[Xmca-l] Re: Trying to frame studies of the web through perezhivanie

Thu Sep 27 10:35:17 PDT 2018

Hi Michael,
First, yes Sam Harris of the “intellectual dark web”. Harari was pushing back on the questioner”s implication that expertise trumped the vote. I think Harari was also pushing back on some things that Harris has said about the future of liberal democracy. What you say about medical education strikes home: My wife is a standardized patient (one who portrays patients) in the medical school at the Univ of New Mexico, a highly touted program that attempts to address the problems you describe. 

Unfortunately, I think I am still off topic, since I can’t figure how this relates to studies of the web through perezhivanie. 

Henry

> On Sep 27, 2018, at 7:01 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi Henry,
>  
> I’m not sure about perezhivanie and I too would be really interested in hearing more about it in this discussion as I would like to have a better understanding (I know, I should go read the special issue, I have put in my queue but I am not sure when I’ll get there).  As far as experience is concerned I think this is a large part of Dewey’s lifelong project. Democracy for Dewey is not a form of government but a form of human association.  A key question is how we both bring experience and treat experience in human association and use it in that association. I think he would say for instance giving the experience of the elites special value and falling into the habits of simply following elites because they have been given that position by society (and he gives general reasons why we do that) is inherently undemocratic. Democratic association means treating experience of all individuals experience as equal as we approach the problem and then treat the problem itself as vital experience (focus on the problem solving itself rather than falling in to specific roles).  So how does this work, because some people have more experience in certain areas than others – well it is being open to that, but only if the experience actually does help in solving the problem. Very often the people society deem elites are not good at all at solving the problem. I was discussing this with some doctors in medical education and initially they were having a hard time with this.  What we came to is the recognition that at times (no agreement on how many times) this works against the goals of education. If doctors believe they know and are the best ones to solve the problems they can make very bad mistakes. They should be taught from the beginning at least to bring the patient into the process, but if it is a problem that goes beyond habit to bring it in to a community of doctors with different types of experience and engage each other in democratic association.
>  
> One other thing.  Same Harris? Really? A member of the (play ominous music) a member of the “Intellectual Dark Web” ?
>  
> Michael
>  
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of HENRY SHONERD
> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2018 11:58 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Trying to frame studies of the web through perezhivanie
>  
> No, Andy.
>  
>  The reason I asked the question is because I was listening to a podcast of Sam Harris (neuroscientist/philosopher) interviewing Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli academic who wrote two very popular books: Sapiens, about the history of humans, and Homo Deus, about our future. (Interestingly, the editor of the piece from Dewey you linked us to remarked on Dewey’s look to the future.)  Someone in the audience to the interview during a Q&A asked the question as to whether democracy will be viable in a future where specialized elites are, more and more, the only ones able to solve the problems of planet earth. Harari’s response was that solutions require elites (elite pilot, elite surgeon, etc.). We all want elites. But goals should reflect the experiences of everybody, not just of the elites. Hence, democracy may be messy, but the best thing going. Your description of movements and transformation makes total sense to me and would not contradict Harari, I think. As far as whether Vygotsky and Dewey have addressed my question, I would bet they did address it for their time. But nuclear weaponry, climate change and artifical intelligence didn’t exist then. Harari, in Homo Deus, seems to be addressing the question for our time. What do you think?
> Henry
>  
> On Sep 26, 2018, at 9:28 PM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>  
> Henry, I think that deploying concepts like "perezhivanie" or "experiences" in social and historical analysis just entails recognition that transformative experiences are collective, shared experiences; movements are formed and transformed by shared experiences (this idea goes back to Herder) and consequently, so are nations. Having recently read an oral history of the 1968 events in France (events which my generation shared whatever country you were in at the time), this is very clear. Experiences not only create and transform social movements, they transform the individual people at the same time. I think Vygotsky is widely interpreted as seeing perezhivaniya as happening "between people" but this is not yet quite the same thing.
> But I am not aware that either Vygotsky or Dewey explicitly treated this theme. Are you?
> Andy
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
> On 27/09/2018 12:50 PM, HENRY SHONERD wrote:
> Thanks, Mike! 
> For sure analog/digital is a sidebar. Got lost in the weeds. 
>  
