JavaScriptDonkey wrote:
Ahhh, the eidetic instance argument.
I think you'll find that cultural membership, although fuzzy and non-exclusive, is very real.
The further removed you are from my cultural norms then the harder you will find it to fit in and in the words of us common people, fit in or **** off.
You mean the individual is the largest instance which can be said to have an identity? Um, I suppose so although that sounds like a question for UE. I'm far from convinced you can define any group by fuzzy or non-exclusive criteria... this is well out of my comfort zone but sounds like something Kant would have knocked down from one of my last conversations with UE. My naive understanding of the concept rests on the question of how you would say if someone was or wasn't a member of a group who's definition was not-exclusive.
By insisting on exclusive groups with definitive traits for membership you construct a world in which it is easy to prove your argument that cultures don't really exist but it is also a world that phantasmal.
There is no need for all members of a group to be identically minted copies. Certainly that is a kind of group but not something likely to appear in human society. Ants perhaps but not humans.
Cultural groups can be thought of as rotating around a central focus with many members sharing some traits but very few sharing all of them. It is perfectly possible to be more or less associated with one or more cultural groups but still mostly in orbit around one foci more than another.
It is the distance between those foci that matter here.
JavaScriptDonkey wrote:
By insisting on exclusive groups with definitive traits for membership you construct a world in which it is easy to prove your argument that cultures don't really exist but it is also a world that phantasmal.
There is no need for all members of a group to be identically minted copies. Certainly that is a kind of group but not something likely to appear in human society. Ants perhaps but not humans.
Cultural groups can be thought of as rotating around a central focus with many members sharing some traits but very few sharing all of them. It is perfectly possible to be more or less associated with one or more cultural groups but still mostly in orbit around one foci more than another.
It is the distance between those foci that matter here.
Probably more Zadeh than Kant.
The killer problem with using fuzzy logic is that the degree of truth, or the distance from the foci in your example, or even which foci you are orbiting, is entirely subjective. Hence we have people here relying on assertion, emotion and statements like 'it's obvious' when trying to describe even their own cultural group. Noticed that all posters above are proud to be British when the 'Britsh trait' is a positive one like democracy or freedom of speech, yet 'it's nothing to do with me, it's the bankers/elite/aliens' when it comes to the crimes of empire or the daily news stories of corruption (both of which are just as much a part of our history and present as the JS Mill).
To the best of my knowledge the question of whether it is possible to have a decidable subset of a fuzzy set is still open. Whatever the answer, it's no basis on which to run an immigration policy.
JavaScriptDonkey wrote:
By insisting on exclusive groups with definitive traits for membership you construct a world in which it is easy to prove your argument that cultures don't really exist but it is also a world that phantasmal.
There is no need for all members of a group to be identically minted copies. Certainly that is a kind of group but not something likely to appear in human society. Ants perhaps but not humans.
Cultural groups can be thought of as rotating around a central focus with many members sharing some traits but very few sharing all of them. It is perfectly possible to be more or less associated with one or more cultural groups but still mostly in orbit around one foci more than another.
It is the distance between those foci that matter here.
Probably more Zadeh than Kant.
The killer problem with using fuzzy logic is that the degree of truth, or the distance from the foci in your example, or even which foci you are orbiting, is entirely subjective. Hence we have people here relying on assertion, emotion and statements like 'it's obvious' when trying to describe even their own cultural group. Noticed that all posters above are proud to be British when the 'Britsh trait' is a positive one like democracy or freedom of speech, yet 'it's nothing to do with me, it's the bankers/elite/aliens' when it comes to the crimes of empire or the daily news stories of corruption (both of which are just as much a part of our history and present as the JS Mill).
To the best of my knowledge the question of whether it is possible to have a decidable subset of a fuzzy set is still open. Whatever the answer, it's no basis on which to run an immigration policy.
Bullshit
You have consistently in this thread attempted to turn the initial issue of the numbers involved in immigration into an issue of racism by the entirely inappropriate lumping together of different arguments, and, when you have failed to succeed fully in that endeavour, you are now attempting to ascribe to others on this thread arguments they have simply not made.
