in terms of “spirits”? I’m not suggesting to believe “bearded elder” blindly or anything. Consider the difficulty of explaining things in SERIOUS SCIENCE to someone used to more intuitive reasoning. Why shouldn’t things like “condensation” forming on “dust particles” be explained in metaphors like “the water god finds purchase on the earth goddesses’ children” (or something)? It’s important to be aware of the metaphor, I suppose…
We’re not talking about quantum chromodynamics here—“clouds are made of water, and sometimes some of that water falls out” is pretty clear in any language.
Edit: Even if we were, I don’t think supporting incorrect beliefs is wise, as a rule. Also, that wasn’t the point of the post.
That is one disgusting metaphor. And if I was talking to somebody who had a problem undertstanding condensation I would not make up metaphors. I would hold a glass over a small pot of water on the stove. Or perhaps better, ask them to breath on a window if it is a somewhat cold day.
Ha ha, yeah, rain is the result of divine pedophilia. Didn’t think that one through… I dunno, just playing with ideas. My point is that “sky spirits” as an explanation isn’t “incorrect”, just imprecise and prone to misinterpretation. I mean, there are many myths that have turned out to be pretty good intuitions of real phenomenon. for instance, the Hindu belief in “divine vibration” sounds uncannily like string theory- then there is an African tribe known as the Dogon that was aware of the fact that Sirius is a binary system hundreds of years ago. “the plants told us”. I’d expect a Curandero in the amazon to know more about the ecology there than any “rational” (quotes to highlight subjectivity) scientist… Even though they would probably use terms like “spirit” to describe it. Holding a glass over a pot of water doesn’t explain condensation, it just demonstrates it. “why does water gather there?” It’s very possible to intuit things about nature. Strange but it’s true. [As an aside, I know this isn’t on topic, but I’m multi-attentional, so it’s okay.] I’d recommend Jill Bolte Taylors’ talk on TED for a pretty good explanation of what I’m referring to; you don’t need to have a stroke to get to that state of consciousness. I guess what I’m getting at is, why is it so important to be “right” in the objective sense? If you’re trying to build some kind of precise machine, I can see the value. Otherwise, a pretty story is way more than good enough, especially if it conforms to universal archetype… IMHO
That might be true …
… but all that is not true. There is a long list of distinctively modern concepts and discoveries—DNA, the Big Bang, black holes… - which are constantly being linked in spurious ways to ancient myth and scripture. It is actually a type of modern superstition that shamans already know all this, that God or aliens already told us about it in code, etc—in short, that the pre-scientific world already knew about what science has discovered.
Hinduism has nothing to do with string theory. A hundred years ago, you had spiritualists trying to link divine vibrations with the electromagnetic spectrum. In a few years they’ll be trying to link it with cortical brain rhythms. These connections are completely superficial. As for the Dogon, the match between myth and astronomy is far more equivocal than you might have thought.
It’s incredibly frustrating how all my comments get voted down so much… Anyway, how does that have nothing to do with string theory? I guess maybe I don’t understand anything about either of them. It’s not like I have a degree. That said, I believe string theory relates to the way that at a base level, all form is caused by vibration? (PLEASE correct me if this is wrong) I relate this to cymatics (google it if you’re unfamiliar). You’re saying that the concept of a universal creative vibration (om) doesn’t sound anything like the concept of vibration creating all form? Really? Even if it’s totally coincidence (whatever that means), it still works as an explanation. The concept of archetypes repeating themselves would possibly account for that… I think it’s irrational to rule that out instantly. With the Dogon, admittedly I could’ve done more research. The thing is, we’re all looking at the same whole. It’s amazing how many similarities there are between myths of different cultures- most of them revolving around the worship of “projective” and “receptive” principals (God and Goddess) which obviously exist in the form of sun and earth or man and woman or whatever. Do you see where I’m coming from?
Yes, we do understand where you’re coming from. We just think you’re mistaken and confused.
