Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 180.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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        Date: 2018-11-12 08:42:41+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty 
        Subject: releasing hares and using metaphors

I am reminded by this discussion of something Amos Tversky said, quoted 
by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard Thaler in "The two friends who changed 
how we think about how we think", New Yorker, 7 December 2016*:

> He didn’t care for metaphors: “They replace genuine uncertainty about
> the world with semantic ambiguity. A metaphor is a cover-up.” He was
> organized and highly disciplined. His office was spotless; there was
> nothing on his desk except a pad, a mechanical pencil, and an eraser.

Curious. How does one express "genuine uncertainty about the world" if 
not by (marked) semantic ambiguity? How does one otherwise express it? 
There are, as has been pointed out, uncatchable hares, frivolously 
released, whose pursuit leads to nothing of significance. But how does 
one know ahead of time and for all potential pursuers?

Yours,
WM

-----
* 
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-two-friends-who-changed-how-we-think-about-how-we-think

-- 
Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/), Professor emeritus, Department of
Digital Humanities, King's College London; Adjunct Professor, Western
Sydney University; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
(www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist (www.dhhumanist.org)




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