Semantic Restructuring is the pursuit of enlightenment, enlivenment, empowerment through the creative re-arranging of the building blocks of meaning. For a better description, Start Here.
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Bateson, books, cogling, context, CPB, embodiment, framing, I Ching, paradox, perception influence, prisdem, semantic punctuation, sensation, techniques, unconscious
Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's just my pet peeve.
The thing that most sticks in my craw is the way prisdem is used to speciously support cooperation ethics. I a big fan of cooperation. But it sets my teeth on edge to see it offered as a panacea, to see semantic traps laid that prevent a clear view of what's going on, that prevent
As has been the case for years, I'm stymied by not even really knowing how to say what's bugging me. Iterating the game absolutely positively changes the game into something not even remotely resembling the Dilemma.
Okay, so who cares, and why? In the actual dilemma one is tempted to engage in the infinitely regressing task of wondering what the other person thinks I think they think I think... Highlighting the difficulty of solving this infinite loop is the point of the scenario. Well, you certainly do indeed avoid that loop of you change the rules to iterate (or even allow "morse code tapping" on the walls.) But the central question of what to do about that tempting infinite loop remains unanswered.
Add into the mix the willingness to commit intellectual whoredom by labeling the possible actions, confess/don't confess, with semantically charged labels such as defect/cooperate...
Bingo. Those two words frame the cooperation issue, and combined with the willingness to change the rules and thereby avoid the actual original dilemma we get nonsensical pollyanish morals about the value of cooperation. Contrast this with the view of the original dilemma, in which the situation can best be likened to having two coins, heads=0/tails=-6 on one, heads=-240/tails=-24 on the other. In this scenario you have no ability to influence the outcome of any one toss of the coin, but you sure as hell can choose wisely between the two. However, it takes mental discipline to keep that view, not to slip into the infinite loop of "but what if he comes to the same conclusion?" The other person's thinking is unknowable, the choice comes down to which set of indeterminite options you are willing to sign up for.
More relevant, however, than iterating this one game, is the neglected notion of concurrent games. Winning in the true prisoner's dilemma might mean losing a more important game; i.e., choosing the 0/-6 coin might get you killed when you hit the street because your action (neutrally described as confessing) also figures into calculated social reprucussions outside the prescribed dilemma. Recognizing the influence of concurrent games, working to analyze the pay-off grid in multiple relevant contexts, this would be a fruitful line of investigation. It stikes me that such thinking would add a good deal not only to understanding decision making process, but might even bear on meaning formation in general, helping break down the linear one-stimulus-one-response, sign-signified, thinking that seems still to prevail in the linguistic world.
I am hoping to work this into a letter for cogling. Meanwhile, it's just a rant.
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