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(attempting) to tie some ideas together.

Started by AFK, April 07, 2008, 04:17:48 PM

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Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Quote from: triple zero on July 17, 2008, 04:05:03 PM
Quote from: Reverend Whats His Name on July 17, 2008, 03:47:34 PM
Quote from: triple zero on July 17, 2008, 03:32:54 PM
Quote from: RatatoskAgreed, and the more maps, the better...

disagree. not every new map sheds more light on a subject.

also, some maps add more information to a subject from the way they're structured in themselves than from the angle they allow you to look at a subject.

But he didn't say they did.  The point isn't that EVERY map will be useful.  The point is that it is better to have more than one.  Use the historical maps of Earth as an analogy.  Clearly the old maps that guessed at what the New World looked like would be useless today.  But those maps did have some utility, at least, for the European continent.  More maps can provide more information, but that doesn't mean some of them will be useless.  That's why you make sure you have more than one cartographer available to interpret the information. 

well if that's what Rat meant, okay. i yet have to see him call any map useless, though :)


Ha! You know me too well TZ!

Indeed, I think all maps are useful in some sense. Not always the same sense though. For example, a map of the Columbus Sewage system wouldn't be useful in the same way Google Maps would be. A map of The World circa 1150 AD, wouldn't be nearly as useful as a map of the world as mapped out by satellite... but it might be invaluable, in gaining a greater understanding of the people living in 1150 AD.

Maps tell us about the territory... but, perhaps just as importantly (IMO) they also tell us about how someone else perceives the territory. When I speak to a Fundamentalist Christian, I try to use their maps, so I understand better how they see the territory. I could stick with the map that I personally think best... but if their map and my map differ greatly, then we won't be able to usefully communicate. If I can grok their map, then I can communicate with them more easily.

Now, I wouldn't consider their map a good map to live by and I am sad that so many people use incomplete, incompatible, incongruous, incorrect maps from incompetent map makers. However, if people use a map, looking at that map occasionally, might help figuring out what those people think they're doing ;-)

So for example:

Reality Tunnels, Black Iron Prisons, Reality Grids, Shrapnel, Cue Balls on infinitely bumpy tables.... all Model a territory. They all model it differently, showing different aspects of how the territory is perceived by the map maker. Therefore, I think they all have value (and the more the better) because they show us MORE perspectives on the territory.

We can argue the details of each map, we might have "Here theyre Be Iron Bars" scrawled along one side, or we might use "circuit programming" to discuss the same concept as "Shrapnel". Both have value, and neither model is useless... but all models are limited.

For me I have a sliding scale for models:

Very Useful..........................................................Not Very Useful

But, nowehere on that scale is Useless... because even the worst map there, then one that is at (Not Very Useful - 1) still probably tells us something interesting about some humans.
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

Cainad (dec.)

Quote from: Ratatosk on July 17, 2008, 05:12:43 PM
Quote from: triple zero on July 17, 2008, 04:05:03 PM
Quote from: Reverend Whats His Name on July 17, 2008, 03:47:34 PM
Quote from: triple zero on July 17, 2008, 03:32:54 PM
Quote from: RatatoskAgreed, and the more maps, the better...

disagree. not every new map sheds more light on a subject.

also, some maps add more information to a subject from the way they're structured in themselves than from the angle they allow you to look at a subject.

But he didn't say they did.  The point isn't that EVERY map will be useful.  The point is that it is better to have more than one.  Use the historical maps of Earth as an analogy.  Clearly the old maps that guessed at what the New World looked like would be useless today.  But those maps did have some utility, at least, for the European continent.  More maps can provide more information, but that doesn't mean some of them will be useless.  That's why you make sure you have more than one cartographer available to interpret the information. 

well if that's what Rat meant, okay. i yet have to see him call any map useless, though :)


Ha! You know me too well TZ!

Indeed, I think all maps are useful in some sense. Not always the same sense though. For example, a map of the Columbus Sewage system wouldn't be useful in the same way Google Maps would be. A map of The World circa 1150 AD, wouldn't be nearly as useful as a map of the world as mapped out by satellite... but it might be invaluable, in gaining a greater understanding of the people living in 1150 AD.

I just thought I'd point out that this is the same as saying any map is useful if you're using the right map for it to appear so. Metacartography ITT.

Carry on.

Cramulus

 :mrgreen:

Quote from: Ratatosk on July 17, 2008, 05:12:43 PM
Ha! You know me too well TZ!

let me remind you of 000's impression of you during the WOMP project A Fapcab Named Desire

Quote

Ratatosk's casting as LHX's comic relief sidekick in the Predicate ##### Gang, a renegade group of rebelling semantic subjectivists, was not only unfortunate as well as highly aggravating, spouting inane oneliners like a twelve year-old that just discovered the sentence-fragment "... that's what she said!":

LHX: "E-Prime, motherfucker! Do you speak it?!"
Ratatosk: ".. IN SOME SENSE!"
Cainad: "Dude .. I .. have a heart condition .."
Ratatosk: ".. MAYBE!"

