site banner
sockpuppet2  10d ago (astralcodexten.com)   2527 thread views

Scott: Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does

astralcodexten.com

This made me reflect that I hadn't actually thought critically about the phrase (at least, commensurate to how often it's used). For fun, if you think the purpose of a system is what it does, write what you think that means, before reading Scott's critique, then write if you've updated your opinion. For example: I think it's a useful way of re-framing obviously dysfunctional systems, so as to analyze their dysfunction, but Scott is persuasive that it's not a good means of understanding systems, in general, so people should be more cautious about adopting this framing and using the phrase, rhetorically.

(Spoilers go between two sets of "||")

12
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

For fun, if you think the purpose of a system is what it does, write what you think that means

Systems are a product of human will and action. No system continues if it is not fed and maintained by active human effort. "Systems" do not ever do things on their own; the people who control and operate them are responsible for all outcomes.

If you observe a novel system and wish to understand it, look at the outputs it produces. Those outputs are what the people feeding and maintaining the system consider sufficiently acceptable to continue feeding and maintaining it. Thus, they are a reasonable approximation of the purpose of the system, and certainly offer a far better understanding of that system than theoretical claims that diverge significantly from observed outputs. If people have been feeding and maintaining a system with Output Z, all the while claiming the purpose of the system is output A, their claims probably do not contain useful information and should be discounted. It doesn't really matter if they're lying or simply incompetent; they probably do not have useful information to offer.

The longer the system has been fed and maintained, the better this heuristic works.

I'm reading the article. I'm not impressed so far, but perhaps it gets better.

[EDIT] - That was an uncharacteristically-short post, and it did not get better.

||

If you observe a novel system and wish to understand it, look at the outputs it produces. Those outputs are what the people feeding and maintaining the system consider sufficiently acceptable to continue feeding and maintaining it.

No, I think you discount inertia here. Plenty of people maintain systems they don’t really believe in, support or care for because it’s just what they do, it’s what they’ve always done, and changing a routine (even if you have the power to do so) requires effort.

Then, of course, you respond by saying that in this case, even if the system’s output is ideologically unattractive to those who feed it, they still consider it acceptable, and therefore TPOSIWID is still true, because the purpose itself is a kind of inertia machine, or to be a sinecure, or to perpetuate itself in some grand sense. But then the whole phrase is kind of meaningless.

Or, to put it another way, TPOSIWID is a common catchphrase on right wing twitter to criticize mainstream or progressive institutions. But it works equally well in reverse, because it explains to us that a lot of rightist grand ideological plans will end up establishing (and arguably already have) institutions that fail, are corrupt, are sinecures, exist to perpetuate themselves and have highly deleterious outcomes for society.

So the phrase just becomes a warning about where ideology leads, and thus just another dull argument for the kind of technocratic mediocrity that TPOSIWID advocates hate.

I think it’s useful as a heuristic. It the system in question is always getting a supposedly wrong result, it’s perfectly reasonable to say “that wrong result is the point.” If you have a system that is supposed to produce widgets, but instead the people who run it produce nothing but paperwork on the impacts the widgets will have, then the point is tge paperwork and not the widget. The point of most iPad games is not to be fun, the point is to show ads and frustrate the player into spending money.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats