• Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    In the tradition of my odd little threads that people mostly ignore, I bring you

    Two Ways of Putting On Socks

    Method 1

    You grasp the sock at the top and pull until the lower section is properly seated.

    Method 2

    You bunch up the top section of the sock so that you are now grasping the lower section, pull that onto your foot, then unbunch the top.

    (There are some other methods that have their uses, such as turning the sock inside out, and then right-side-outing it from the toe up, but for reasons that might become clear I'm going to treat this as a variation on the second method. Also I believe there is a similar range of practices for donning hose, and that extensive rolling is an option here because of the light material; again a variation of Method 2.)

    First a clarification: using Method 1, you're probably not really done once the foot is seated (although this is a matter of personal preference), because the top section is stretched out too much, making the sock somewhat too tight unless you push it back down a little.

    Method 1 has other flaws: it is harder to line up the lower section of the sock so that it seats properly, and sometimes results in a misalignment that requires lots of twisting, and sometimes even that is not enough and you're forced to start all over; it also puts considerable strain on the sock and I suspect contributes to earlier sock-failure (especially if there is a noticeable transition between the top and bottom sections).

    I think Method 2 is only really practical for standard crew-length socks -- once you get to something that reaches your knee, it's just too much material to bunch up. (But recall the exception with hose and the inside-out method.)

    Why on earth am I writing about this?

    One way of approaching a problem, such as a philosophical problem, is to have some method or approach, often simple enough to be completely understandable (so no surprises), that at least in theory might eventually produce a solution, and then push that method or that system as hard and as far as you can, hoping at some point the goal will heave into view and even be reached. This is my Method 1. You start at the very beginning of the sock, settle on your method, your system -- i.e., pulling -- and then you just do that until you can't do it anymore. Then you look and see if it worked -- is the damn thing lined up right? Did I tear at by pulling so hard?

    Method 2 is a little sneaky. It starts in the middle and doesn't pay much attention to the top section of the sock at all except to keep it out of the way. Instead it focuses first on lining up the bottom section properly and getting it seated before setting the top of the sock in order.

    There are approaches to philosophical problems that are similarly sneaky. Instead of just leaping in with some preferred method and hoping it gets the kind of result you want, it starts by paying much more attention to the result. 'If we did have a theory that fulfilled the conditions we've accepted, what would that look like? Can there even be such a theory, or do we need to make some adjustment to our plans before we begin the work proper?' It leaves the filling in of details until later.

    In a sense, this is like leaping over the entire path and checking out the destination, making sure it's ready to receive guests, and once everything there is in order, going back to see what kind of path we can fill in. It's also in a sense starting in the middle, but with the intention of getting the entire back half taken care of first -- the middle all the way to the end. And you need not go back and adjust after, or correct the sort of messes Method 1 can leave you with; once you've done the bottom half, either's it not done at all (as in sock-failure) or it's done right and you can leave it alone.

    Method 1 has a tendency to produce a complete result that's somewhat imperfect or unsatisfying and requires further adjustment. On the plus side, it's simpler, faster, and for an old pair of socks used to your feet, it often works right off the bat.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Reminds me of Kung Fu Panda - Monkey, Snake, Mantis, Tiger, etc. styles.
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    "Sock and a Sock" (Archie) or "Sock and a Shoe" (Meathead)?

    https://youtu.be/prRtcQz8Uqk :smirk:
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    :rofl: Maybe there's something to it, you know.
  • Nils Loc
    1.3k
    Donning hose or doffing hose?
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    When I posted this last night, it didn't occur to me that this is really close to the distinction I was making in the "Evolution of Logic" thread about building a bird's nest:

    A nest-building bird that followed a procedure mechanically -- add a piece to what we have so far by entwining it in a certain way, leaving ways to use it for the next bit, and preserving a local curvature of such-and-such -- could consistently produce nests with no knowledge of the overall shape its procedure leads to.Srap Tasmaner

    or putting together a jigsaw puzzle:

    If I put together a jigsaw puzzle by selecting a piece at random and then performing a brute-force search for pieces that connect to it properly -- matching shapes and colors, the usual rules -- and then repeat this process with the new edges of my work in progress until the puzzle is complete, I can be successful without having any idea what the final form will be.Srap Tasmaner

    In that discussion I wanted to say it's curious that, on the one hand, we have an image of ourselves as behaving in ways that are less "mechanical" than our less brainy cousins, but also we have System 2, which allows us to use formal methods of reasoning that aspire to the mechanical. What I wasn't thinking about then is that how you apply the rules is the interesting bit.

    The socks thing is a case where we have in hand a formal method -- lining up the top and pulling -- perhaps originally arrived at through a System 2 analysis, but if applied mechanically, by System 1, then the results are often unsatisfactory. So we can refine the method by lining up the middle of the sock and then pulling, and adding procedures to bunch and unbunch the top section.

