quotations – Page 9 – Andi Fugard (∧⇒)

Doings and deliberations can change things

“Naive fatalism holds that there is no point in doing anything because everything is predetermined (or is the will of God, for example), hence nothing you can do can change how things will be. It is false, because one’s doings and deliberations can change things, being themselves real parts of the (possibly deterministic) causal process.”
– Strawson (2010, p. 247, footnote 22) [Freedom and Belief, Revised Edition.]

Freedom under determinism

“Behind the whole compatibilist enterprise lies the valid and important insight that, from one centrally important point of view, freedom is nothing more than a matter of being able to do what one wants or chooses or decides or thinks right or best to do, given one’s character, desires, values, beliefs (moral or otherwise), circumstances, and so on. Generally speaking, we have this freedom. Determinism does not affect it at all, and it has nothing whatever to do with any supposed sort of ultimate self-determination, or any particular power to determine what one’s character, desires, and so on will be.”
– Strawson (2010, p. 94) [Freedom and Belief, Revised Edition.]

Variance estimation when matching with replacement

“Matching with replacement induces two types of correlations that must be accounted for when estimating the variance of estimated treatment effects. The first is a within-matched set correlation in outcomes. Matched subjects within the same matched set have similar values of the propensity score. Subjects who have the same value of the propensity score have measured baseline covariates that come from the same multivariate distribution. In the presence of confounding, baseline covariates are related to the outcome. Thus, matched subjects are more likely to have similar outcomes compared to two randomly selected subjects. The second source of correlation is induced by repeated use of control subjects. Failure to account for this correlation and acting as though the matched control subjects were independent observations will likely result in estimated standard errors that are artificially small and estimated confidence intervals that are artificially narrow. Added complexity is introduced by having subjects cross-classified with matched sets such that the same control subject can belong to more than one matched set.”

Austin, P. C., & Cafri, G. (2020, p. 1625). [Variance estimation when using propensity‐score matching with replacement with survival or time‐to‐event outcomes. Statistics in Medicine, 39(11), 1623–1640.]

A Word on Critical Realism, by Kieran Healy (2013)

I’ve just remembered this:

“[Critical realism] presents itself in a way that some social scientists—with next to no real background in philosophy—feel gives them just what they need to shore up their empirical research and metaphysical intuitions. You want to be realist in your philosophy of social science? Sure! You want your preferred level of analysis to also be an ontologically emergent level of reality? No problem! You want to talk about social structures as irreducible in some serious-but-not-really-analyzed fashion? You got it. You want your theory to be critical? I mean, who doesn’t, right? Just call yourself a Critical Realist and cite some Bhaskar. After all, he has repeatedly asserted that his work is a “Copernican Revolution” in the philosophy of science […]”

And:

“The diffusion of CR was slightly hampered by the transformation of Bhaskar from fringe philosopher of science to full-blown guru. Having recruited followers in sociology on the basis of his realism, he began to pull the rug out from under them in the late 1990s, first with the merely absurd Plato, Etc and then with the frankly embarrassing From East to West: Odyssey of a Soul (which closed with a final chapter titled “The Dance of Shiva in the Age of Aquarius”). This work, in retrospect, seems like the culmination of the unpleasant cult of personality that grew up around Bhaskar in CR circles in the 1980s and which he seems to have done little to discourage.”

One section is constructive, providing alternatives to critical realism:

“Sociologists interested in emergence or macro-level explanations have no need to run together that interest with the specific CR position or view. (This was the point of my old article on Archer, Mouzelis, and CR.) There are large and immediately accessible literatures on all of these topics in philosophy, leading naturally to more technical or specialist work. Consider the SEP article on Emergent Properties, for instance, and the one on Supervenience, or the one on Scientific Explanation, or Scientific Realism. Go from there to, say, Jonathan Schaffer’s Is there a Fundamental Level? (for the metaphysics) or Michael Strevens’ Depth for one take on the philosophy of science, or—for something in parts similar to Bhaskar but far more creative and central—read Nancy Cartwright on laws of nature. I feel confident in asserting that different sociologists could ally themselves with quite incompatible positions in these debates and much of our work would go on as before.”

Tin openers versus dials

Neil Carter (1989, p. 134) on the limits of data dashboards and mindless use of KPIs:

“… the majority of indicators are tin-openers rather than dials: by opening up a ‘can of worms’ they do not give answers but prompt interrogation and inquiry, and by themselves provide an incomplete and inaccurate picture.”

Carter, N. (1989). Performance indicators: ‘Backseat driving’ or ‘hands off’control? Policy & Politics, 17(2), 131-138.

Formal education and training

“[…] formal education and training rarely enhances competence. Instead, the so-called educational system mainly performs sociological functions, like controlling access to protected occupations and legitimising huge disparities in quality of life. These, in turn, have the effect of compelling most people, against their better judgement, to participate in the unethical activities of which modern society is so largely composed – the manufacture and marketing of junk foods, junk toys, junk education and junk research.”

– John Raven (2003, p. 360)

References

John, R. (2003). CPD – What should we be developing? The Psychologist, 16(7), 360–362.

Schopenhauer on religion

“According to this doctrine, then, God created out of nothing a weak race prone to sin, in order to give them over to endless torment. And, as a last characteristic, we are told that this God, who prescribes forbearance and forgiveness of every fault, exercises none himself, but does the exact opposite; for a punishment which comes at the end of all things, when the world is over and done with, cannot have for its object either to improve or deter, and is therefore pure vengeance. So that, on this view, the whole race is actually destined to eternal torture and damnation, and created expressly for this end, the only exception being those few persons who are rescued by election of grace, from what motive one does not know.

“Putting these aside, it looks as if the Blessed Lord had created the world for the benefit of the devil! it would have been so much better not to have made it at all.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860), The Christian System.

Writing a song “is an act of self-murder”: Nick Cave on ChatGPT

The best part of Nick Cave’s critique of ChatGPT is, IMHO, the following:

“Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel.”

A close second:

“Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past.”

A story about Philip Larkin

A story about Philip Larkin, as told by Kingsley Amis (quoted in Andrew Motion’s 1993 biography of Larkin, p. 115):

“In those days, before he started making real money, Bruce had been a beer drinker, a fanatical one by Philip’s account, setting a cruel pace and insisting on being closely followed. After a prolonged session, the pair had the hardihood to attend a meeting of the school literary society [in Shrewsbury School]. Philip found himself in the chair furthest from the door with hundreds of boys, many sitting on the floor, between him and any exit. Quite soon after everybody was settled a tremendous desire to urinate came upon him. Finding he could not face causing the upheaval that must have attended his leaving the room, and reasoning, if that is the word, that he was wearing a lot of clothes, including, in those days of fuel rationing, a heavy overcoat, he decided to rely on their absorbent qualities and intentionally pissed himself. It turned out that he had miscalculated.”