Young Master Smeet
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Do hunter gatherers have ideology? Certainly, they have a world view (although the extent to which that 'blinkers' them may well be an interpollation of anthropologists imposing a protstant schema onto the purported and reported susperstition of the 'primitives' is debatable).Anyway, some recent reading. noticeably in Botrh Pannekoek's HIstory of Astronomy, and Isaac Azimov's popular science behemoth New Guide to Science they both observe a significant shift, from about the birth of the Royal Society[*] from individual's working in attics to collective science as expressed in correspondence and societies. Now, this must be a part of the standard history of science to have been mentioned by both writers so.Now, I've also been reading a book on the application of statistics to football (I pass ont heir prediction that there will be around 1,000 goals in the premier league this year, at an average of 2.6 per match). Now, such statistics are being driven by the technology that suddenly makes measuring a complex phenomena like soccer possible, before we simply could not. It has been tried, they quote Charles Reep, a pioneer of soccer stats:"Provide a counter to reliance on memory, tradition and impressions that lead to soccer ideologies" Here The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football is Wrong / By Chris Anderson, David Sally.Interestingly, a quick google search for Reep & Ideology threw up this tidbit:"But the essential problem with Reep, as Barney Ronay masterfully detailed in a 2003 When Saturday Comes column, was that despite his experience as an accountant, his approach to understanding football was marked more by ideology than science." HereIn common parlance, ideology is one of those irregular verbs: I am scientific, you are mistaken, he/she/it is an ideologue. of course, ideology 101 tells us that precisely is ideology in action. Interestingly, though, the accusation levelled by Anderson and Sally is that Reep, who was a mid twentieth century technocrat, precisely let his assumptions get in the way of the data. So Anderson and Sally tell us that a manager can account for as much as 15% of a teams success, then that is what the data tells us.Anyway, two last tidbits. Firstly, remember you can get most books for free (or a very small charge from your public library) and Worldcat can help you find out if a library near you actually has a book in stock (Universities may let you pay for a reference ticket).Finally, I leave you with Asimov on the wrongness of wrong, which is quite relevent, IMNSHO, to discussions here.http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
OK, poll ended:http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/results.pl?id=E_498584c6116bc7ebSome points. I could have chosen cartoon characters, favourite deserts, or anything, but I wanted somethign people on the board could feel connected to. I was only after non-random preference orderings, so I was a touch narked when a few people took the poll seriously enough to just enter spoilt or effectively blank ballots — though I suppose it is illustrative of what would happen in practice.Yes, there were some errors in set up that could have been overcome with more preparation. Is houldn't have allowed voting while write in votes were in operation (that meant that early votes cast effectively didn't count against about half the options); I think I shouldn't have allowed "No opinion" options, again, because that meant a straight abstention, it would have been better to have forced a low ranking; none of the above should have been called re-open nominations. And "Breat Britain".Aside from that the results have been moderately instructive.So, if we had only had a first past the post race, the results would have been:World Socialist Movement (Britain) 4World Socialist Party UK3None of the above2World Socialist Party of Breat Britain2World Socialist Movement UK1World Socialist Party (Britain)1World Socialist Party (GB)1World Socialist Party (UK)1Clearly, opinion would be split, and the result would be unsatisfactory to many (and lack a mjaority legitimacy). So, by some procedure, to make a decision, we'd have to winnow down the choices. Yes, we could have gone to a committee, but the result would have been the same, a choice of a less preferred option for some of the electorate, at least the below actually reflects the degree to which people support alternatives. 123456789101112131. B : World Socialist Party UK -978897108898102. A: World Socialist Party of Breat Britain 3-7867968877103. World Socialist Movement UK (write-in) 76-9891071298784. World Socialist Movement (Britain) (write-in) 765-8867968855.
