Abstraction & Sophomoric Irony

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>>That particular level of abstraction is probably (just probably) not
>>very interesting. But only for amateur ironists is there no recognition
>>of the necessity of considering 'things' (_res_) at various levels of
>>abstraction.
>
>well, isn't the question what levels of abstraction are meaningful 
>and/or useful? doug appears to me to be arguing (via reductio ad 
>absurdum, which, far from being sophomoric, is a perfectly 
>reasonable technique) that the level of abstraction you've been 
>deploying is not very helpful. your response here is simply to 
>defend abstraction rather than the high level of abstraction doug 
>seems to be after. if anything, your analogy above proves his point, 
>imo.
>
>at least, afaict.
>
>jeff
>the analogy police

To determine what level of abstraction is useful, one would have to 
first think about the purpose of analysis at hand.  For some 
purposes, differences between CEOs and shareholders who don't manage 
firms day to day, for instance, matter; for others, they don't.  One 
of the problems of e-list discussion is that seldom are purposes of 
analyses made clear, so discussants end up talking entirely at cross 
purposes.
-- 
Yoshie

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