Says Todd in the comments to
the post that talks — the post that talks! — about using the expression "release weight" instead of "lose weight."
It is NEVER ever MY fault. Stuff just happens, bad stuff anyway. Everyone owns the good stuff but bad stuff just happens.
In this case if the weight doesn't leave, well "it" chose to stay and it is NOT your fault!
But this made me think about the virus. It's just a thing. It has no mind. But we're encouraged to think of it as
stuff with agency.
Here's Trump, yesterday:
I view the invisible enemy as a war.... Hey, it’s killed more people than Pearl Harbor, and it’s killed more people than the World Trade Center. World Trade Center was close to 3,000. Well, we’re going to beat that by many times, unfortunately, so yeah, we view it as a war. This is a mobilization against the war. In many ways, it’s a tougher enemy. We do very well against the visible enemies. It’s the invisible enemy. This is an invisible enemy, but we’re doing a good job.
Posts
24 comments:
Hey.
Keep safe and God bless.
Floods, hurricanes, tornados
The virus doesn't have a mind, but it does act on its own.
Have we really done that well against the visible enemies?
Pearl Harbor killed no one.
The World Trade Center never killed anyone.
The Chinese virus has killed a lot of people.
Almost 5% of the number predicted by the experts.
War!
The virus may not have a brain, but it is a living thing. It responds to stimulus, it does more of what works and less of what does not work, so giving it agency is not nearly such a stretch as the other items you reference--guns and blog posts.
it's invisible but it has visible enablers like Cuomo, deblasio and Pelosi, what I was ranting on last night, the press both conceals the casualties and amplifies them,,
was it deliberately released from the Wuhan institute, or was it just criminal negligence, we aren't allowed to ask that,
This is an interesting question, actually. From an external sense, fat (i.e., weight) does both depending on the measurement process used. Most of us measure the diminishing marginal value (Delta MV) of body MASS with a SCALE. Hence, WEIGHT LOSS is a valid term. Most of do not measure Delta MV in terms of the gases RELEASED from the body as a result of burning off the excess mass through exhalation and perspiration.
ERGO, Weight Loss = Weight Release.
I would agree that the latter is a bit more snooty. What is interesting is the deduction that the latter leads to some sort of anthropomorphic "agency." Don't see that at all. Weight Loss/Release can occur through the Intention of the Self. It can equally occur as a result of Cancer, Aids, or a host of other related variables that affect body integrity.
We talk of Stress RELEASE; do we say equally Stress LOSS (maybe after such actions like divorce)?
On the other hand, from the perspective of Kahneman and Twersky's Preference Reversal model, acknowledging the technical equality of LOSS versus RELEASE is obscured by the relative difference of framing. Regimes (the French for DIET is SO much better) that involve negation (i.e., LOSS) seem cognitively more difficult than the same regime framed positively (i.e., RELEASE). In fact, taking candy from a child is a loss; one has to encourage the little bastard to release its grip.
We are each strong and weaker than we want to admit. Weaker, because we stand on a platform that we don't own or control. Stronger because we can learn to make hard decisions and do hard things, that we are not at first able to make or do.
The only thing that makes it like a war is that were destroying a lot of stuff, and we're fighting this one at home.
It resembles WWI in the foolishness of why it was fought, the level of damage, and the stupid reluctance to end it.
the rules that dr. ferguson puts forth, using his byzantine code, he can't abide by, what chance do any of us, have,
On the weight loss issue, it's no surprise that many people have given up trying to lose it, because the long term success rate (5+ years) hovers somewhere around 0.015%. Diets do not work!
So it's quite correct to say '*it* won't leave', because at best any progress is temporary and dieters often end up fatter than ever before, and worst of all, are miserable because of it. I would rather that my friends are fat and happy than skinny, starving and miserable. And if you think fatties are ugly, buy darker sunglasses.
No-one has yet found a solution to obesity that works AND lasts, so it would be nice if that example is dropped from agency/willpower etc discussions.
But we're encouraged to think of it as stuff with agency. Here's Trump, yesterday:
His statement doesn't imply agency* in sense of the common misusage of the term (~ 'can make "conscious" choices'), he just used word "war" in a way which is popular w/gummint people: "War on Poverty", "War on Drugs".
*A virus which kills people really does have "agency": the state of being in action or of exerting power;
I'm a bit with MayBee. The virus doesn't have a mind, but it's RNA gears it to act in a certain manner. When dealing with humans in war, even though they have agency, it easier to battle them by dehumanizing them. Here, we are doing the opposite by humanizing a virus to help others see it as a bigger threat. Whether humans at war or a virus, both can be threats with an endgame of an individuals death. Although as a parasite, the virus does better when it doesn't actually kill its host.
Reminds me of that old joke I made up a few weeks ago -
"Yo mama so fat nobody can get six feet away from her."
I'm so old, I remember when we called "stuff with agency" "anthropomorphizing," and recognized it as a convenient shorthand for "stuff exhibiting emergent behavior that seems purposeful, but we know isn't, haha."
I Think I threw up a little in my mouth. Such lies and obfuscation.
Vicki from pasadena
Maybe I just forgot. Other than the virus and the consequences of Democrat/MSM sedition, what is the bad stuff that has happened on Trump’s Watch?
Blogger narciso said...
“was it deliberately released from the Wuhan institute, or was it just criminal negligence, we aren't allowed to ask that”
Of course you’re allowed to ask that, Racist Pig. What’s your address? /s
I generally hate it when people attribute agency -- conscious agency, to clarify -- to otherwise inanimate or barely-animate things. Like a lot of these cancer commercials where they try to 'outsmart' cancer, or 'fight' cancer like it's some sort of conscious enemy. It's not. It just does what it does.
And it infuriates me when economic disruption is said to be 'caused by the coronavirus'; it's not. It is caused by the government's response to it. Those people have agency.
The actual war is a Cold War with China. The virus is not the enemy, it's more like nuclear waste accidentally dropped in an enemy city's main shopping district. The initial attack was not an attack, but everything they've done since then was an attempt to move from a defensive posture to an offensive posture. Everything from public posturing about the virus being contained in China to manipulating supply chains to making a show of shipping (in retrospect defective) medical equipment has represented an effort by China to turn its mistake into a win.
To be fair, we're doing much the same. But... we're not the ones who mistakenly loosed a scary new virus on the world.
Trump may be talking about a war with a virus. But the real war is being fought in the South China Sea where China is trying to both expand its territory and take control of shipping lanes and the path to Taiwan while the US pushes back.
Incidentally, the frequency with which the Captcha asks me to identify crosswalks leads me to believe the self-driving cars are still having real trouble with this.
... and as I proved I was not a robot for this post, I had to do two more crosswalk pictures.
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