BtZ42 Section 6: Roger Mexico

[Monte Davis]

Roger the statistician: "By the time one has pulled one’s nth victim or
part of a victim free of one’s nth pile of rubble, he told her once, angry,
weary, it has ceased to be that personal . . . the value of n may be
different for each of us, but I’m sorry: sooner or later . . ." (p. 41).

Still in a Dylan Thomas mood, I'm hearing here "After the first death,
there is no other."

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/refusal-mourn-death-fire-child-london
<https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/refusal-mourn-death-fire-child-london>

Seen from one angle (sometimes but not always Jessica's), Roger is almost
as inhuman(e)ly odd and chill as his colleagues. Seen from another
(sometimes but not always Pointsman's), he is a threatening wild card,
given to probabilities and the acceptance of random fluctuations rather
than on-off (flip-flop in V.?), mechanistic certainties and strict
causality.

Statistics and probability theory themselves have Janus faces. Yes, they
strip experience to bare chill manipulable numbers: that certainly seems
bad. But yes, they *also* strip away preconception and anecdotal impression
and bias to reveal what experience actually *is* over broader scales of
time, space, and number than any one of us can grasp -- which is kinda good
if you want to stop an epidemic (or a traditional but ineffective/harmful
therapy), forestall a famine, anticipate global warming, etc.

CF. my earlier remarks on P.M.S. Blackett, "running a war on gusts of
emotion," and both the V-weapons and Allied area bombing as examples of the
latter. From one angle, we can see both programs as embodiments of
implacable science / technology / industry... but had they really been
evaluated by chill statistics, rather than as "oboy, here's a new way to
hurt the enemy," neither would have been pursued.

On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 6:33 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Statistician. ( we will learn of his belief in the range between zero and
> one. Meanings here?)
> Works for The White Visitation. " The Dour Young Man of.."
> Doesn't get on with his colleagues
> Doesn't understand Pavlovians, but has to help Pointsman.
> Unappealing looks ( accepts jabs about) seemingly youthful looking.
> Pirate sez he's been euchred into a Byzantine exercise of psychological
> warfare conducted by The White Visitation. His " enthusiasm grows" with
> each film delivery from Bloat. (Section 5)
>
> " Never a prophetic dream, no telepathic messages, never touched The Other
> World directly"
> YET, he tells us of his first experience of " magic" : " data he can't
> argue away" ...." The feeling of actually being joined" w Jessica. IN love.
>
> Comments wanted.
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad-
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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