ROCKMAKERS: A new arrival upon the front!

MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2018

Part 1—Wittgenstein's pinball machine:
Long ago and far away, "the appearance on the front of a new arrival...became the topic of general conversation."

So said glorious Chekhov, though only, of course, in translation. In Chekhov's account, the new arrival was "a lady with a lapdog." The events in question would have occurred in or around the 1890s.

(Some background, from the leading authority: "The Lady with the Dog is a short story by Anton Chekhov. First published in 1899, it describes an adulterous affair between Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, an unhappily married Moscow banker, and Anna Sergeyevna Von Diderits, a young married woman, an affair which begins while both are vacationing alone in the Crimean sea resort of Yalta...This is one of Chekhov's most famous pieces of short fiction. Vladimir Nabokov, for instance, considers it as one of the greatest short stories ever written.")

By way of contrast, the new arrival of which we speak was a pinball machine—Bally's 1967 "RockMakers" entry. It appeared in the basement of Harvard's Dunster House at some point during the 1968-69 academic year, producing general interest.

By happenstance, that was our senior year in college. Thanks to the Vietnam war and the ever-expanding draft, it was a relatively undesirable time to be a senior in college—if you were, in the words of Luca Brasi, "a masculine child."

On the bright side, it was a time of nearly full employment—but only because 500,000 American men were "fully employed" in Vietnam. Placing that number in perspective, the nation's total population was roughly 200 million that year.

Service in Vietnam didn't necessarily seem like a fabulous deal. There were no Skype calls to the folks back home of the type we'd later see from Iraq. It was basically eleven months in a jungle, with the outside chance of being asked to engage in the occasional village massacre.

Today, the courage of various progressive pundits—we think of MSNBC's Joy Reid—has helped us see how eager these people would have been to serve in Vietnam.

Despite their lack of military service, these pundits are quick to suggest that they would have been the first to sign up for Vietnam. For ourselves, we'll only guess that they might have felt somewhat differently had they come along at a time when their bold declarations would have flown in the face of that relentless, widely-feared draft.

At any rate, it was in that year that the new arrival of whom we speak appeared in the Dunster House basement. As you can only start to see in this evocative video clip, it was a pinball machine whose iconography concerned a race of people on some planet where their sole occupation seemed to involve the making of rocks.

As pinball machines of the era went, RockMakers was wickedly great. The player could win extra games by racking up a very high score—but also by achieving an appropriate number of "Rock-A-Rocks," whose provenance we won't attempt to describe. If memory serves, the tilt mechanism was, or became, especially forgiving in the Dunster House machine.

We spent occasional thoughtful minutes lingering over RockMakers. Today, its rock-making denizens may seem to suggest the leading players in the 1968 film, Planet of the Apes (with perhaps a hint of The Flintstones), as you can see in this unfortunate image, but we're fairly sure that we hadn't seen that satirical film at that time.

For us, the rock-makers inevitably suggested the tableau painted by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the second short section, or "aphorism," of his puzzling magnum opus, Philosophical Investigations, a very hot book at the time.

What does one meet in that second short section? After an apologetic Preface, Wittgenstein starts the Investigations with a quotation from Augustine. Quickly, he moves on to this:
2. ...Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words "block", "pillar","slab", "beam". A calls them out;—B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call.——Conceive this as a complete primitive language.
"Conceive this as a complete primitive language?"

Wittgenstein's denizens weren't making rocks—but who could have read this passage without thinking of Bally's rock-makers and their limited "form of life?" Indeed, the term "form of life" first appears in passage or aphorism 19, after Wittgenstein has expanded his picture of this primitive language:
19. It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle.—Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes and no. And innumerable others.——And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.
"To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life?"

As Wittgenstein acknowledges in his Preface, Philosophical Investigations is a highly obscure text. Despite this fact, its overlap with Bally's RockMakers was rather hard to ignore at that highly fraught point in time.

(Wittgenstein: "I should have liked to produce a good book. That has not come to pass, but the time is past in which I could improve it.")

RockMakers portrayed a set of humanoids whose entire world seemed to consist in the making of rocks. We've thought of those rock-makers in recent weeks as we've continued to think about the so-called "Harari heuristic."

