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PLATONIC_HATRED
February - May, 2008
Throughout the Black Swan, Taleb
repeatedly uses Plato as a swear BLACK_SWAN
word. From the Prologue, p. xxv:
"What I call _Platonicity_, after
the ideas (and personality) of the
philosopher Plato, is our tendency
to mistake the map for the Maps and territories...
territory, to focus on pure and A closet-Korzybski fan?
well-defined 'forms,' ... When
these ideas and crisp constructs
inhabit our minds, we privilege
them over other less elegant
objects, those with messier and
less tractable structures ... "
"Platonicity is what makes us think that
we understand more than we actually do. ..."
I think this is rather harsh on
Plato. Arguably, Socrates was
continually rubbing people's nose ARROW_OF_DEMOCRACY
in the fact that they don't
understand much about the things
that are most important to them. "[Plato] argues on this
side and on that. The
acutest German, the
I found Taleb's repetitive lovingest disciple,
use of the term "Platonicity" could never tell what
irritating. Platonism was; indeed,
admirable texts can be
quoted on both sides of
every great question
What's wrong with just saying from him."
"idealized" or "over-simplified"? -- Emerson,
"... I do not want to be drawn into "Plato, or, the
philosophical debates with my Black Philosopher",
Swan idea. What I mean by Platonicity p. 317-318, Viking
is not so metaphysical." -- p. 291 Portable ed.
He just uses metaphysical jargon And yet, there
when it sounds impressive. are Platos of the
mind, with
corresponding
Platonisms.
But then, it is certainly true that
many a person out there is afflicted
with a need for certainty that can
only be satisfied by delusion.
And indeed, many of these people have
technical backgrounds -- one of the reasons
you might choose to move into a technical
fields is to try to escape the the fuzzy,
insolvable problems of being human.
But Taleb often seems to be overstating the
case with his attacks on "Platonicity".
There's a temptation to quote things like
this at him:
"The triumphs of modern science,
from Copernicus and Kepler, Descartes
and Newton, had all involved the
application of precise mathematics
to the material world, and this
apparently requires abstracting away There may not be a
from the grubby accidental properties "platonic ideal" of an
of things to find their secret electron, but there might
mathematical essences." as well be: every one of
them is perfectly identical
Daniel Dennet, to the point where the
"Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (1995) physicist John Wheeler
p. 37, Touchstone (trade paper), 1st ed. hypothesized that they were
all the same electron
replicated through a
time-travel trick.
These tactics were tremendously successful
for a wide class of problems -- the attempt
at applying them to human affairs was
inevitable, however doomed the effort.
Still, it must be admitted that
Taleb leads with a denial,
again, from p. xxv: TALEB
"But I am not saying that
Platonic forms don't exist.
Models and constructions, these
intellectual maps of reality, are
not always wrong ... you do not
beforehand ... know _where_ the
map will be wrong ... These
models are like potentially
helpful medicines that carry
random but very severe side
effects."
But this is the last you'll hear of
any reasonable compromise on the
utility of abstractions... he goes "To clarify, Platonic is
on to sneer at "Platonicity" with top-down, formulaic,
every other breath. closed-minded, self-serving,
and commoditized; a-Platonic
And I would argue he retracts is bottom-up, open-minded,
this compromise later: on skeptical, and empirical."
p. 181, he claims Hayek's -- p. 182
criticism of "scientism" in the
social sciences should really
be extended to all fields of "Platonified economists
knowledge... ignored the fact that
people might prefer to
He seems to be saying that do something other than
the case of physics is an maximize their economic
exception, and that even interests." -- p. 184
among the sciences,
"platonic" idealism harms INTO_THE_BRAINPAN
more than hurts.
" Alfred North Whitehead called it the Why doesn't he
'fallacy of misplaced concreteness' " ever claim to be
-- p. 181 Aristotelian,
rather than
But the trouble there lies a-Platonic?
in it being misplaced.
Would he sound too
As concrete as much like a Randroid?
possible, but
no more. (Without being Or maybe he's
a block-head?) more of a
Van Vogtian
than a
Korzybskite.
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