Your debating tactics are intellectually dishonorable and dishonest.
You have consistently in this thread attempted to turn the initial issue of the numbers involved in immigration into an issue of racism by the entirely inappropriate lumping together of different arguments, and, when you have failed to succeed fully in that endeavour, you are now attempting to ascribe to others on this thread arguments they have simply not made.
Your debating tactics are intellectually dishonorable and dishonest.
I think you are the one being intellectually dishonest here, or at least very forgetful. The subject of cultural 'drift', shall we say, predates my own entrance on to this thread by several pages and had already caused a couple of long term members to declare that they were not comfortable staying here any more. That should give you pause.
I then entered with a post on the subject of immigration numbers and why they were not an issue. I responded to your previous claim of 'bullshit' with more immigration numbers but the post that was picked up on was an offhand comment about the BNP being 'equal opportunities haters of other cultures'. If that truly is the subject you wish to steer the debate towards then I suggest you respond to me when I talk about them.
This is easily verifiable, and it marks the second time you've accused me of being dishonest in this thread when the evidence for my claims is a flick of the scroll wheel away. I'm not sure I'd call this a debating tactic unless intellectual suicide is a form of tactic.
AndySir wrote:
The killer problem with using fuzzy logic is that the degree of truth, or the distance from the foci in your example, or even which foci you are orbiting, is entirely subjective. Hence we have people here relying on assertion, emotion and statements like 'it's obvious' when trying to describe even their own cultural group. Noticed that all posters above are proud to be British when the 'Britsh trait' is a positive one like democracy or freedom of speech, yet 'it's nothing to do with me, it's the bankers/elite/aliens' when it comes to the crimes of empire or the daily news stories of corruption (both of which are just as much a part of our history and present as the JS Mill).
To the best of my knowledge the question of whether it is possible to have a decidable subset of a fuzzy set is still open. Whatever the answer, it's no basis on which to run an immigration policy.
And yet we instinctively know when we are exposed to a different culture.
I was recently looking at an old family photograph of an athletics team. It's pretty low resolution as these things are and quite dated and yet when I saw my then teenage father's face I recognised it instantly.
I cannot give you an accurate description of his face that would enable you to do the same and yet I could recognise the man he would become in the face of the boy.
AndySir wrote:
The killer problem with using fuzzy logic is that the degree of truth, or the distance from the foci in your example, or even which foci you are orbiting, is entirely subjective. Hence we have people here relying on assertion, emotion and statements like 'it's obvious' when trying to describe even their own cultural group. Noticed that all posters above are proud to be British when the 'Britsh trait' is a positive one like democracy or freedom of speech, yet 'it's nothing to do with me, it's the bankers/elite/aliens' when it comes to the crimes of empire or the daily news stories of corruption (both of which are just as much a part of our history and present as the JS Mill).
To the best of my knowledge the question of whether it is possible to have a decidable subset of a fuzzy set is still open. Whatever the answer, it's no basis on which to run an immigration policy.
And yet we instinctively know when we are exposed to a different culture.
I was recently looking at an old family photograph of an athletics team. It's pretty low resolution as these things are and quite dated and yet when I saw my then teenage father's face I recognised it instantly.
I cannot give you an accurate description of his face that would enable you to do the same and yet I could recognise the man he would become in the face of the boy.
Fuzzy subsets are all around us.
Oh poor lamb. I almost thought you had a vague handle on what you were talking about there.
US war planners wanted to establish forward-bases in Eurasia to contain Russia and China, to be a main player in oil and natural gas extraction, and to spread US hegemony to this century’s most dynamic “growth center”. To that end, the US plans to maintain a significant presence in Afghanistan, including large numbers of combat forces, lethal high-tech weaponry, intel operatives, private contractors, and at least 4 military bases presumably on oil transit lines. The US is not leaving Afghanistan.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
However, they will be a strategic force for use against exterior foes. They will stay in their bases and leave the bulk of the country to its own devices. They will probably send out a few drones and special forces to help out the local military as and when, and keep them supplied with intel and weapons enough to stop them being overrun.