In his widely-acclaimed best-selling book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Professor Harari advances a pregnant picture of our own self-impressed species, Homo sapiens. We took control of the planet, Harari says, when chance mutations allowed us to develop two important new abilities—the ability to "gossip," and the ability to invent, promote and believe highly potent group "fictions."

Bill Gates has blurbed Harari's book; so has Bararck Obama. When readers ponder that Harari heuristic, they're being asked to toss aside the ancient paradigm according to which our glorious, war-making species is different from all others in that we're the planet's "rational" critters.

When we ponder the Harari heuristic, we're being told that our species is different 1) because we're able to gossip, and 2) because we're able to invent and believe certain types of irrational nonsense. This makes us think of Bally's extremely limited rock-makers; of Wittgenstein's obscure text; and of the men and women of our own corporate mainstream press corps.

Are we really a "rational" species? Or are we really a bunch of rock-makers—a life form highly susceptible to error once we venture outside certain limited pathways? In Philosophical Investigation. Wittgenstein tilted rather heavily in the latter direction.

He thought our capacity for inventing and asserting nonsense was especially strong at the higher ends of the intellectual scale. The types of nonsense he especially favored occurred, he sometimes said, "only when doing philosophy." At this site, by way of contrast, we've focused on the kinds of error which have larded our modern journalism, helping bring Trump to power.

Starting after Labor Day, we expect to spend our time discussing various aspects of Wittgenstein's heady ideas. This week, we'll tick off some of the RockMaker-redolent gossip and fiction we've seen, in just the past week, all through our rock-making press.

We surviving humans have developed a thoroughly decent technology. In fairness, we've managed to move well beyond the mere making of rocks.

Our skill levels drop after that. When we venture outside the technological realm, we do tend toward gossip and fictions, and to disastrous types of error.

Wittgenstein especially thought that our "philosophers" are inclined to traffic in nonsense. Due to his date of birth, he didn't live to see the rock-like impulses and productions of our modern-day press.

Wittgenstein rolled his eyes at the philosophers, including the one who had produced his own widely-praised early work. By his own assessment, he was never able to present his later views in a coherent package.

The past twenty years have convinced us that it's pointless to discuss the incessant rock-making of our most famous journalists. We modern rock-makers are good, decent people, but what a strange world our incessant tribal rock-making has incessantly helped to create!

Tomorrow: One of last week's rock-a-rocks

Yalta today: According to the leading authority:
"In the 19th century, the town became a fashionable resort for the Russian aristocracy and gentry. Leo Tolstoy spent summers there and Anton Chekhov in 1898 bought a house (the White Dacha) here, where he lived till 1902; Yalta is the setting for Chekhov's short story, "The Lady with the Dog", and such prominent plays as The Three Sisters were written in Yalta. The town was also closely associated with royalty.

[...]

[Modern-day] Yalta has a beautiful seafront promenade along the Black Sea. People can be seen strolling there all seasons of the year, and it also serves as a place to gather and talk, to see and be seen."
Presumably, that's "the front" upon which Chekhov's "new arrival," a lady, appeared, quickly inspiring talk.

35 comments:

  1. Here is some actual media criticism from Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2018/08/don-jr-will-someday-be-gop-presidential.html

    "Here we are in the Democratic Party, asking ourselves whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is really ready for prime time, and possibly might need a little more experience, or might benefit from a deeper grounding in the issues -- but Republicans don't care about any of that. Anyone who turns their voters into spittle-flecked rage monsters is declared to be a superstar -- and the Post's Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker seem to be eagerly accepting this assessment:

    Trump Jr. — who, together with brother Eric, took over the family’s real estate and branding company when their father became president — is planning an aggressive fall schedule of appearances from Montana to Texas to New York to help Republicans maintain their Senate and House majorities.

    “He can bridge anyplace,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “It’s genuine. He’s not there because, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go make this trip.’ He wants to be there. . . . He connects with people.”

    In many ways, Trump Jr. carries the spirit of his father’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Like the president, he uses social media to fan conspiracy theories, air grievances and troll adversaries. He busts through boundaries of political correctness and relishes public feuds, especially with those he deems liberal elites.