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Quote from: Professor Cramulus on July 17, 2008, 06:35:36 PM
:mrgreen:

Quote from: Ratatosk on July 17, 2008, 05:12:43 PM
Ha! You know me too well TZ!

let me remind you of 000's impression of you during the WOMP project A Fapcab Named Desire

Quote

Ratatosk's casting as LHX's comic relief sidekick in the Predicate ##### Gang, a renegade group of rebelling semantic subjectivists, was not only unfortunate as well as highly aggravating, spouting inane oneliners like a twelve year-old that just discovered the sentence-fragment "... that's what she said!":

LHX: "E-Prime, motherfucker! Do you speak it?!"
Ratatosk: ".. IN SOME SENSE!"
Cainad: "Dude .. I .. have a heart condition .."
Ratatosk: ".. MAYBE!"


OSHI, how did I ever miss that?!

- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

Triple Zero

IMO, if you grok a fundie christian map in order to communicate better with them, you're not actually navigating with their map, but you are using your own map which you have constructed in such a way that it is able to reflect the way these christian fundies think.
yes, you are "using" their map, in the sense that ou have been studying it, and "using" it again when you speak to them in coordinates relative to their maps, but by no means are you actually being a christian fundie, navigating with the christian fundie map, because if you truly were, you wouldnt automatically return to the regular map you use for every day life.

so you got yourself some kind of chameleon multi-map. and in a sense, everybody does, but some are more flexible than others.

yet this means that not all maps are created equal. some are good enough to actually use for navigating and getting somewhere, and others are useful for molding your personal map to in order to communicate better with certain people, and yet others are useful for even vaguer stuff, some are simply weird and funny, and then, i'm pretty sure, i can come up with some map that is just plain useless.

i was going somewhere, but either i forgot or i already went there.

few more things:

1) what cainad said, i agree with.

2) yeah i kinda figured you missed it cause i never got any comment from you about it ;-) [i wonder if i sent it to LHX as well].

3) the "Predicate ##### Gang", i was going to fill in another word there, but apparently i completely forgot about it, heh.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Quote from: triple zero on July 17, 2008, 07:24:50 PM
IMO, if you grok a fundie christian map in order to communicate better with them, you're not actually navigating with their map, but you are using your own map which you have constructed in such a way that it is able to reflect the way these christian fundies think.
yes, you are "using" their map, in the sense that ou have been studying it, and "using" it again when you speak to them in coordinates relative to their maps, but by no means are you actually being a christian fundie, navigating with the christian fundie map, because if you truly were, you wouldnt automatically return to the regular map you use for every day life.

Well, maybe. For me personally, I have spent periods of time trying to navigate with different maps. I'm serious when I've said that I spent time basing my beliefs on the roll of a die. In some cases, I have found it possible to get trapped there. It was only through a routine which I forced myself to follow that I escaped the most recent adventure I had with the "Conservative Politics" map. Fortunately for me, I force myself through a couple rituals at the end of each month to purge the old... I found myself reluctant to purge though, because the map seemed really useful after a month of being completely embedded with people that used it. About half the country seems to find it useful, and I can see why. In the end, thanks to the safeguards I put in place (or maybe I only think it was those...) I am happily not a Conservative now. Did I really change my map, or did I just pretend? I don't know, I'm not sure how we could use such a broad metaphor to cover things like temporary belief systems.

Quote
so you got yourself some kind of chameleon multi-map. and in a sense, everybody does, but some are more flexible than others.

Maybe. a metamap perhaps. Indeed, some would argue that Crowley considered the Tree of Life a metamap of all religious systems. You can certainly transpose many of the religions in the world to that basic set of metaphors. Maybe I just have a chameleon map, or maybe I make use of other maps, either way... the map (weather I follow it wholesale, or just metafollow it) is useful in understanding the people that follow it.

Quote
yet this means that not all maps are created equal.

I agree entirely.

Quote
some are good enough to actually use for navigating and getting somewhere, and others are useful for molding your personal map to in order to communicate better with certain people, and yet others are useful for even vaguer stuff, some are simply weird and funny, and then, i'm pretty sure, i can come up with some map that is just plain useless.

I agree with everything except the very last statement. any map you make, is based on an interpretation of what you experience, or believe or think is true. As such, it seems useful in understanding you. If the map is not  based on some perceived territory, then its not really a map, is it? It may just be a drawing.

;-)

But I think we're arguing semantics here. I think that there are lots of maps with Minimal Value... that is they might be useful to us in some manner(anthropology maybe ;-) ), but probably not in a manner that would fall under "normal usage" for a map (telling you enough about the territory that you don't go fall in a hole and die).

How's that?
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson