(FB 1548430537 Timestamp)
I think it’s odd that you would make that line of arguments:
– reading? have you seen my reading list? that’s a tiny fraction of it. Of course I
– natural law… then you clearly have not read how i define natural law, the history of it, and why I use the term, and narrow its definition.
– particularly that I haven’t read anything after 1940. Particularly quine. When I started with AI, and worked backward through history from Searle, and you don’t mention searl, chomsky, turing, or cognitive science in general, because i base my work on that field of science, not the analytic movement which I am not alone in calling a failure. Nor was Russell for that matter.
– that with your ’40s argument you didn’t grasp the connection between the failure of the operational movement in those fields where it was unnecessary (mathematics), where it was adopted, and those where it is increasingly necessary: economics, sociology, psychology, and language, and the areas where it was adopted (computer science, cognitive science, current mathematics), and why logicians failed (there is no closure, so only falsification is possible within each logic).
– that you don’t mention my criticism of set logic and idealism, (or the grammars), which is the basis of the critique of philosophy from Kant and the continentals to wittgenstein, russell, and the anglos.
– that you are conflating philosophy(positive) with law(negative) and that it seems very difficult for you to grasp the difference between the epistemological spectrum of MEANING, of POSSIBILITY and the one of TESTIMONY. The test of course is whether you would prefer that when you were prosecuted people applied the empirical or some OTHER (arbitrary) means of prosecuting you.
– that the law has always demanded third person observability because of incentives to lie, or at least engage in wishful thinking and the pretense of knowledge, and that empiricism was a western invention precisely because our law has been empirical from early bronze age, so that law is a via negativa means of eliminating falsehoods and removing doubt via tests of incentives (means, motive, opportunity, and more recently ‘intent’.)
– that you don’t mention the purpose of the law as I work on it: to end marxist, postmodernist, feminist pseudoscience and sophism in public discourse, and to end the use of pilpul, idealism, postmodernism to use weakness in the common law constitution to legislate via the bench, nor how strictly constructed law, in operational language, from the first principle of reciprocity, prohibits these attacks on sovereignty (or ‘liberty’ if you’re enlightenment, and ‘freedom’ if archaic.)
– that physical science already makes use of operational language and that economics does not for the reasons the austrians warned. And that the primary transformation in psychology has been the ‘operationalist’ movement.
– that when you say ‘context’ dependent you’re suggesting relativism, rather than paradigms that make use of synonyms but which converge on the universe’s parsimony and determinism (consistency).
– And that you’re making a ‘seems like’ argument. Which means ‘free association’ not ‘consistent relations’.
There are criticisms of my work. I post them. Often. But, as yet, no one has offered any material criticism of the work. No one. All I get are pragmatisms from (a) young men who are very smart and prefer authoritarianism – because they have no experience organizing anything – even a family – at any scale, (b) nat-soc’s who prefer intolerant authoritarianism, (c) young men who cling to the possibility of anarchism, (d) a range of men who cling to the hope of (authoritarian) religious restoration (not knowing how lucky we are to have escaped it.), (e) the room temperature IQ crowd that attempts to participate or observe a discourse that is beyond their knowledge and ability, but is too impatient to wait for the full constitutional changes and the policies that arise from them that would bring them relief.
The only extant criticisms I can find, despite trying everything, are (a) people want a positive religion(supernaturalism), philosophy(sophism), pseudoscience, or narrative(excuse), not law, or policy that would benefit them (b) people want to preserve their right to advocate for supernatural, sophistry, pseudoscientific, or excuses, rather than do so truthfully (scientifically), (c) that propertarianism’s grammars, operationalism, epistemology, and strict construction, are too hard for ordinary people to undrestand (not that they undrestand the calculus, programming, or the law as it stands today yet they live under them), (c) because of these reasons it will not be possible to form a majority movement to enact those policies and that law producing those benefits.
There is no surviving criticism of the grammars or the epistemology or the law that I know of. And ‘grown ups’ – meaning those of us who have built organizations of any scale, or worked large organizations, or in government, or in finance or in the judiciary, are quite well aware that the world operates by rules and those rules consists of legislation, regulation, and findings of law. And that everything else exists within it. Not because people believe in the law via positiva, but because they fear the consequences of not doing so.
The purpose of religion is regional social mindfulness. The purpose of philosophy is local personal mindfulness. The purpose of science is a universal language of truthful speech. The purpose of the NATURAL law is a universal method of prosecuting imposition of costs upon others involuntarily. The purpose of legislation and regulation is to enforce the terms of the local contracts in the production of commons. The difference in the production of commons is determined by asian (dictatorial corporate), european(bipartite state vs citizen), anglo (egalitarian sovereign) presumptions.
So my opinion is that if you cannot argue against the benefits (policies), and the construction of the law, and the creation for a market of non-false religion, non-false philosophy, non-false science, then you don’t much matter other than preventing good people who are willing to act to obtain material benefits and the rewards of a society far more free of falsehoods, then you don’t matter.
But here is what the data says: people online (in france at present we have great evidence) are negatively correlated with activism (taking action). That people are positively activist in order to obtain material benefits. That they will pursue these material benefits by any means that they can justify.
People are happy to opine and presume knowledge. However, if you sit down, try to write a constitution that cannot be violated and which ends the industrialization of propaganda, disinformation, sophism, pseudoscience, and deceit, in commercial financial, economic, and political spheres you will find that the problem is quite difficult. To do so requires a VIA-NEGATIVA epistemology of eliminating falsehoods. Which if you sit down and try to produce, is quite difficult. And once having done so if you sit down and try to produce a set of policies that eliminate commercial, financial, economic, political, and academic parasitism in all its forms, you will find it is quite difficult. If you sit down and try to produce a plan by which a small percentage of (costly) men can bring a government to its knees such that it has no choice but to enact this constitutional amendments, end parasitism, and free a people from predation and genocide, you will find it is somewhat hard to do.
Now, if you can find a one, single, other, person, who can do any ONE of those things, I’d like to meet that person. If you can find that group of people to do all those things, I would love to know about them. Because from where I’m sitting you folks haven’t got a single other person living today with anything other than wishful thinking and empty words. And while I’d MUCH RATHER sit around and work on my tech company and reap the economic rewards, I am not (unlike critics) extirpating my frustration with hollow nonsense to mask my lack of agency and courage. I am not afraid of dying. And I don’t lack agency.
I have built companies of scale. I have built a body of thought on a scale only seen since the marxists and perhaps since smith and hume. And much against my preference I’m building a body of people capable of teaching and communicating the work, the policies, and the revolution to those who would have it.
And if you had a criticism of anything material you would make it. However, what I see is nothing more than (a) lack of understanding, and straw manning because of it, (b) self confidence absent evidence of demonstrated ability, (c) moral conviction that is admirable, (c) but lacking the courage to do more than gossip.
So as always, as you have noted, I follow the same technique wherever possible.
1 – Acknowledge the other’s good or ill intentions.
2 – Deflate and disambiguate his argument – almost always an argument out of ignorance.
3 – Undermine his argument – almost almost always, as in this case a straw man due to ignorance.
4 – State how he can falsify your argument if an argument is to be had. (There are only the arguments above to be had).
5 – Hold to reciprocity and return any disrespect, shaming, rallying, disapproval, ridicule, or gossip, stated or implied in order to incite the individual to persist in the argument, until iteratively he exposes his lack of knowledge, overconfidence, arrogance to the audience. Then post the conversation to train members of the group in how these arguments are constructed and defeated through deflation and disambiguation of vacuous arguments and straw men.
Priests lie, commerce frauds, law decides.
Thus endeth the lesson. 😉
-Cheers