    “Don is a chip off the old block,” said Cliff Sims, a former White House and Trump campaign staffer. “He’s a savage on Twitter and a force of nature on the stump.”

    That's not reporting -- it's a GOP press release."

    --end quote--

    ReplyDelete
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  2. I need to borrow some ointment.

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  3. OK, Somerby is teasing future posts and has just barely gotten started, but he has utterly failed to explain what the Lady with the Lapdog has to do with pinball machines, and what either of these has to do with Wittgenstein, Harari and today's press. This is a jumble of stream-of-consciousness (to give Somerby the benefit of the doubt) whiny ramblings with no connecting thread and no point whatsoever. What a waste of everyone's time!

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  4. The draft lottery didn't start until 1969, after Somerby's graduation if he was a senior in 1968. There were deferments for those employed in essential civilian occupations, such as teaching. Somerby can chide others for saying they would have volunteered, but he didn't appear that eager to go himself.

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  5. Harari's ideas are inconsistent with Wittgenstein's primitive conceptions of language, and Wittgenstein's ideas are inconsistent with the ideas of most linguists, start with Noam Chomskey for example.

    The purpose of language is not to hand each other building materials but to interact socially, build social cohesion, coordinate activities, and discuss the mysteries and problems of life, resulting in narrative "fictions" akin to modern religion, history and folk wisdom. That is so much richer than Wittgenstein's posited names of blocks and slabs. But Wittgenstein is proposing a limited vocabulary to show that language emerges from the practical need to talk about things. Harari takes that a step further and says that the practical need is to talk about human society and it yields culture. Simple nouns are insufficient, so Chomsky posits an innate grammar that permits flexible constructions of meaning to cover a wide variety of experiences.

    Somerby cute example of an offensive pinball machine adds nothing -- the lives of early man were nothing like The Flintstones and even the lives of those Harvard students were more complex than pinball and rock-making. Other pinball motifs were just as silly.

    So what is Somerby's point, except to make everything seem vaguely vain and stupid?

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    1. Chomsky denies that the purpose of language is to interact socially. He points out that most language use is internal to the individual and not externalized.

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    2. Since Chomsky thinks language is innate and evolved, what does he think exerts evolutionary pressure to evolve language, if not social interaction?

      If Chomsky believes that all thought takes place using language, that has been disproven. People also think using visual imagery.

      Delete
    3. Leroy's Slurred Speech and Bloodshot EyesAugust 13, 2018 at 7:48 PM

      Language and Responsibility (1977- Pantheon):

      "Language is used in many different ways. Language can be used to transmit information, but it also serves many other purposes: to establish relations among people, to express or clarify thought, for play, for creative mental activity, to gain understanding, and so on.

      In my opinion, there is no reason to accord privileged status to one or the other of these modes. Forced to choose, I would have to say something quite classical and rather empty: language serves essentially for the expression of thought."

      Delete
    4. We rarely know the evolutionary history of a given trait.

      Not all thought uses language.

      I don't know when Chomsky first noticed that most language use is internal. It may have been after 1977.

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    5. Language can be social and internal if a person is thinking about a social situation, imagining one, or rehearsing a conversation. How much is left without that?

      Delete
    6. Silently reading a book?

      Delete
  6. Bob asks, Are we really a "rational" species? Or are we really a bunch of rock-makers—a life form highly susceptible to error once we venture outside certain limited pathways?

    Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein answered in the following quote, "Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal."

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    1. Heinlein may have said that, but we are a reasoning creature. The way we reason does not conform to formal logic as developed in mathematics and philosophy, but it does conform to probabilistic judgment. Fuzzy logic and modal logic better capture how humans think, but these approaches had not been developed when Somerby was at Harvard, so he doesn't seem to know anything about them. So, the answer to whether man is rational or not depends on how you define rational. People are consistent and they do reason and their judgments fit their need to function in unpredictable environments.

      These different ways that humans reason are not errors. The error was thinking that humans should reason the way early logic dictated. Philosophers correctly recognized that people do reason, but they incorrectly decided we must reason certain ways or else be considered illogical or error-prone. Human reasoning works much better in human situations than formal logic does.

