User talk:Likebirds

Hi. I like birds. And risk perception. And science and math. And theories of evolution. Also, birds. Likebirds (talk) 21:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Group grid, functionalism & chaos
I appreciate the work you did over at cultural theory of risk. The criticism of it as functionalism could easily be turned aside if one used these gridded perceptions of risk to contingently map the edge of chaos, such that each quarter of the grid-group was seen as a strange attractor, are you aware of any work in this area? if Douglas+psychometrics is heaven, I feel perceptions of risk and chaos & complexity theory as a little nirvana. The numbers would be nice though. My wife likes birds, I go along for the company. --Meika (talk) 12:57, 5 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No, or at least I don't think so, but possibly I would be able to identify relevant sources if I knew more about complexity theory & strange attractors. Am definitely intrigued. Can you tell me more about how the argument would work conceptually? And refer me to readings? (I'm also very interested in how one might formalize group-grid and related dynamics mathematically or better still via statistical simulation; are there methods in chaos theory that are relevant to that?) The psychometric escape route from functionalism -- using mechanisms of cognition that are consistent with methodological individualism -- is an approach that has been used to try to liberate ideology theories from functionalism generally. For more on that, you could see Elster, Making Sense of Marx (1985), particularly ch. 1, and Boudon, Social Mechanisms Without Black Boxes, in Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social theory (eds., P. Hedström & R. Swedbergpp), pp. 172-203 (1998). As for whether Douglas's comment that CTR could go to heaven via that route, it's very possible she was being facetious; in any case, she wrote How Institutions Think (1986), which is full throttled defense of the functionalist groundings of CTR, with full awareness of Elster's turn to psychology, so she apparently was willing to remain a functionalist come hell or highwater, so to speak. Likebirds (talk) 19:34, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd like offer some reading but I did my coursework masters a decade ago now. I am unaware of any and was hoping the field had expanded while I was away helping another's PhD, two daughters, and failing to be a writer myself. I was hoping you would know. I'll check out your honourable mentions when I get time, we're away for two weeks. I am unfamiliar with them. If you can email references drop me a line at http://meika.loofs-samorzewski.com/meika_contact.html or http://twitter.com/meika

In that masters I did write a small personal reflection on reading Douglas' Good Taste: Critical Essays on Good Taste 1996 Sage. For me, this was about 1999.

It was part epiphany on discovering her work, and part description of how a person's everyday decisions (mostly by rejection according to Douglas) build up into a pattern one could label a thought style, and that perceptions of risk are related to a perception to an edge of chaos (moreso to the fragility of Morality than of Nature perhaps) at the personal level. That's a direct mapping. I am unclear on all the implications. Her thoughts and mine are mixed up in the following digression:

In was a metaphoric recognition that the grid-group could be mapped to various strange attractors, each created by individuals choosing this over that. Each choice is recursively embedded in its cultural context. (Not a lot of maths in me I am afraid. I am more a failed poet.) Each choice by an individual is a reiteration, which builds up a patterns (that one may recognise or reject in the next choice one makes with limited resources). More like Bayesian statistics?? Out of my depth now.

Elsewhere, I think I argued or suggested that, in an evolutionary landscape, a population that was capable of maintaining a pool of a perceptions of risk, as expressed among it's individuals would be more likely to survive. (This is more niche construction than group selection by the way.)

In this context the reference to the edge of chaos would also allow a creative response by the "population". A population with just one thought style would not necessarily have the flexibility or options to survive change beyond it's control.

What I liked in her theory, was that each bias was antagonistically defined and maintain by the "culture war" of rejection, and why symbols mean so much. I read it to mean we are both programmed to be biased, and to want to champion that bias' champions, despite reality (global warming delusionism anyone??). It's sort of an evil twin to altruism, whereby I might die defending the currently wrong answer, so that other later might survive using it in another situation down the track. Liberalism's "tolerance" is a semi-conscious appreciation of this. Though why we have to die defending these perceptions territorially is another matter.

Anyway, a group that rigidly enforced conformity on it's individual members' choices would tumble into chaos (like the way a heart attack is preceded by overly regular heartbeats), and evolutionary oblivion. The other constraint here is that the group's integrity disappears also if there is no conversation, if people do not reject each others preferences. If everybody does their own thing, then they do not notice they are in a group and so the group is no more.

Argument is central to the grid-group negotiations, which is an operation itself at the edge of chaos, between there being a group and there being none. For it to have evolutionary advantage to individuals, member individuals would have to have more offspring than those who cannot partake in such cultural negotiations, regardless as to whether any belief or personal preference in itself offers an advantage.

