Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

ARGUMENT

THREE METHODS OF POLITICAL COERCION

There are only three means of coercion (weapons of influence), although they can be, and are frequently, used in concert:

1) Force (threatening, punishing, killing) Institution: Law

2) Remuneration (payment/opportunity – boycott/deprivation) Institution: Credit

3) Gossip (rallying, shaming, ostracizing) Institution: Religion (norms) We can engage in force to create property, remuneration once we possess it, and gossip to advocate it. Or we can do just the opposite. The Jewish historical method is to apply the female reproductive strategy (gossip), because they lack the numbers (and the ability) to fight. Westerners took the libertarian strategy(synthesis). The barbarians take the masculine strategy of predation. Natural law (which Sovereignty translates from rational to scientific, just as lock translated it from theological to rational) is typically western attempt at science (“without intent”), by stating that these principles are required for flourishing – which is true. However, that is the reverse logic. The obverse is that these rules are required for voluntary cooperation and the voluntary organization of production, and to suppress parasitism of the people by the rulers(nobility), governors(politicians), and state (bureaucracy). For all intents and purposes I have continued the Natural Law tradition, just as the natural law philosophers continued the Greek and roman traditions: noble families would not surrender power to a tyrant and as such required rules of voluntary cooperation. Just So I see the battle between western science, libertarianism, universalism, and truth telling and eastern pseudoscience, authoritarianism, separatism, and deceit, as continuing. We first had an invasion of Babylonian mysticism and authoritarianism. 1 – Then we had an invasion of Christianity (Mysticism: Judaism, Christianity, Islamism). 2 – Then we had the invasion of Marxism (Pseudoscience: Marxism, Boazianism, Freudianism, Frankfurt School aesthetics. 3 – Then we had the invasion of Cultural Marxism and Postmodernism (ridicule of excellence – shaming us for our excellences.) These constitute three waves of increasingly articulate lies, that undermine high trust societies. The only way to defeat lying as a strategy, is to defeat lying altogether as a possible strategy, just as we have defeated every other form of fraud. Testimonialism and the legal protection of the informational commons under universal standing may seem a bit expensive. But it is less expensive than the alternatives: the ongoing conquest of the west. And the loss of the truth telling civilization to another dark age. So, There are three ways to coerce people: force(law/military), payment(trade), and shaming(gossip/morals) These techniques correspond to conservative(saving), libertarian(trade), and progressive(shaming). And these correspond to the reproductive roles of father(conservative), the brother(libertarian), and the mother and sister(progressive) And that’s because it’s the reproductive strategy of the males, the young, and the females. We differ in perception and function, but are compatible, and through exchanges(negotiations and trades) we ‘discover‘ the ‘price’ of persistence (survival). And we rebel at the limits, when exchanges are no longer possible or desirable.. It’s very simple. We all just negotiate on behalf of our reproductive strategies. It’s that simple. All our talk is nonsense.

THREE CLASSES OF SPECIALIZATION

(continuous adaptation to demands)

METHODS OF ARGUMENT

The next ten arguments you engage in, try to determine which form of argument the person is relying upon. (Not with me. I have enough to do. Test your cunning elsewhere.) If you do this a few times you will begin to intuit it in every argument. 1) Expressive (emotional): a type of argument where a person expresses a positive or negative opinion based upon his emotional response to the subject. 2) Sentimental (biological): a type of argument that relies upon one of the five (or six) human sentiments, and their artifacts as captured in human traditions, morals, or other unarticulated, but nevertheless consistently and universally demonstrated preferences and behaviors. 3) Moral (normative) : a type of argument that relies upon a set of assumedly normative rules of whose origin is either (a)socially contractual, (b)biologically natural, (c) economically necessary, or even (d)divine. (Also: RELIGIOUS) 4) Reasonable (informal) 5) Rational (logical and formal) – Most philosophical arguments rely upon contradiction and internal consistency rather than external correspondence. 10) Analogical (HISTORICAL) A spectrum of analogical arguments – from Historical to Anecdotal — that rely upon a relationship between a historical sequence of events, and a present sequence events, in order to suggest that the current events will come to the same conclusion as did the past events, or can be used to invalidate or validate assumptions about the current period. 6) Scientific (directly empirical): The use of a set of measurements that produce data that can be used to prove or disprove an hypothesis, but which are subject to human cognitive biases and preferences. ie: ‘Bottom up analysis” 7) Economic: (indirectly empirical): The use of a set of measures consisting of uncontrolled variables, for the purpose of circumventing the problems of direct human inquiry into human preferences, by the process of capturing demonstrated preferences, as expressed by human exchanges, usually in the form of money. ie: “Top Down Analysis”. The weakness of economic arguments is caused by the elimination of properties and causes that are necessary for the process of aggregation. 8) Ratio-Empirical (Comprehensive: Using all above): A rationally articulated argument that makes use of economic, scientific, historical, normative and sentimental information to comprehensively prove that a position is defensible under all objections. NOTE: See “Styles of Argument” below. 9) Testimonial: (OPERATIONAL) categorically consistent, Internally consistent (logical), Externally Correspondent (Instrumentally observable), Operationally articulated (Possible), Fully Accounted, Moral (free of imposed costs).

METHODS OF FALSEHOOD AND DECEIT

1) Ignorance and Error 2) Bias and Wishful Thinking 3) Loading and Framing

Loading = Moral Loading (a form of biasing a suggestion, causing the person to be more heavily influenced by intuition – social effects.)

Framing = a form of informational cherry-picking where one eliminates some information and overloads with other information, in order to bias the conclusions of others.

Overloading = Cognitive Overloading ( The use of information, language, detail, to cause the failure of the individual to analytically tests the statement and resort to intuition – cognitive effects) 4) Suggestion, Obscurantism, Overloading 5) Fictionalism and Deceit Pseudoscience and pseudo-rationalism, religion, and narrative are methods of Overloading. (Marxism is at present the second best form of overloading after monotheism – both of which make false utopian promises).

DEFINITION: FICTIONALISM

1 – Conflation (Substitution, Ambiguity, Signaling) Conflation consists in the practice of combining two or more distinct concepts in order to perform on or more of the following:

1. Compensate for one’s lack of knowledge or skill (ambiguity).
2. Using terms that convey status, experience, or education (signaling).
3. Attribute greater weight to a proposition than is warranted (conflation).
4. Misrepresent one thing as another (substitution).

Examples: A common conflation we all make is to conflate Like with Good, and Good with True. |Decidability| Undecidable > Possible > Useful > Valuable(Like) > Preferable (Personally Preferable) > Good(Reciprocally Preferable) > True (decidable) > Analytically True (internally consistent) > Tautologically True (identical) |Correspondent| Another example: The common conflation of Reasonable, Rational, and Logical. |Decisions| (Un)intelligible > (In)Sensible(Understandable) > (Un)Reasonable > (Ir)Rational > (Il)Logical > (In)Calculable > (Un)Computable > (Un)Deniable In ordinary language (prose), we conflate reasonable, rational and logical to signal our degree of dispassion, degree of criticism, to attribute greater weight to our claims than exists, or to demonstrate status – rather than stating the method we’re using, and adhere to its limitations. However, Reasonable (loose), Rational (limited), and Logical (strict) refer to increasing constraints on the strictness of our reasoning, Loose: The Reasonable requires only ordinary informal reason. Meaning that we must only be able to sympathetically tests the sequence of thoughts of ourselves or others for possibility or believability. In courts we test reasonableness every day, and always have. Example: “That’s reasonable” translates to “I can understand how you, or one would, come to that conclusion”.Limited: The Rational relies on Rationalism, meaning that which is limited to apprehension and judgment by our reason. However, in practice, Rationalism means ‘justification’ or ‘Justificationism’. Justificationism evolved from ordinary human moral and ethical justification (explanation, or excuse), scriptural Interpretation in the middle east, and legal interpretation in the west, and later textual interpretation in the west and far east. In criminal, ethical, moral, explanatory, and communication contexts, to we provide a set of propositions that lead one to a conclusion like directions lead us to a location on a map. However, all non-trivial, real world propositions (assumptions) are forever contingent. Meaning that no amount of justification (reasons or evidence) provides a proof (truth), only an explanation of one’s understanding (theory). Rationalism(Justification) differs from Science (falsification) in that in science, justifications only provide us with suggestions of how we might falsify a proposition (theory) to see if it survives (is true). In this sense, a justification is an excuse for stating a testimony (truth claim). We can justify (prove) very little outside of mathematics, or that which is reducible to mathematical relations. But we can falsify (demonstrate a falsehood) using the first two rules. We will discuss this in depth later on. Justification (Justificationism) is still (unfortunately) taught in philosophy classes in the west if not everywhere. Strict: The Logical relies upon the three classic laws of thought: (1) The law of identity – that the properties of a referent are unique enough that it cannot be conflated with something else. This is best thought of that a referrer and a referent are uniquely correspondent. (2) The law of non-contradiction stats that for any sentence or proposition, it and its negation cannot both be true. In other words, the law states that there are no true contradictions. (3) The law of excluded middle states that for any sentence (or proposition), that sentence is either true or false. This is equivalent to saying that truth and falsity are the only truth values for a sentence, and that no well-formed sentences are simultaneously not true and not false. This is somewhat problematic because there is a difference between false and undecidable. These three criteria leave us only two venues of decidability: (a)”mutually exclusive” and (b) “jointly exhaustive”, and provide no choice of the unknown or contingent. 2 – Suggestion: Suggestion consists in the practice of stating:

1. a complete, coherent, consistent, correspondent, statement or narrative
2. a question, example, or puzzle that is by its nature incomplete
3. an incomplete statement or narrative
4. an analogous statement or narrative
5. an incoherent statement or narrative
6. an erroneous statement or narrative

Such that the observer (audience) must infer, or supply (“fill in”), willingly or not, the information that is necessary for sensibility (coherence) in order to understand the actor (speaker). Unfortunately, the process of serialized speech (sequences of sounds, words, phrases, sentences) consists of a stream of suggestions by the actor (speaker), and “filling-in” (tentative completion) by the observer (audience). The question is only whether the contract for meaning produced by the actor (speaker) is reciprocal (equally understood) by the observer (audience) or not. The actor can pay the cost of due diligence, or the observer can pay the cost of due diligence, assuming either has the ability to do so. Unfortunately, knowledge is always and forever asymmetrical and therefore due diligence against fraudulent contract terms (contract for meaning) leaves the participant with the greatest knowledge asymmetrically responsible for the warranty of due diligence against ignorance, error, bias, and deceit. Example: A common libertarian artifice is “The Non-Aggression Principle”, which consists of an incomplete statement (“an incomplete statement or narrative” above). For one to aggress, one must aggress against something. By not stating what people may not aggress against, this deception forces the observer to rely upon intuition to complete his understanding. For this reason, while people vastly agree upon the general meaning of aggression, they disagree upon what one may or may not aggress against. This provides nearly everyone who hears it with the incentive to agree with the proposition yet continuously disagree with what may or may not be aggressed against. (You will see this pattern of deception throughout libertarianism, Marxism, and Neo Conservatism.) In general, beware ‘principles’ as nothing more than arbitrary statements of appeal to tradition or authority by those who lack the knowledge to make the judgments they claim to. 3 – Omniscience An unfortunate consequence of demand for efficient speech, even in a language as precise as English, is our use of the Copula (the verb to-be) to conflate both the forms of existence, and observer’s point of view, allowing us to testify on behalf of others, and to escape responsibility for our testimony.

• Using Operational grammar thereby deflating points of view (who is testifying).

(b) Eliminating The Copula (the Verb To-Be) to eliminate pretense of authority, and escape liability for testimony (speech). Example: Take the simple sentence “The cat is black”. (Much like “Chocolate is good” in the example above.) This is ‘god mode’ (omniscient) speech. Rather than “I promise I see a cat. The cats fur appears black. If you observe this cat, it’s fur will appear black to you as well.” There are a host of reasons we use the copula for the sake of brevity.

• computational efficiency (it’s costly in English grammar to speak in the active voice)
• verbal efficiency and convenience
• lack of understanding
• circumvention of responsibility (liability) for our speech (testimony)

This single grammatical device is the source of the vast majority of sophisms in the English language. For example, there is a great difference between “Everything in this box is a lie”, and “I promise I have written only lies in this box”.   In philosophy this is considered a paradox, when it is simply that the actor (speaker, composer) is engaged in an intentional conflation of promising and lying – it’s just a case of bad grammar. In other words, phrases and sentences don’t ‘mean something platonic or ideal’ the author intends a meaning and succeeds or fails and producing it grammatically such that it’s consistent, correspondent, coherent, and complete – and possible, rational, and reciprocal if claimed so. In other words, the author claims a text has meaning rather than an actor composes text meaningfully or not, and ethically or not. Another Example: Compare the two sentences “I, Albert, saw Brock throw the rock toward Carl, and it hit Carl, and Carl flinched when it hit him.” versus “Brock was angry and threw a rock at Carl, and it hurt him, and made him angry.” I cannot testify to Brock’s or Carl’s moods or intentions, only to the operation that Brock threw a rock and the rock hit Carl. 4 – Extrapolation Extrapolation means assuming whatever you observe continues to share properties with what you cannot observe. For example: “The house is green.” Versus “I see a house. I can see two sides. The two sides I can see appear green, I cannot see other than those two sides of the house.” 5 – Inflation (White Lie) Inflation consists of three techniques, Loading, Framing, and Overloading             |Inflation| Loading > Framing > Obscuring > Overloading Loading (Valuing) Loading consists of the addition of subjective value (personal, normative, cultural, religious, political, methodological, and disciplinary), rather than the removal (deflation) of it, by ‘display, word, or deed”. Framing (Leading) Framing refers to a form of suggestion (inference) wherein the presentation of information, or telling of a story, in a way that influences the observer – by emphasizing negative and positive consequences. (From the legal “I’ve been framed!”.) For example: Whenever we are presented with information we attempt to construct a network of relations that we use to create a model understanding and evaluation no matter how little or much information we are given. At any given time on any given subject we might be able to present the information from different points of view – thereby causing the observer (audience) to empathize with that point of view. Or to cause the observer (audience) to hypothesize cause, or intention. Or to recall and associate the story with a myth, or norm, or saying. Obscuring, Obscurantism (Hiding) Obscuring refers to the use of characterized by deliberate vagueness or obliqueness in argument intended to prevent understanding, to hinder the process of understanding, or to hinder full understanding. For example: Philosophers engage in obscurantism when describing the abstract concepts of their disciplines. Public intellectuals write esoterically to avert persecution by the political or religious authorities, or obscurely, in order to hide his or her vacuousness. Populists engage in obscurantism denote and describe the denial of the empirical truth of scientific theory, because of the disagreeable moral consequences that might arise from acceptance of fact. Many of us engage in ‘hand waving’ in order to pretend knowledge, obscure our ignorance, avoid stating the unpleasant, or to avoid blame. Overloading (Overwhelming) Overloading refers to an actor supplying enough information that the observer can only intuit rather than reason through the material. The most effective means of overloading is sophism: an apparently sophisticated argument that is correct in form but false in consequence. Pseudoscience, pseudo-rationalism, and religion all rely upon compensating for the otherwise unbelievable with an abundance of information that overloads the observer’s ability to reason. Particularly if the observer has incentive to believe in the falsehood in the first place. Advertising, Propaganda, Pseudoscientific Papers books and articles, Pilpul (misleading justification) and Critique (misleading criticism), philosophical rationalism(justification), and statistics (innumeracy) are the most common methods of overloading. 6 –Fictionalisms |Fictions| Testimony > Narration > Story > Fiction > Fictionalism > Deception > Fraud A positive Fictionalism refers to those statements that appear to be descriptions of the real world (reality) but are cases of “make believe” – of pretending that a given useful fiction is other than just a useful fiction. A negative Fictionalism refers to the most successful means of deception (coercion) by loading, framing and overloading. Given our the methods of perception: |Perception| Physical (sensory) > Intuitionistic (intuitionistic, emotional) > Mental (intellectual, reason) And the methods of inflating and conflating them: |Fictionalisms| Magical (Technical, Physical) > Supernatural (Occult, Experiential) > Ideal (Intellectual, Verbal) We produce these common uses of Fictionalism: Ideal (intellectual): 1) Mathematical Fictionalism, which states that talk of numbers and other mathematical objects is nothing more than a verbal convenience for performing their science. (the logic of constant relations: measurement) 2) Platonic Fictionalism (Idealism) which states that…. 3) Rational Fictionalism (continental philosophy) Magical (Technical): 4) Human Fictionalism (‘Denialism’) state that equality in all possible dimensions (a falsehood), is too necessary to throw out. 5) Modal Fictionalism developed by _________ which states that possible worlds, or multiple worlds, regardless of whether they exist or not, may be a part of a useful discourse. 6) Pseudosciences: Supernormal (Experiential): 7) Moral Fictionalism in meta-ethics, suggests that fictions (falsehoods) are too useful to throw out. 8) Religious Fictionalism in all areas of thought – our most ancient form of Fictionalism are too useful, and somehow necessary to throw out. 9) Aesthetic Fictionalism (In the arts, in experience, in the new age, and in the occult) are somehow necessary to escape reality, or fabricate a false version of it. We must note that all of these claims are just excuses for doing what has been done in the past, and failing to perform the cost of reformation of the terms, paradigms, and stories. Fictionalisms make use of three presumptions: 1) Communication of Meaning: The purpose of discourse(discovery) in any given domain is not truth, but communication. Whether descriptive or fictional, honest or deceptive, true or false. 2) Meaningful but not True: Claims made within the domain of discourse are taken to be truth-apt; that is, descriptive or fictional, and honest or deceitful, and true or false. 3) A Useful Fiction Not Open To Further Interpretation (Face Value): The domain of discourse is to be interpreted at face value—not reduced to meaning something else:

• Conversation(bonding or entertainment),
• Discourse (discovery),
• Argument(persuasion), and
• Testimony(reporting),

… Differ substantially in the contractual commitments to one another as to the degree of:

• Description vs. Fiction,
• Honesty vs. Deceit,
• Truth or Falsehood,

… of our statements. (We white and grey lie all time in conversation, and we do no such thing in testimony.) Speakers attempt to preserve the use of Fictionalisms for one of the following possible reasons: 1) To obscure their ignorance of causality and decidability in their disciplines, or 2) To preserve the sunk cost of their investments in obscurantist fictional descriptions, or 3) To avoid the costs of reformation the method of decidability within their domains. 4) To avoid the falsification of their arguments if methods of decidability within their domains are discovered. 5) To conduct deceptions by claiming their arbitrary preferences or judgments are truths. 5) To conduct frauds by using their arbitrary preferences or judgments for coercion or profit. 7 – Fraud and Deceit (black lie)Fraud is any act of deception carried out for the purpose of unearned gain, avoidance of loss or demand for restitution, or for unwarranted harm to others; while Deceit is an act or practice intended to deceive or trick whether for gain or not. Distinguishing between Fraud and Deceit requires we expand our analysis beyond terms and into incentives. And that evaluation, will require Operational Language, Fully Expanded Sentences, and an Account of Changes in State – which we will cover later in the chapters on Propertarianism, Testimonialism, and Natural Law. However, we can identify malincentives, which consist of either Discounts or Premiums. Discount Premium |Malincentives| Signaling > Biasing > Deceiving > Defrauding Discounting  Virtue Signaling Signaling  Biasing  Deceiving  Defrauding 8 – Evil (deep black lie) (…)

THE DECIETS

Numerology, Idealism, Astrology, Mythology, Magic, Supernatural, Disapproval, contempt , ridicule, shaming,