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sockpuppet2  6d ago (astralcodexten.com)   2409 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 "||")

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Very little to say other than that this is a lame low-effort post by his old standards. It hinges entirely on reading the word "does" to mean "accomplishes," not "carries out." Compare his absurd examples to:
"The purpose of a cancer ward is to match patients with oncologists and medical resources"
"The purpose of an army is to fight a war"
"The purpose of the San Francisco homelessness commission is to..."

Now, if there's a military that is manifestly unfit for fighting wars, employs more admirals than it has ships, and politicians alternate between saying "it's good to abolish militaries so we can't have wars" and "fuck, we want to go have a war but our military is incapable," you can say "the purpose of this military is what it does, which is not fighting wars."
Similarly if we had a cancer ward that had no patients and was only staffed by the physical therapist cousins of the director, its purpose would be nepotism, even though it has cancer in the mission statement and nobody has ever died of cancer there.

Scott used to be very careful with words and meanings to the point of pilpul, so I'm assuming this is intentionally playing stupid for dunking purposes. My least favorite "what does that even meaaaaan, I don't get it so you're weird lol" rhetorical trick.

Edit: and the follow-up engagement baiting on Twitter confirms it. He must be lose subscriber to resort to farming like this.

Very little to say other than that this is a terrible post. It hinges on the word "does" meaning "accomplishes," not "carries out."

Scott has begun to lean more and more into semantics over substance as the basis of his arguments. Some months back someone posted an argument from which structurally ran on a no-true-Scotsman fallacy established in the opening lines.

Can you link it?

Unfortunately no, or rather not without more internet archeology than I'm inclined to spend additional time to. I've just spent a bit longer than I'd care to admit looking through the last several months of pages (admittedly reviewing the quality contribution threads along the way), and not recognized the thread.

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