From Natural (or Naturalized) to Social Epistemology

I've been reading an anthology called Naturalizing Epistemology (1986) edited by Hilary Kornblith.

   "Naturalizing" epistemology has been heavily identified with W.V.O. Quine (author of the 2 first articles in Naturalizing Epistemology).

   Others draw parallels between naturalized epistemology and the much earlier philosophy of pragmatism, or John Dewey in particular, as in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 32, No. 4, Fall, 1996, "Dewey, Quine, and Pragmatic Naturalized Epistemology".  Or see Stich 1993 "Naturalizing Epistemology: Quine, Simon and the Prospects for Pragmatism".  The title alludes to Herb Simon, the Nobel Laureate (Economics), Turing Prize winner, cognitive psychologist, AI pioneer, etc.

Naturalized epistemology, like many other intellectual approaches has a strong and a weak program, or position.  The strong might be represented by Quine's "Why not settle for psychology".

A modest search engine proposal

How much AI technique could it possibly take for google (or something better) to do a decent job with

speechby:obama   attitude:positive   "Saul Alinsky".

I.e. "speechby:" and "attitude:" don't exist, but could, I believe be implemented pretty accurately, to see in this case if we can find any instances of Obama praising Saul Alinsky.
An article: "Bill Ayers and Obama Both Quote Alinsky" claims such quotes exist, but their one attempt to demonstrate it is laughable -- something vaguely like a paraphrase of an Alinsky statement, but which has, in fact the reverse sense of what the supposed "original" meant.

"Obama Confession" by Andrew Hodges

I just have to give an example of the strange places some Americans have gone fishing for the truth.  Psycho-history once had its day, but that day is long past, except in right wing daemonizations of Obama which are big sellers. If you're tempted to buy this, let me suggest looking at this review of another book by the author called A Mother Gone Bad: The Hidden Confession of JonBenet's Killer Here is one excerpt from the review "he concludes that the misspelled word "bussiness" all by itself indicates that a woman did it because of several random words that he himself, out of the blue, associates with that word. Yes, it really is that bad!"

Applied Memetics, Godwin's Law, Leo Strauss and Reduction ad Hitlerum

According to Wikipedia, Godwin's law (or Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1".

Myths About Saul Alinsky (and Obama)

  [NOTE: Current latest tRTP posting:  http://therealtruthproject.blogspot.com/2016/06/clinton-and-bengazi-vs-reagan-and.html]
Lately, right wing sources have been circulating a fictitious set of 8 "levels of control"  or "How to create a social state" that Saul Alinsky was supposed to have written, which led off with
  1) Healthcare – Control healthcare and you control the people

This myth is so thoroughly digested and accepted that answers.yahoo.com will spit it out as the answer to "What are the 8 levels of control as outlined by Saul Alinsky?" (last time checked: 2014-08-18).
Yet is very easily shown to be a total fiction.

Alinsky has been dead for over 40 years, yet the phoney connection between Alinsky and his supposed "How to create a social state" only appears on web pages from 2013 on, which probably means it is scuttlebutt generated for the post-election renewal of the war on Obama.

If you Google { alinsky "Control healthcare and you control the people" }
with a custom date range 1/1/2000-1/1/2013 you get 9 hits which all seem to not really be that old; but an unrestricted search gives 85,600 results (note that Google gives different results for different people based on their records of what you've shown interest in -- so your mileage may vary)

So, apparently nobody ever heard of Alinsky saying  "Control healthcare and you control the people" before 2013, though he's been dead since 1972.

2014 "Planning" for 65,000 unaccompanied minor aliens - though it would be the first year more than 5,000 appeared

How to create an illusion of proper sourcing:
A widespread story has appeared that the U.S. was looking for one or more contractors to help deal with an estimated 65,000 unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants for 2014 when up to now, no more than 5,000 unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants a year have been seen.

It looks like the story originated with "Conservative Treehouse".  They provided a link to the original solicitation for services on a legitimate government site.  Yes, it sure enough says "There will be approximately 65,000 UAC (Unaccompanied Alien Children)  in total".  So, impressive sourcing, straight to the government document. 

Is this a Real Project? Or What?

Whenever someone charges at the world waving the flag of truth, they almost never mean truth in and of itself; they mean some particular claim that for them burns so bright as to blot out everything else.

Trying to get a handle on truth in and of itself seems to me a lot like wrestling Proteus, or the "Old Man of the Sea", as described by Menelaus in the Odyssey. The Old Man can answer any questions if captured, but capturing him means holding on as he changes shapes from a horse to a serpent to water to fire to whatever until he is worn out if one has the strength to wear him out.