Always Understand That You Could Be Wrong
Mar. 21st, 2012 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7Placebo - Protect Me From What I Want--- A few things have pissed me off, today. Regina Spektor - [The Ghost of Corporate Future]). on the whole, I'm most directly upset by the hypocrisy of people, and the strange willingness to engage in evidentiary bias.
Remember People: The first place a thing is written down is not necessarily that thing's ultimate source. Just because it shows up in a book about a culture or by a person, does not mean that was the first culture or person to find it. It was simply the first place to have written it down. We forget that our research methods and our ways of talking about things are a shorthand for "I Want To Know As Much About This Thing As I Possibly Can, And Eventually I May Hit The Limit of My Ability To Know But That Reflects On Me And Not On The Things-To-Be-Known."
Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart--- Your research methods-- Your system ofr thought? It's not the world.
I was having one of those days where it seemed like people's inability or refusal to see the hypocrisies inherent in their systematizations was going to make my freaking head explode. (Crüxshadows - [Carnival]). And so I developed a new theory which was neither new nor theoretical: Those things which a system seeks to exclude as Invalid will actuallly be enshrined within that system in a fundamental way. (Florence And The Machine - Between Two Lungs). That is simply that we will make the biggest deal out of hating that which we actually embody or dread we may embody, at our core, writ large.
Think about it: Science demands evidence and repeatability. Demands rationality and reason. Based on what? What is the foundation for repetition? For pattern-making? All patterns are devised patterns.
Academia demands that we have a chain of evidence, to show that we brought these ideas up from somewhere, that we didn't just pull them from our asses, and say QED, go fuck yourself. (Dauby - [Mutual (DJ Comorbid Remix)]). Why? Because at the start of everything we study, someone just made that shit up, based on what they saw. And academia spends the rest of its time tying itself in knots, to shore up these thoughts and the holes and flaws therein, to build a dome around and out of nothing, to support all of the shit that comes after.
At the heart of your system of thought-- powering it, generating it-- is the very thing you developed that system to eradicate.
And you know what? That is fine. It's absolutely okay, just so long as you own it! Accept and recognise the fact that your system wil be paradoxical and problematic because it preferences one iteration of a process while discounting as completely unacceptable another iteration of the exact same process.
All Research Is Based Upon Anecdotal Evidence.
Stop being a superior dick about your particular kind of anecdotes and, and just do the fucking work. (Autechre - [Xylin Room]). Learn something. Investigate and present ideas. Try to understand the systems others use to understand. And don't be a fucking superior asshole about it.
GOD DAMN IT.
You don't have the answers. You have a set of answers that works really well in a specific set of situations. That's all that any of us has, and it's all we ever can have, as finite structures.
Sin - [Army of Me (Björk Cover)]--- Accept it. And in accepting it, seek to surpass its limitations. Seek to integrate as many views as possible, to patch and refine, and adapt your own, but always, ALWAYS with an eye to the fact that you are not better, not more not "Correct," but just as incomplete.
MC Frontalot - [Origin of Species]--- And this song coming on, right now is how I know that my WinAmp is A) Either itself sentient or a Conduit for a particular sentient force and B) Possessed of a really fucked up sense of humour.
I'm finished.
Remember People: The first place a thing is written down is not necessarily that thing's ultimate source. Just because it shows up in a book about a culture or by a person, does not mean that was the first culture or person to find it. It was simply the first place to have written it down. We forget that our research methods and our ways of talking about things are a shorthand for "I Want To Know As Much About This Thing As I Possibly Can, And Eventually I May Hit The Limit of My Ability To Know But That Reflects On Me And Not On The Things-To-Be-Known."
Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart--- Your research methods-- Your system ofr thought? It's not the world.
I was having one of those days where it seemed like people's inability or refusal to see the hypocrisies inherent in their systematizations was going to make my freaking head explode. (Crüxshadows - [Carnival]). And so I developed a new theory which was neither new nor theoretical: Those things which a system seeks to exclude as Invalid will actuallly be enshrined within that system in a fundamental way. (Florence And The Machine - Between Two Lungs). That is simply that we will make the biggest deal out of hating that which we actually embody or dread we may embody, at our core, writ large.
Think about it: Science demands evidence and repeatability. Demands rationality and reason. Based on what? What is the foundation for repetition? For pattern-making? All patterns are devised patterns.
Academia demands that we have a chain of evidence, to show that we brought these ideas up from somewhere, that we didn't just pull them from our asses, and say QED, go fuck yourself. (Dauby - [Mutual (DJ Comorbid Remix)]). Why? Because at the start of everything we study, someone just made that shit up, based on what they saw. And academia spends the rest of its time tying itself in knots, to shore up these thoughts and the holes and flaws therein, to build a dome around and out of nothing, to support all of the shit that comes after.
At the heart of your system of thought-- powering it, generating it-- is the very thing you developed that system to eradicate.
And you know what? That is fine. It's absolutely okay, just so long as you own it! Accept and recognise the fact that your system wil be paradoxical and problematic because it preferences one iteration of a process while discounting as completely unacceptable another iteration of the exact same process.
All Research Is Based Upon Anecdotal Evidence.
Stop being a superior dick about your particular kind of anecdotes and, and just do the fucking work. (Autechre - [Xylin Room]). Learn something. Investigate and present ideas. Try to understand the systems others use to understand. And don't be a fucking superior asshole about it.
GOD DAMN IT.
You don't have the answers. You have a set of answers that works really well in a specific set of situations. That's all that any of us has, and it's all we ever can have, as finite structures.
Sin - [Army of Me (Björk Cover)]--- Accept it. And in accepting it, seek to surpass its limitations. Seek to integrate as many views as possible, to patch and refine, and adapt your own, but always, ALWAYS with an eye to the fact that you are not better, not more not "Correct," but just as incomplete.
MC Frontalot - [Origin of Species]--- And this song coming on, right now is how I know that my WinAmp is A) Either itself sentient or a Conduit for a particular sentient force and B) Possessed of a really fucked up sense of humour.
I'm finished.
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Date: 2012-03-24 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 04:42 am (UTC)