You really need to go read the entire Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence before you comment again, because you sound like a flat-earther asking questions at an astronomy conference. :(
Yeah, well. You’re mother wears combat boots. LOL I can’t believe you’re stooping to name calling. I’m just promoting alternate views.. I really don’t give a damn which one is true. We just use the belief we find most useful. Beauty is truth. What does “objective” mean? My brain is clearly wired differently than yours. That’s okay! I hope I haven’t dropped below your “sanity threshold”… Pfft. I personally think I’m NOT mistaken and confused, even though there’s a choir of “rationalists” preaching at me. It’s not “rational” to subdue dialogue like that. The fact that a dogmatic comment like yours gets voted up while an open minded one like mine gets voted below the viewing threshold is part of the reason “rationalism” is still in the minority. You know what? I still love you. You should go outside more, and instead of explaining, just experience. No one has the slightest idea what’s going on, not even you. What explanation will you give me if I ask you “Why”? You’re succumbing to the worst parts of tribalism. I said something you think “rational people” don’t believe, so “we” think I’m “irrational”. Blah… I quickly lost faith (irony) in this website. Good articles, though.
I do give a damn which one is true. I have not been following the whole thread, but that sentence sure jumped out at me.
What is a way I can convince you that I am being open-minded? I am willing to read through the thread and add my thoughts but I want to know where your open-minded threshold begins and ends. If I don’t make the cut I won’t bother.
First define “truth”, and I’ll start to worry about that.
Just don’t start calling people names. It’s not helpful in any sense. I’m not trying to lower the quality of discussion here, quite the opposite (not that it isn’t high quality discussion). If we don’t disagree, it’s not cause I’m stupider than you (which is the implication in comparing me to a flat earther)… It’s cause our experiences lead us to different conclusions. Maybe I am stupider than you. even then is that a reason to exclude someone from a conversation? Maybe I want to talk about the relationship between “mythos” and “logos”. Maybe that makes me irrational? Why jump to the conclusion that I have no idea what I’m talking about? Why assume I’m attached to my ideas to the point where you can’t point out their flaws without ad hominem attacks? really… You guys take everything so seriously.
Truth: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth
Please take the hint on all the negative ratings and stop commenting here. Future comments from you will be removed.
It might be good to link “The Simple Truth” in What Do We Mean By Rationality?.
It is.
Ah, I missed it—thanks!
Truth is correspondence with reality. To quote the narrator:
I’m sorry if I sounded like I was calling you names, but I’m not sure how to convey my meaning more politely. Is “You sound like a first-year student who walked into a fourth-year class by mistake” any better? You’re asking me to explain the difference between a fake explanation and a deep theory, and that’s something that can take an awful lot of words to explain. A whole book’s worth, even. The answer to your original question is short, but the reasoning behind the answer is really complicated if you don’t know it already.
If I said “Take my university course, and by the end of it, you’ll know the difference between a real understanding and a fake understanding and be good at coming up with correct answers to Confusing Questions that had stumped philosophers for centuries,” would you be up for it? Because, as far as I can tell from reading your posts so far, that’s the kind of effort it would take to get you on the same page as many of the other people here. I’m willing to be your tutor if you’re willing to be my student, but if you aren’t willing to start with the basics, neither of us should waste any more time.
“You are mistaken” --> “you’re stooping to name calling similar to your mother having indicators of low status”
It isn’t surprising at all but it certainly illustrates how beliefs operate among groups of humans.
I could write a whole essay in response to that but it would be way off-topic. Mail me via mporter at gmail and I’ll respond.
I see how “the water god finds purchase on the earth goddesses’ children” is a metaphor for water coming to be on dust particles by way of condensation. What I don’t see is how that metaphor explains shit. Yes the water god found purchase on the children of the earth goddess… but I knew that when I saw the water on the dust. Explaining condensation involves discussing phases of matter and how temperature affects them. Your metaphor hasn’t told me anything other than “the water did something to the dust” (surely erosion or mud could be described with the same sentence). The metaphor only seems like it explains something if the person hearing the explanation reifies ‘water god’ and ‘earth goddess’. Then there is a causal story (“Why is there water here? The water god did it. If you have a problem with it speak to the water god. Etc.”).