> But I do have something that I think germane to the subject line, a question really: How does Dewey connect experience and democracy? And how about Vygotsky? In fact, would anyone point me to ways in which Dewey and Vygotsky connect experience/perrizhvanie (mass/countable) and democracy, or whatever form of government applies? I despair sometimes about the future of democracy. Has it ever had a present?  I hope I’m not getting into weeds where no one wants to go. Or maybe it’s so obvious, it doesn’t bear wasting words?
> Henry
>  
>  
> On Sep 26, 2018, at 8:24 PM, Greg Mcverry <jgregmcverry@gmail.com <mailto:jgregmcverry@gmail.com>> wrote:
>  
> Yes sorry my use of analog v digital sidetracked thread.  
>  
> I spent some time considering how drastic a change to my methodology I would have to make to for switch to Dewey and experiencing. 
>  
> I really don't consider the web, for those who inhabit it, as an artifact. it is both the act of identity creation and identity itself. A dance of the selves in a networked world. A living part of who many people are. 
>  
> A piece of my MEs that is shaped by me and outside interest. 
>  
> I 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 9:30 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
> I found "Having an experience" the most useful.
> https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/an-experience.htm <https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/an-experience.htm>
> Andy
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
> On 27/09/2018 10:52 AM, mike cole wrote:
> I would be helped in following this interesting discussion if people brought it back to perezhivanie . It is my reading of the recent special issue on perezhivanie that there is no firm agreement on its meaning. My unease was evoked when I read a note where the word perezhivanie had been replaced by the word experience. When I read the word experience I think Dewey, not Vygotsky, not Stanislavsky, not Vsiliuk.
>  
> Mike
> PS
> What is the best discussion of experience and perezhivanie that covers a lot of Dewey, particularly “Art and Experience” ? Deweyites out there, speak up!
>  
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 3:11 PM Edward Wall <ewall@umich.edu <mailto:ewall@umich.edu>> wrote:
> Henry 
>  
>       Interesting subject. I have always thought Newton somewhat more ‘digital’ and Leibnitz somewhat more ‘analog’ (he used infinitesimals which Robinson much latter put on a firm mathematical basis) in how they, in essence, treat something like a point. I’ve seen a few calculus texts that do use Leibnitz’s method and there are some arguments that, mathematically speaking, extensions of his method (due, in part, to Robinson) bring some things into view that may be hard to see otherwise. 
>  
> Ed
>  
> 
> On Sep 26, 2018, at  4:52 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com <mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:
>  
> It took me a long time to understand the calculus, because I couldn’t "get" the limit theorem, which allows for a way to use digital means to arrive quickly at as-precise-as-you-like approximations of rates of change (in differential calculus) and sums (in integral calculus) than would be possible and/or practical with analog means of counting and measuring. Without such quickly gotten precision, modern engineering would be impossible. I thought that Newton and Leibnitz discovered the calculs independently and at the same time, but a quick look at the wiki on the calculus is much more complex than that. It’s a history, it seems, that adds to the issue of concept and a word for the concept.
> Henry
>  
> On Sep 26, 2018, at 7:53 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu <mailto:glassman.13@osu.edu>> wrote:
>  
> Hi Ed,
>  
> This is a kind of interesting topic, including from a cultural perspective. My knowledge on this is relatively superficial.  Bruce Robinson made a really good point to me – also in your message – that analog computers were better for things like differential equations and more pure mathematic stuff (I think).  But that when it came to information processing digital was far superior.  My thinking though from the cultural perspective is that analog thinking is more representative of the way humans actually think, at least the way I believe they think. The big argument I have with information processing is that the argument is that the way the computer works (mostly software) is isomorphic to the human mind. But I wonder how much of the direction our society has gone in the last thirty years, with the timed testing using multiple choice questions, if we are attempting to make the human mind isomorphic to the computer.  As a friend who has worked at IBM for a lot of years told me recently, they are beginning to wonder if the computer is not training the human. I had wondered if we had gone the analog route (and right now I think I’m agreeing with Bruce, but I change quickly) if we might have gone in another direction, a more pure human-computer symbiosis.  Just rambling on a Tuesday morning.
>  
> Michael
>  
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of Edward Wall
> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2018 3:11 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Trying to frame studies of the web through perezhivanie
>  
> Michael
>  
