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SLIPPERY SCIENCES:
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There abide classes of ideas that may guide individual and collective paths towards meaningful fulfillment, even though many such ideas may demonstrably be beyond empirical confirmation. Even so, I suspect many such ideas may be more focused in worthwhile and useful ways and sharpened as to their “truthiness” when they are considered from a wide and enveloping variety of points of view, contexts, and purposes. Mathematical analysis, when applied in concert with unfolding and shared purposes, can often help filter and refine such ideas, so that, after excluding all that are clearly shown to be impractical or invalid, those that remain may be pursued and applied with unfolding confidence. Something very like this seems to apply to “dismal sciences” (or to non-sciences, such as economics, politics, and morality).
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Dismal “sciences” often rely on vaguely, poorly, non-rigorously-defined, lay concepts --- which cannot facilitate any firm grasp upon truth. Among such concepts, for which no non-slippery consensus abides, seem to be the following: The invisible hand of providence; free will; good will, good faith, freedom; equality; fairness; merit; moral facts; equality in rights and opportunities; the unbiased juror or judge; the reasonable man; the non-adhesive contract; the free and informed consumer; the free market; the international corporation; bankruptcy; moral turpitude; the non-manipulated security or stock; the fair lobbyist; free campaign contribution; un-owned representative; elected representative; fair taxation and regulation; maximized taxation; faith and credit extended to currency; clear and fair law, tax, and legal classification; ideal preservation of speciation, ecology, climate, and environment; genetic drag; living constitution; consensus for protecting personal classifications (race, gender, sexual orientation, fashion sense, IQ, skill, strength, quickness, courage, criminal history, age, wealth, appearance, health, connections, dna, culture, religion, etc.); absolutist slogans and analogies (such as: to tax a thing is [always] to incent less of its production; freedom is not [ever] free; a rising tide [always] lifts all boats, etc.).
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However important such words and concepts may be, they are qualitatively evaluative, so that we cannot distill “truth” from them. However, we can choose to deploy such words towards distilling and assimilating sustainable civil decency, inspiration, and purposefulness (i.e., “truthiness”). Doing so necessitates (1) understanding the slippery quality of such words; (2) becoming willing and skilled in considering and winnowing concepts that deploy such words, while we consider them from a wide and enveloping variety of points of view, contexts, and purposes. In that way, we may winnow the clearly invalid concepts while we more confidently pursue that which remains.
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7 comments:
If you tax something, you do not necessarily get less of it. The entropically guided direction of the system as a whole must be consulted. Sometimes, taxes will thin the herd, reward oligarchs, and thus empower the oligarchs to pass the taxes onto consumers. Meantime, decency follows in tandem.
t seems obvious that evolution unfolds even as it is and has been guided. A deeper issue concerns what is meant by the "cause and effect" of evolution, versus the associationally guided sequencing of evolution. A strange "observer effect" and "measurement problem" permeates. There is a stubborn assumption, perhaps illusion, that each sequence is itself the entire cause of each succeeding sequence. Problem is, much of contemporaneous sequencing is overpowered by previously preset rules for guiding the sequential unfolding. That which is sequentially measurable may be associational with a meta cause that has established presets while remaining contemporaneously guiding. That is, measurably signified sequences are not in themselves causal. All that which is measurable may be the signs, significations, associations, and "words made flesh" of an immeasurable communicator, one that can abide with severable avatars for signifying the receiving, recording, and transmitting of Information. It may be that entropy is merely the measurably associated ouflow from centers of experientially empathetic communication. And what is it that we measure? Spins within orbits within rolls ... within ever more spins within orbits within rolls ... borrowed from otherwise substantive nothingness and measurably conserved in respect of zero. That which we so often consider to be substantive, material, physical, measurable, and causal may be artifactual of spins made and conserved out of nothingness by a reconciling yet immeasurable Entity that has meta capacity to communicate appreciations of significations of Information among and between severally signified avatars. Indeed, within such a system, no severable avatar could form without simultaneously being fitted for the conserving and conveying of Information. That kind of guided communication of Information seems to be innate to the cosmos, without which the cosmos may not possibly exist.
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I wonder if space-in-itself is expanding. Can someone wrap his mind around this: Which galaxy could abide such that its denizens would not experience themselves as being at "the" center of space? Is space really expanding, or is the informational-transmitting experience of space expanding?
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Science can measure significations of frameworks, but it canot prove that to which we should aspire to appreciate or signify. Moreover, scientists become absurd and irrelevant to the purposeful guiding of the unfoldment of civilization when they argue that we ought not pursue any moral ought
I would say many people are too restrictive in their idea of "prayer." They try to put the author of science under the rule of science and its handmaiden (math and statistics). You can't reconcile God to that. That is a stubborn orientation (or illusion). So long as one retains that orientation, one will not get what follows: All of measurable beingness is mere signification --- either of conscious prayer or of response thereto. One may reasonably believe that choices among the feedback that unfolds is reconciled and qualitatively responsive (observer effect) --- not measurably or quantitatively predictable. You cannot measure whether a response was an answer. You take it on faith that everything is reconciled, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, and that your apprehensions are part of the factoring. What one wants affects the quality of what one gets, but one does not always get all that one wants. Still, one always gets responses, even though often not the responses one wanted. Empathy does not necessarily mean love, nor does it mean one always merits getting all that one wanted. Nor does it mean that God is incapable of learning and adjusting (meta feedback). As one acts in conscious good faith and good will, then intuition, not science, suggests one will more likely find the path that unfolds more rewarding than otherwise. Quality of prayer may relate to enhancing the quality of one's state of mind. I can no more measure, predict, or rule the interests of the Reconciler than I can rigorously define good faith and good will. Each person must face his own pursuits in such respects. When a society comes to believe there abides no meta basis, nor any other basis, for good will or "oughts," I believe there likely will be a qualitative effect on civilization. I cannot prove it empirically, but my intuition is that what would result would not be well liked by humanity.
