LMD Async Tutoring

[Elliot]

@LMD

• The uniqueness of the critical tradition can be seen in comparing to the traditional function of schools
• changes are rare in traditional schools
• changes are usually due to mistakes
• any conscious changes are usually secretly made
  • otherwise they can lead to schisms in the school

This is a low number of brainstormed items.

@LMD

final:

The method of the critical tradition of criticising the received doctrine is unique amongst schools, whose traditional function is to preserve the founder’s doctrine against change.

I agree that’s the best of your 3.

Here’s a version you can compare to.

A second component of the scientific tradition is critical discussion. It stands out because schools usually work to preserve ideas instead of making changes or progress.

I wrote this quickly and intuitively. It’s not necessarily better but hopefully useful.

[Elliot]

@LMD

Again from Popper’s TMOTF:

Let me say at once that the myth contains a kernel of truth. Although I contend that it is a most dangerous exaggeration to say that a fruitful discussion is impossible unless the participants share a common framework, I am very ready to admit that a discussion among participants who do not share a common framework may be difficult. A discussion will also be difficult if the frameworks have little in common. And it will be the easier the greater the overlap between the frameworks. Indeed, if the participants agree on all points, it may turn out to be an easy, smooth, and rational discussion – though perhaps a little boring.

I’ll just paraphrase this without reading your text. See what you think.

Fruitful discussion is possible between participants who don’t share a common framework, but it may be difficult. Greater overlap between frameworks makes discussions easier.

[Elliot]

@LMD

The critical tradition was founded by the adoption of the method of criticizing a received story or explanation and then proceeding to a new, improved, imaginative story which in turn is submitted to criticism. This method, I suggest, is the method of science. It seems to have been invented only once in human history. It died in the West when the schools in Athens were suppressed by a victorious and intolerant Christianity, though it lingered on in the Arab East. It was missed and mourned during the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance, it was not so much reinvented as reimported from the East, together with the rediscovery of Greek philosophy and Greek science.

I assume this is from Popper’s TMOTF.

Paraphrasing myself without reading @LMD’s post:

The critical tradition and science work by criticizing ideas, coming up with new improved ideas, and then criticizing those too. This approach was only ever invented once, in ancient Greece. It’s been passed around between different societies and rediscovered a few times.

Disclaimer: I don’t know if Popper is correct about history. His claim seems plausible but I can also imagine it being incorrect. If it’s incorrect, I imagine one of the main issues is systematic biases by Western historians, rather than this just being Popper’s own error.

[LMD]

@Elliot

@LMD

final:

The method of the critical tradition of criticising the received doctrine is unique amongst schools, whose traditional function is to preserve the founder’s doctrine against change.

I agree that’s the best of your 3.

Here’s a version you can compare to.

A second component of the scientific tradition is critical discussion. It stands out because schools usually work to preserve ideas instead of making changes or progress.

I wrote this quickly and intuitively. It’s not necessarily better but hopefully useful.

The big difference I can see is that yours talks about critical discussion as being a second component of the scientific tradition. But your paraphrase makes it seem like this is the paragraph in the essay where this second component is introduced and identified, but it’s actually introduced earlier (about 9 paragraphs earlier). So I think it makes sense to not have that in mine?

Another difference, which I like, is that your second sentence uses simpler words. Mine like Poppers uses ‘function’ and ‘doctrine’ where you use roughly ‘work’ and ‘ideas’.

[LMD]

@LMD

Again from Popper’s TMOTF:

Let me say at once that the myth contains a kernel of truth. Although I contend that it is a most dangerous exaggeration to say that a fruitful discussion is impossible unless the participants share a common framework, I am very ready to admit that a discussion among participants who do not share a common framework may be difficult. A discussion will also be difficult if the frameworks have little in common. And it will be the easier the greater the overlap between the frameworks. Indeed, if the participants agree on all points, it may turn out to be an easy, smooth, and rational discussion – though perhaps a little boring.

yours:

@Elliot

Fruitful discussion is possible between participants who don’t share a common framework, but it may be difficult. Greater overlap between frameworks makes discussions easier.

mine:

@LMD

Popper admits some truth to the myth: that a discussion may be more difficult the less the frameworks have in common. But Popper considers it a dangerous mistake to think this makes fruitful discussion impossible where frameworks aren’t shared.