    Lining up the middle of the sock instead of the top now strikes me as a really curious leap of insight in itself -- though last night I was primarily thinking of it as sensitivity to the desired result, like looking at the picture on the puzzle-box.
  • tim wood
    8.7k
    As I suspected, and now we have proof, that at least some part of your life was misspent.
  • creativesoul
    11.4k
    Lining up the middle of the sock instead of the top now strikes me as a really curious leap of insight in itself...Srap Tasmaner

    Trial and error...
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k


    You can imagine following Method 1 but bunching the top a little, not deliberately or at least not as a step toward Method 2, and then seeing that you could bunch a lot more on purpose. Or maybe you bunch the top a lot because you're trying to reduce the evident strain on the fabric there, and then you realize it makes alignment easier.

    There are probably lots of stories you could tell about the evolution of Method 2 from Method 1, but none of them look like trial and error to me. What did you have in mind?
  • creativesoul
    11.4k
    I was thinking that method 2 could be a result of figuring out that method 1 had unsatisfactory results; an adjustment based upon findings.
  • Ansiktsburk
    192
    Occam goes : skip the socks you look sissy in sandals with socks on anyways.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k


    Sure. But you can't generally insert male into female starting in the middle, only in this case you can by modifying the shape of the receiving object so that a cross-section from the middle is now the mouth.

    To come back a little toward my original motive here, the new process "cheats" a little in how it handles the top section: your foot still passes through it, but you allow it to pass through in a temporary and deliberately incorrect way so you can focus on getting the lower section right first.
  • creativesoul
    11.4k


    Are there parallels between the sock story of two methods and top-down vs. bottom-up methods of reasoning? That's the 'sense' I had from the very beginning, but I wanted to allow you to flesh it out and/or say so yourself.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k


    Yes, and that's how I characterized it in the "Evolution of logic" thread, but I wanted to leave that out because I'm not sure it's quite that. But, yes, you're on the right track.

    Here's another analogy.

    There's an old cartoon gag where you build a swing by tying ropes to limbs of the same height on either side of a tree. When you discover that you can't actually swing this way, you cut out the section of the tree's trunk that's in the way and happily swing through the gap.

    Now imagine that as a philosophy research project. You either keep swinging through the gap because no one notices you've violated a universal law, or the trunk collapses (and in cartoon physics there's always a delay) and you have to cut the gap again. And again. And again. What do you do when you finally get to the section of the trunk where the rope-supporting limbs are?

    In the alternative approach, you size up the situation ahead of time and realize that both ropes will have to be on the same side of the tree.
  • creativesoul
    11.4k


    Why do we grant the dichotomy to begin with? Are those the only two types of reasoning, and are they mutually exclusive?
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k


    <shrug>

    Maybe it doesn't come to anything because there's lots of interplay, but if it's interplay -- say, of deduction and abduction -- the distinction is still interesting.

    Also: for my swing example, I left out a popular option, replacing a section of the tree's trunk with something that you stipulate as holding up the tree while allowing you to swing through it. (Insert Russell quote about theft and honest toil.)
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    Sure. But you can't generally insert male into female starting in the middle, only in this case you can by modifying the shape of the receiving object so that a cross-section from the middle is now the mouth.Srap Tasmaner

    To extract a principle here, I would note how this method involves a reduction in dimensionality. An abstraction that results from taking a step back from the concrete particulars of the reality.

    So you problematic is a foot - a surface that offers friction generally and also has a geometry with a particularly high friction kink at the ankle.

    You can solve this problem in friction-minimising manner by turning the sock from being a cylinder into a circle. You abstract away a dimension and now the resulting circle glides over the kink at the ankle. A tube bunched into a circle can’t even see the kink exists.

    So reasoning in general relies on abstraction - a dimensional reduction - to allow it to glide more easily over the rough surface of actual reality.
  • Pfhorrest
    4.6k
    I put my socks on the same way everyone else does, two hips at a time.
  • BC
    13.1k
    "Doff" is a shortened version of the short phrase "do off". And, appropriately, "don" is short for "do on". This goes back to Middle English.
  • BC
    13.1k
    insert male into female starting in the middleSrap Tasmaner

    Must sex be brought up at every opportunity? Disgusting.
  • BC
    13.1k
    I don't seem to be having any difficulty putting my socks on, so I have not investigating how a given method might be faulty.

    One issue: If one has rough toe nails that snag the sock, the roll/insert toe at heel/pull on lower half of sock/unroll top half saves a snag. Men's socks are pretty durable, but it's annoying to have one's esteemed toenails snagged on a loop.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k


    Yes, I think your focus on the point of greatest resistance is part of the story. When I suggested that one effect of a mechanical, unreflective application of "pull" ends up stretching out the top section too much, this is what I had in the back of my mind.

    What I had in the front of my mind -- without saying it -- is solutions arrived at this way are often somewhat "brittle": the method barely works, and works only by extracting everything the method has to offer. The fact that the entire sock has been pulled as snug as possible makes alignment errors very difficult to correct; the alternative solution focuses on getting alignment right by making getting alignment right easier, at the expense of requiring extra -- but themselves quite simple -- bunching and unbunching procedures.

    The swing example shows a similarly brittle solution that will eventually have no reasonable way of proceeding -- not to mention having along the way removed so much of the tree that the whole point of a swing is lost.

