Fire and Knowledge

It is man’s glory to be the only intellectual animal on earth. That imposes upon human beings the moral obligation to lead intellectual lives. The slothful are blind to the glory and neglect of the obligation
–Mortimer Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter

People can lose their lives in Libraries. They ought to be warned.
–Saul Bellow

During the campaign of Harry Truman and John Dewey, political experts everywhere predicted a landslide victory for Dewey.  All of the polls showed Dewey in the lead.  Newspapers would decry Truman and wish he would stop doing anything more to mess up the country before Dewey got in to fix things up.  But they were all wrong.  Truman won by over 2 million popular votes and carried 303 electoral votes (compared to Dewey’s 189).

He had won against the greatest odds in the annals of presidential politics.  Not one polling organization had been correct in its forecast.  Not a single radio commentator or newspaper columnist, or any of the hundreds of reporters who covered the campaign, had called it right.  Every expert had been proven wrong, and as was said, “a great roar of laughter arose from the land.”  The people had made fools of those supposedly in the know.  Of all amazing things, Harry Truman had turned out to be the only one who knew what he was talking about….

George Gallup, Elmo Roper, and other opinion specialists were openly dumbfounded.  He didn’t know what happened, Gallup said.  “I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Why I don’t know,” Roper admitted.

So what did all these experts do?  Think about what the experts would say today if this happened. They would probably not admit they were wrong, but rather make charges of voter fraud or avoid the issue.  They have no sense of honor.  But listen to how the experts back then handled things.  The managing editor of Life, Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr., wrote:

But I do think that we ourselves were misled by our bias.  Because of that bias we did not exert ourselves enough to report the side we didn’t believe in.  We were to ready to accept the [negative] evidence…. We were too eager to report the Truman “bobbles” and to pass over the things that were wrong about the Republican campaign: empty Dewey speeches, the bad Republican candidates, the dangers of Republican commitments to big business.  I myself had many misgivings about these things but thought that what the hell, the election was already decided, we could get after the Republicans later….

So the editor of Life admitted their bias and moved on.  That would be a major accomplishment for most of our political experts who get things wrong and distort the truth so often.   It should be a warning for those who accept the television news as absolute truth, and do not realize what kind of biases of content and medium are being presented.  It should be a warning against accepting pollster’s opinion as fact, when so much depends on whom they sample and how they form their questions.  However, the experts did not end with simply admitting their bias. Harry Truman returned to Washington on Friday, November 5th.

Passing the stone-fronted offices of the Washington Post, Truman looked up to see a big sign strung across the second floor: WELCOME HOME FROM CROW-EATERS.

The day after the election, the staff of the Post had sent a telegram asking him to attend a “Crow Banquet,” to which all newspaper editorial writers, political reporters, pollsters, radio commentators, and columnists would be invited.  The main course was to be old crow en glace.  Truman alone would be served turkey.  Dress for the guest of honor would be white tie, for the others, sackcloth.  In response Truman had written that he had “no desire to crow over anybody or see anybody eat crow figuratively or otherwise.  We should all get together now and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.”

[Blockquotes taken from David McCullough's Truman.]

Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.
–Franz Kafka, letter to Oskar Polak

EPIC 2014

A fictional glimpse of the future of company mergers and information gluttony.

Congress Holds Hearings on Digital Music

A U.S. House subcommittee on intellectual property has begun hearings to consider whether Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL – news) should be forced to make its digital music products work on digital music players provided by other vendors, such as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT – news).

Spearheaded by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the subcommittee is investigating whether the government should mandate digital music compatibility.

Oh brother. It’s their company, and they should not have be made to work with other products. And yes, I believe it works the same way with Microsoft and other companies. Apple lets you listen to music not bought from iTunes on the iPod. If other companies can figure out how to support Apple’s music (or if they pay Apple a bunch to license it), then great. But the government has bigger things to worry about other than if iTunes music plays on other players.

Apple did a good job with the music industry. Don’t punish them for doing well.

Have you ever wanted all your personal information to be broadcasted at all times? No? I don’t blame you. Who wants terrorists reading the broadcast (because they will)?

Today is the last day to give feedback to the State Department on why they should not put RFID into passports.

For more information and an easy submit form, see RFIDKills.com

For those just jumping in, here are the previous links:

• John’s Article: A Word Wrapped in Light
• My First Thoughts on His Article
• John’s Comment and My First Response
• John’s First Response
• My Second Response
• John’s Second Response
• My Final Response [you are here]

John,

I really appreciate the time and effort you have put into this discussion. I think things have cleared up pretty well as we have interacted and gotten more specific with each other.

I completely agree with your assertion that verbal language and visual language have their uses.  Icons certainly have their place and, when done correctly, are often helpful.

I also agree with your example how maps can help convey the relation between distances.  It is a visual representation of visual things, which visual language is perfect suited for.  Words can be used, although it takes more effort to understand what is being conveyed. I think this furthers my point that words are better at conveying abstract thought, whereas visual language is not as helpful.  But your point is certainly not lost and, if I understand it correctly, I readily agree with it.

Your assertion that verbal and visual language is a difference in kind not caliber is helpful.  I believe you have brought up a helpful distinction.  After thinking about this for a while, I believe I can say I agree with you.  Perhaps I was unfair to treat them as a difference in caliber—although, if visual imagery can indeed have syntax is still seems they are still attempting to communicate through language.  I would be willing to admit “each lends itself to certain uses that that other does not.”  Photography conveys a specific scene exactly as it happened visually, something that would be impossible for a human to document with words.  Likewise, typography conveys propositions and logic and context that a photograph never could.

Your example of visual syntax with the sentence “the purpose of education is the cultivation of virtue” was helpful and interesting.  I also think you hit on something important: it is, in fact, a translation.  If I read the sentence, I do not have to translate it.  I understand what it means as I see it.  You would probably argue that the same could be done with images if the syntax was developed enough (and with widespread visual literacy), and I do not doubt that it might be possible.  But why?  Words seem better at communicating such a concept as the sentence regarding education.  However, I am not opposed to it being tested and seen what kind of uses it might have, which seems to be what you are proposing.

You also made a great point about how the written word can often be more precise than we ourselves wish it to be.  I don’t think I have heard anyone make that point before, but I agree.  That is why we read what we write with such a critical eye.  Your conclusion to this, that “ideography may prove itself better suited to the ambiguities of human thought and intuition,” is interesting but I am unsure what that would mean in practice.

I don’t have much to say about your response to my speculation about the second commandment.  Overall, I found myself agreeing with you and I am still struggling with some of the various interpretations that are available.  It is an area that I will do some more thinking and research on, because right now it is filled with too many questions in my mind.

Thank you for the wonderful public and private discussion.  It has been helpful for me and I am very glad we were able to discuss these issues—and perhaps even help others who might be thinking about the same issues.  May God bless you and your family!

Sincerely,

Joshua Sowin