      But Somerby doesn't read his comment section so he will go on asserting that people must be rational in certain ways or they are not rational at all, and we will have to listen to him malign humanity over and over, as Somerby makes his ignorant error repeatedly because he doesn't think he can learn from others.

      Delete
    2. Man does what he wants, not what is rational.

      Delete
    3. Nice comment AnonymousAugust 13, 2018 at 2:21 PM. I imagine Heinlein was exaggerating. What does seem to be true is that the smartest people don't necessarily use their intelligence to make the best decisions. And, they sometimes use their intelligence to rationalize a decision that was really arrived at some other way than pure rational reasoning.

      In that sense, man is both a rational and a rationalizing animal.

      Delete
    4. The notion that there is "rational" thinking could be another group fiction, as Harari would call it. Who decides what is rational vs irrational? The scientific method, principles of logic...these arguably don't exist except in the imaginations of human beings.

      Delete
    5. David, no one who studies decision making thinks that decisions are reached only through pure reason. The importance of emotion and emotional heuristics to judgment and decision making is now well accepted in cognitive psychology, and has been for about 30 years now. Somerby is stuck in the 1960s and has a crush on Aristotle. Two psychologists who won recent Nobel prizes, Simon and Kahnemann, studied biases in reasoning and heuristics like "satisficing". Daniel Arielly is now the go-to guy on how emotion affects economic judgments and decisions and how straight-up logic and so-called rational thinking doesn't come near explaining human behavior in a variety of situations.

      To be aware of them, you would have to read something besides 60s era exposes of schooling and old Chekov stories. Gladwell's Thinking Fast and Slow might be accessible to someone like Somerby. I especially like Levitan's The Organized Mind.

      I agree with 6:52 that all scientific theories and philosophies are examples of group fiction.

      Delete
    6. [A]ll scientific theories ... are examples of group fiction.

      Jump off the roof of a tall building and then get back to me on fictional nature of Newton's Theory of Gravitation.

      Delete
    7. Silly dembot. Was everyone jumping off the roof before Newton?

      Delete
    8. Deadrat, the explanation for how gravity works is a fiction, but the behavior that theory tries to explain is not. Scientists differentiate between facts (observations, measurements, data) and the theories used to organize and explain those facts. The latter change but the former do not.

      Delete
    9. This is the postmodernist torturing of language, not to mention the postmodernist ignorance of science. Theories differ from measurements, but both change. Theories are models, as imperfect as our ability to measure things. Sometimes theories explain things and sometimes they don’t. Newton’s theory doesn’t explain gravity; Einstein’s does.

      Theories are certainly constructs of human minds, but that doesn’t make them “fictions” in the ordinary sense of the word. Fictions are things like Chekhov’s short stories or Trumps evolving tales about the meeting with Russians in Trump Tower.

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    10. "but that doesn’t make them “fictions” in the ordinary sense of the word"

      Sure it does. Human mind is making up stories, based on its observations. And that's all there is to it. Stories about dames with lapdogs, stories about Zeus, and stories and about Science. Same difference.

      Delete
  7. In Chekov's story, everything is said for a reason. Somerby could learn from that.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "When we ponder the Harari heuristic, we're being told that our species is different 1) because we're able to gossip, and 2) because we're able to invent and believe certain types of irrational nonsense. "

    When Harari claims that Homo sapiens control the world due to their cognitive capacity for "fiction" (Harari's word), he is not equating fiction with "irrational nonsense." By "fiction", he means things existing purely in the imagination, such as gods or money or human rights, and extending to systems such as religion and political and legal institutions. None of these really qualify as "irrational" or "nonsense."

    And Somerby, who has questioned Aristotle's assertion that man is the rational animal, still thinks he is rational enough to decide what qualifies as rational or irrational.

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  9. Humans invented the concept of "rational thinking", Bob.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Crazy.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QEDb3xzdec

    ReplyDelete
  11. Uncle David speaks. No, not David in CA. David Glosser, uncle of Stephen Miller.

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Leroy's Six HGN CuesAugust 13, 2018 at 10:36 PM

      David Glosser is not the only one:

      https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/13/politics/bobby-goodlatte-jennifer-lewis/index.html

      Delete
  12. If it befall to me as befalleth to the fools, why should I labour to be more wise?

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