Teleology conversation

2021-03-06.

"This" is the idea that when people appear to be ahead of their time, it's about luck, keen observation of the present, and survivorship bias, and not "true prophecy" which occurs in advance of any evidence. This bothers me because I don't think nature does stuff in the future, it only does stuff in the present.

The examples were:

1. Ned Block saying Andy Clark's extended mind wasn't true in 1995 but it's true now.
2. Adam Curtis on Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1964) and how it seems to have gotten more true.
3. Clifford Geertz on Clyde Kluckhohn: "Anthropology as intellectual poaching license" is more true now (1980) than when he said it (1950?), and also applies to many other disciplines.

• So the short version is: Prophecies are not predictions. Prophecies are keen/early observation, and they survive through selection, so they're subject to survivorship bias
• And the reason I'm so worked up about this is that I'm allergic to teleological views. Everything human is teleological. We search for purpose. But nature is not teleological. It has no aims or endpoints
  • That’s excellent. Totally get it
• And I think when people say "anticipatory response" this correctly means "early" and not "before"
  • The definition of anticipatory is "before" though. So I don't like it when people use that term incorrectly
    • There is no “before” in the brain except one that we arbitrarily mark as observers As in, he's opposed to dwelling on the trauma
• As Kuhn reads Darwin: Evolution proceeds from simplicity. But it does not proceed towards anything
  • Yup. This is a core tenet
  • Freud has a similar view btw
  • We can understand a psychopathology and its “causes” only by looking backwards. Not by predicting forwards
    • Totally. Post-traumatic growth
    • It's interesting because Adler is opposed to Freud's etiological view, and proposes a teleological one. But critically, that is about behaviour in the present. It's not about finding causes. It's about ignoring causes to start a process of change towards something. In that case teleology is fine. That's living
  • And this is a sense making act
  • Not a natural cause act
    • Thanks this is important
• Yes. And also why I like narrative identity. It’s a vehicle for sense making and a way to move forward with some sign posts. but they’re always confused as truth and people get fucked that way
  • Right. Identity ... and actually the practice of science ... are both cases of acting "as if"
  • It's not fake it til you make it. It's faking it for long enough to do the action
  • It's faking it forever, basically
    • Yes. So yes
  • Science only proceeds if it actually does stuff, and then you learn a posteriori. Nature doesn't care about your a priori theories. And in some sense all theories are false. They're all maps
• But there really is causation at that level.
  • At the level of narrative. Not nature
  • Yes. There are patterns and there is causation
  • Yes. Narrative is critical for communication and for living. But a narrative is a map or a signpost, it's not the real thing, and if you mistake it for the real thing you can get trapped in it
    • Yup yup and yup. We are so in the same page
  • On the Narrative of Nature and How it Fucks up Everything. TED talk at 8pm :/)