Respectfully, you’re missing the point. A solid answer like that is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things- unless you need to use condensation for something, it doesn’t matter exactly how it works; which is why people are content with metaphor. You’ve really got to not be so closed to other ways of seeing reality… I like science as much as the next guy, but my experience of reality is a work of art (creative commons attribution license, tee hee).
Also, it was a really crappy metaphor.
Either someone cares how condensation works or they don’t. If they care, then you should explain how it works. If they don’t you should talk about something else. Neither option involves making up bad metaphors for phenomena. Under what circumstances would you share extremely bad explanations?
I like avante garde art, sensory deprivation chambers, and MDMA as much as the next guy but I don’t propagate deceptive non-explanations.
An explanation using myth is only “bad” from a rationalists’ perspective. Devoid of “ism” it’s as good as any… Maybe I only care about how condensation works far enough to make a painting of it, or write a song about it. As stated above, no one has the slightest idea what’s going on… even if you can explain exactly how every phenomenon works and how it happens, tell me “why” it happens and I’ll give you a virtua-lolipop. If I have a reality where I experience “ghosts” “god” “fairies” and “giant pyramid craft hovering over the kremlin” (hold on...) then I have a reality where those things happen to me. maybe evolutionary biology rules out fairies- that doesn’t change the fact that they sometimes happen to people. If that experience can have meaning attached to it, in what sense is it not “real”? I mean, my dreams are “real”. “reality” is very ambiguously defined.
I’m willing to agree with you on this, but this is a community devoted to rationality. Please no basketball on the tennis court. Thus the downvotes.
All your comments get harshly downvoted. You should take a hint and stop posting for a while.
The only good metaphor is a dead metaphor.
I assume you’re joking… Otherwise this statement is incredibly ignorant. I guess art is worthless to you?
Not joking, but speaking to a specific context, that of discourse whose purpose is to arrive at the truth of things. I can appreciate literary art in its place, but its methods tend to obscure the facts.
“Sky spirits” are not a good metaphor for rain, they are a bad explanation. At some time in the distant past it might have been the only explanation that anyone had come up with, but we know better now. There are no sky spirits and there never were. To teach people falsehoods because they cannot understand the truth does them a disservice. The truth is a rock, and though the rain come down, and the streams rise, and the winds blow and beat against a house builded on that rock, yet it does not fall, because it hath a sound foundation. But to understand things by fictions and myths, is like a foolish man who build his house on sand. The rain shall come down, and the streams rise, and the winds blow and beat against that house, and lo, it falls with a great crash, because it hath no foundation. (Ahem. Metaphor. Shamelessly repurposed from another source.)
I’m going to guess that Kennaway was criticizing argument by analogy, not rhetoric.
Actually, I’m wary of any sort of rhetoric. The simple truth should be simply said.
On further consideration, I have changed my view of this. Even simplicity can be a rhetorical device, and for its use by the Dark Side, just look at any political advertisement. The thing to be wary of is language that sounds like an argument without actually being one.
Simple speaking is harder to abuse, as Orwell noted in “Politics and the English Language”, but I would prefer not to make a categorical ban on imagery. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, a true metaphor (such as, I don’t know, “the map is not the territory”) is no less true because it is not literal. The problem lies when speech departs from reality, not in the fashion of speaking which does so.
More to the point, I’m not convinced that most people really know the difference between those two things. If you asked the average Neolithic villager, and they explained it in terms of spirits, and then asked the average high school graduate, who could explain it with the right language—does the average high school graduate really understand it more deeply? They’ve both been taught a certain way to talk about it, but I doubt the average high school graduate’s language give him a leg up in the actual manipulation of the phenomenon.
