“CURT CAN YOU COMMENT ON THIS ISSUE, AND TIE IT TO THE INFORMATIONAL COMMONS?” (

http://mic.com/articles/107926/one-tweet-perfectly-sums-up-the-big-problem-with-how-we-talk-about-terrorismQ: “CURT CAN YOU COMMENT ON THIS ISSUE, AND TIE IT TO THE INFORMATIONAL COMMONS?”

(long)(important)

The questioner also asked me to be brief. (I am not good at brevity, I am good at precision, lol) So I will try to make a list of bullet points in an effort to be brief..

PART I – CONFLATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF DECEPTION

1) Terrorism is truthfully (honestly) defined as an act of out-group members against in-group members). Rebellion is truthfully (honestly) an act of in-group members against in-group members. Conflating them is dishonest. Conflation is a postmodern rhetorical deception learned from Marxist critique.

2) The reason that the Cathedral: Academy, media and state have adopted the deceptive strategy of conflating terrorism and rebellion is to attempt to legitimize through postmodern repetition the Cathedral Complex: legitimize the Academy, media and state. And to delegitimize rebellion by labeling it terrorism and thereby conflating it with out-group activity.

3) Bombing the ATF, Crashing a plane into the IRS building, bombing the NAACP, are all acts of rebellion by internal members. The purpose of rebellion is to change policies by state members when institutional means fail. Rebellion is internal politics by other means.

4) The various islamist bombings are not acts of rebellion, but they are acts of warfare, by the only military means possible. Terrorism is extremely inexpensive warfare by out-group members against in-group members. That is why small group and poor groups rely upon terrorism: it is inexpensive. States sponsor rebellion(internal violence) and terrorism(out group violence) as discounted means of warfare. States also you proxy wars (financing conflicts with third parties.) These are all forms of warfare: the use of violence to conduct politics by other means.

5) The purpose of warfare, terrorism and rebellion is to change policy. All forms of political violence harms citizens, infrastructure and politicians. It is dishonest to state that terrorism is for the purpose of changing policy, when changing policy is the purpose of all warfare, whether it is inexpensive warfare (terrorism) or expensive (state sponsored, organized, mechanized warfare). The purpose of war, terrorism, and rebellion is to change policy.

As Klausewitz said, “War is just politics by other means”.

PART II – MEDIA

6) Media is a product that evolved as a means to sell advertising. The purpose of news is to sell product. That product need only be as ‘true’ as it does not harm their ability to sell advertising by associating advertisers with news stories. To sell that news, so that they can sell advertising, they must get your attention. The psychology of attention is a well understood phenomenon. I will not cover it here except to say that the reader must feel righteous – confirmed in his beliefs. During monopoly period, television access was centralized, but during the current period we get our information from television channels that tailor to our moral biases, and we select internet news sources, and information from friends and associates

7) The media is not warrantied product – we do not warranty it for truth the way that CPA’s must warrant their work for due diligence. Lawyers must warrant their work for due diligence. Witnesses in court must warrant their testimony for diligence. Companies must warrant their products and services for due diligence. Even scientists must warrant their publications for due diligence. But journalism, political speech of public intellectuals, and propaganda are in the category of the few products that is not warranted to be the subject of due diligence, nor are media required to pay restitution for the damages that they cause when they fail due diligence. In our past, we held people accountable for libel, slander and defamation, but allowed dissent as a means of limiting the bad behavior of the government.

It is quite possible that ‘free speech’ rather than ‘truthful speech’ was a catastrophic mistake in legal history. Truthful speech that causes good, truthful speech that causes harm, and untruthful speech that deceives or causes harm are very different things. There is no reason why we cannot demand that public speech, particularly public speech that is sold as a product in the market, is not warrantied like all other products and services in the market are warrantied by due diligence, and that the manufacturers and distributors of that product are not liable for damages and restitution in the case that they sell defective product.

8) Propaganda is intentionally defective product, delivered with intent to persuade by deception using rhetorical deceptions including: conflation, loading, framing, overloading, obscurantism, straw-men, and outright lying, for the purpose of obtaining power. The general argument has been that we are all smart enough to dismiss propaganda, but history says that this isn’t true. The various pseudoscientific movements, from marxist ‘scientific socialism’, to Freudian Psychology, to Keynesian economics, the Anthropology of Franz Boas, to the outright fabrications of the Frankfurt School, to the postmodern philosophers, to today’s political correctness, all make use of constant repetition of false statements consisting of various forms of fallacious argument: conflation, loading, framing, obscurantism, straw men, and marxist ‘Critique’ to stimulate our intuitions, and generate confirmation bias, via normative awareness, rather than rational persuasion by truthful means. In other words, its a very complex and innovative form of deception by suggestion, rather than persuasion by reason.

Propaganda is not warrantied either. If it was, there wouldn’t be any of it. And there is a difference between placebo products,( light therapy,most vitamins) that make you feel better purely psychologically, and products that cause you harm, or justify theft. Most political propaganda seeks to encourage of justifies theft – why not? If you cannot compete in the market, then competing using deception in order to collect rents is often easier. In fact, if we study the evolution of businesses, the most effective strategy is to become large enough that you can seek various rents through limited monopolies. (I can’t link to research on this from my location but it’s available.)