    While we might not want to conclude that focusing on solving the hardest part of a problem first is always a stellar strategy, even figuring out which parts are easy and which hard is an improvement over just diving in. And certainly having a sense of how hard the hard part will be and what resources you'll need to deal with it can give you a sense of whether a solution to the hard part is conceivable, achievable, etc., and could save you spending time and energy on the parts that, while easier, don't come for free, only to end up in a dead-end.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    Since we're still talking about socks, I guess it's only fair to mention hybrid approaches: you can start at the top and pull only until the resistance increases noticeably or an alignment problem is detected, and then switch to pulling and aligning the heel in the middle of the sock, twisting the toe as needed to keep it straight, and then go back to finish the top at the end.

    This also is sometimes a good way to work on a problem, jumping around from section to section, adjusting and redesigning components of the machine you're building to keep the parts working together smoothly.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k
    I started this thread because I thought of different ways of putting on socks as an analogy for different approaches to problem solving, and thus of doing philosophy, but it occurs to me now that it can be an analogy because how humans do this reveals human practical intelligence at work: there is remarkable flexibility and reflexivity in carrying out even these terribly mundane tasks.

    I think that's why I find them so interesting, and of philosophical value, though others would rather be discussing the un-concealment of Being, or whatever. Just ask a researcher trying to design a robot smart enough to put on a pair of socks.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    Coming in late to the discussion...I would agree with @creativesoul that Method 2 (and the mentioned hybrid) seem to be revisions of Method 1, reducing the probability of errors that require more attention and effort to correct late in the process.

    The frequency of practical application, the availability of effort and attention, an apperception of variability in aspects of the process, and whether one rationalises or refines when practical issues occur, all contribute to awareness of, connection to and collaboration with proposed methodology.

    In relation to problem solving in general, a lack of practical application limits awareness of inaccuracies in the method. An abundance of effort and attention limits the need for more efficient methodology. Ignorance, isolation or exclusion of alternative methods limits critical analysis. And the rationalisation of practical issues points to the preferred aim being knowledge of ‘a method’ rather than the development of accurate methodology.
  • Srap Tasmaner
    4.6k


    Yes certainly I should have been clearer that there's a presumption that Method 2 is a refinement of Method 1, motivated by the shortcomings of that method. I was a bit distracted by trying to clarify the differences between them -- and then on figuring out how you might make the leap from one to the other.

    But now I'm also thinking it's important to recognize the role of Method 1, which at least gives us a start and something to revise. Without the formal method, mechanically applied, as a test, you can't know enough to know whether you need to revise.

    I still don't have clearly in view how to take the application of a method. A method should be a procedure that can be mechanically followed, and may need to be for purposes of reliable reconnaissance, but the sort of "pathologies of method" you describe are failings at the, I don't know, monitoring and supervision level, maybe what you mean by "methodology".

    This is all a bit abstract -- hence the socks! -- but I think what we're talking about is finding a reliable approach to making use of formalization without becoming beholden to it, without letting it dictate terms ("looking where the light is best" and related problems).

    Is this how you see it?
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    I still don't have clearly in view how to take the application of a method. A method should be a procedure that can be mechanically followed, and may need to be for purposes of reliable reconnaissance, but the sort of "pathologies of method" you describe are failings at the, I don't know, monitoring and supervision level, maybe what you mean by "methodology".Srap Tasmaner

    Methodology, for me, refers to multi-dimensional processes that are not just mechanically followed, but depend on conceptual re-structuring.

    The point I guess I’m trying to make in application of a method is that we take for granted that these methods of putting on socks are easy enough to follow mechanically, and that we can evaluate them in terms of speed and efficiency. At the level of philosophical problems, efficient, convenient and error-free methodology in application often seems less important than describing knowledge of ‘a method’ in a theoretical sense. When application is first conceptual and then practical, when it requires a specific way of thinking about or perceiving the problem first, the distinction between knowing ‘a method’ and knowing how to deal with the various incarnations of the problem in a practical sense becomes more pronounced.

    This is all a bit abstract -- hence the socks! -- but I think what we're talking about is finding a reliable approach to making use of formalization without becoming beholden to it, without letting it dictate terms ("looking where the light is best" and related problems).

    Is this how you see it?
    Srap Tasmaner

    Yes. It relates in a way to the ‘scientific method’ (on principle): that the aim is not just to have a formal method, but to be open to refining any formalisation towards the most accurate methodology.

    What complicates it is that a more accurate methodology is found to be irreducible to a practical method without limiting the broadness of its application. Such is the uncertainty principle.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    Method 1 has other flaws: it is harder to line up the lower section of the sock so that it seats properly, and sometimes results in a misalignment that requires lots of twisting, and sometimes even that is not enough and you're forced to start all over; it also puts considerable strain on the sock and I suspect contributes to earlier sock-failure (especially if there is a noticeable transition between the top and bottom sections).Srap Tasmaner

    The alignment problem is the reason why method 1 is unacceptable. For those who refuse to accept that method 1 is unacceptable (some people just will not accept that their way is not the best way), there are socks with a very short, or non-existent ankle piece called ankle socks. Then method 1 becomes the only way.
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