Mine mentions the myth ~explicitly (though not completely), but yours refers to it implicitly.

Yours doesn’t mention the dangerous mistake/misunderstanding part. That seemed important to me, though I could only guess why he thought it was a dangerous mistake, and I didn’t include that guess in my paraphrase (its in my brainstorm though). I think he was probably thinking of this violent danger, the danger of war/violence, and not necessarily the kind of general existential danger that being irrational puts you in.

I rewrote another one, that states the myth more explicitly, has the idea of overlap and difficulty, and has he danger of believing the myth:

The myth that fruitful discussions are impossible without shared frameworks seems true because discussions with less framework overlap are more difficult. But it is a dangerous mistake to think this makes them impossible.

[LMD]

From TMOTF:

Rational discussion in this sense is a rare thing. But it is an important ideal, and we may learn to enjoy it. It does not aim at conversion, and it is modest in its expectations: it is enough, more than enough, if we feel that we can see things in a new light or that we have got even a little nearer to the truth.

brainstorm:

Rational discussion is rare
implied: rational discussion in the sense of a critical discussion aimed at learning and not ‘winning’
But rational discussion is an important ideal
it doesn’t aim at conversion
it has more modest expectations
if we can see things in a new light, that’s enough
if we have gotten a little nearer to the truth, that’s enough
we can learn to enjoy rational discussion

first pass:

Rational discussion is rare
implied: rational discussion in the sense of a critical discussion aimed at learning and not ‘winning’
But rational discussion is an important ideal
it doesn’t aim at conversion
it has more modest expectations
if we can see things in a new light, that’s enough
if we have gotten a little nearer to the truth, that’s enough
we can learn to enjoy rational discussion

paraphrase:

Proper rational discussion focused on learning and not winning is rare, but it is an important ideal.

[LMD]

But let me now return to the myth of the framework. There are many tendencies which may contribute to the fact that this myth is often taken for an almost self-evident truth.

One of these tendencies I have already mentioned. It results from a disappointed over-optimism concerning the powers of reason – that is, from an over-optimistic expectation concerning the outcome of a discussion. I mean the expectation that discussion should lead to a decisive and deserved intellectual victory of the truth, represented by one party, over falsity, represented by the other. When it is found that this is not what a discussion usually achieves, disappointment turns an over-optimistic expectation into a general pessimism concerning the fruitfulness of discussions.

many tendencies contribute to the fact that the myth is accepted as truth
one is the expectation that the outcomes of discussion should always be decisive in favour of truth against falsity
this comes from an over-optimistic expectation of the powers of reason
when this doesn’t usually eventuate, it can lead to pessimism about rational discussion

My paraphrase:

The tendency of viewing rational discussion as something to win has lead to disappointed expectations which in turn has lead to pessimism about how fruitful discussions can be, and to the acceptance the myth as truth.

That’s cumbersome and awkward, but I’m trying to spend less time on these, and do more. I didn’t brainstorm many things and they mostly are things that are directly in the paragraph, and I didn’t use the brainstorm much for reference.

Some examples of how you might brainstorm things from a paragraph I think would be helpful, like your paraphrases, because I might not even be noticing what I’m leaving out of the brainstorm. Because a brainstorm can just be really wide, it needs to have some focus, and maybe I’m intuitively limiting too hard what I should be including in the brainstorm?

[LMD]

I’m blurring my processes here. I start off making a brainstorm list, but then I end up trying to just use my intuitions to piece together a paraphrase. So I’m not really leaning very much on my explicit brainstorming.

[Elliot]

@LMD

The big difference I can see is that yours talks about critical discussion as being a second component of the scientific tradition. But your paraphrase makes it seem like this is the paragraph in the essay where this second component is introduced and identified, but it’s actually introduced earlier (about 9 paragraphs earlier). So I think it makes sense to not have that in mine?