World Socialist Movement in Great Britain 5667-7768788106. World Socialist Party (Britain) (write-in) 56567-97996767. World Socialist Party (UK) (write-in) 644774-7987758. C: World Socialist Party of England and Scotland 1556545-6676109. World Socialist Party (GB) (write-in) 76367557-887610. World Socialist Movement (GB) (write-in) 765775577-88511. F: Common Ownership League 3545476565-7912. E: The Wage Labour Abolition Society 45454665755-1013. None of the above (write-in) 233625626632-World Socialist Party UK is the undisputed winner, ranked above evry other choice by more voters.What I'd suggest is that we could use such polls, not to make final decisions, but in place of the committee (or by a wider committee), after which we could have a fuller vote on either confirming the result, or between the top two choices. The rich information given by the rankings helps us understand trends in thought.You should be able to vote once a day. Did you put a different name? I note that the vote count has gone uop by two since I posted today, so maybe your vote has gone through? One of the votes today just ranked everything 13, so maybe that was you?
OK, last call for voters (and it is possible/permissible for previous voters to vote again if they want, but I'd ask them to change their votes, please: I'm only after non-random test data).
SP,If you could go to:http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/vote.pl?id=E_498584c6116bc7eb&akey=4bf14a524205fa18and cast your vote there, that would be helpful…
And, back to China:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-9d7f-China-Diary-1-2-3#.U_23rdjgdhc
Quote:Restaurants in China are sparking a craze for robot workers. At a noodle restaurant in Xiamen in east China’s Fujian Province, a robot chef repeatedly shaves dough into a boiling wok with efficiency and precision. A human simply wouldn't be able to keep up.The robot shaver, capable of making four bowls of noodles a minute, is also inexpensive. “A human shaver costs me at least 2,000 yuan (about £195) a month but the robot, working 10 hours a day, only costs 3kWh of power,” said Zheng Guozhao, owner of the restaurant.“In a year, the money saved from hiring cooks will be enough to buy two more robots,” he said, which is a telling comment on the labour situation in China, which used to have an abundance of low-paid workers.Just to add, the CIVS engine will allow equal ranking, so you could, theoretically vote:A>B=C=D>E>F however, that effectively means when when B & C are compared, the vote wouldn't count (since neither is ranked above the other), but would mean that B is preferred to F and would count as a vote in that comparison.
If folk could go to the site at the link (two of you have) and express your preferences there, that would help a little. No opinion is a ranking option, as is a write in vote. I've added two of the suggestions so far.The tactic is to rank in order of preference (starting in either direction. If you think about each preference as being a two horse race, so if you were faced with E or B, which would you choose. If you would prefer E to B you would rank it higher. If you don't rank something it's automatically last, so you can plump and just vote for one option (that is risky, however, as it means if that is a losing option you won't sway any of your lesser choices). Also, that provides less information.The poll is below:http://civs.cs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/vote.pl?id=E_498584c6116bc7eb&akey=4bf14a524205fa18
The condorcet Jury Theorem is slightly different from condorcet voting, that is simply listing preferrences in order, and seeing which one wins in a pairwise comparison. So, in your above, C is compared with A, C with B and A with B, as if it were a series of two horse races. The voting paradox could apply, and there are a number of techniques for tie breaks in the usually unlikely event of a tie. Among a hundred people, you'd likely get a result.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_paradoxIn any event, you get rich information of preferences.Counting could be a sod, which is why you really need to use software (which is freely available online).
ALB wrote:I write as someone who thought that the present fascia of HO was ok (after all, it's only seen by passers-by in a street in one London suburb) and who doesn't like the decision finally reached, but I can't see any other way of reaching a decision on a matter like this.Condorcet voting doesn't reach the least objectionable result, it fairly reliably finds a genuine pluarility, and could have been quickly and readily achived by an email vote: we are missing out on a trick by not using such devices. Ranked choice voting will play an important part in socialism.
