tetranomos

tetranomos, 7 months ago

the quantum level of description is a luxury:

Conscious intentional communication, which we perhaps too hastily attribute to human beings as a mark of distinction, becomes a limited domain, the only domain where the distinction between desirable and ‘spurious’ uncertainty pertains. We may have to concede that the centrality of human communication, understood as a semantic and culturally saturated information system is, at least in principle, neither the first system in which information processes occur, nor necessarily the most efficient.

tetranomos, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

what about “the war on drugs” makes them say it was a failure in the peculiar institution since the end of the premodern period and the advent of modern capitalism lol? too many sparring partners of a certain melanin configuration not available to participate in all the naturally emergent belligerence?

tetranomos, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

the south thought it perfected slavery since antiquity. it’s supposed that “honor” can be restored or “retvrned” in the 21st century through refounding the colosseums

FIGURE 4.3 “Dark Artillery; or, How to Make the Contrabands Useful.” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 26, 1861. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

tetranomos, 10 months ago

qutebrowser ftw

tetranomos, 10 months ago

first comment,

If the conventional wisdom is correct, Bayesianism is potentially wrong (it’s not part of the Standard Approach to Life), and [certainly useless] […]

what was actually said:

the abandonment of interpretation in favor of a naïve approach to statistical [analysis] certainly skews the game from the outset in favor of a belief that data is intrinsically quantitative—self-evident, value neutral, and observer-independent. This [belief excludes] the possibilities of conceiving data as qualitative, co-dependently constituted. (Drucker, Johanna. 2011. “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display.”)

the latter isn’t even claiming that the bayesian (statistical analysis) is “useless” but that it “skews the game […] in favor of a belief”. the very framing is a misconstrual of the nature of the debate.