Principles of Applied Epistemology (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)

[Pete Jones]

"While timorous knowledge stands considering, audacious ignorance hath done the deed."

---English poet and historian Samuel Daniel.

[Mick Harper]

For years I assumed audiobooks were for the infirm. I now realise it is a completely different medium. Books you might ordinarily reject for all kinds of reasons--from unfamiliar genre to tedium--when reading, you will listen to with great pleasure.

However, this is not widely appreciated. It is like driving. Journeys that you would forswear if you had to drive, can be undertaken happily if you're in the passenger seat.

[Mick Harper]

The Tyranny of Large Numbers ran headlong into the Immoveable Political Stereotype the other day.

Nobody knows how many Russians died in the Second World War, and the Russians have always kept firm control of the data required for making accurate assessments. For several decades it was 'twenty million'. Then suddenly, for no obvious reason, the figure became 'twenty-seven million' and that remained the unvarying number for the decades since.

The other day, presumably because of the Ukraine War, a western commentator uttered the fateful words 'twenty-five to twenty-seven million'.

[Mick Harper]

I was watching The History Boys and reading Infinite Jest but got impatient with both. The fictional characters kept going off on lengthy conversations with a technical content far beyond the scope of any similar types of people I've come across in real life. Indeed, far outside anything I could myself offer on the subjects in question. This led me to some AE musings.

I was entirely comfortable that the respective authors (Alan Bennet and David Foster Wallace) had the wherewithal to come up with these expositions. I was happy to recognise that putting them in the mouths of their characters made for excellent viewing/ reading. Nevertheless, I found myself getting increasingly irked.

The truth is, with some exceptions, I have never had a conversation ever of such complex interest with anyone. It would seem the people I, personally, come into contact socially with are either

* incapable of delivering them
* decline for some reason to deliver them, if they are capable
* do not allow me to deliver them (I am fully capable)
* or shut me up in short order if I manage to get started.

The 'some exceptions' led to

* great wonder on my part or theirs
* expressions of gratitude on my part or theirs
* no repetition of anything similar again
* with, at most, three exceptions.

Now you might think this must be because I have led a sheltered intellectual life. But this just isn't so.

* I have attended various academic institutions (and similar non-academic ones)
* I come from and have remained in social circles that prize intellectual endeavour
* I have conducted numberless conversations over the internet with 'intellectuals'
* I have demonstrated at all times I am 'up for it'.

So just what is going on? I really would like to know.

[Mick Harper]

A nice example of the bogus list turned up yesterday on YouTube. I was watching a generally sound chap giving me the dope about Elon Musk, and specifically what happened to him back in 2016 when, in order to drum up funds from both customers pre-ordering and Wall Street financiers lending, he promised to be turning out 5.000 Teslas a week from his all-new, all-robotic Texas carplant by the following year.

This was despite the said factory currently turning out a few hundred every quarter. The bloke on YouTube told us this was an example of 'Moonshine Management', the technique of galvanising everyone by issuing seemingly unrealistic targets in the expectation they will buckle down and achieve them, by hook or by crook.

I was my usual sceptical self and waited for the dude to give us some examples from history. He duly obliged. 'Like President Kennedy announcing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade," he began. I found this very doubtful but gave it a reluctant pass. Or Churchill demanding blood, sweat and tears to defeat the Nazis. I rolled over laughing at this one. 'And Elon Musk's five thousand cars a week which he achieved the year after.'

And moved on to other things, notably Elon discovering for many processes on the production line, a Texan could do it in a tenth of the time and at a fraction of the cost of a robot.

[Mick Harper]

Here's an interesting application of the Bogus List principle:

[Mick Harper]

I was recommended this YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TegsVN5HTQ. It's by some outfit that calls itself Socrates in the City so you can tell it's highbrow.

I don't recommend you watching it--the two cats in conversation are highly tedious--but the subject matter 'The Medieval technique for memorising entire books' is an interesting one.

Neither of them seemed aware that the 'put things in rooms' technique is the standard one--and as far as I know, the only one--used by music hall memory acts ('Can Professor Knows-it-all tell me who won the cup in 1937' etc?). And it's true, prodigious amounts of discrete data can be stored like that. Though, again as far as I know, it is useless for memorising prose. Otherwise actors would use the technique wholesale.

But one little AE snippet was gleaned. Apparently, William of Ockham wrote all his best stuff after he had been banished and wasn't allowed any books. This is similar to Isaac Newton after he had left the cosy confines of Cambridge. When you're forced back on your own resources, knowledge turns from memorised data to something more.

My own small contribution to the technique is the '1-10 list'. If you force yourself to always come up with ten reasons why, the first half-dozen are rumpty-tumpty, gleaned from memory, but the next three are all your own, mint fresh for the world. Ya gotta work for them but they're there if you wait long enough. The last one is the McGuffin, though I find a joke mainly suffices. It'll only mean another book if you find it.