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Showing posts from March, 2009

Putting Labels In Their Proper Place

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It's comforting, isn't it? It's comforting to know that when you walk into a CD Tradepost and ask the local vendor where the Neo-Death-Industrial-Metal Section is in the music, she can take you to the exact spot and you can find your favorite band, Necro PileDriver. It's nice to know you can go to the horror movie section and see the latest movie crapped out by hollywood about a 110 pound teenage girl that defeats a 10,000 year old demon in PG-13 form. Being able to dinstinguish some things from other things is pretty cool. Being able to categorize certain obejcts in our experience using just a word or two is pretty useful. In fact, without this ability, it's pretty hard to see the human race surviving for very long. The ability to categorize and label is a tool of the human understanding. The ability of attaching an entire viewpoint around a certain word or idea is connected to the study of heuristics. In psychology , heuristics are simple, efficient rul