I thought it was important framing from Popper that critical discussion is one component, out of multiple, in the scientific tradition. Your version didn’t mention science.

[Elliot]

@LMD

Yours doesn’t mention the dangerous mistake/misunderstanding part. That seemed important to me

That’s reasonable.

One difficulty with this practice is the lack of a real context. When you’re paraphrasing for non-practice, you have some sort of goals and context that help guide decisions about what is important or relevant to include or not.

@LMD

I rewrote another one, that states the myth more explicitly, has the idea of overlap and difficulty, and has he danger of believing the myth:

The myth that fruitful discussions are impossible without shared frameworks seems true because discussions with less framework overlap are more difficult. But it is a dangerous mistake to think this makes them impossible.

That’s reasonable.

[Elliot]

Conversion and winning are different. You can win a debate, and impress the audience, without the debate partner/opponent actually changing his mind.

Also a nit pick about something I’ve seen multiple times which brings up some grammar analysis:

“and not” is usually better as just “not” or “, not”.

Similarly, “try and” is usually better as “try to”.

I think these are both getting common and English may be shifting, but I think they’re worse (less precise, make less sense in terms of grammar and logic).

“not X” is a modifier while “and not X” is adding in a conjunction for some reason. The purpose of the conjunction is often unclear to me and I think it’s often unnecessary.

Here are two potential interpretations of the conjunction: it could be forming a list with elements “W” and “not X” or it could be forming a clause with an implied repetition of a subject and verb.

The clause version is like “It’s learning and also it’s not winning.” Using “and” is making it shorthand for that whole thing.

The list version is like “It’s two things: 1) learning 2) not winning.”

With “It’s learning, not winning.” I think the “not winning” is a modifier for “learning” (maybe an appositive restatement to clarify it).

[Elliot]

I really like that paragraph by Popper about people’s disappointed over-optimism about discussion.

@LMD

The tendency of viewing rational discussion as something to win has lead to disappointed expectations which in turn has lead to pessimism about how fruitful discussions can be, and to the acceptance the myth as truth.

This one seems less accurate to me than your other recent ones.

@LMD

Some examples of how you might brainstorm things from a paragraph I think would be helpful, like your paraphrases, because I might not even be noticing what I’m leaving out of the brainstorm. Because a brainstorm can just be really wide, it needs to have some focus, and maybe I’m intuitively limiting too hard what I should be including in the brainstorm?

ok let’s see. Popper wrote, i assume in The Myth of the Framework (btw please include a source in each post here):

But let me now return to the myth of the framework. There are many tendencies which may contribute to the fact that this myth is often taken for an almost self-evident truth.

One of these tendencies I have already mentioned. It results from a disappointed over-optimism concerning the powers of reason – that is, from an over-optimistic expectation concerning the outcome of a discussion. I mean the expectation that discussion should lead to a decisive and deserved intellectual victory of the truth, represented by one party, over falsity, represented by the other. When it is found that this is not what a discussion usually achieves, disappointment turns an over-optimistic expectation into a general pessimism concerning the fruitfulness of discussions.

• regarding the myth of the framework
• there are many tendencies
• tendencies contribute to believing myth strongly
• myth is taken as almost self-evident truth
• already mentioned one tendency
• tendency results from disappointed over-optimism about reason
• people are over-optimistic about discussion outcomes
• people expect decisive discussions
• people expect well-deserved intellectual victories for the truth
• people expect one side to win and one lose
• they expect the false side to lose
• (implied) they expect one side to be pure truth, and one pure falsity, instead of each side being right about some points and wrong about some points (likely with an uneven mix, not 50/50, but also not 100/0).
• discussions usually don’t achieve this in practice (in this text, Popper doesn’t talk about why or what the common outcomes are)
• people get disappointed
• people become pessimistic
• the optimism led to wanting and expecting too much, dreaming too big, which led to disappointment and then pessimism
• (interpretation or expansion) they’re swinging the pendulum too far in one direction, being wrong, then swinging it too far in the other direction (over-correcting, so now they’re wrong the other way)
• the pessimism they form is about the fruitfulness of discussions in general (not about a more limited issue like whether most people are willing to admit they’re wrong or the difficulty of having a fully true claim that can win an ideal victory)

