From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Fri Jan 09 2004 - 15:18:06 GMT
Hi Platt,
>> I have been at a loss to understand what you meant by quantifying values
>> until this post on determining and ranking the greatest people. You seem
>> to want to create hierarchies among societies, ideas, people, etc and would
>> like a formula for evaluating the same. Was Phaedrus wrong about undefined
>> Quality? Maybe he could have written a computer program to feed his
>> student's papers into for grading?
> Seems you have some objection to creating hierarchies among societies,
> ideas, people, etc. Do you not grade your students?
I do not grade my students, though I do grade my student's work. I wouldn't
want to say that Bobby or Katie is better in some absolute sense. I could,
however, provide evidence that Bobby has a better understanding of a
particular concept and that Katie has a better understanding of some other
concept based on test scores. But even that is a tricky business.
>Is there something
> wrong for men to grade women (or vice versa) on a scale of 1 to 10?
The only way to do this is based on conformity to some standard while I
would say that there are many ways for a woman to be beautiful. A hierarchy
of beauty is impossible since we are unlikely to settle on one standard to
which women ideally conform. Which is better, blonde hair or brown? Blue
eyes or green? B cups or C's? The more you try to define beauty the more
you miss it.
>Can we
> not agree that Shakespeare stands head and shoulders above other
> playwrights?
I'm not sure what such an absolute statement would mean. You'd have to
provide a more specific context for me to make an evaluation.
>Is not E=mc2 a better idea than E=squat?
Within the narrowly defined context that is implied here, I don't think
there is a question as to which is better. But if you want to know which is
funnier...
>> Being a math/statistics teacher, I am very aware of a tendency for non math
>> types to seek objectivity by assigning numbers to their subjective
>> judgments and then doing some calculations on them. The output of such
>> calculations is still subjective, of course. Its a sort of SOM alchemy
>> that is being attempted.
>
> In one sense, the output of all calculations are subjective, so I'm not
> sure of your point. Nor do I understand what you mean by "SOM alchemy."
By "SOM alchemy" I am referring to the tendency for people to try to turn
subjective judgments into objective facts by assigning numbers which is
based on the assumption that only that which is objective is real.
>> In this case, as far as I can tell, the researcher is using "objective"
>> measures. But it is also important to note that the output depends
>> entirely on what we've chosen to measure. Such choices of what to measure
>> tend to be made based on what is most easy to measure.
>
> I see no evidence that Murray picked what was "most easy to measure."
For example, he didn't measure what can't be measured--undefined Quality.
>> Here's how the method goes: First decide who is great, then find
>> measurements that correspond with our ideas of who we already know is
>> great. When the numbers that work in most cases don't fit our ideas of what
>> is great in other cases, we need to add some other measures to our model.
>> Ideally at the end of this process we get a mathematical formula that
>> produces rankings that match the judgments that we decided on in advance to
>> make the model. Have our subjected judgments become objective at this
>> point? Of course not. If we had made different judgments from the start,
>> we could have come up with a different set of measures to match our
>> judgments
>
> I find no evidence that Murray used the method you suggest. But, I admit
> to not having read his book. It's on order.
>
>> To me, an important point of ZAMM was to help us get rid of the distaste
>> for our own taste-the whole subjective/objective problem. What is good and
>> what is not good? Do you really need a number to tell you?
>
> No. But in this number-happy SOM intellectual environment we find
> ourselves in (SOM alchemy?), a legitimate method of applying numbers to
> values may--I say may--help move the MOQ along in the minds of some. Just
> by establishing that objectively some things are better than others, a
> step forward will be accomplished.
I agree with the idea that it is important to demonstrate to people that
values are real, e.g. 1+1=2 is better than 1+1=3 and is an "objective" value
in that people do not see it as depending on personal bias. However, some
values (actually all values with the important exception of the value of DQ)
do depend on individual collections of static patterns. I think you may
hurt the cause by trying to make such judgments appear objective and feed
into the number-happy SOMer's denial of the reality of value by supporting
their need for "objective" proof of betterness.
Regards,
Steve
>> I'd also like to suggest that the case of attempting to measure
>> intellectual value is where the postmodernist claim that truth is context
>> dependent is important. Some statements are better than others, but
>> statements can only be compared within particular contexts. Since we
>> compare inorganic values within narrowly defined contexts we can create
>> hierarchies, but until we agree on the particular context, we will not be
>> able to decide whether, for example, polar coordinates are better than
>> rectangular coordinates any more than we can ask without a context whether
>> the number one is better than the number three. In the context of the
>> answer to the question "what is one plus two?" we can say which is a better
>> answer. Without a context, we can't.
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