I supose it's arguable that one can know without ideas: dogs know things, and yet have no ideas: but I think that's arguable, since we're still talking about, essentially, mental states, and the property of being a mental state. Both ideas and knowledge are parts of the mental domain. I can't see "knowledge" being f any other stuff than matter or ideas…
I don't see how C can be different from B, knowledge is ideal, in as much as it belongs to the realm of ideas. And isn't this just a statement of basic monism? Back to Loony's line: 'Intelligent idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism'. etc.Anyway, some drive-by quotes from Tony Pancake:
Quote:If at times man is referred to as the “lawmaker of nature,” it must be added that nature very often disregards these laws and summons man to make better ones.and
Quote:Through his labor man does not oppose nature as an external or alien world. On the contrary, by the toil of his hands he transforms the external world to such an extent that the original natural substance is no longer discernable, and while this process goes on, man changes, too. Thus, man creates his own world: human society in a nature changed by him. What meaning, then, has the question of whether his thinking leads to truth? The object of his thinking is that which he himself produces by his physical and mental activities and which he controls through his brain. This is not a question of partial truths such as, for instance, those of which Engels wrote in his book on Feuerbach that the artificial production of the natural dye alizarin would prove the validity of the chemical formula employed. This is not, to repeat, a question of partial truths in a specific field of knowledge, where the practical consequence either affirms or refutes them. Rather the point in question here is a philosophical one, namely, whether human thought is capable of encompassing the real, the deepest truth of the world. That the philosopher, in his secluded study, who is concerned exclusively with abstract philosophical concepts, which are derived in turn from abstract scientific concepts also formulated outside of practical life experiences, should have his doubts in the midst of this world of shadows is easily understood. But for human beings who live and act in the real every day world the question has no meaning. The truth of thought, says Marx, is nothing other than power and mastery over the real world.http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/materialism/index.htm
LBird wrote:To believe the bourgeois myth of a ‘neutral method in physics which gives humans The Eternal Truth’ (and since Einstein we’ve know that it’s a myth, hence the disturbances within 20th century philosophy of science, Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, the most prominent critical thinkers), is to sow the seeds of Leninism within proletarian thought. If there is a ‘neutral method’ in physics, which can be learned by an educated elite, to the omission of the mass, and that this ‘neutral method’ can lay the basis of a ‘neutral method’ in all science (and if it can’t, and social issues are not open to ‘scientific’ approaches, where does that leave us Communists and our analysis of society?), then a small part of our class can claim to be able to employ this ‘neutral method’ which gives The Truth in politics, too.And herein lies the problem in Lbirds refusal to discuss "Ideology" and it's meanings. If their model of ideology is a totalising one, in which the ideas of the ruling class are (in effect, or at least in the model) the only ideas, and we are all trapped in a prison of ideas (per Althusser) then, yes, science becomes the one way out of ideology, and we become committed to a cadre who can see through the veil. if ideas are contexted, and our model is that the Voloshinov/Bakhtin in which all ideas are contested and polyphonic, t6hen there is a way out. We cease to conflate culture/ creeed, ideas and experience into the Eternal Truth of ideology, and instead have a situation in which we can begin to talk about truth as the coincidence of life as experienced with how it is concieved: an end to ideology. Put another way, the end of ideology is not through superior perception, but through lived experience. The point is to change the world.In socialism, I don't believe that anyone will be allowed to join a deep sea diving team off an oil-rig without training. Likewise, they won't get to run an experiemnt with a radio telescope. We can expect a total lifetime of useful waking hours of about 210 thousand. (in actual fact I'd estimate it at roughly half that, age will tell) 210 thousand hours in which to become experts in maths, physics, chemistry, languages, history, art, music, etc. we'll split those hours differently, and some will choose not to bother with physics, some will love physics, and some will be better musicians than they are physicists.
http://www.icsu.org/science-for-policy/Arguably, a body like the ICSU is an exmple of building the new society within the shell of the old. It is an international body, concerned first and foremost with science and the general well-bing (albeit, some of it's stuff sounds a bit social democrat, as they now list the responsibilities of scientists alongside their rights, but then, a degree of technocracy goes hand in hand with social democrat thinking). Things like this are 'planning' in embryo. We won't need to plan the movement of every last screw and nut, but at a world level, a forum for honest examination of the world will be needed.(Not to cross thread, but we need to remember that politics isn't about what gets decided, but about who decides).Now, interestingly, a book on Ideology and Science Crossed my desk t'other day. There was an interesting chapter about attempts to impose state ideologies on scientists (Under Stalinism, Naziism and McCarthyism). The main contention was, that ultimately this failed, as the state had greater need of the outputs of science than it did of its need to control them. An unhappy comprimise was reached.Just as "in ideology" capitalism appears to be the same as industry and industrial co-operative production, in reality the two are separate and can be separated in the transformation into socialism. Scientists are proletarians these days, workign for a wage or salary (and indcreasingly subject to management control).