I didn’t do this from memory. It’s mostly very point by point using small chunks. There are other ways to brainstorm more creatively which are easier to do from memory. Some types of brainstorming get easier with longer passages. Like if you read a passage with 10 paragraphs, then there might be 3 major points per paragraph on average, for a total of 30 major points. Then you could brainstorm a list of 15 major points that you think you might want to include, plus some minor points, and then cut it down later.

Brainstorming meanings, implications or interpretations is another way to get a longer list and use more creativity, even with short passages (as long as they have enough complexity). You’ll especially get a longer list if you brainstorm multiple contradictory candidate interpretations instead of just one interpretation of each part. You can brainstorm claims about a text that might be mistaken.

[LMD]

@Elliot

There are many reasonable things to do next. They’re all fine. You can work on developing intuitions for paraphrasing. That’s a very long process if you want to get results similar to mine, but if you just want to make some progress you can accomplish that now. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to work on. You could also work on something simpler where you can go really fast with a high success rate, and try to figure out what is one small step more advanced than that, so you can work on that with little slow down, and then repeat. And we could also do some more advanced stuff like working on debate, which would go slower and get less quantity of things done, but could also be good as long as you learn some things.

There are lots of good learning paths and your preferences or intuitions about what you want to do should play a significant role in deciding what to do. I can veto things I think are a bad idea, and make suggestions, and bring up key prerequisites that were skipped, but as long as students pick reasonable topics that I think will work fine, then there’s a lot of flexibility. That doesn’t mean they’re all equal. Many things would work OK but customization does help too. I can select some customizations but some are up to you and your self-knowledge about what you like and don’t like, are interested in or not interested in, curious or not curious about, opinions or intuitions like those.

I don’t have clear ideas of what I could study next, so I think suggestions from you would be good, and then I can use my preferences/intuitions to help guide my decisions. Some of the topics I’m interested to learn about are probably high level compared my skill level, and I don’t really know how to approach them without overreaching and getting stuck. I don’t for example think I could have a debate about epistemology or morality. I think that’s probably because I don’t know a lot about debate, nor epistemology and morality, nor a lot of discussion skills. Maybe it’s fine to try and debate them and just ‘lose’ or fail at a bunch of debates and that finding out I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing is valuable. I think with debate I’m just worried I’ll make a bunch of errors and be incoherent or something, and waste someone else’s time, and maybe embarrass myself.

Is it still a debate if I’m just finding out I don’t actually know what I think I do and I’m just asking my debate partner heaps of questions about a topic? That sounds more like a teacher/student dynamic to me, and I guess I imagine debates aren’t like that. How can I use debate as a beginner to help me learn?

p.s Should I be sharing what advanced topics that I’d like to learn about? Would that be helpful for you? I’m imagining that we’re a way off studying something like morality, or Objectivism, but I don’t know.

[LMD]

@Elliot

“and not” is usually better as just “not” or “, not”.

Similarly, “try and” is usually better as “try to”.

Cool. I hadn’t noticed I did that. I think they are worse than what you’re suggesting. I’ll try to keep an eye out for that.

[LMD]

@LMD

I think they are worse than what you’re suggesting

rereading this again this sounds kinda ambiguous to me so to be clear: I think that your suggestions for what to do instead of what I was doing are good.

[LMD]

From The Myth of the Framework by Karl Popper:

Another tendency which contributes to the myth of the framework, and which deserves careful scrutiny, is connected with historical or cultural relativism. This is a view whose beginnings may perhaps be discerned in Herodotus.

Herodotus seems to have been one of those somewhat rare people whose minds are broadened by travel. At first he was no doubt shocked by the many strange customs and institutions which he encountered in the Middle East. But he learned to respect them, and to look on some of them critically, and to regard others as the results of historical accidents: he learned to be tolerant, and he even acquired the ability to see the customs and institutions of his own country through the eyes of his barbarian hosts.

