Theme: Education

STEPHAN: WOULD YOU HOST THIS DISCUSSION BETWEEN ME AND JORDAN PETERSON – Not a debate but an important discussion

Whether pedagogy and argument by…

– supernatural idealism (Abrahamism) or

– supernatural analogy (our ancient supernormal religions),or

– idealism (platonism/existential overloading, philosophy/reason overloading), or

– parables (hyperbolic reality), or

– description (selected stories from history)

…produces the least bad externalities, and the most good general rules of human behavior.

Peterson is an advocate of the use of middle eastern ‘Fictionalism’ – conflationary ‘truisms’, in pedagogy, and I’m an advocate of the european tradition of deflationary truth in pedagogy, where we do NOT conflate religion, philosophy, history, law, and, science, but apply these different means of argument as increasing degrees of precision.

At this moment, Peterson is a popular reactionary voice because he combines science and ‘fictional’ literature. I work on deflating philosophy so that psychology, philosophy, sociology, law, and science are unified into a single language and system. Nassim Taleb is trying to discover the limits to statistical claims (which I don’t think we will be able to do without).

But I am fairly certain that while fictionalism sells (literature), that it requires indoctrination. But science (natural law) requires only simple legislation and letting the market bring about deterministic ends.

Reciprocity can be legislated. With Reciprocity, Operationalism and Reciprocity we can complete the scientific method and require it’s use as a means of warranty of due diligence in matters of public speech (legislation).

If we can prevent fraud in commercial speech (irreciprocity) then we can prevent fraud in political speech (irreciprocity).

The legal strict constructionist were almost right. Hayek was almost right. They just needed another 50 years of thought.

(I am aware this is a lot of dense information, which is why I would prefer the three of us have this discussion. )

Thanks.

—BACKGROUND—

THE RANGE OF WESTERN DEFLATIONARY METHODS OF ARGUMENT (in order)

(gossip/priestly class)

– Supernatural Religion,

– myth as wisdom literature,

– literature as wisdom literature,

( martial, judicial and commercial class)

– history as wisdom literature,

– law as a record of conflict resolutions – an empirical record of wisdom.,

– legislation as a record of commons produced within a polity,

( intellectual class)

– morality as a portfolio of rights and obligations within a polity given their group competitive strategy,

– science as the measurement of phenomenon.

– philosophy as the means of producing decidability [identity, utility, preference, good, truth] within contexts.

– Truth as the means of producing decidability INDEPENDENT of contexts.

CHINESE NON-CONFLATIONARY WISDOM LITERATURE AND ARGUMENT (in order)

– Sun Tzu (aristocracy)

– Confucian (Bureaucracy/Middle Class)

– Lao Tzu (Working/Laboring class )

– Buddhism ( mental discipline: eastern version of Stoicism )

THE RANGE OF WORLD CONFLATIONARY MEANS OF WISDOM LITERATURE AND ARGUMENT (in order)

– Monotheistic Religion/Pseudo-Mythology (myth, law, philosophy)

– Rousseauian/Kantian Pseudo-rationaism and Postmodernism (Secular Religion, Philosophy, Politics, Law)

– Cosmopolitan (Jewish) Pseudoscience (Boaz, Marx, Freud, Cantor, Mises, and the frankfurt school)

ANALYSIS:

There does appear to be some relation between that which is closer to dream state (free association) and that which is closer to acting state (description) in each culture. But this difference can almost universally be explained by the median ability of the population relying upon the mythos.

I understand that stories are good. But the method, the content, and the consequence of those stories are different things. And my job is to end the problem of *externalities* produced by many small errors made many times, culminating in vast influences – many of which are catastrophic.

THE CONVERSION FROM JUSTIFICATION(Excuse) TO CRITICISM (survival from criticism) AND THE REASONS WHY;

We ended the era of human scale over 150 years ago, and we are today, in our works, unlike the past, not limited in ideas, or opportunities, but principally involved in the elimination of error, and saturated with methods of communicating meaning so that we can reduce our costs. And in each culture and even each class, we wish to communicate meaning using different ‘methods’ for purely habitual reasons. Yet the method we convey meaning with, functions itself, as a means of educating people in how meaning is conveyed and constructed.

We can communicate meaning by various devices, but then once we have achieved conveyance of meaning, we must reduce error that is a byproduct of the use of analogy to experience that we use to create meaning. Meaning followed by criticism leaving leaving what we intended to convey behind.

The problem is, we can leave artifacts of the method, behind. Leaving artifacts of history and science behind is one thing. Leaving artifacts of literature is another thing. Leaving the example of hyperbole that is so endemic to conservative thought is yet another thing. But leaving platonism and authoritarian supernaturalism is, as far as I can see, in all walks of life, disastrous for a people precisely because it it is, like alcohol, drugs, and gossip, so damaging to people and their societies.

Now some communication struggles to leave no artifacts behind: testimony, and science. Some seeks to leave good behind: parable. But western civilization was defeated in the ancient world and in the recent modern world, by the use of wishful thinking, suggestion, loading, framing, and overloading, the ordinary mind with information it cannot test. And in the past 150 years we have seen the use of media to use suggestion, loading, framing,and overloading to leave behind that which is not directly said. We have spent a century allowing ‘freedom of speech’ during the era of the industrialization and institutionalization of lying on a scope that neither Constantine nor Justinian could have dreamed of. They had to force the closure of the stoic schools. Other than the Italians and the Germans, Western governments put up very little resistance to the industrialization of lying.

I’m not against literature, I’m for it. I’m just against lying: platonism and abrahamism, because they are not obviously ‘stories’, and the stories that they tell you are stories for slaves.

I mean, why would you listen to supernatural lies, rather than hyperbolic parables? Or great events and heroes of history?

I mean… why would you do that? Why would you need lies when the truth is sitting there?

Why leave debilitating intellectual poisons behind – the literature of the enslaved, when we seek to create a free society?

Why not instead, prohibit such things in pedagogy, just as we prohibit all other forms of fraud in all aspects of life: commercial, judicial, and political?

Why do we need lies? Are we so incompetent that we cannot convey ideas through ordinary literature of extraordinary people? I don’t think so. Any number of tomes have been produced to do just that.

I am against carrying on the damaging myths of equality and the good of democracy, rather than the goods of truth, duty, and meritocracy. But that is a whole different topic.

The question remains, why pollute the informational commons and leave waste behind in the minds of our people, when every single sense of meaning can be conveyed by a literary device other than the platonic ideal and the authoritarian supernatural?

Especially when the uniquenss of western civilization is that we both discovered and practice DEFLATIONARY truth and NO OTHER PEOPLE HAS.

That’s the conversation that needs to be had.

Because you cannot half open pandora’s box of lies. And zoroaster half opened it. And abraham broke it wide open. And islam has carried it across the world, and caused almost as much death as the black plague, bue even worse devolution of the great civilizations.

The cosmopolitan pseudoscientific revolution, and the french pseudo-rational revolution both succeed in reforming abrahamism (loading, framing, overloading, and suggestion), and marxism caused a hundred million deaths. And if we lose western civilization to it, then what? What group still practices deflationary truth, high trust, and continuous innovation regardless of its impact on the dominance hierarch we call ‘order’?

Cheers