That surprises me. I would have come to the exact opposite conclusion. I suppose the follow up question is in what way can you explain it so that the explanation gives him a leg up in manipulation? Why wouldn’t that be a better explanation?
Agreed. Let’s turn this into an operational test. If you can come up with a way to make it rain in your kitchen, you understand the phenomenon. (Compare Hacking’s “If you can spray them, they are real.”)
It doesn’t really matter then what language you use. Some people might use “condensation” as a fake explanation, and that’s no better than “sky spirits”, which I guess was bgrah449′s point.
Catching yourself in a fake explanation is trickier than it might seem. As my kids reach a certain age I find myself dealing with questions like “Dad, what’s causing the rainbow?” You learn to cue on a certain tone of voice. “Well son, it’s because of refraction.” Ouch, too late, failed to catch that one in time.
“Well, it’s....”, and trailing off… “Buggered if I know right now, actually. It’s something about angles and the shape of water droplets, and if you ask me again once I’ve stopped the car we’ll draw a diagram together and see if we can work it out; the basic principle isn’t too hard but there’s a twist or two, like that second rainbow.”
Better now. And I know that I don’t really understand refraction; the geometric part of the optics here I know I can derive from scratch with what high school math I have left, but I don’t have a good enough grasp of electromagnetism to explain why the refractive index varies. Even to a dedicated reductionist, all explanations are ultimately “fake”, at least until we have a Theory of Everything and a mind capable of grasping the entire chain of its implications up to the rainbow; don’t hold your breath.
But there is such a thing as “good enough”.
An explanation stops being fake as soon as it tells you to predict something (or better yet, do something) you couldn’t do before. For example, if you sketch out the refractive reflection on paper, your son will—hopefully! - know to look away from the Sun, and at what angle to expect to see the rainbow, and just a little about why. And just knowing that it’s water droplets, at all, tells you that you might be able to use a garden hose.
I’m embarrassed to be caught using “fake explanation” as a fake explanation. Thanks for straightening that out. I’ll use my own words more.
Yes, optics are enough that I can predict something. Even this late in the game for me, I occasionally find some things I hadn’t really, really known before; it took experimental evidence (a rainbow caused by one of the wonderful waterfalls of Iceland) to realize that a rainbow appears centered about a point—my eyes—that moves as I move. That has a particularly wonderful effect when the rainbow is close to a full circle, as was the case that day at Skogafoss.
For some reason, I experienced that moment of playing with my personal rainbow as a minor epiphany; it had all the hallmarks of the religious experience I hear people talking about, up to “feeling at one with nature”. Except that this was a reductionist epiphany, where I realized that even though I was momentarily unable to recall all the details of why this rainbow danced with me, that knowledge was mine to reconstruct if I wanted to, down to almost the rock-bottom level of explanation. I felt as if the Universe belonged to me in that instant.
Previous to that I was something of a rationalist’s mysterian, if the phrase makes any sense; I had (truth be told, likely still have) traces of the “science doesn’t know everything so there might be magic” attitude.
I don’t know (yet) how to pass on that kind of feeling to my kids, but I hope I figure it out, for their sakes. It’s a great feeling, one I’d love to share with people I love, and knowing it has a neurological basis doesn’t spoil it one bit.
This was last summer, about three months before I chanced upon LW and ultimately the sequence that includes “Joy in the merely real”.
ETA: folks are sending karma here and to the grand-parent, I notice; I’d appreciate, if any of those upvotes mean “might like to see that worked into a post”, your replying that explicity.
I’ve been thinking about writing up the rainbow epiphany for a while now, but didn’t know how or for whom, and though I’m writing this at 2am and probably in for more revising than I care to admit, I feel better for having gotten it out.
It occurs to me that there is at least one advantage of fake explanations based on science over fake explanations based on mythology: if someone tries to find out more based on a teacher’s password, they might actually find a real explanation. “rainbows refraction” (no quotes) is a sufficient search term, for example.