Btw, politics has to do with social oughts, as also does religion. One approaches in respect of what law should be, the other approaches in respect of what people should do regardless of, and sometimes in disobedience to, law. Both flux and change, so it is not perfectly clear what should be the line between them. For example, Libertarianism (like many political orientations), insofar as it adopts moral principles that cannot be perfectly confirmed in science, and insofar as it adopts its own dogmas and rituals and experts (priests), is not altogether unlike a religion. Should there be a wall of separation between Libertarian pronouncements and the State?
May one prove whether or not there has been evolution of species (aside from involvement or guidance of God) by assuming God is not involved, and then trying to falsify an assumption that natural selection occurs purely in respect of contextually random chance? If one does falsify an assumption that random chance can avail a complete explanation (and I suspect such falsification may be successful), then I don't think one would thereby prove that God is or is not involved. Rather, I think one would simply prove that there may be another, unexcluded possibility: that our mortal capacity to conceptualize non-trivial truth is innately imperfect.
A difficulty lurks that seems to confound discussion: The idea of causal determination versus associational unfolding does not seem to be easily or well defined. It sometimes seems causal determination may be modeled for discussion in terms of three mutually exclusive ideas, which seem to exhaust the range of possibilities: (1) determination by pre-design, (2) determination by chaotic unfolding (or replication of the fittest to replicate) out of random happenstance, or (3) contemporaneous choice.
However, I think there is a fourth possibility: (4) that no model can avail a complete, coordinate, coherent, consistent explanation. That is, I doubt it can be shown that the first three ideas constitute a set that is truly mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Rather, I suspect each idea is more like a model --- conceptually useful depending on purpose, but incomplete for ascertaining or mapping non-trivial truth.
Although I don't believe the truth MUST abide in one of the first three enumerated ideas, I also doubt the truth is a MIX of the three. (Indeed, even if there is a God who is contemporaneously involved in evaluating our experiences of choice, I doubt such God must necessarily know whether His choices are entirely predetermined.) It's not that truth is a MIX of the ideas. It's that the ideas are different approaches for different practical purposes of modeling and communication about different kinds of concerns: often (but not always) depending on the "how" versus the "why." Depending on purpose of the moment, it seems a responsible person has no choice but to adopt "compartments of conceptualizations" --- even if such adoptions remain at a subconscious level of faith.
I completely agree that we gotta let Obama go. I think we also should ask how it came to be that Obama was elected. I doubt it was entirely because he was half black. I suspect it was because a lot of cronies figured that, through Obama, they could consolidate and gain big time. Wasn't the lion's share of billionaire money in Obama's camp? So why do some seem to be saying out of one corner of their mouths that the middle class, viz a viz political power of the wealthy, is doing just fine, while out of the other corner saying that Obama is so awful? Obama was handed to us on a silver platter of wealthy elitists! So why are so many saying we need to do more to increase the relative wealth and influence of elitists? What? we haven't shipped enough industry overseas? I don't quite get how, having elected Obama under the support of big money, and while having so many jobs shipped out, it can reasonably be said that the middle class is in relatively secure shape, politically. When government policy stops greasing the outflow of jobs, then I may better follow the idea that corporations don't have enough tax breaks. Well, at least Romney will give some encouragement in terms of allowing domestic energy production and repealing Obamacare.
Supposedly, Dims want to be paid based on MERIT, not gender or entitlement. LOL! However, they believe affirmative action trumps. If you don't pay them strictly on merit, they sue for back wage make up (per Lilly Ledbetter)! If you do pay them strictly on merit, they still sue! (For discrimination against black pig farmers who weren't really pig farmers, for illegal profiling of voters who weren't really legal, for income tax credit refunds to resident workers who weren't really resident workers, etc.). Like the guy on Oh Brother Where Art Thou, "I don't get it Big Dan."
What's going on is that the play pen has reached critical mass. There are too many toddlers to service them all, so they are all acting out at once (against that dratted Tea Party, darn them!). Things will not get better until they tire themselves out and consent to be tucked back in. Because of the critical mass, however, the house will first have to be trashed, perhaps even burned down.
Well, I agree that principled thinking about what is needed to sustain a decent society is in short supply. However, I don't think that problem is addressed by rounding up a big group of malcontents (rainbow coalition) from Pee Wee's Playhouse in order to attack the system from all sides, with no assimilating vision that amounts to more than "Print money, Chairee, and gimme my share of the stash." The problem of excessive government handouts is not well addressed by creating ever more handouts. That's a Cloward-Piven strategy. It may sound fun, and its rotten fruit appears very likely to drop heavily all over us, but we're not going to like it when it does. Maybe if we enforced the border we could sustain a better health-care safety net. That would implicate a mindset of "Keep Muslims and illegals feet off our land." I'm fine with that! Unless you're big and good enough to adopt all the crazy, poor, and irresponsible people in the world, I don't see an alternative. Generations need to learn to become responsible to their own societies. I'm not willing to import and adopt crazies, illegals, and druggies. I am willing to help out elderly citizens, many of whom have sacrificed to defend the nation.
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