- Plato’s cave and what we don’t know, or don’t know that we don’t know;
- David Gerrold on “woke” and why I think citing “woke” (or religion) dismisses one from any serious conversation;
- Short items about how a third of the public sat the election out; the MAGA jailhouse to White House pipeline; how MAGA attorneys plan to run the US government like a mob organization; and how 75 Nobel Laureates object to RFK Jr.
I’ve had a couple items in the last couple weeks about how people prefer ignorance and belief to knowledge, even when knowledge is readily available. But suppose we’re not even aware of being ignorant?
Big Think, Daniel R. DeNicola, 8 Dec 2024 (from The MIT Press Reader): Plato’s cave and the stubborn persistence of ignorance, subtitled “Plato’s cave metaphor illustrates the cognitive trap of ignorance, where we may be unaware of the limitations of our understanding.”
The writer recalls Plato’s parable, and discusses how we are all ignorant about many things simply because we’ve never been exposed to such information. “There are whole realms of knowledge of which each of us is ignorant.”
So, let us pause to amend a fundamental point: ignorance may be recognized and ascribed only from the perspective of knowledge, and the knowledge we possess determines the degree of specificity of the ignorance we recognize and serves to characterize the ignorance and its importance. This is why we readers of Plato can recognize that cavern as a place of profound ignorance, lacking in truth and sustained by deception.
Utter ignorance, however, for which the dictionary offers the term ignoration, is yet more profound: The prisoners in Plato’s Cave do not know what they do not know; they do not even know that they do not know. They dwell in ignorance, but cannot recognize it. Ignoration is thus a predicament, a trap — one that is not comprehended by those who are caught in it and dwell there. In a sense, they are not in a place at all: Theirs is rather a placelessness in which one doesn’t even know one is lost.
Fortunately, this trap, like a Chinese finger puzzle, has a simple solution: learning.
Yet how do you know what you need to learn about? Well, you rely on others, at first your parents. This article rather belabors its points. I see it as being about Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns, a rather profound insight for which he was widely mocked. The writer here concludes:
So, are we like Plato’s Cave dwellers — not just in infancy, but throughout our adult lives? It seems we are, at least in one important way: I refer to the unsettling fact that we too are haunted by things we do not know we do not know; and we cannot imagine how drastically those unknowns would alter our lives and our view of the world.
This is a theme that runs through certain branches of science philosophy, and of science fiction. Is the universe stranger than we can literally imagine? For all that science fiction likes to think it can imagine the strange and inhuman, in fact there’s a sense in which we literally can’t.
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I’m beginning to conclude that anyone who invokes “woke,” or religion, can automatically be dismissed from any kind of serious argument.
I’m going to quote from a Facebook post by David Gerrold yesterday. He cites comments he’d read that equated “woke” with “enemy”. He responds. I’m on Gerrold’s side.
Over here, “woke” means empathy, compassion, caring, and a general commitment to progressive policies. In fact, the word “woke” means awakened, aware, conscious, ready to go to work. So it puzzles me why anyone would want to turn that into an epithet.
Of course, the extreme conservatives *aren’t* in any kind of sympathy with people unlike themselves. Just look at the ambitions of Trump’s new cabinet picks. Gerrold gets psychologically analytical.
Further thought on the matter led me down this possible avenue. The incels, the anti-woke, the MAGAts — their deliberate show of contempt for “woke libtards” and others who they violently disagree with isn’t a contempt born of superiority. It’s not even contempt.
It’s thinly veiled fear.
Look at who their targets are. Jews, Muslims, gay men, lesbians, women in general, immigrants, trans people, and anyone else who isn’t a straight white male identifying as Christian.
It’s a fear of anything different. It’s a reaction to the idea that all people are equal and all people are deserving of equal rights and equal protection under the law. It’s a fear of loss of superiority. It’s a fear of loss of identity.
Once we understand that the incels, the MAGAts are terrified little men, they become pitiful, even laughable.
Laughable, but dangerous.
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Shorter items about the current political climate.
Salon, Chauncey DeVega, 10 Dec 2024: When facts no longer matter: 3 key steps to return to civil dialogue, subtitled “Dr. Kurt Gray on how to ‘find a healthy consensus again’ in the Age of Trump”
(Image: A Trump supporter holds her hand in the face of a counter-protester.)
Considering the number of people who voted and who didn’t vote, and writer comments:
To borrow from the truism and warning, one-third of the public decided to harm the other third while the remaining third looked on.
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Title says all.
Salon, Austin Sarat – Tom Dumm, 10 Dec 2024: Trump’s criminal state: MAGA’s jailhouse-to-White House pipeline is bigger than corruption, subtitled “What Trump’s government of criminals and ne-er do wells means for America’s future”
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What kind of nation are they thinking of running? Is the US government a mob organization?
AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 10 Dec 2024: MAGA attorney threatens senators with private investigations if they reject Trump nominees
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NY Times, 9 Dec 2024: Nobel Laureates Urge Senate to Turn Down Kennedy’s Nomination, subtitled “Elevating Mr. Kennedy to secretary of H.H.S. ‘would put the public’s health in jeopardy,’ more than 75 laureates wrote.” (Shared link via)
More than 75 Nobel Prize winners have signed a letter urging senators not to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
The letter, obtained by The New York Times, marks the first time in recent memory that Nobel laureates have banded together against a Cabinet choice, according to Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine, who helped draft the letter. The group tries to stay out of politics whenever possible, he said.
But the confirmation of Mr. Kennedy, a staunch critic of mainstream medicine who has been hostile to the scientists and agencies he would oversee, is a threat that the Nobel laureates could not ignore, Dr. Roberts said.
“These political attacks on science are very damaging,” he said. “You have to stand up and protect it.”
The laureates questioned whether Mr. Kennedy, who they said has “a lack of credentials” in medicine, science or administration, was fit to lead the department responsible for protecting public health and funding biomedical research.
“Placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of DHHS would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences,” the letter warned.
This kind of thing has been tried before, if on more limited scales, and Americans don’t care. What do Nobel laureates know, anyway? This is yet another example of the dissolution of trust in institutions and expertise. We’re doomed.