PART III – THE INFORMATIONAL COMMONS

10) The Informational Commons”. We treat parks as a commons, we treat the earth, land, and air as a commons, we treat roads, sidewalks, public buildings, and radio spectrum as commons – and most of us treat our traditions myths and rituals as commons, as well as our manners, ethics and morals. We now treat healthcare as a commons. We treat many things as commons. Meaning that we consider ourselves shareholders in some asset that none of us permit one another to consume or destroy but many of us can use as long as we do it no harm, and therefore harm other shareholders.

The common asset that we regulate most is the market for goods and services. Because we are more dependent upon the market for our health, wealth, and well being than we are upon any other infrastructure. And because it is very easy to lie cheat and steal in that market. We created standard weights and measures, law, contract, guarantee, interest, banking, money, finance, interest. We created minimum warranties. We require truth in labeling. (Although we lose that one all the time and many labels are still deceptive: MSG and various forms of sugar are in everything and both of them are probably equal to Orwell’s ‘Soma’.)

Aren’t we as dependent upon the informational commons as we are upon the market, norms, roads, air, land and sea?

So if we can require warranty of all other products in our commons, why can we not require warranty of information distributed in our commons? Why do we need regulators instead of the common law? If we are all shareholders in the commons, why can we not individually or in groups, take individuals, organizations, politicians, and the government bureaucracy to court for damage to that commons.

The reason is that if truth was required, and if insurance was required, of all products services, and information distributed via the commons for the purpose of profiting my trade, or by political rents and privileges, then it would be very hard for the Cathedral Complex: Academy, Media, and State to sell falsehoods and propaganda.

Why for example does the Academy not get paid as a percentage of your earnings, rather than selling you education that does not pay off? What would happen if that were the case? That the academy was paid 10% of your 30 year earnings? How would what they teach you change? What if you could sue a university for giving you a bad service?

Why for example, aren’t public intellectuals required to warranty that their speech is truthful: internally consistent, externally correspondent, existentially possible, free from encouraging theft and fraud, and at least responsibly falsified?

Why for example, aren’t politicians required to demonstrate strict construction in law, from the initial requirement for property rights and voluntary exchange? Why aren’t laws written as contracts, with expiration dates? Why can we make one law (contract) but the consequent government can break it, and use the money for whatever arbitrary purposes that they wish? Why is it that all money from all taxes is not raised to meet a fixed sum, for a fixed purposes, and finished at the completion of that time?

Why is it legal for academy, media and state to lie, and pollute our informational commons?

Isn’t it just legalized fraud?

PART IV – SCIENCE IS THE LANGUAGE OF TRUTHFUL SPEECH, NOT A METHOD

We can never know we speak the truth, we can only know that we speak truthfully. And we can only do that if we ourselves apply due diligence to our own thoughts and utterances.

Scientists do this by what we call the scientific method. But that method is not a method at all. It is a warranty that they have been diligent in their testimony about their observations and theories.

1) Internally consistent (that it is logical). This warranty requires tests of reason, logic and mathematics.

2) Externally correspondent (that it corresponds to reality) This warranty requires that we demonstrate that the actions we take, or the measurements we make, or both, correspond to what we say they do.

3) Operationally Defined (that what we say exists does, and is possible). In science this means that every step in a process is listed, and its measurements captured, so that we know whether real changes in reality are recorded or our imagination of reality is recorded. In economics, politics , accounting, and law, operational definitions require that each transaction (movement) is transparent, audit-able, and open to human perception).

4) Objectively Moral (that each transfer is rational and voluntary). Under This is particular to law and to economics, where in law, something cannot be legal if it cannot be agreed to, and it cannot be ‘true’ economics if deception is required. This is the complaint about Keyensian ‘dishonest’ economics, both in Monetary/Credit policy, and in Fiscal (Spending) policy: that manipulation of prices of money and credit, constitute ‘lies’ used to motivate business, industry and consumer to spend, and that instead the purpose of economic policy should be to assist us in cooperating truthfully, and voluntarily. The ‘dishonest’ economists are unfortunately, the current mainstream economists, and the ‘honest’ economists are marginalized.

5) Falsified (even if the above are all true, that we have tried to disprove our theory, our action, by testing if it is possibly erroneous by either of the previous four methods. This gets away from the problem of confirmation bias.

Truthful speech requires that we testify to having performed due diligence by giving all five warranties on our speech. This is why science has been so productive. This is also why reason, rationalism, and philosophy have been so successfully employed in lying, deception, power accumulation, and theft: philosophers, academics public intellectuals, politicians, propagandists, and media personnel have learned not as the greeks asked us – to tell the truth. But how to lie. And they have become masters of it.

CLOSING

It is a very simple problem to fix really: information as a commons, universal standing, warranty of truthful speech, and restitution for damages.

There is no reason we cannot cooperate truthfully in speech, just as we do in the market.