This is a healthy attitude. But it may lead to relativism, that is, to the view that there is no absolute or objective truth, but rather one truth for the Greeks, another for the Egyptians, still another for the Syrians, and so on.

Here is a long brainstorm I made of points. This wasn’t from memory:

• there is another tendency
• this tendency contributes to the acceptance of the myth
• this tendency deserves careful scrutiny
• this tendency is connected with cultural/historical relativism
• relativism’s beginnings may perhaps be discerned in Herodotus
• Herodotus was a rare mind
• Herodotus’s mind seemed to have been broadened by travel
• implied: most people’s minds aren’t broadened by travel
• implied: the relevant thing about travel in this context is culture clash
• At first he would’ve been shocked by the foreign customs of the Middle East
• But he learned to respect their customs
• he learned to look at some of their customs critically
• he learned to regard other customs as the result of historical accident
• he learned to be tolerant of these differences in culture
• he learned to view his country’s customs through foreign eyes
• This tolerant and critical attitude is healthy
• This attitude can lead to relativism
• Implied: relativism is false, and the wrong conclusion to draw from the attitude
• (expansion on why conclusion is wrong) It shouldn’t lead to relativism because the fact that people have different ideas (including different ideas for how to judge ideas) doesn’t mean that there are no true ideas including true ideas for how to judge ideas. It’s a non sequitur.
• Relativism is the view that there is no objective truth
• Relativism would mean there is a truth for each country or culture
• (expansion) Relativism’s view is therefore that no objective standards for comparing the customs of different countries exist. Each can only judge relative to his own standards, which are merely arbitrary.

[LMD]

@Elliot

Popper wrote, i assume in The Myth of the Framework (btw please include a source in each post here):

Yes is it. And sorry, I’ll make sure to do that from now on. I think I know why that’s happening.

I can’t edit older posts so for the record all of my unattributed excerpts since this post are from Karl Popper’s The Myth of the Framework.

[Elliot]

ok continue on to a paraphrase

[Elliot]

We could try working on some debate or analysis methods and see how it goes. I’d like to do some brainstorming practice first though, and more paraphrasing is fine too.

For brainstorming practice, one of the goals is to loosen up and make longer lists. Another goal is to come up with some non-standard answers. Another goal is to come up with some risky answers – to be experimental and creative even at the risk of some of the brainstormed items being incorrect. Another goal is to be pretty quick and use your intuition, not agonize over things slowly.

First brainstorming prompt: plants.

[LMD]

@Elliot

We could try working on some debate or analysis methods and see how it goes. I’d like to do some brainstorming practice first though, and more paraphrasing is fine too.

sounds good

plants brainstorm (10 minutes):

food plants
corn
beets
maize
potatos
celery
carrots
cabbage
vegetables
fruits
apples
pears
oranges
trees
plums
bushes
shrubs
vines
tall trees
forests
lakes
seaweed
algae
photosynthesis
green colour
leaves
branches
seeds
reproduction via bees and insects
used to make cloth and fibrous materials
burnt for heat
house plants
monstera
ivy
plants are made from air
some plants are protected from being cut down
cotton
poison berries
deadly nightshade
domesticated plants
soup ingredients
gardening
herbs
basil
oregano
thyme
parsely
coriander
smoking plants
tobacco
cannabis
palm trees
coconuts
wood is plants
houses are built from plants
clothes are made from plants
old ships built from trees
soil is dead plants
national plants
buying plants from shops
weeds grow in sidewalks
parks in cities
animals live in trees
some trees are old
underwater plants
seaweed
kelp
forest fires
plants used for medicine
herbal tea
chinese medicine
aloe vera
greenhouses
produce oxygen
overgrown buildings
gardens in urban setting
tree roots pushing up sidewalks
tree stumps
deforestation
being around trees and greenery is nice
wood for guitars
vegans eat mostly plants
diets