>      I don’t know if my comments are germane to your discussion of digital and analog, but I was involved in the 60s towards the tail end of the ‘competition'. Your reading makes sense to me; however from where I was sitting there were some nuances. In those years there were, in effect,  two kinds of computing using ‘computers’: information processing and scientific computing. Both of these had an analog history stretching far back. Information processing was, in a sense, initially mechanical, a mechanical that became driven by electronics and eventually with the advent of various graphic devices (I include printers of various kinds) became what we see today. The situation with scientific computing was a little different as it has even a richer analog history. Initially, electronic analog devices had the upper hand because they could, in effect, operate in real time. However, as the digital devices became faster and faster, it became possible to, in effect, simulate an analog device on a digital machine and pragmatically the simulation was “good enough.” Thus for, in a sense, economic reasons digital ‘computers’ won the ‘battle.’ In a way the evolution is reminiscent of that of audio reproduction or using mathematics to model physical reality; it is amazingly effective.  The battle, by the way, is still going on. If I tell the Amazon Alexa to play music a little louder, the increase is done in a digital fashion. If I turn the volume control on one of the original versionsit is done in an analog fashion. So I think you are right, the digital path doesn’t completely reproduce the analog path.
>  
> Ed
> On Sep 22, 2018, at  9:46 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu <mailto:glassman.13@osu.edu>> wrote:
>  
> Hi Greg and Andy,
>  
> I wonder if, based on what Andy has said, is might be more worthwhile to focus on the Web as (Dewey’s ideas on) experience rather than perezhivaniye.  I don’t really have a good grasp on perezhivaniye, can’t even really spell it.  But if you used Dewey’s ideas on experience the Web  becomes both artefact and event in our actions.  Dewey makes the argument multiple times I think that we cannot really know our tools outside of our experience in using them, and that in attempting to separate them we are diminishing the meaning of both in our lives. So I think experience actually would be a good way to describe what you are trying to do.
>  
> Oh, also another take on analog and digital.  There was a battle between digital and analogous in computing but my own reading of the history is that had more to do with how we treated how computers processed information and solved problems.  I believe the crux of the battle was a bit earlier than the 1960s.  Actually Vannevar Bush who some (me included) consider the father of both the Internet and the Web (well maybe a more distant father but the actual name web is based on one of his ideas I think, web of trails) was working on the idea of an analogous computer in the late forties. I am sure others were as well.  The difference as I understand it is whether we wanted to treat the processing of information as analogous (sort of a linear logic) where one piece of information built off another piece working towards an answer or whether we wanted to treat information as a series of yes no questions leading to a solution (digital referring to the use of 0 and one as yes and no, although I always mix that up.  Digital became dominant for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because it is more precise and efficient but it is also far more limited.  I often wonder what would have happened if we had followed Bush’s intuition). There are analog and digital circuits of course, but at least in the early history of the computer I don’t believe that was the primary discussion in the use of these terms. Of course that’s just my reading.
>  
> Michael
>  
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2018 9:46 PM
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Trying to frame studies of the web through perezhivanie
>  
> A few comments Greg.
> It seems to me that the web (i.w., www, yes?) is an artefact not events; each unit is a trace of perezhivaniya not a perezhivaniye as such; it is important not to conflate events and artefacts; just as an historian has to know that what they see are traces of real events, not the events as such. What you do with that evidence is something again.
> Just by-the-by, "analog" does not mean "original" or "real"; it means the opposite of reality. The terms "digital" and "analog" originate from the 1960s when there were two types of computer. Analog computers emulate natural processes by representing natural processes in analogous electronic circuits based on the calculus. In the end digital computers won an almost complete victory, but for example, if I'm not mistaken, the bionic ear uses analog computing to achieve real-time coding of speech, or at least it did when I knew it in the 1980s. 
> Andy
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
> On 22/09/2018 12:57 AM, Greg Mcverry wrote:
> Hello all,
>  
> I have been spending time this summer reading up on the concept of perezhivanie after our article discussion on identify of funds.
>  
> I wanted to share a draft of my theoretical perspectie for feedback. Granted due to word count it will probably be reduced to a paragraph or two with drive by citations but I am trying to think this through to inform my design.
>  
> https://checkoutmydomain.glitch.me/theoretical.html <https://checkoutmydomain.glitch.me/theoretical.html>
>  
> -I got a little feedback but from Russian scholars in other fields (literature mainly)  that I missed the meaning by being too neutral and I needed to get at "growing from one's misery" or another person said "brooding over the bad stuff that happened that makes you who you are" So I want to make sure I capture the struggle.
>  
> -I am not diving into this now but I am also considering the identify and culture of a local web and how that plays out into how we shapes funds of identity as we create online spaces.
>  
> -Finally is applying this lens with adult learners not appropriate? What does it mean when you actively want to tweak the environment of learners to reduce experiencing as struggle and increase experience as contemplation.

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