Category: AI, Computation, and Technology

ON WRITING SKILLS

About two years ago I began to realize that my writing, and possibly my mind, had been dramatically impacted by the time I had spent with software.

SOFTWARE AND THE MIND

When you write software, the computer has perfect memory. You don’t have to drag the computer along with you using constant reminders. 🙂 You don’t have to draw connections, if they’re logically dependent. And you don’t have to appeal to sentiments – the machine doesn’t have any. 🙂

So if you write human language the way that you write software it is absurdly dense. It must be studied not read. And any reader who does not have mastery of the subject will certainly not grasp your argument – since most of it is not directly stated but implied.

This violates Spinoza’s advice. Advice that I took to heart a long time ago in my spoken words: “…endeavor to speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people.”

Writing software is writing logic. Writing database software is writing logic that corresponds to the real world. Both of these forms of logic are very precise, intolerant and much of their content is IMPLIED. It is exceptional training for the mind. And it is exceptional training for life: programming teaches you that the human mind is fragile, imprecise and prone to error. It teaches you that consensus and opinion are rarely right. It teaches you about the fragility of complex systems. It teaches you about human hubris. The singular difference between progressives and conservatives is this judgement about the nature of man. And programming confirms the conservative vision, while literature tends to confirm the progressive illusion.

Which is why programmers wax libertarian and conservative.

For about three months I was very troubled by this realization. What I am trying to write about – Propertarian Philosophy as the solution to the problem of politics, needs to be reduced to something that is accessible in order to be successful. It mustn’t be accessible to the common man. But it must be accessible to someone with a university education in a technically difficult discipline.

I am daily aware that Hoppe, from whom I literally learned almost everything of value about politics, is all but ignored despite the fact that he has solved one of the most important parts of the 2500 year old problem of political institutions. But because he based it on Rothbard and argumentation ethics, he is descriptively correct, but not causally correct. Or perhaps, he does not address causation. Which is why it’s complicated to convey to others. Hoppe is inaccessible. All language is an allegory to experience. And all communication must be delivered as an allegory to experience. Argumentation is an improvement on Rothbard’s natural law. But it is still incomplete without a cause.

And I wanted to be accessible. What good is it if I repair Praxeology, Rothbardian property, and extend Hoppe’s institutional solutions to address heterogenous populations, if it’s incomprehensible to other humans?

So I set out trying to write sentimentally again. To try to move from proofs and programs to narratives. And I feel that of late I’m beginning to get there.

The problem now, is that I’ve sketched out the entire book and argument and I must now go back and rewrite fifty pages of definitions, finish writing the conservative (Aristocratic Egalitarianism) history of philosophy, and flesh out the institutional solution that I’ve worked on.

So I have so much work to do. I never feel I am intellectually capable of taking on task as comprehensive as this. I never feel I have the time for it. And I feel that I will fail – if only because I started late in life on this problem, and it has taken me over a decade of hard work to get to this point. And I see years worth of work ahead of me.