A pool of perceptions (of risk to Nature/Morality) is maintained in conversation, and negotiated via cultural artefacts and 'transmitted' through social institutions (the linkage between any particular artefact and a grid-group is of course arbitrary, however poetic it may look).

Our hominid ancestor success lay not in hunted or gathering, but in being able to do both these styles of movements at the same time, and this was negotiated socially. And this allowed us to move into new habitats from the deserts to the Arctic, and from these landscapes through argument form new movements, like agriculture and pastoralism, and so the city, the nomad, the trader, the warrior. I argued without our ability to argue we would not be able to maintain a pool of risk perception options.

However maintaining a pool of different perceptions to risk, is itself operating at the edge of chaos, "the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed ..." It's risky....

OMIGOD, nothing is true, everything is permitted...

In Douglas' case perhaps the commitment to Formalism was an expression of her own afferent biases as a "conservative hierarchist", and an adjunct to a Catholicism? A fear that what truth she did uncover undid her unbecomingly?

See, I've gone all poetic, it's an inclination of mine.

I guess you could reject it out of hand. Certainly looks like a rant from this side, my methodology is all over the shop, not coherent and close to the edge of chaos. Wish I had more maths, less... deleuze?

However, I do not believe such biases to be distortions, as they are integral. I feel that bias is what makes us who we are. Our soul. We are individual(ly) partial creatures, animals, and without bias we would never have been alive in the first place, and have no church to go to. No, I do not believe in original sin, but original want. Original hunger.

A use of Chaos/complexity theory which maps the grid-group quarters to "strange attractors" steals the Formalism away, by providing a mechanism in which it is the individual (the pivot on which evolution turns) in making choice after choice after choice en masse, which makes the grid-group recognizable to ourselves, and thus Formalizeable, enforceable, reifiable, deifiable. Processes to which we are also partial, processes which are full of bias and wanting.

Religion and faith are proof I feel of evolution's blind design. Formalism probably is too.

I don't find it attractive myself. Or necessary. Maybe I'm wrong though, hard to tell with fashion in the way, covers move, invests more than it reveals...

BTW "As for whether Douglas's comment that CTR could go to heaven via that route, it's very possible she was being facetious;" As I remember it this accords with her request for "more data" later in Good Taste: Critical Essays on Good Taste, it could be facetious as well. The bird of the day here was the Grey Butcherbird --Meika (talk) 09:43, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That's extremely interesting. I should read about chaos--it's embarrassing not to be more familiar with it. I think you are absolutely right that theories that describe spontaneous & undirected ordering are a plausible alternative to functionalism, and a plausible alternative to the cognitive strategy for making ideology respectable. I have been reading a bit about "emergence" and related network theories; they seek to explain too how functional collective entities can get going through the interaction of individuals who themselves are not aware of, much less self-consciously committed to advancing the interests of, the entity (indeed, the individuals don't even have to be aware of anything -- they can be micro-organisms or proteins or whathaveyou). Evolutionary theory seems to opening up to mechanisms like this as supplements to natural selection ... Interesting how these things all tend to fold into each other! Beautiful bird, too-- thanks! Did you actually spot it?

Yes, the butcher bird (so named for spearing and thus storing their prey on twigs of trees) lives nearby, it has a beuatiful warbling song. We're back from holidays. New record for species identified while driving (so they have to be larger) is 51 driving from Dubbo to Canberra. We're still working on our raptor fieldmarks. "Chaos" by James Gleich is a good introduction, no doubt there are many places on the web now. Complexity Theory has taken over from Systems theory, or a a lot of ex-system theorists are complexity theorists, with a bit of fuzzy logic thrown in. I've just found a gridgroup blog, http://fourcultures.wordpress.com/ I may hang around there now, we'll see--165.228.6.188 (talk) 22:59, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks! As it turns out, I am now 1/2 way through Gleich's book, which is among the materials I was inspired to look at by our exchange. I can see why you had the idea that the dynamics associated with chaos would offer an alternative to functionalist accounts (or maybe fill in the seeming holes in such accounts) of why individuals take on the worldviews posited by group-grid. I'm still absorbing & ruminating; more later (of course, the "butterfly effect" would make much more sense if described as a "bird effect," but that's not a fatal drawback). Thanks again.

interesting blog comments at http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/socialbrain/maths-small-children-and-neural-pathways-proving-cultural-theory/ --Meika (talk) 23:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Likebirds, Chaos theory and fourcultures covering some things you may like to follow up. Bird of the day was a flock of about 30 Sulphur Crested Cockatoos, importants to Tasmania, and not uncommon, but we've never seen a flock at home before. --Meika (talk) 22:00, 28 March 2009 (UTC)