Re: quantification fetish

["Marasigan . Vicente" <vic@pusit.admu.edu.ph>]

On 1 Jan 1999, Roberto Verzola wrote:

----------
> When
> the scale of problem-solving is small enough, there is much less need
> for quantification, and the quality of life and problems can often be
> felt/sensed/intuited. So can the solutions.
> 
-----------

I readily plead guilty to fetishism about quantification.  Lonergan
himself used the term "bias" about the tendency of many mathematicians
to be overly obsessed with quantification and too stagnant to advance
to qualitative differences between groups of operators.  To atone for
my guilt, let me discuss analogous groups of operators:

One group of operators in this listserv is seen by Tom Abeles to be
concentrating on the Y2K symptom rather than on the mindset disease
that led to the Y2K.  Another group is seen by Glenn Bacon as
concerned more with ideology (of anti-gain-max) than with reality.
Still another group is concerned like Bob Olsen more with the next 18
months than on the next 30 years (to be spent on educating our grade
school tots not to make the same mistakes committed by granduncles
like me).  And still another group sees the Gulf War as not just 4
days long but as symptomatic of a century of global addiction to oil,
a "fatal" addiction that is becoming worse (Jay Hanson).  Whoever
obtains absolute power over this addictive drug will, as Jay says, be
like Dostoevsky's grand inquisitor to whom people will surrender their
freedom and say: "Make us your slaves, but feed us!"

In the context of Jay's and Dostoevski's fatalistic forecast, can I be
forgiven for indulging in quantification fetish?  Perhaps, just
perhaps, the systems-analysts advising the grand inquisitor and
his/her successors may someday be looking for a way of quantifying
circulation of goods, services and payments, even if it is merely to
dissuade too many Robinsoe Crusoes from wanting to escape from the
totalitarian realm and into a fractal paradise of freedom.

Vicente Marasigan