Q&A: “CURT, WHY DONT YOU USE THE TERM REDUCTION?”
—“I am surprised I haven’t heard you mention or talk about reduction in any of your work. Because when I think of Propertarianism ( and I use this to refer to all of your work) I see how you have reduced complex ideas into smaller statements and/or terms(definitions). So I suppose what I think I’m asking is, has reduction played a specific part in your work and if so would it be beneficial for others to understand the process of complexity and reduction?Thanks,”— A Friend
Um. I use the terms “Deconflation, Deflationary, Deflate, Parsimony, Parsimonious, and Analytic, and Operational” and I should but don’t use Reduction or Reductonism primarily because (a) I’m not sure what people hear, and (b) i like to emphasize the problem of deconflation rather than simplifications.
In other words, it is one thing to reduce things and another to describe how one reduces things. I reduce things largely by a process of deconflation. I achieve that deconflation through the use of a series of techniques:
(a) Operational grammar thereby deflating POV.
(b) Operational descriptions thereby deflating loading framing, etc
(c) Descriptions in Series,(Spectrums, lists, grids, truth tables) thereby deflating the use of terms to describe multiple states.
(d) Equilibrial forces between series.
(e) The evolutionary result of competition between sets of equilibrial forces.
Deconflation and Deflation are in fact, methods of Reductionism. And Reductionism, now that you made me think of it, at least ‘sounds like’ a good term of common understanding for marketing the value of Propertarianism. And I will test it a bit and see if I can make that point now and then. So thank you for the suggestion.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine