Meaning: the experience produced by the interaction between memory and stimuli caused by human action in time. This definition survives criticism even if the action is purely passive observation. All symbols for meaning are constructed from some set of analogies to experience. These constructs evolve through repetition and loading, until their constituent causal relations are lost, and all that remains is the habituated experience caused by the term. At which point ‘meaning’ is a purely experiential, rather than constructive. At that point, reason no longer can be said to apply. If one cannot explain something in analogies to experience, where analogies to experience are statements in operational language, one does not understand the terms one uses. They are merely experiential metaphors, used to transfer experiences rather than causal properties independent of experiences.
Form: Definition
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An Operational Definition of "Meaning"
Meaning: the experience produced by the interaction between memory and stimuli caused by human action in time. This definition survives criticism even if the action is purely passive observation. All symbols for meaning are constructed from some set of analogies to experience. These constructs evolve through repetition and loading, until their constituent causal relations are lost, and all that remains is the habituated experience caused by the term. At which point ‘meaning’ is a purely experiential, rather than constructive. At that point, reason no longer can be said to apply. If one cannot explain something in analogies to experience, where analogies to experience are statements in operational language, one does not understand the terms one uses. They are merely experiential metaphors, used to transfer experiences rather than causal properties independent of experiences.
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An Operational Definition of “Meaning”
Meaning: the experience produced by the interaction between memory and stimuli caused by human action in time. This definition survives criticism even if the action is purely passive observation. All symbols for meaning are constructed from some set of analogies to experience. These constructs evolve through repetition and loading, until their constituent causal relations are lost, and all that remains is the habituated experience caused by the term. At which point ‘meaning’ is a purely experiential, rather than constructive. At that point, reason no longer can be said to apply. If one cannot explain something in analogies to experience, where analogies to experience are statements in operational language, one does not understand the terms one uses. They are merely experiential metaphors, used to transfer experiences rather than causal properties independent of experiences.
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An Operational Definition of “Meaning”
Meaning: the experience produced by the interaction between memory and stimuli caused by human action in time. This definition survives criticism even if the action is purely passive observation. All symbols for meaning are constructed from some set of analogies to experience. These constructs evolve through repetition and loading, until their constituent causal relations are lost, and all that remains is the habituated experience caused by the term. At which point ‘meaning’ is a purely experiential, rather than constructive. At that point, reason no longer can be said to apply. If one cannot explain something in analogies to experience, where analogies to experience are statements in operational language, one does not understand the terms one uses. They are merely experiential metaphors, used to transfer experiences rather than causal properties independent of experiences.
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DEFINING GHETTO ETHICS Ghetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieva
DEFINING GHETTO ETHICS
Ghetto Ethics: quite literally, the ethics of the medieval urban ghetto.
As a ‘state within a state’ residents of the ghetto can conduct exchange as if they are state actors by relying upon high trust exchange in-group, while using low trust exchange out-group.
However, in any polity, each of us cannot act as a ‘state’ by applying low trust with some and high trust with others because the net result is a near universally low trust society for the vast majority.
In such an environment demand for the state and its interventions as a proxy for trust remains high, since low trust is by definition the use of cunning and deception to obtain discounts and premiums that the opposite party would not tolerate willingly.
In other words, low trust ethics are parasitic, and impose high transaction costs on the population.
The underlying point I’m making is the absurdity of using the model of a state within a state to advocate for a stateless society. In that lens the entire rothbardian project is… well, absurdly illogical. Laughable even.
Aristocratic egalitarianism (the protestant ethic) suppresses all cheating such that demand for the state is low because transaction costs and conflicts are minimized, while the velocity of production and exchange is high.
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-12 02:56:00 UTC
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HOW DO WE USE SCIENCE TO CONSTRUCT OUR PERCEPTION OF REALITY? Science is the con
HOW DO WE USE SCIENCE TO CONSTRUCT OUR PERCEPTION OF REALITY?
Science is the construction of calculable analogies to experience by means of instrumentation consisting of tools for correspondence and logics for coherence.
(reposted for archiving purposes)
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-06 10:18:00 UTC
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DOES “HIGH TRUST” MEAN? HIGH TRUST = LOW TRANSACTION COSTS = HIGH QUANTITY AND V
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Basis_of_a_Backward_SocietyWHAT DOES “HIGH TRUST” MEAN?
HIGH TRUST = LOW TRANSACTION COSTS = HIGH QUANTITY AND VELOCITY OF EXCHANGE = GREATER WEATH AT LOWER RISK.
(the not so obvious but obvious)
When we say ‘high trust’ and ‘low trust’ what we mean, is the willingness that one has to conduct a contract, whether formal or informal, with a random party that is not a member of your friends or family.
In a low trust society you can only really trust personal relations. In a very low trust society you can only really trust family members. In a high trust society you can trust the average person on the street as thoroughly as you can a friend or family member. (Often more so than family members.)
And given that politicians are universally corrupt, and that we depend upon judges and juries enforce this universal trust, and that judges and juries consist of people from the community, then the community must consist of high trust members for the system to perpetuate itself. So how does one construct a high trust society? Well, western europeans did it with property rights, prohibition on inbreeding and cousin marriage, and prohibition on marriage and child rearing until one had home and hearth.
Other than hiring a legion of northern european jurists, adopting the common law, requiring wills, granting universal private property rights, prohibiting cousin marriage out to four or six generations, prohibiting cohabitation between generations, it’s pretty much impossible.
And feminists and socialists are doing everything in their power to dismantle the total prohibition on free riding that the northern european people have created over five thousand years, but most importantly in the past 1500.
Those of us who claim to be ‘gentlemen’, will often do business on a handshake. Doing business by handshake is a status symbol. For me, I have always said that “I made a deal, we stick to the deal” because this preserves your ability to make deals with high trust. Sometimes we fail.
One of my long time business partners was notorious for constantly revising deals for his own convenience. Which makes me a bit nuts. But people put up with it from him because he always appears to be so honest. But the truth is, it’s an act. He’s always acting in his own pragmatic interest.
Using rural Italy as the example, the first and best work is the Moral Basis of a Backward Society by Edward Banfield.
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-05 13:41:00 UTC
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MORAL INTUITIONISM IS A TEST NOT A TRUTH. I agree with moral intuitionalism. How
MORAL INTUITIONISM IS A TEST NOT A TRUTH.
I agree with moral intuitionalism. However, that is a statement about our ability to test moral statements. It is not a test of whether moral statements are NECESSARY and therefore TRUE or not.
You might notice that I don’t rely on NORMATIVE expressions of morality EVER in my arguments.
Introspection is not only insufficient for the solution to the mind body problem, and the problem of consciousness, but it is also insufficient for analysis of morality.
In fact, any philosophical argument that relies upon introspection, is, I am fairly certain, a fallacy. (Although I am willing to be proven wrong if someone can provide an example.)
Truth is a function of correspondence on one hand and internal consistency on the other. Introspection fails both of those tests without the use of instrumentation to test our thoughts.
Source date (UTC): 2014-02-05 09:08:00 UTC
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THE ETHICAL SPECTRUM: CRIMINAL, ETHICAL, MORAL, CONSPIRATORIAL, CONQUEST The spe
THE ETHICAL SPECTRUM: CRIMINAL, ETHICAL, MORAL, CONSPIRATORIAL, CONQUEST
The spectrum describes means by which we act parasitically rather than productively. In a perfect world we only act productively with all parasitism eliminated. (No perfect world is possible I suppose, but it helps illustrate the point.)
Human history from from our consanguineous communal (Bonobo-like) pre-history to our current state as individualist, single-parent, autonomous producers insured through a corporation we call the state, required, first and foremost, the continuous expansion of prohibition on free riding (parasitism) in all its forms, thereby pressing each individual human into the market.
At some point our productivity increased sufficiently that a few people could specialize in thinking.
But today, less than half of the population is actually engaged in productive labor and it’s heading toward a third. So soon, 2/3 of people extant live independent of productive labor.
Given that malthusian limits controlled our population for most of history, it’s pretty impressive that so many people can be sustained by the combination of so few, plus fossil fuels of course.
Or stated otherwise, 2/3 of the people life a life of luxury.
I am not sure, but I cannot find anyone else who has described this system in detail. Very Weberian.
SPECIFIC TERMS:
By Conquest I mean organized (war) and unorganized conquest (immigration, religious invasion, political invasion).
By Conspiratorial I mean organized conspiracies of extraction such as protection rackets including the government.
By moral I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) actions we take on third parties.
By ethical I mean those extractions (parasitic and non productive) we take directly on others who are involved with us by non physical action such as lying, cheating, obscuring, fraud, etc.
By criminal I mean those extractions that we take against persons and their property by physical action (violence and theft).
Source date (UTC): 2014-01-26 08:08:00 UTC
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TRUST Definition: “Your confidence that another will act with a necessary degree
TRUST
Definition: “Your confidence that another will act with a necessary degree of reciprocity (mutually beneficial) for the matter at hand, despite the opportunity to act out of an equal degree of self interest.”
This definition addresses the spectrum of low trust exchanges to consanguineous interactions to high trust mutual insurance. Most definitions assume an equality of relations that never actually exists and as such those other definitions always seem wanting.
It also explains when we are actually trusting someone, versus asking for a donation. 🙂 Trust is a matter of reciprocity given the relationship you have to someone else.
Source date (UTC): 2014-01-26 06:06:00 UTC