[ExI] Filtering Digests

[Jef Allbright]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:41 PM, Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:44 AM, Anna Taylor <femmechakra at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>>   Like Jef said, maybe it's all subjective, maybe it won't amount to anything but a mere great listening but I find that highly unlikely.

For persons put off by the characteristic density of my earlier response:

To say that a statement might not amount to much because it's "merely
subjective" is to miss the deeper point:  ALL statements are
inherently subjective. It's the quality of the subjective point of
view -- it's coherence relative to context, how simply does it explain
how much -- that matters.


- Jef

------------------------------------------




>
> Anna -
>
> My point about subjectivity is not that everyone has their own
> subjective view of "the meaning" of things, but that all meaning is
> necessarily subjective. From a putatively objective god's-eye view,
> there is no meaning, but only what is.  Subjectivity entails not
> merely knowledge that is approximate and incomplete, but knowledge
> with *meaning*, due to the model's causal relationship with the course
> of development and present state of the agent within a given
> environment of interaction with "reality."
>
> An effective understanding of subjectivity is essential for a coherent
> theory of values, self, and moral agency.  The practical value of this
> (yes, philosophical) metaethical understanding consists in its
> coherence: in the elimination of effort wasted in pursuit of moral
> absolutes, whether based on instinct, supposed providence, perceived
> virtue, expected consequences, etc.,  and the resultant improved focus
> of attention, and thus effort, on (1) an increasingly effective model
> of fine-grained hierarchical values coherent over increasing context
> of meaning-making, and (2) increasingly effective instrumental methods
> in principle, promoting those values over increasing scope of
> consequences.
>
> It's an evolutionary process.  It's always ongoing in the natural
> self-organizational tendency toward selection for increasingly
> synergistic locally dissipative structures.  But it's only recently
> that we've become aware enough of our place within the system to focus
> not just on getting what we think we want, but on improving the
> process of knowing what we want and how better to get it.
>
> ------------
>
> As for email filtering, I have hundred of "filters", classifying by
> topic and sub-topic and then ranking according to salience.  I don't
> simply dump anyone's posts in the bit-bucket, but there is a strong
> tendency for certain email to end up near the bottom and never get
> read.
>
> - Jef
>